I spoke with Dr. Timothy Oleksiak, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts—Boston, about two of his essays, “A Queer Praxis for Peer Review” and “Slow Peer Review in the Writing Classroom,” recently out in College Composition and Communication and Pedagogy. In these essays, they present theory and practice for a pedagogical practice they call slow peer review, a different way to approach that classical strategy of writing classes, student-to-student peer review, where students swap drafts and give each other feedback on how to improve them. Slow peer review does have students swap drafts but asks them to spend a lot more time with the drafts than usual, reading them very carefully and thinking about them deeply. Slow peer review then asks students to respond in different and more in depth ways than just giving the writer suggestions. I found the essays really compelling, opening up so many questions with relevance far beyond this specific practice and far beyond even just the teaching of writing.
In our conversation, which you can watch below, we discuss opera, “the improvement imperative” (i.e., there are more things to do in a writing classroom than help students write better, even as that remains a key goal), and the concept of “cruel optimism” (which refers, in this case, to an unhealthy attachment to certain teaching strategies that aren’t working and won’t suddenly start working through being tweaked). We also discuss the ways in which writers and readers of drafts both participate in “worldmaking.” The idea here is that each draft someone writes envisions a world in which some are included while others are not, and peer reviewers can help writers imagine more clearly what sort of world they’ve built. We also discuss what all of this has to do with queer theory. Lastly, I asked Timothy whether this peer review pedagogy isn’t actually a reading pedagogy. While he’s not so sure, he does have students “read the drafts five different times” and directs students to consider such questions as “What does it mean to be fully human in this world?” (i.e., in the world of the draft being read). Those seem like scaffolds for deep reading to me. At any rate, whatever else this pedagogy does, it does ask students to really read each other’s writing. And that feels extraordinarily valuable to me.
I sat down with Dr. Arlene Wilner, Professor of English at Rider University, to discuss her new book Rethinking Reading in College: An Across-the-Curriculum Approach. Central to her approach is the idea of rhetorical reading: we ought to teach students, in any discipline, to approach texts not as freestanding and homogenous info blocks but as written by specific people in specific contexts for specific purposes and constructed such that the parts relate to the whole to support those purposes. In other words, to use terms Wilner borrows from John Bean’s Engaging Ideas, texts don’t just say things, they also do things. A sentence does something in a paragraph, something different than other sentences. A essay does something in a larger discussion, something different than other essays.
We also discussed the importance of background knowledge for reading comprehension. “It takes knowledge to learn,” she says. Now, I’ve long been wary of too great an emphasis on students gathering background knowledge, since, in my mind, that impulse can lead to a sort of teaching-as-coverage approach, where we spend all our time giving students background knowledge they never get around to actually applying to anything. But I’m coming around to Wilner’s point, which is supported by psychological studies on the matter (she cites, for instance, Daniel T. Willingham’s The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads). The key seems to be timing and balance: it can’t be all content or all skills but both.
Stressing background knowledge, Wilner acknowledges–especially the idea that the background knowledge most important for students tends to be common cultural knowledge–could be seen as supporting regressive notions about what “common cultural knowledge” is or ought to be (i.e., traditional notions of canon). But this doesn’t have to be the case. We can a diverse set of texts in common. As one example she shares: when her students read Martin Luther King’s Letter from “Birmingham Jail” and recognize allusions to Socrates and others texts, they get excited, knowing what he’s talking about. She tells them, “Well now you’re part of the conversation, because you’ve read those things too.”
Wilner wants more from and for students than merely connecting with and responding to the texts they read. Though that is meaningful, she wants them to go deeper, see layers, interrogate their immediate responses. It’s easy to “translate” texts “to something that’s comfortable and familiar to us,” she says, even if that translation misses what the text is actually saying. But it’s “respectful” of students and of their intellectual abilities to ask them to do more, to help them do more. Students ought not go into college thinking, “I’m going to have my existing feelings beliefs ratified” but instead, “I’m going to have them shaken up.’” Some hard, important, scaffolded reading offers a lot in that direction.
When students arrive in college, faculty often make the assumption that they know how to read for comprehension and retention. Unfortunately, and for a variety of reasons, many students are not well versed in how to read for class. In today post, I want to share an excerpt from my book, Teaching for Learning, about how you can use SQ3R to help college students read.
Photo credit: Marketa
SQ3R
Overview
The SQ3R activity provides a framework for students to better comprehend and retain information from readings assigned for class. Students often read course readings as they would any other text: start at page 1 and read to the end without framing the content, thinking critically about the content, and engaging the content. This IDEA offers a more systematic approach to better study the material while reading (Artis, 2008).
SQ3R is a five-step process: survey, question, read, recite, and review. The activity helps students engage with material and improve their processing of the information through framing and reflection. Although the use of these five steps take longer than simply reading a text, the advantages of improved understanding and recall are beneficial for students and they improve the teaching experience.
Guiding Principles
SQ3R is built on the foundation of an information processing theory of learning (Newell & Simon, 1972; Tadlock, 1978). This theory suggests that people structure and organize information into systems of meaning. The limitations of learning are frequently attributed to limits on the ability to organize information and by encoding information in a way that facilitates recall. By providing a framework to organize new knowledge, SQ3R helps students develop understanding faster and more efficiently.
The activity also makes use of the ways the brain stores and retrieves information using short and long-term recall. The framework of SQ3R encourages students to slow down and spend time on information which activates the processing strengths of particularly long-term memory. By asking questions and encouraging recitation, SQ3R allows students to better store and recall information from course readings.
Preparation
Most frequently, the SQ3R activity is completed by the student outside of class as part of assigned readings. Prior to assigning SQ3R, provide the framework for students and also explain why the activity proves useful. Students often complain that this process increases the time it takes to complete the reading and in doing so they often fail to see the value. Providing an understanding of why it works based on the guiding principles above can help students know the value and use the activity (Tadlock, 1978).
Process
Explain the framework of the activity in the class and assign (or suggest) students use it on the readings for homework. The following steps explain the process of the activity.
Survey helps students gather the basic structure of the topic presented in the reading including reading the title, headings, graphics, and any text called out such as definitions or objectives.
Question involves turning headings and other main ideas identified in the survey stage into question. Students should then seek answers to the questions as they read.
In the Read stage, students read the text to capture the main ideas as identified in the survey and question stages. The goal is to write down the answers to the questions raised by filling in the main ideas without getting too bogged down by the details.
Next, students Recite material, which assists with concentration and recall. Students look at each of the questions of a section and attempt to answer the question (while covering up their notes).
The Review step allows the students to consolidate learning and comprehension by reviewing each of the questions and answers.
Pro-tips
Many students have never been taught how to read texts or study content rich material. This activity presents a great strategy to help students by providing a versatile framework to use while reading. Many instructors find it helpful to walk students through how to complete the steps in class. Taking the time to model the process in class can improve students’ use of the activity and improve their reading comprehension as a result.
There are many different variations that have grown out of SQ3R such as, SQ4R (survey, question, read, recite, wRite, and review) (Pauk, 1984), PQ4R (preview, question, read, reflect, recite, and review), and FAIRER (facts, ask questions, identify major/minor details, read, evaluate comprehension, and review) (Lei, Rhinehart, Howard, & Cho, 2010). Fundamentally, these all provide frameworks for self-regulation of reading. You can use any variation of this system, as the goal is to provide a way for students to work through a framework to organize and comprehend new information.
One of the more difficult, yet important, aspects of the SQ3R activity is developing good questions. Students often can easily turn headings and other readily identifiable major points into questions, but struggle with developing good topic spanning questions. As part of other class activities and in debriefing this activity, help students develop good questions. You may do this by sharing good questions raised by classmates or by providing some starter questions early in the course you identified. Helping students learn to ask questions can assist students in your class and throughout their education.
