Writing Assistance Tools for Apprentices
In the course of taking a graduate class this term, Seminar in Rhetoric and Composition, I’ve been reading Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. In the preface to the book, editors Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle explain that “threshold concepts are ideas that learners must ‘see through and see with’ (Kreber 2009,11) in order to participate more fully in particular disciplines” (ix). The concepts are not always easy for us to accept. They can be “troublesome” and might happen in a “two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back kind of way as learners push against troublesome knowledge,” but once the thresholds are crossed, the new understanding can be “integrative and transformative” and “probably irreversible” (Adler-Kassner and Wardle, ix).
As I consider my thinking this year about writing assistance tools in our Ahead of the Code group, I realize that there is a threshold in thinking about the uses of these tools that I have not crossed yet. In fact, I find that I am still struggling to align the tools with what I know about writing. Threshold concept 3 in Naming What We Know asks us to consider the ways in which “writing enacts and creates identities and ideologies.” One of the questions that struck me in this section was Paul Gee’s: “What sort of social group do I intend to apprentice the learner into?” (as qtd in Scott, Adler-Kassner and Wardle, 48). I appreciate this question as a writer who has been mentored by wonderful people but even more so as a teacher who wants to create a supportive social group for developing writers to grow in their craft.
What sort of classroom environment do I want to apprentice the writer into? And how do writing assistance tools fit into that environment? To puzzle this through, I needed a metaphor and I settled on cooking. Apprenticeship is crucial in learning to write just as it is in learning to cook. The developing cook may read recipes and instructions, watch videos, and experiment on their own with ingredients, but they will grow by leaps and bounds if they stand next to a cook who shows them the proper knife technique, helps them pick the right seasonings, and pushes them to assess whether a dish succeeds or fails. The same is true of the developing writer.
When I think about the writing assistance tools we are exploring, I wonder if these tools should be categorized differently based on what they do for the apprentice.
For instance, some writing assistance tools are Blue Apron. The meal kit arrives complete with all of the ingredients, full-color images of the goal, and explicit instructions to be followed. Tools like Writable, NoRedInk, and Quill seem to be these sorts of tools. They are complete and self-contained writing kits: all of the prompts, instructions, and rubrics are included. Now, it seems likely that the developing cook would gain quite a few skills from working weekly with meal kits. It might even be likely that those skills would be transferable to other ingredients and meals. Is this the “social group that I intend to apprentice learners into,” though? Will these tools encourage the social and rhetorical situations that I want developing writers to experience?
On the other hand, some tools work like a well-stocked spice rack or pantry. The built-in writing assistance tools in Google Docs or Microsoft Word and the Grammarly extension seem to fit this description better. They can add a dash of correctness to balance a piece of writing; they can help the amateur writer to build confidence by ensuring their message is not obscured by technical errors.
Finally, there are tools that work like a good food critic, offering commentary on the dish in the form of data. In my classroom, we use analyzemywriting.com for this sort of data. Like a good critic, it can compare the final dish to the standards of the field and offer information. Students then can develop agency by deciding what to adopt or reject from the critic.
At the end of the meal, I keep going back to the central question Paul Gee raises: “What sort of social group do I intend to apprentice the learner into?” (as qtd in Scott, Adler-Kassner and Wardle, 48). In my next post, I’ll talk more about how I decided to use the habits of mind and experiences laid out in the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing to frame how apprentices use writing tools in my classroom.
References
Adler-Kassner, L., & Wardle, E. A. (Eds.). (2015). Naming what we know: Threshold concepts of writing studies. Utah State University Press.
