Retention and Resistance: Writing Instruction and Students Who Leave - Brossura

Powell, Pegeen Reichert

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0874219302 ISBN 13: 9780874219302

Casa editrice: Utah State Univ Pr, 2014

Riassunto

Retention and Resistance combines personal student narratives with a critical analysis of the current approach to retention in colleges and universities, and explores how retention can inform a revision of goals for first-year writing teachers.

Retention is a vital issue for institutions, but as these students’ stories show, leaving college is often the result of complex and idiosyncratic individual situations that make institutional efforts difficult and ultimately ineffective. An adjustment of institutional and pedagogical objectives is needed to refocus on educating as many students as possible, including those who might leave before graduation.

Much of the pedagogy, curricula, and methodologies of composition studies assume students are preparing for further academic study. Retention and Resistance argues for a new kairotic pedagogy that moves toward an emphasis on the present classroom experience and takes students’ varied experiences into account. Infusing the discourse of retention with three individual student voices, Powell explores the obligation of faculty to participate in designing an institution that educates all students, no matter where they are in their educational journey or how far that journey will go.

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Informazioni sull?autore

Pegeen Reichert Powell is associate professor in the English department at Columbia College Chicago.

Estratto. © Ristampato con autorizzazione. Tutti i diritti riservati.

RETENTION AND RESISTANCE

Writing Instruction and Students Who Leave

By PEGEEN REICHERT POWELL

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2013 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-87421-930-2

Contents

Acknowledgments, ix, 
Introduction: Paying Attention to the Discourse of Retention in Higher Education, 1, 
1 A Story of Retention Research, 31, 
2 The Seduction and Betrayal of the Discourse of Retention, 52, 
3 The Possibility of Failure, 83, 
4 Beyond Retention, 106, 
References, 135, 
About the Author, 142, 
Index, 143, 

CHAPTER 1

A STORY OF RETENTIONRESEARCH

Helen is one of the toughest students I've ever taught. Bythis I mean that, at times, her demeanor is tough. Her languageis tough. And she would admit parts of her background arepretty tough, too. I also mean she is probably one of the brightest,most earnest, most hardworking students I have ever met,and it was tough to teach her when I knew she was strugglingwith money and family and relationships and her vision for thefuture and her own sense of herself. She approached the writingand the reading with an enthusiasm that made our classroomtime together a joy, but I also spent many hours outside theclassroom dealing with her extracurricular challenges, exhaustingthe resources and services at my college, and trying to cometo terms with my limits as an educator.

Put simply, research on student retention tries to determinewhy a student like Helen might leave college after one semester,why others stay, and whether or not there is anything we cando to influence these decisions; the goal of such research is tofigure out ways to keep as many students as possible enrolled ina particular institution. But the issue of retention is hardly simple,and it raises some particularly compelling questions aboutour own roles as educators. Helen was a tough student to teachbecause I didn't face a day during the semester she was enrolledin my class without confronting these questions: Is higher educationa right or a privilege? What is the purpose of higher education?What does "success" in college mean? And what roledoes writing instruction play in answers to these questions?

This chapter tells Helen's story. I got to know Helen both asa participant in the Student Faculty Partnership for Success program(which I describe in the introduction) and as a studentin my Writing and Rhetoric course. Like the other students Idiscuss in this book, she also sat down for a long recorded andtranscribed interview while she was still enrolled in my college. (Ireturn to Helen's story in chapter 4, and in that chapter, I drawon a second interview, conducted two and a half years later.)

On one hand, the peculiarities of Helen's experiences,behaviors, and personality traits undermine much of what wethink we know about retention—who leaves and how to preventthat from happening—and thus her story lays the groundworkfor a critique of the discourse of retention, which I continuein chapter 2. On the other hand, the picture that emerges ofa bright and engaged student who drops out of college afterone semester compels me to ask important questions about mygoals as a writing instructor and my responsibilities to teach studentslike Helen who may never graduate, at least not from thecollege where I taught them, questions I take up in chapters 3and 4.

Helen in many ways represents the larger population of studentswho are at risk for leaving college before graduation, whomay or may not transfer to other institutions or return later toachieve the degree. We hear in her story many of the "risk factors"the data tell us to look for when trying to determine whomight leave. She is representative, too, because, paradoxically,her story is unique—I believe it is nearly impossible to extrapolatefrom this one case any useful generalizations about retention.I am inclined to argue that all students are unique in thisway. Getting to know her, like getting to know the other studentsI write about in this book, has taught me just how muchwe don't know, and how much we may never be able to know,about the reasons some students leave and other students stay.

In this chapter, I put Helen's story next to a discussion ofsome of the dominant strains of retention scholarship. I beginwith a brief history of retention research to provide some necessarycontext. Then, I juxtapose Helen's narrative with highlightsfrom recent retention research in order to illustrate thedifficulties of going back and forth between students' voices andresearch, the struggle to reconcile both of these discourses intoone tidy narrative, and the disjointedness of our understandingof retention.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF RETENTION RESEARCH

The issue of retention occupies a growing body of research:Vincent Tinto asserts that "student retention is one of the mostwidely studied areas in higher education" (Tinto 2006–2007,1). While the motivations for studying and trying to improveretention are varied, the assumption in this body of scholarship,and even among other academics who do not study retention,is almost always that retention is good. Some retention scholarsfocus on the benefits to individual students who remain inschool until they achieve a college degree: "A bachelor's degreeis no longer considered a potential stepping stone to a betterlife. It is the gatekeeper to myriad social and individual benefits,ranging from income, employment stability, and occupationalprestige to engagement in civic and political activities"(Cabrera, Burkum, and LaNasa 2005, 155). Other retentionscholars stress the benefits to society, both politically and economically,of educating as many people as possible: "An educatedcitizenry will keep the United States strong and vibrant.This, in essence, is what makes us a great nation and an examplefor others to follow" (Seidman 2005b, 315).

Still others focus on the benefits to the institutions themselves.It is perhaps this motivation, more than the others, thatfuels administrations' support for retention scholarship andprograms. Tinto explains this rationale in very clear terms:

Today it is more important than ever for institutions to respondto the challenge of increasing student success. Forced to copewith tight, if not shrinking, budgets, institutions face mountingpressure to improve their rates of student retention and graduation.In many cases, this pressure reflects the movement of statesto include graduation rates in a system of institutional accountability.In other cases, this pressure reflects the impact of widelypublicized ranking systems that include graduation rates as onemeasure of "quality." In still other cases, this pressure mirrors thereality that increased student retention is critical to the stabilityof institutional budgets. (Tinto 2005b, ix–x; cf. Hossler 2006)

It is difficult to distinguish the various motivations for studyingretention inasmuch as focusing on the benefits to individualsand society speaks to the whole purpose of higher education,and focusing on the financial implications of the retentionproblem speaks to institutions' ability to fulfill that purpose.Nevertheless, the extent to which retention efforts are fundedby individual colleges and universities and supported by upper-leveladministrators is often dependent on the extent to whichsuch efforts will realize financial gains in the form of tuitiondollars, state funding, or future graduates' support as alumni.

According to Joseph B. Berger and Susan C. Lyon, retention,as an area of concern in higher education, did not exist in anysignificant way until the beginning of the twentieth century,and only in the last three or four decades has an identifiablebody of scholarship emerged (Berger and Lyon 2005, 9). Thetremendous expansion of higher education in the 1950s due inpart to the GI Bill, as well as increased access to higher educationmade possible through other movements like civil rightsand feminism, diversified the student population in ways mostinstitutions were not prepared for. As Berger and Lyon explain,

Attempts to promote access and diversity on college campusesled to many challenges, some of which were directly associatedwith the retention of students. Many campuses were unpreparedto deal with a more diverse student body, and many were unableor unwilling to create supportive environments for studentsof color. Additionally, many students from underrepresentedminority groups that were now allowed greater access to highereducation had not been provided adequate educational preparation,given the inequities in school systems throughout America.As a result, retention rates were quite low for minority students.(Berger and Lyon 2005, 16)

Thus, much like the history of the field of composition studies,especially the development of process approaches and the subfieldof basic writing, research on retention in the 1970s arose,in part, as a response to the struggles of institutions to respondto the needs of these new students. There was also a fear amongcollege administrators that enrollment numbers would begin toflatten in the late 70s, and in anticipation of this decline, seminalwork on retention by William Spady and Vincent Tinto waspublished then (Berger and Lyon 2005, 16–19).

In the 1980s, the trend in retention research and practicemoved toward "enrollment management," informed by theTotal Quality Management movement of the same era: admissions,student services, recruitment, financial aid, and institutionalresearch were consolidated around the effort to bringstudents in and keep them there (Berger and Lyon 2005, 21).Efforts like these initiated the student-as-consumer model thatdominates higher education today, a phenomenon I return toin chapter 2. The current financial climate in higher educationis prompting even more interest in the reasons students leave.Since the 1990s, retention has emerged as one of the mostresearched areas in higher education today (6). Dissertationsabout retention in higher education have increased 35 percentfrom the period of 1988–1998 to the period of 1999–2009.Likewise, the quarterly, peer-reviewed Journal of College StudentRetention: Research, Theory & Practice began publication in 1999.What's more, this is an area of scholarship that has yieldedretention "experts," consultants who promise to provide programsand initiatives that will improve an institution's retentionrate. One study found that a sample of forty American collegesspent, on average, close to $10,000 on conferences, webcasts,research reports, and other information sources and a meanof approximately $25,000 on consulting services to improvestudent retention in one year (Survey of Student RetentionPolicies in Higher Education 2008, 18–19). These figures do notinclude all the money put into the actual programs or positionscreated specifically to address retention. In other words, retentionis a growth industry. Tinto admits that "it would not be anunderstatement to say that student retention has become bigbusiness for researchers, educators, and entrepreneurs alike"(Tinto 2006–2007, 2). And like any good industry, the entrepreneurscreate the need for their services. There have always beenstudents who drop out, or transfer to other schools, and therehave been economic crises before, too. What's different now isthat there is a battalion of consultants and a plethora of productsand services ready to address what we now see as a problem,and a buzzword, a body of scholarship, and conversationsin popular media and on local campuses—a complex, multilayereddiscourse—to keep the problem front and center.

And this is part of my point here: in large part due to theemergence of the field of retention scholarship, we see a studentlike Helen as a problem to be solved. Her story remindsus that positioning students within the framework of "problem:solution" is inadequate, unproductive, and possibly unethical.

RETENTION AND PREVIOUS ACADEMIC EXPERIENCES:I WAS REALLY SCREWING MYSELF HARD AS HELL.

Helen's story is punctuated by her many moves. During highschool, she lived in the city, then moved out to a suburb withher mom, where, in her words, I got Saturday detentions almostevery weekend. Didn't go ... I wasn't going to classes. I was ditchinga lot of the morning classes, always late. She got involved withgangs, then moved out to her dad's home to avoid the gangmembers after her close friend (and gang brother) was killedand they were coming after her. About that school, she said,They threw me into geometry. And geometry I slept through every day.I told the [teacher] I'm not going to be able to learn this. And I sleptthrough it every day. Chemistry was the same thing, slept through that.So, like, I was really screwing myself hard as hell, hard as hell. I wasn'tpassing any classes.

She then moved back to her mom's because she found outshe wouldn't graduate on time from the school she attendedat her dad's. When asked if she had been held back a year inschool because of all the turbulence, she replied, In answer toyour question if I was held back, technical I was held back because whenI went to h-F as a junior, they did label me as a sophomore, so I guessthat is being held back. But they told me I'd be able to make up the credits.But they're telling me in order to graduate, I would have to do somuch schoolwork, Prairie State College to do night courses, do this, andthen get my diploma mailed to me. I told them, kiss my ass. Either I'mgoing to graduate on time, or instead of doing all this stuff, I'll get myGED because it will be a lot quicker than doing all the extra shit. Ratherthan go to that trouble, she reenrolled in her original highschool and, in her words, I killed my senior year. Killed it. Came outwith As and Bs. Killed it. Graduated on time.

According to Jennifer L. Crissman Ishler and M. Lee Upcraft'sreview of retention literature, "There is substantial evidencethat the most powerful predictor of persistence into the sophomoreyear is the first-year student's prior academic achievement,including high school grades" (Ishler and Upcraft 2005,33; see also Astin and Oseguera 2005, 256; Caison 2004–2005,431). If "prior academic achievement" can predict whether ornot a student will reenroll after the first semester or first yearof college, then Helen's high-school experience does not bodewell. Her high-school GPA undoubtedly reflected all of the movingaround and violence and uncertainty that characterized herlife during this period of time. Regardless of the quality of herhigh schools or the availability of AP classes or extracurriculars,she clearly wasn't taking advantage of opportunities to preparefor college academically or behaviorally, and that lack of preparationis to some degree captured in the GPA numbers.

However, what her GPA doesn't adequately reflect is herhigh intelligence or her tough personality, which one can seeglimpses of in her narrative here, and which I witnessed in theclassroom and in interactions with Helen over the course ofseveral years. Many writing program administrators are understandablywary of GPAs and SATs and all of their numbers asindicators of intelligence or writing ability. To this generalsense of wariness I'll add the further caution that when thesenumbers are used to predict retention, they'll increasingly beused to determine access (an institution determined to improveretention numbers will be more likely to deny access to studentswhose numbers suggest they won't make it) (see my discussionof Astin in chapter 2).

What is unnerving for me, in trying to understand retentionbetter, is how even knowing more of Helen's story, even seeingbehind the numbers, even coming to tremendously enjoy andrespect her intelligence and her personality, I am no better ableto predict her chances of graduating from college.

RETENTION AND THE ROLE OF THE FAMILY:I TOLD YOU THIS WASN'T GOING TO WORK.

With the encouragement of a friend, Helen applied to ColumbiaCollege Chicago, a private generous-admissions arts and mediacollege. Her acceptance was contingent on attending a SummerBridge program: Yeah, and I got a letter that said I had to do theBridge program, and I was pissed. I remember I was pissed about that.My mom read the letter first, though, and out of her mouth was, I toldyou this wasn't going to work and all this. But I was pissed, like, man,I wrote good on that essay. There should be no reason. But then I thoughtabout it. They probably looked at my high school and, you know, my testscores, and they probably figured, you know. But I couldn't blame themfor that because I wasn't showing up, so what the—you know? So, I toldmy mom—she told me I couldn't do it, and I said, watch.

When asked if she had either of her parents' support whenshe started the Bridge program, she answered immediately: No.My dad, like, he did come with me one time to another open house, like,after I came with [a friend] and stuff. It was like a parent thing. Hecame with me, and he said he liked the school, and he liked it becausethe music—neither one of my parents supported it as a career for me,or, you know what I'm saying, where I should be going to school at. Butthey're still—to this day, they're still talking about me going to communitycollege.

(Continues...)

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Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Utah State Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0874219302
• ISBN 13: 9780874219302
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 144
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile