The role of recognition: Reconceptualizing academic expression.
Item
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Title
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The role of recognition: Reconceptualizing academic expression.
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Identifier
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AAI3283586
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identifier
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3283586
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Creator
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Stern, Rebecca K.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Colette Daiute
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Date
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2007
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Social | Education, Higher | Education, Educational Psychology
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Abstract
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Literacy among college students, both at community colleges and four-year colleges, has traditionally been discussed in primarily cognitive terms; writing has been seen as cognitively more complex than speaking, and some students have been seen as more cognitively advanced than others. I explore what happens when we depart from a cognitive framework and instead situate speaking and writing firmly within psychological and social-historical contexts using the concept of recognition.;Recognition---the feeling of being known through one's academic expression---is conceptualized and described in detail based upon interview data of 28 four-year and community-college students' narratives of their best and worst speaking and writing experiences in college. Recognition is conceptualized as a psychosocial unit of analysis; it encapsulates the psychological, relational, and contextual aspects of being known through the reception of one's spoken and written academic expression. Because speaking and writing are practices which take on meaning only when they are received, that is, heard or read by various audiences, the feeling of recognition is also contextualized within various structures which frame the reception of communication. These structures include the social and historical identities of the student and the audience members, the history of the particular institution which the communication takes place within, and the history of the mode of expression, to name several levels I studied in this dissertation.;Findings in this dissertation include 14 types of recognition, for example feeling surprised by rejection or feeling pressured by praise, and descriptions of schemas which resulted in unintended consequences when students and teachers interacted around speaking, writing, and recognition. Descriptions of how race and gender are associated with various types of teacher and student response to speaking and writing are also explored. Notably, the interview data show that African American students more likely than White students to associate teacher response with negative writing experiences, and female students are more likely than male students to associate teacher response with negative speaking experiences. All of these findings support the basic claim of this dissertation that when one places literacy practices within all of their associated social contexts, one sees that students cannot easily be placed in cognitive hierarchies without acknowledgement of the very different social terrains with which they engage. Neither can speaking and writing be placed into simple hierarchies of cognitive difficulty as they are more clearly differentiated based on a host of contextual factors including the social factors which come before and after, and give meaning to, all acts of academic expression.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
