| OCR Text |
Show page 4 , Spring/Summer 2003 People Don't Change, But They Can Learn f £ T A T"hy do you bother? He's never going to \/\f change. People don't change." On some V V level, I believe that to be true. There are some things about me that I was born with and will die with. On occasion, I wonder if they'll cause my death. For example, I speak up. And that won't be changing. Yet, I see people changing all the time. As a nurse, I see enormous personal transformation as a result of experiencing pain, loss or parenthood. As faculty, we hope that our teaching, painful or not, changes students. If not now, perhaps later, even years after graduation. No matter which side of this debate you are on, we know that one of the more potent ways to initiate change is through the use of writing. But what, exactly, is learned through writing, and when is writing an appropriate pedagogical method? How can it be used in the sciences, and in content-driven courses? And what about all that reading and grading? Content mastery. Content mastery is the most defensible and, some would say, sensible use of writing as a learning tool. Writing can change the speed, depth, and ease of content mastery. Usually, we ask students to write formal papers or critiques. Yet you also can use reflective writing to promote concept mastery, even in the sciences. Reflective writing requires some informal self-disclosure or self-application, and can help students put a concept, a theory or an application into their own words. Examples of reflective writing assignments in the sciences include relating the tenets of probability learned today to their chances of winning the lottery, applying a physical law to their own driving or skiing abilities, or comparing pain theory to their injury experience. Learning writing. Intentional or not, writing results in another change, beyond content mastery: learning how to write. Learning to write, always a laudable goal for a writing exercise, includes such basics as the mechanics of constructing a readable sentence or a cogent argument. It is best achieved through guided writing, in some quantity, and multiple drafts with instructor feedback. Yet learning to write, even if the writing is of poor quality, also includes some increased development or awareness of one's relationship with writing. Self-learning. Learning about one's self is a happy outcome of writing as a learning activity. I certainly have known students who were not ready to explore a relationship with themselves through writing, particularly if I were privy to the content. Incorporate reflective writing into your course, and I guarantee you'll have some whine with your dinner. For these few students, learning about one's self may consist only of the awareness that writing for self-knowledge does not work for them (no small victory). Other students can experience self-awareness ranging from small "ah-has" to true paradigm shifts. The best exercises for self-learning through writing are journals, critical incident papers where one reflects informally on a recent incident relevant to course material, thought/response papers, or writing where opposing views must be explicated. |
