Using Autoethnography to Bring Together Writing Center and Composition Practicums

Abstract

Previously, at our institution, the writing center and composition practicum courses were taught separately. In this collaborative autoethnography, we analyze and interpret what happened when we combined the two courses, making literacy the inquiry focus of the course in an attempt to integrate the theory and practice of writing pedagogy, both one-to-one and one-to-many, more meaningfully. By having students employ a collaborative autoethnographic methodology, we were able to move them (and us) beyond “what do I have to do?” to “how and why do I do it?”

This chapter is a story of the development and refinement of our collaborative craft. In a project that began for pragmatic reasons, we find that the methodology of autoethnography has created for us a new space that has implications for our roles as co-instructors, as well as for our ongoing professional identities as colleagues and co-authors.

Postscript from the Editors

Complex Collaboration—Readers may recognize an element at play in the authors’ use of autoethnography and one of the tenets of complex collaboration: the ability of such ventures to achieve more than would be possible by each individual alone; in short, the collaboration’s sum more than outweighs its individual components. As the authors write near the end of the chapter, “the genre helps to create a space that is truly a collaborative craft, one that goes beyond what either of us would have done in the course individually.” This chapter also offers insights into the ways in which collaboration is often iterative—encouraging participants to reflect, revise, adjust, and grow in ways not anticipated at the outset of the initiative.

Practical Implications—In this meta-analysis of the collaborative development of a practicum class targeted at both new tutors and teachers, Damron and Brooks provide a detailed course plan that incorporates current theoretical and pedagogical scholarship and practices (autoethnography, literacy narratives, and reflective research plans). This collaborative course design not only suggests a model course syllabi, but also answers pressing needs associated with teacher preparation: how to address the needs of new teachers from a variety of concentrations (literature, rhetoric and composition, creative writing, linguistics, secondary English, etc.) and to integrate pedagogy and research for pre-service and new teachers. Furthermore, students often regard introductory teaching practicum courses as anomalies within their graduate programs of study; this course design, which may be among the first classes new graduate students take, is not merely “skills based” but helps students devise a research agenda based on an important branch of the academic triumvirate: teaching.