Dialogic collaging to cultivate shame resilience in writing classrooms

Purpose Recently, practitioner literature in English education has taken up the issue of writing-related shame in classrooms, calling for teachers to help students develop resilience. One possible approach for nurturing shame resilience around writing is dialogic collaging: students make and dialogically engage with collages and with colleagues to explore the self-as-writer and to connect with others around writing struggles and joys. The purpose of this paper is to share and critically reflect on this pedagogical approach. Design/methodology/approach To share, interpret and consider the limitations and implications of the dialogic collaging pedagogy in service of writing-related shame resilience, the authors offer a multi-voiced narrative about one classroom instantiation of college, from the perspective of a university writing teacher and a student of writing. Findings On the interpretation, this story unfolds three central themes as follows: dialogic collaging can help students to develop a more realistic and situated sense of self-as-writer. That is, students can come to appreciate how “becoming a writer” is a process they – and others around them – are already in, rather than an unreachable achievement at which they will inevitably fail. The stance of playfulness nurtured through the dialogic collage process can provide a helpful distance between self and writing. These processes may – under certain conditions – support shame resilience. Research limitations/implications The conclusion reflects on whether more explicit attention to shame could be fruitful and on the dynamics of teacher vulnerability in writing classrooms. Practical implications The authors hope to inspire writing teachers – particularly in secondary, post-secondary and adult education – to engage with dialogic collaging as part of their pedagogical repertoires. Originality/value Dialogic collaging is a pedagogical approach not previously discussed in the literature on secondary and post-secondary writing instruction, offering one promising way to address writing-related shame. It can make visible and build solidarity around how others are also in the midst of a process of becoming – as writers and/or with writing. This appreciation can help nurture a more realistic, playful and shame-resilient stance toward self-as-writer.

Writing Instruction, Academic Labour, and Professional Development

As we envisioned this special section and, in turn, encouraged colleagues to contribute, we confronted one of the ironies of post-secondary writing instruction: many of the people entrusted with the responsibility of supporting student writing development are, essentially, excluded from professional conversations about effective writing pedagogy. That is, hired term-by-term, treated by their departments as fungible, and burdened with excessive teaching loads, university writing instructors may lack a sense of belonging to a profession or a discipline. College instructors, in turn, are also frequently precarious; even if working in full-time and permanent positions, they have little opportunity to engage with the profession, conducting research, as Brenna Clarke Gray points out, “off the sides of our desk.” The effect is a feeling of isolation and, for too many, despair about the sustainability of their work in higher education. This sentiment is expressed in the excellent work submitted by our contributors, who are each at differing points on their professional timelines, and, as a result, provide a range of viewpoints. We are grateful for their provocative and engaging work, and we also appreciate and acknowledge the formidable challenges of potential contributors who explained why they could not produce articles for publication--including some who struggled with how to represent their experience of academic precarity without hampering their employment prospects. We thank the editors of CJSDW/R for their patience and assistance as we completed this project amid other responsibilities.