Out of the Shadows: Rethinking Response Through the Instructor -Led Peer Conference

"This dissertation is a historical, theoretical, and empirical study of the practices of responding to student writing in composition classrooms. It argues that the primary value of response lies not in the evaluation or correction of student texts, but instead in the opportunities it presents for the dialogic shaping of writers and their writing practices over time. It focus specifically on a relatively neglected response format, called the ""instructor-led peer conference"" (ILPC), in which a writing instructor meets with a small group of students to discuss their drafts in progress. By tracing the genealogies of more common activities (such as peer response), and also by drawing on sociocultural theories of language (such as those of Vygotsky, Bakhtin, and Voloshinov), this study positions the ILPC as an ideal site for studying response as a situated practice. By attending closely to the contexts of response, it complicates received notions of teacher authority, student autonomy, and textual ownership that constrain, rather than enable, effective response practices. The aim of this dissertation is not to convince writing teachers to use the ILPC, but instead to argue for the pedagogical value of the kind of collaborative dialogue the ILPC represents. In the end, this dissertation also demonstrates the utility of combining historical and theoretical approaches with classroom-based research to study existing teaching practices."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Ching, Kory

Contributors dc:contributor

• Prior, Paul

• Language, Rhetoric and Composition

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3337734

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/81444