Notes from the Writing Instruction Underground

Feminist researchers concur, arguing that critical researchers need to ‘learn to make professional judgments about the context, consequences, and potential benefits and drawbacks of their work’ (Kirsch and Richie 17). We think that the challenges for interventionist practices are somewhat different in classrooms, where the social, material conditions include the goal of change—learning—built into the educational contract between teacher and student. The emphasis on having students tell their experiences and teachers comprehend them connects pedagogy with ethnography. However, the question of what happens to the “there”—the students and their experience—as a result of the telling is pushed to the forefront because of the teacher’s commitment to bring change to the student. For composition classrooms, where critical thinking is often a central component of reading and writing instruction, the ontological and epistemological uses of experience can be built into the course.