Response Styles and Ways of Knowing

Anson, Chris M. (1989) Response Styles and Ways of Knowing. In C. Anson (Ed.), Writing and Reponse: Theory, Practice, and Research (pp. 332-366). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Topic: The main focus of this essays is instructional ideology, a relatively unexplored topic with regards to educative theories. Anson analyzes teacher responses to student writing, and discusses how the responses reflect the reader's epistemology.

Methods: Anson exercised a very thoughtful way of collecting data for this investigation. He first gathered essays from a group of incoming Freshman at a special summer program at a large midwestern university. This was part of an arrangement for these Freshman, who needed remediation in certain basic skills. Anson chose basic skills writers intentionally. The essay prompt was distributed to 8 different classrooms of 10-15 students. The samples went through a normative process, where Anson and two associates categorized the essays. Discrepancies were thrown out. The 6 essays with the most common scores representing their categories were then distributed to 16 teachers of moderate experience teaching basic writing courses in universities. Responses were also checked against the teachers' typical comments for accuracy.

Evaluation: The methods matched the inquiry proposed, and I believe Anson contributed to the literature on instructional ideology in a profound way. However, there are certain assumptions that Anson makes along the way, which are debatable. For example, the categories that Anson uses were first established by William Perry's Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme (1970), and Perry's conclusions are hotly criticized for several reasons. Nevertheless, even with the assumptions made, I think that Anson's findings have merit, and his methods used help establish a consistent framework for analysis.

Anson first discusses Perry's discussion of how worldview can be observed in student writings. There are several stages, but the essential three are dualistic, relativistic and committed, or reflective. Generally, the dualistic perspective is seen in student writing which assumes there is a right and a wrong way to approach writing. These students are very concerned with rule-following, and pay close attention to Authority, who are assume to have access and knowledge of the rules. However, students can begin to challenge dualistic processes and move towards relativism. During this stage of development, students do not see knowledge as absolute, and feel that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. They feel they cannot disagree with people, because there is no basis for disagreement. Everything becomes merely a matter of opinion. However, after muddling through relativism, students may decide to commit to their own personal point of view, and reject others. A committed, or reflective, type of writer will be unafraid of tentativeness, able to consider many different viewpoints, and will eventually settle on a balanced point of view that he or she feels can be argued strongly.

When beginning this exploration, Anson felt that teacher responses would recognize these various points of view on writing, and would vary accordingly. However, Anson found instead that teacher responses themselves reflect the same kinds of ideologies.

Dualistic responses tended to treat the student writing very textually, focused on grammatical or structural problems which needed to be "fixed." Relativistic responses did not focus on the text at all, but were more like detached notes or casual responses to the text. They did not provide direction for revision, but were solely focused on the ideas generated through the essay prompt. Finally, reflective responses included somewhat a mixture of both, in that they focused on the ideas, but did not hesitate to express preference. Generally, reflective responses put the focus back on the writer as authority, but encouraged the writer to pursue certain courses and provided options for revision.

Anson concludes with thoughts about the importance of focusing not just on the students, but also on the teachers as learners. He recognizes that responses to student writing have become a "private" and "unscrutinized" domain, but teachers tend to be very interested in how other teachers perform the same tasks. Although response to student writing is critical for continued literacy and cognitive development, we do not often put the spotlight on teachers.

Reflection

I appreciate Anson's focus on teacher responses, and concur that this would be a valuable focus on inquiry for any campus. If we believe that we are lifelong learners, why do teachers get so insecure about finding ways of improving our practices? with admitting that we could be doing something better? with admitting, even, that we are doing something wrong or very harmful to the goals we profess to seek?

Throughout this article, I recognized the development of my own intellectual capacity, both as a student and as a teacher. I know that I have made dualistic, relativistic and reflective responses to student writing. I struggle to determine what is the most effective and beneficial way to interact with students in the writing process.