W4: Revisiting my Teaching Philosophy

Prompt: Describe your "philosophy statement" approach to the first assignment. Which rhetors are you thinking of using, and why? 


The last time I revisited my Teaching Statement was back in 2008 which, although it doesn't feel that long ago, was actually six years back! I also realized that it didn't include any direct references to scholars. I'm not sure how my professor (who assigned this for an MA class) let me get away with that! This new version will definitely show marked improvement. 

I took some time to review Dr. Rice's statement and realized that our first few sentences were actually very similar. I promise I didn't just copy yours, Dr. Rice. ;) However, I really loved his three bulleted statements that serve as the foundation of his philosophy, so that I am borrowing. At this point, these are my four foundational tenets:

* I believe in the power of student agency in class activities and assessment practices.
* I believe in equipping students to think critically.
* I believe in using technology to enhance learning.
* I believe in making visible biases and differences, such as those created through race, culture, literacy, socioeconomic standing, religion, gender, and age.

The one that will most directly link to this course's content is, of course, the second one: equipping students to think critically. So I think what I'd like to do here is start connecting the dots between my goals and scholars from this class and others I've taken since 2008. Then, I will integrate these into my document. I'm sure some will be direct inclusions while others will be footnotes. I also understand that what I've posted here is a bit of a mess. I won't necessarily transfer all of this into my teaching philosophy; however, including it in one place is helping me to see connections and figure out what to include later. So, here is my mess of a prewriting assignment based off of these four foundational statements:

The power of student agency in class activities and assessment practices: Guiding students through these processes helps them to take ownership and really embody the steps we often take for granted. This reflects the post-process theory where the process is as important as the product that results from it. Class generated content can also aid in the invention process. Putting students in the forefront also allows for more genuine conversation, which aids in invention and I believe also relates to topoi, but I still struggle knowing how to integrate that term/concept in my thinking and my syntax. I strive to reflect the Constructionist theory: 

Constructivist theorists claim that learners interpret information and the world according to their personal reality, and that they learn by observation, processing, and interpretation, and then personalize the information into personal knowledge. Learners learn best when they can contextualize what they learn for immediate application and to acquire personal meaning. (Ally, 2004, p. 4 of 23)

I seek to apply Jones’ (2013) guidelines in my overall rubric creation. He writes:

I have found the following four strategies helpful for my purposes. First, make students aware of the rubrics used in the course before using them to assess their work… Second, avoid using too many different rubrics… Third, make the rubrics fair… Fourth, make sure each rubric accurately reflects the objectives of the assignment. (Jones, 2013, p. 248)

I prioritize using collectively created rubrics that reflect Horton's Absorb, Do, and Practice activities, which allow students to be invested in the process and see how the five cannons are assessed, especially arrangement and style, in written form.

Equipping students to think critically: I believe I am most aligned with Isocrates because, unlike Plato, I don't believe that rhetoric is connected to a higher power or the Truth. Isocrates believed in the ability to teach rhetoric, even if some students are naturally more inclined than others, and that it is a practical tool. I try to instill this in my students all of the time. However, I do follow Plato's thinking that dialogue can help us determine truth and that rhetoric can be used for corruption, which is why I believe it is so important for students to learn what rhetoric is, how it is created, and how to identify fallacies within it.

Young - crossing barriers and uncovering biases/cultural differences/etc. (Public Rhetorics course)

Paulo Friere - use student's current knowledge while adding to it and challenging it.

Using technology to enhance learning: This can allow students to play with different ways of manifesting delivery and style from the cannons of ways we develop knowledge  Technology can also aid in the invention stage through research, blogs, and other collaborative processes (i.e. GoogleDocs, virtual whiteboard tools through Blackboard etc., NoodleTools, etc.). I try to use discussion boards as true sites for discussion, not just busy work: As Warnock (2009) suggests, “You can create this same dynamic on message boards by having small breakout groups… focus on a particular aspect of a topic before having a general conversation with the whole group” (p. 150). 
 

Warnock (2009) suggest that “Socratic conversations can be built into your message boards: pose simple, direct questions to students initially, and then during the week, work toward a more complex learning goal” (pp. 31-2). 

They write of their growing awareness of how long each video takes to both create and view, and how they realized the need to “script [their] oral presentations, compose them, and then spend further time editing before posting to [their] courses” (Cason & Jenkins, 2013, p. 232).  

I believe all of these things contribute to invention and creating a dialectic, and the two really go hand-in-hand.

Making visible biases and differences, such as those created through race, culture, literacy, socioeconomic standing, religion, gender, and age: Faiola and Matei (2006) discovered that task associated performance times shortened when Chinese and American participants used sites created by designers from their own culture. Factors such as layout, navigation, color, and content ratios have been shown to vary based on culture (Shneiderman & Hochheiser, 2001; Kincl & Štrach, 2011). 

Jame Gee's discussion of discourse and discourse communities.

Implied/textual note: Borcher's discussion of rhetorics in other cultures. Emphasize the need to recognize differences and honor them, even if that simply leads to greater awareness of how to help students acquire (White) academic discourse.

References

Ally, M. (2004). Foundations of educational theory for online learning. In T. Anderson (Ed.),

Theory and practice of online learning. (np) Athabasca: Athabasca University.

Cason, J. & Jenkins, P. (2013). Adapting instructional documents to an online course

environment. In Online education 2.0: Evolving, adapting, and reinventing online technical communication. Cargile Cook, K. & Grant-Dvie, K. (Eds). (pp. 213-236). New York: Baywood Publishing, Inc.

Faiola, A. & Matei, S. A. (2006). Cultural cognitive style and web design: Beyond a behavioral

inquiry into computer-mediated communication. Journal of computer-mediated communication, 11, 375-394. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00018.x

Horton, W. (2012). E-learning by design 2^nd ed. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Jones, D. (2013). Expanding the scaffolding of the online undergraduate technical

communication course. In Online education 2.0: Evolving, adapting, and reinventing online technical communication. Cargile Cook, K. & Grant-Dvie, K. (Eds). (pp. 237-256). New York: Baywood Publishing, Inc.

Kincl, T. & Štrach, P. (2011, Feb.) Measuring website quality: Asymmetric effect of user

satisfaction. Behavior & information technology, 31 (7), 647-657. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2010.526150 

Shneiderman, B. & Hochheiser, H. (2001). Universal usability as a stimulus to advanced

interface design. Behaviour & information technology, 20 (5), 367-376. doi: 10.1080/0144929011008360 2 

W3: The Rhetoric of 9/11

Prompt: What rhetoric do you remember being employed during and in the aftermath of 9/11? Perhaps make connections to rhetors we've been reading. Also, which of the introductions to rhetoric did you find the most useful, and why?


Although I know there was (and still is) a lot of rhetoric around 9/11, my mind always returns to the visual rhetoric. I see myself in the office where I worked being forced to watch the footage over and over again while newscasters repeated the same facts and speculations. We all wanted to know more than we did. We wanted to understand, to make sense of this tragedy; but all we had were a few snippets of footage and fear. I had this in mind as I read through this week's introductions, and I'll be honest; I had a really hard time seeing my memory of 9/11 visual rhetoric through these lenses. But here are my best efforts.

The Sophists are critiques for teaching how to prevail in an argument and, in a sense, that was what dominated our airwaves in those weeks and for months and years afterward. It wasn't really an attempt to win an argument; it was an attempt to win over a nation that we could endure and catch Bin Laden. There was a clear amplification of pathos involved, which is true of Sophists. However, Gorgias, Isocrates, and Plato all emphasized kairos, "the immediate social situation in which solutions to philosophical problems must be proposed" (Bizzell & Hertzberg, 2001, p. 81). Although I can't say that what we heard surrounding these terrorist attacks was logic, those producing the rhetoric were certainly addressing the audience and situation, which I'm understanding as kairos. The newscasters, the president, and anyone else who was in a position to gain air time wanted us to feel like they were in control and that we (America) would prevail. Winning + kairos = 9/11 rhetoric. 

As I am reviewing this week's reading, I am also seeing connections to Gorgias' belief that "human encounters with the world and the exchange of knowledge about it are necessarily limited, provisional, and shared experiences that rely upon a shared deception effected by language" (Bizzell & Hertzberg, 2001, p. 43). It seems that the media (and thus the visual rhetoric I recall) was all about creating a shared experience. We knew parts of it were true, but we now know other parts were biased at the least and deception at the worst. Although, at the time, we were made to believe all of what we were told was true and that decisions were logic-based. Aristotle would have been proud. I recall feeling (and even now feel) unqualified and uniformed enough to know what to believe and who to trust. So, if I try to filter this through Aristotle's belief, where does that lead me? According to Bizzell and Hertzbert (2001), Artistotle believes "Rhetoric functions in situations in which such rigorous analysis is not possible (because the audience is not qualified) or desirable (due to the exigency of the questions at hand). Instead of examining everything, rhetorical argument builds whenever possible on assumptions the audience already holds" (p. 170). Does this mean that the audience is, in a sense, pandered to if they are unqualified? Shouldn't that make us question what we are told even more? And if that is the case, and I believe time revealed that it was in some instances, then it seems like we (the undereducated audience) should be skeptical of rhetoric, whether coming from "trusted" sources or those with only their own (Sophist-like) interests in mind. 

In terms of what I introductions I found most useful, I'd honestly have to say all of them. Since I know so little of the history of rhetoric, each introduction helped me to better understand these steps. I'd say that Plato and Aristotle felt the most applicable, but that's probably just because they are closest to what we now think of as rhetoric. I do appreciate that each introduction recaps and connects the new content to the previous introductions we have read. That is very helpful for me.

Freewriting on my Expert Discussion Lead

Context: This assignment really had me stumped. I so want each of my classes and all of my classwork to help me towards my dissertation, but I had two problems with this: 1) my specific dissertation focus has been so terribly nebulous and broad throughout my year of coursework and 2) I just couldn't get anything to fit with this goal. Nothing. I was stumped. I sent a long, rambling email to Dr. Rice expressing this and then thought of something I might be able to use: a rhetorical analysis of Humans of New York, a Facebook page I follow and love. So, off I went typing up another email to poor Prof. Rice. This one he responded to and elicited a short email dialogue as I attempted to nail down my idea. Then, through a strange set of events I will not describe, I happened upon a book called The technology of nonviolence: Social media and violence prevention by Joseph B. Bock. I mentioned this to my husband and we had a conversation that lead me to this idea. So, this post is me thinking on paper/screen about this idea because 1) I'm hoping to use it for my Expert Discussion Lead, 2) I'd LOVE to build a publishable paper out of it and 3) I think this may actually be a brand new direction for me to go with my dissertation, which I am SUPER excited about! So, feel free to read, comment, make suggestions, leave encouragements, or simply stop reading here. :)


The little I have read and seen about social media and disaster or violence has argued that social media can help or even prevent these difficult situations. While I don't necessarily believe that is not the case, a recent event in my city has lead me to see the negative influence of social media as well. In the last three weeks, two churches (one Mormon and one Catholic) have been vandalized by someone(s) calling him/her/themselve(s) "The Merry Men." They have graffitied the doors with non-establishment rhetoric. However, a few days ago they hit my old high school. But there was something different about this. The message was the same, but in the morning the school received a bomb thread via email. The police are linking the two acts together, but it is unclear whether or not they are directly related. However, that is not the interesting part: it is what happened the night before that interests me. Before the email was sent or received, there was chatter on Twitter about planned violence on the campus the next day, which sparked panic. A combination of fear (from students, but mainly parents) and extreme distraction lead to over 800 students being dismissed despite the school being deemed safe for the students on the day of the actual bomb threat - the morning after the Twitter chatter.

In this case, the chatter did not prevent or even help the threat; it actually made things worse. A lot worse. Although there is potential in the graffitied rhetoric (which might come to play as I work these things out) I am more interested in the way that this online dialogue emerged and shaped the response to this threat. It was to the point that kids were being kept home or being called back home, and police were so bombarded with calls that they were unable to respond appropriately. The police are uncertain if the two men they arrested who are suspected to be "the Merry Men" are also the ones who made the threat, and there were copy cats that emerged around the time of the social media explosion. I want to further explore the hashtag #merrymen that circulated the threats of violence to better understand the reactions. I want to understand how this new form of rhetoric moves, develops, and grows. I also have some developing long-term ideas of what to do with this, but I am a bit reluctant to put them in a fully-accessible venue like this one. However, I'm hoping that an analysis of the chatter itself might reveal something about power, control, and fear mongering.

W2: My Evolving Rhetorical Understanding

Prompt: What are the most important characteristics of rhetoric, and what have you learned about non-Western rhetoric which is new to you?

What struck me the most in this week's reading is how variable rhetoric is - not just in its creation, but in its interpretation. I knew there was some debate over what comprised rhetoric here in the western world because my fabulous comp instructors at CSUF would tell us that all writing is persuasive. I had never thought about that until Rick Hansen said it the first time. Then, as I came to believe it, I would restate it to others. Sometimes, someone's head would cock to one side or she would get a look in her eye and ask, really? What about X? And I'd explain how X actually required the rhetor to take a stand, even if it was to convince us that her interpretation of something was accurate. It's all rhetoric. It's all persuasive.

This hit me the most through reading about the evolution of rhetoric in Chapter 1. I knew from my first TTU course, Public Rhetorics, that Habermas saw interlocutors as qualified individuals who engaged and spoke to find and share truth. This seems far more aligned with Aristotle's definition of rhetoric: "intentional, strategic, and oral in nature. Rhetorical theorists of ancient times were interested in how speakers used rhetoric to achieve purposive ends, such as passing laws or making judicial decisions" (Borchers, 2006, p. 6). However, I didn't realize how variable the definition of rhetoric had been over the years. My own understanding of rhetoric seems to begin with Francis Bacon because he turned his focus to the audience whereas others had looked more at the speaker. When I teach my students about rhetoric, I often emphasize a bit of both, but the audience interpretation and experience are really the heart of everything. Apparently, I owe Bacon for this. And come on, who doesn't love b(B)acon? ;) 

Although Burke's inclusion of symbols was only briefly mentioned, this made a lot of sense to me because I used to spend a good amount of time helping my students to unpack some of their connotations in things we read together. Symbols seem to work in a similar way, and their inclusion, I believe, paves the way for our current inclusion of film, music, TV, advertisements, clothing, and so many other indirect forms of rhetoric. 

I was not at all familiar with Thomas Farrell, but I now love him for his inclusion of discourse. Ever since I read James Gee in my early comp classes, I have been in love with discourse. And I believe discourse leads us so nicely into thinking about non-Western rhetoric because discourse is all about understanding the expectations of a particular group in a particular setting/time/location. You cannot appreciate global rhetoric without appreciating Gee's discourse and discourse communities. And we wouldn't even care about global rhetoric without paying some mind to audience, so I suppose that's how they all tie together. So... on to the second part of this question!

I have not finished reading Chapter 9 yet, but there was one sentence that really represented the entire subject for me, and it wasn't even Borchers who wrote it. Molefi Asante, the father of Afrocentricity, is cited as saying, "It is important... that 'any interpretation of African culture must begin at once to dispense with the notion that, in all things, Europe is teacher and Africa is pupil" (Borchers, 2006, p. 229). As obvious as this should be and as egotistic as it is for this to come as a surprise, it really struck me. I had just written a note in response to Borcher's claim that we could not rely on "Western-centered rhetorical theory, such as Aristotle's ethos, pathos, and logos or Burke's pentad" because it "may lead to skewed and unreliable results" (p. 228). My note reads: "This totally makes sense, but what tools do we then have to analyze?" So when I read Asante's words on the very next page, I was embarrassed and saddened by my previous, albeit innocent, response. Of course our tools are not necessarily appropriate in other contexts. How could they be? And yet, I believe my response was valid. It's not like we are taught in school about ethos, pathos, logos, styling, and indirection. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be, but we aren't. That is why it is so important that we expose our own biases and become vulnerable to ask, what do other culture use to evaluate their speakers/rhetors/writers? 

The more I thought about this idea, the more I began to see myself as arrogant and Eurocentric. I had learned about this concept in other classes - the need to be aware of a particular community's discourse to create effective disaster prevention materials or directions for use labels for medications. I had even written about how different cultures utilize different web design elements and colors. However, I had always used my own Western-based language, definitions, and understandings to frame these discussions. It is one of those things - almost a self-fulfilling prophecy or perhaps a feedback loop of sorts. We want to understand, so we use what we have to try to understand; however, this limits our ability and taints the way the "others" see us and our attempts to understand them. All of this is to say that I'm glad we are learning not just that culture X does things differently, but that culture X values A, B and C so that we can learn to value their rhetoric the way they do instead of just through our own Western-baised lenses.