Feedback on Writing as a Relational Context for Political Education and Becoming

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Lives and Lived Experience Foregrounded in Young Adults' Writing and Literacies

Abstract

While scholars have examined how teacher-student relationships cultivate learners’ political analysis, few have investigated the writing feedback encounter as a fundamental context where these relationships unfold. We take up this focus through an analysis of writing in a summer program serving first-generation and low-income students entering the university (SLI). In contrast to remedial models, SLI emphasized critical and creative forms of analysis and argumentation, supporting students to connect core theoretical concepts, their lived experiences, and transformative action through daily feedback on written work. This paper closely examines three student cases against the backdrop of a larger data set of writing and student interviews to illustrate how specific feedback moves supported expansive forms of relationality, political education and becoming.

Authors

• Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University

• Kalonji L. Nzinga, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Allena G. Berry, University School of Nashville