Download PDFCharacter Matters: Linear and Liminal Dispositions
As a lens for explicating our findings related to the highly complex topic of students’ dispositions, I have drawn two composite character profiles derived from participants involved in this study. These profiles were drawn exclusively from students identified as Student Group B. Students who entered with course credit and accepted their credit and enrolled in WRIT 2302 are represented by Caitlyn. Students who forewent their credit and enrolled in a section of WRIT 1301 taught using the revised curriculum are represented by Gabriella. My analysis of participants’ responses in this subgroup revealed that students who enter the university with credit for a required writing course, either through AP test credit or dual enrollment course credit, generally embody a dispositional habitus that exists along a continuum between linear and liminal.
In many ways, Caitlyn and Gabriella are very similar. Their secondary educations were both marked by a rigorous curriculum of Advanced Placement courses. Because of these shared experiences, both have a shallow understanding of writing as primarily test oriented. What’s more, both Caitlyn and Gabriella are accustomed to putting this functional understanding of writing to good academic use. They have both figured out “how to work” the system, how to “find what the teacher or test is looking for and give it to them.” Subsequently, they both generally earn good grades. All their prior experiences, in short, have led each to be fairly confident in themselves—both in general and as writers specifically. If you asked Caitlyn to rank her confidence level as a writer coming into the university, she’d tell you “a solid eight.” Gabriella might waffle between a six and an eight on the same question, but she’s not far off, if at all, from the confidence that Caitlyn exhibits. Importantly, these two students both have a common expectation about the required university writing course: they both expect to experience a writing construct that is “more of the same.” As a matter of prior experience, as a matter of practicality, and as a matter of cognition, Caitlyn and Gabriella are strikingly alike.
However, the principle point of divergence between Caitlyn and Gabriella begins to emerge in their decision about what to do with the writing course credit they’ve earned prior to enrollment. Caitlyn opts to use her AP test credit and enroll in WRIT 2302, the second course in the revised two-course sequence. Gabriella chooses to forego her AP test credit and enroll in WRIT 1301, a course she did not need to complete. Again, Gabriella, like her counterpart Caitlyn, believes that WRIT 1301 is going to be an extension of the types of writing to which she is accustomed (and for which she already has university credit), so she is not cognitively expecting this course to offer her anything new. Why, then, did she choose, in her words, to “step back,” seemingly, into this course? I would not necessarily agree that a choice to “re-take” WRIT 1301 is a step back, especially if the course content differs from a student’s prior experience, but the larger issue, this research suggests, is that this student’s decision lies, at least in part, in her liminal disposition.
A liminal disposition can be characterized as an affective habit of mind that is marked by a recognition of the self as incomplete, coupled with a perception of learning that is recursive. Indeed, the eight habits of mind outlined in the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing privilege a dispositional approach to learning grounded in liminality, likely because the developers all approach learning to write as a lifelong endeavor. This mindset differentiates Gabriella from Caitlyn. Gabriella’s explanation of why she decided to enroll in WRIT 1301 is worth detailing at length:
I figured that I should take it again because it would be beneficial to me, even if it was something I’d already done. Like, it wouldn’t hurt to relearn some of the stuff because I felt at that point maybe I was slipping a little and I had a little bit of self-doubt. I was confident coming into it [the university] but I was also a little bit not. Because you would get checked a little bit [in high school] with the fact that you don’t always know what you’re doing really.
Gabriella’s prior experiences, her own cognition, and even the university placement system itself are all telling her that she doesn’t need to take WRIT 1301. But perhaps counterintuitively, she feels that “it wouldn’t hurt to relearn some of the stuff.” Her answer substantiates a dispositional outlook that is recursive and not-yet-complete. Liminal. The prime driver behind her decision is not her thinking, but her attitude. Also important is that her liminal disposition allows her, even requires her, to view her placement decision as a point of uncertainty, an unsettled matter of inquiry. The very possibility for a decision to even exist is predicated on the presence of uncertainty (Dewey; Royer and Giles “The Pragmatist”). It sounds intuitive, but it is a linchpin to understanding why students who embody a liminal disposition are able to actually conceptualize the placement decision as, in fact, an actual decision—a move that those who embody a non-recursive, linear disposition, like Caitlyn, are unable to make.
Royer and Giles rightly argue that the foundation of any effective placement instrument is its ability to “displace belief long enough for students to consider fresh the new situation they are about to encounter as writers in our program” (“The Pragmatist” 59). Students like Caitlyn, whose dispositions are linear, are unable to independently understand the placement decision as an “indeterminate situation”; rather, there is no decision to make. A linear disposition frames learning as a rigid, lock-step progression of skills-based competencies: once a box has been checked, there is no reason to revisit it. Therefore, unlike Gabriella, Caitlyn is unable to locate any value in “relearning” something like WRIT 1301, a set of competencies she has credit for learning. It is no accident that Caitlyn is unable to view WRIT 1301 as anything other than, in her words, “rudimentary.” For Caitlyn, and students whose dispositions are linear, the situation is firmly settled. The only choice is to opt into the higher course. As Caitlyn explains:
I didn’t take 1301 because I didn’t have to, so I didn’t want to. I thought it [WRIT 1301] was just a joke. This would be a waste of my time. What is going to be different from how I was taught in junior and senior year in high school? It would be a waste of my time. If you come in with sufficient experience, it’s more beneficial to just jump into these upper-level courses as opposed to taking remedial Gen Ed writing requirements. Writing is an intuitive thing anyway.
Based on her explanation of her placement decision, it is evident that placement was always already a foregone conclusion for Caitlyn. She wasn’t required to enroll in this course, so she simply wasn’t going to. Furthermore, I actually agree with Caitlyn when she says that taking WRIT 1301 would be a “waste of time,” if, that is, she was able to demonstrate that she was indeed prepared for the higher level, revised curriculum. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Caitlyn withdrew and/or was dropped from WRIT 2302 in consecutive semesters during her first year on our campus.3 Clearly her prior experiences had not well prepared her for the new curriculum; however, the more salient point here is that the dispositional habitus she embodied—her linear perspective—prevented her from even seeing how WRIT 1301 was indeed a departure from her AP credit and thus would have been valuable for her. Her linearity occulted the choice for her. This research suggests that Caitlyn’s inability—or refusal—to (1) conceive of placement as an actual choice and (2) ascertain any worth in taking a course for which she already had credit results, in part, from how a student with a linear disposition assigns and understands value. Cognitively, Caitlyn ought to have been able to see that WRIT 2302 wasn’t “remedial” based on her inability to twice complete the course; by most academic measures, she should have been able to determine that this course, even though she had credit for it, still had something of value to offer.
Furthermore, it was not as though a paucity of information led Caitlyn to believe that WRIT 1301 would not have been of any value for her; she indeed had, of her own accord, collected and reflected on the information about the writing courses on campus. In her own words:
I had heard from people, based on talking to professors and based on reading the description of the course [WRIT 1301] itself. I had many conversations with many different people about it [WRIT 1301]. Based on those conversations about what I would be learning and the kinds of materials that I would be studying... that in and of itself taught me I’m not going to learn anything from this writing course. In talking to even professors and talking to heads of departments...no one was able to give me any insight as to how I would be growing as a writer, how this class would be different.
Caitlyn’s inability to fully apprehend her placement decision—informed as she was—lends credibility to the observation that there is more at stake here than just the availability of information. That is, again, students’ placement decisions appear to be more than matters of cognition. Even though our institution didn’t have an official placement instrument (aside from standardized test scores) in place, Caitlyn still was thoroughly informed about the writing courses available on campus.
In other words, Caitlyn was well informed about her placement decision. She was quite astute and thorough in gathering information about her placement decision. She went to all the right places and spoke to all the right people to gather information about WRIT 1301, and what’s more, the information she received usually indicated that she should take WRIT 1301. In her interview she admitted that at multiple times, she was told that “I [the university] want you to learn about writing on our campus because it’s different.” But despite the wealth of information and apparent directive advice, she still was unable to perceive any potential value in “retaking” WRIT 1301. For her, the value of credit for WRIT 1301 far outstripped any value that she might have gained by enrolling in WRIT 1301. Caitlyn’s testimony indicates that a placement instrument focused solely on providing the student with accurate information will still not be enough to aid them in making the best choice. Again, I contend that this is because placement decisions are highly complex rhetorical moments of transfer. In order to be more efficacious, an informed self-placement instrument would also need to be attuned to students’ dispositions, in particular students who embody a linear disposition.
The question still remains, however: how could such a placement instrument be designed to account for the dispositional habitus students bring with them to the placement decision? One pathway, I contend, is to apply theories of transfer, which have largely heretofore been theorized as a matter of pedagogy, to placement.
[3] Again, it is important to remember that Caitlyn is a composite character, a narrative example of a collective—not individual—experience. Some students who embodied a linear habitus did not end up withdrawing from their WRIT 1301 course, but many did.