"Cogito Ergo Scribo: Applying Self-Schema Theory to the Composition Classroom"

About the Author

Joshua Cruz is currently studying literacy and higher education at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also taught reading and writing skills classes at the community college level while attaining a master's degree in English from Rutgers University. He plans on returning to the community college to continue teaching literacy to at-risk and marginalized students.

Contents

Introduction to Student Alienation and Self-Schema

Several Studies to Justify an Interest in Self-Schema Theory

Practical Application

Works Cited

Practical Application

The bottom line is that one’s self concept or schema clearly plays a determining factor in educational and academic activities, and we can easily use this theory as a lens to guide our teaching habits and curricula. At this point in time, self-schema theory is virtually nonexistent in the field of composition studies, although it can clearly apply. I have found it mentioned only twice in different studies related to writing. In The Psychology of Writing, Ronald Kellogg discusses metacognition’s importance in writing, and during this discussion mentions that an individual’s self-schema might determine how an individual relates to the demands of a given task and how motivated that individual will be to complete the task (77). He terms this “task knowledge,” but it sounds remarkably similar to findings of the Markus study in relation to Kuhl’s action/state/fear/decision orientation.

The other example of self-schema working its way into the discourse of writing can be found in Ketter and Hunter’s “Creating a Writer’s Identity,” in which they discuss students receiving “developmental schema to support them as student writers” from a composition professor (318). Here, it sounds as though the professor is attempting to mold the students’ identities into “writer identities.” If nothing else, this professor provides students with a way to think about what it means to be a writer, which suggests that this professor, consciously or unconsciously, is aware that there is something to be said for a relationship between students’ self-schemata and successful writing.

Given the apparent importance of self-schema in relation to student success, it seems strange that we do not see more on this topic. Perhaps part of the issue is that self-schema theory is still a developing theory, and it is only now gaining wide acceptance in social psychology discourse. Little work has been done on what factors can change self-schemas, probably both because of the relative novelty of the idea as well as the difficulty in pinning down something as difficult to measure as “selfness.” Even so, I would like to provide some basic suggestions that I believe are practical, practicable, and hopefully effective in leading students to adopt an identity as “writer.”

If we look back at Dubson’s text, he discusses his passion for writing, as well as the fact that he embraced an identity as a writer:

I went to college because I was a writer. I started writing what my family called “little stories” when I was eight. A writing teacher I once had called me a born storyteller. I spent a good amount of time in high school writing novels full of adolescent angst that were supposed to be serious but in retrospect were hilarious. I spent my post high-school years writing and marketing short stories of every stripe.

When I enrolled in college after being out of high school for several years, I went… initially with journalism dreams dancing in my head. (Dubson 93-94)

Striking about this small excerpt is that he acts as a reflection of everything that has been said about self-schema in relation to the successful college experience. He first and foremost confirms that he is a writer: he clearly has a writer schema that he applies to himself as indicated by the behaviors and thought patterns that he exhibits. His interests in learning also coincide with the identity that he has embraced, and as a writer, he wants to learn more about writing. Because he intended to go to college for journalism, we can safely assume that he had constructing a writing possible self that his current self was directed toward. Finally, he mentions taking several years off of college, which is consistent with the findings in Merriam and Brockett. This suggests that he had time to mentally refine what it means to be a writer before actually attending college, and was thus able to approach his role as a writing student more seriously than had he gone straight into the field. Dubson seems to be the epitome of how we might expect someone with a writing domain specific self-schema to act.

In this passage, we learn other things about him too. He remembers being young and how his family reacted toward his writing. This suggests that his family played a significant role in his development as a writer, and positively so, as they referred to his work as “stories.” His family, then, helped to cement his identity as writer. Later, we see this identity being positively affirmed by his writing teacher in school. Again, the fact that he mentions this suggests that it was a meaningful experience for him in his development as a writer. Dubson had a positive support network that helped him solidify his identity as a writer and internalize that particular schema. On a basic level, this is a manifestation of Merton’s self fulfilling prophecy phenomenon; given enough feedback, individuals will begin to act in accordance with that feedback.

On a practical level, this means that as teachers, we should make effort to give at least some positive feedback to students and their writing, regardless of their ability. This is already a fairly ubiquitous idea in academia, yet I have talked to and seen colleagues tear into students’ papers with draconian prescriptivism, never once commending a student for being concise, for progressing in ability to use subjects and verbs correctly, or for experimenting stylistically, even if the experiment ultimately fails. I have witnessed a simple “good organization,” “well placed semicolon,” or “sophisticated use of parallelism” in the margin brighten a students’ day, even if the paper itself is failing. Students take positive feedback to heart, probably because it is so unusual or shocking, and they will accordingly construct themselves as schematic for organization, parallelism, or semicolons. The feedback instructors give is supposed to be “constructive.” This word possesses a duality with dire consequences; the student not only uses the criticism to construct a better paper, but uses the criticism to construct a self concept in relation to the severity of the criticism received. Thus, with every comment, the instructor helps to construct a student identity that is either schematic for or against writing.

Unfortunately, by the time they come to college writing classes, feedback may do little good because students are often solidified in their self concept as writing aschematic. Further, as Dubson notes, not all students even take the time to read all of the feedback on their papers. This means that we need to explore other ways of shaping students’ schemata. Here, I call up a point that I highlighted after discussing Ng’s work: “Students master what they perceive as being relevant to master, regardless of a teacher’s expectations upon them, regardless of the relationship that they have with a particular teacher.” This means that students view something as relevant, even if it isn’t writing, and what they consider relevant remains relevant insofar as it helps students attain their desired possible selves. The goal is then to make the activity of writing fall into that realm of relevance. This means that students will be forced to become schematic toward writing as it helps them attain their desired possible selves.

I believe that integrating a writing schema into an already existing self-schema for students is not difficult. The answer lies in WID. Students all have a possible self that they are trying to attain by majoring in a certain area. What we should do, then, is show students how writing can be relevant to their possible selves. Teach them different genres. Teach them different discourse communities. In a developmental writing skills course, I took a class to discuss genre with my students, and gave them a substantial amount of class time to research and explore what kinds of writing would be expected of them in their own fields of study. Half an hour before class was over, I went around the room and had them informally present on their findings. While I was concerned that this would be chaotic and confusing for my developmental writers, all but one student out of eighteen took the assignment seriously, and those seventeen all had something relevant or new to add to the discussion, even with several pre-med/nursing students who could easily have said the same things. This tells me that students saw some relevance in this exercise, and perhaps saw it as pertaining to their individual interests and possible selves.

These suggestions are, of course, things we should be doing anyway, but by applying self-schema theory to them, we gain a new understanding of why these instructional methods are important. We might also gain some insight as to our own goals as writing instructors; instead of teaching students how to write, we should be teaching them to think of themselves as writing individuals and showing them the relevance of writing for the development of their selves. While my knowledge of social psychology is limited, and my teaching experience minimal, it surprises me that no one has opened a discourse between composition and self-schema theory. Given it’s experimentation in other fields (particularly math), I believe self-schema theory may have a promising future in writing. In any case, it is something that requires more research and could perhaps be developed into a comprehensive teaching philosophy.