Successful dialogues: Systematic, written, and prompted self-analysis in college composition

This qualitative study focuses on the use of a form of self-reflection in teaching composition that I have termed "self-analysis." This study examines the benefits of self-analysis in encouraging a more autonomous student writer who is aware of, and can negotiate, the personal, social, and political forces that affect writing. Chapter One describes the philosophy behind the self-analysis used in this study: prompted and written self-analysis required for all drafts and revisions produced in a semester-long writing course at Boston College. Chapter Two reviews the use of self-reflection by cognitivists, expressivists, and---in its more current form---by those promoting a social turn in composition. Chapter Three presents the methodology for this teacher-researcher study and explains in depth the philosophy behind the course studied. The case studies in Chapters Four and Five show the effects that self-analysis had on three students' writing processes and on their attitudes toward writing. The case studies show that the use of systematic, written, and prompted self-analysis can promote an inner dialogue in student writers. It provides them with strategies for invention and revision, and for examination of the context-specific personal, social, and political factors affecting their writing processes. I also address the impact that having access to students' self-analyses had on me, as their teacher, by providing me opportunities to form dialectic relationships with my students. The Conclusion applies the use of self-analysis to a second course, a conference-based First Year Writing Seminar at Boston College. I suggest that self-analysis can be a method of teaching that decentralizes the authority of the writing conference and writing classroom by encouraging dialogue between student and teacher. This dialogue provides important, context-specific information to the teacher that can lead to improved teaching for individual students. This study attempts to show that self-analysis can be a strategy of teaching that transcends competing composition pedagogies by considering the personal and the social in empowering ways for both the student and the teacher.