Novel pedagogies.

Abstract

What happens in a genre cource when you leave your "generic" syllabus behind? This narrative delineates the use of unconventional methods in two novel course, calling for pedaagogy change in college classrooms.

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The challenges common to all literature courses, involving class size, time limitations, and student attitudes and learning styles, occur at a greater order of magnitude in the novel survey. Students expect novels to be fun reading, but instead often find them too lengthy, too antiquated in language, and too mystifying in reference. Teachers who construct novel courses that depart from the norm--in my case, by expecting students to take on more responsibility and exercise decision-making power about the shape and content of the course--raise eyebrows and generate problems even while creating valuable learning experiences.

Opening Up the Novel Survey

At The College of Saint Rose, The British Novel is a 300-level survey, which means it is geared toward majors. While it presumes a background in literature, it serves a range of students. We have a large transfer population; many are taking their first literature classes. I took this and high enrollment into account in my first attempt at unconventional pedagogy, and allowed limited student input--choice of an alternative text during the nineteenth-century section, for example. But one element proved to be more "radical" in students' eyes than I could have expected. They were to produce 20-25 typed pages of writing, divided and individually weighted as they chose, with a sizable portion requiring research.

My goal was for students to make thoughtful decisions about focus and form. In a single-genre course with a final essay exam, binding paper deadlines sometimes seem more about convenience than pedagogy, confining students to topic/novel choices dictated by due date rather than by personal research interests. I encouraged students to think carefully about the creative possibilities of an open schedule, and match their focus with the suitable mode and length of paper. Students choosing to do several papers were to hand in 6-10 pages by mid-October, while students choosing one long paper were to have made progress on a bibliography by then. In individual conferences at the end of October, students were to discuss their work and set remaining deadlines.

Considering the Results

In responding to this format, students fell into three basic groups. One group handled their freedom competently, choosing appropriate modes, planning writing schedules, and handing in solid work. Another, larger, group was less focused; these writers were not always successful in their experiments with modes, and, sometimes, were not particularly rigorous in their efforts. The third, fairly small group waffled, couldn't focus, kept changing plans and topics, and ultimately handed in everything on the last day. These categories of response, while common enough in the conventional classroom, were obviously more disappointing in this context, where the primary objective had been to encourage students to take control over their work.

Judging from student behavior and comments, course evaluations, and my own observations, I believe that the second group confused freedom with laxity--assuming that since the parameters were so unusually broad, the expectations for thorough analysis were not as high as usual. This group needed more help realizing that although they would determine their particular writing goals, their level of achievement would still be evaluated. Careful interpretation, thoughtful analysis, clear reasoning, and effective expression were still required, even without dictated deadlines, topics, approaches, and lengths.

The third group indicated that the whole scheme intimidated them. The page requirements, not parceled out in the usual ways, overwhelmed them. Most members of this group fit the profile of the perpetually late, just barely prepared writer; they felt able in this case to blame me for the problem, and one or two did so openly. They claimed that they needed to be given a specific assignment--even a specific topic--and a fixed deadline, simply to be able to complete the work. Otherwise, they couldn't focus, distracted by the absolute deadlines faced in other classes. Tempting as it is to dismiss them as excuses, some of these reasons relate to very real institutional and social factors. Many of our students work and live off campus, commuting between full-time college and, sometimes, more than full-time work schedules. Students--especially those with minimal skills--taking 15-18 hours of classes in several disciplines may truly be too distracted, hurried, and fragmented for the degree of thought and individual decision-making the assignment required. In this particular case, it might have helped to identify and meet with the third group of students earlier and more often, pressing them to abide by self-set deadlines, and helping them believe these had the same "authority" as those I would have set. For some, however, the weakness of their skills and the novelty of the assignment might have led to the same results.

The second part of their reason--the less flexible demands of their other courses--is actually a formidable one and a source of consternation for all teachers who do not test frequently. The common student time-bind and the single-minded focus on grades is part of a systemic problem. With course objectives ever more assessment-oriented and tightly bound to measurement by letter grades, much of the college curriculum promotes a type of short-term thinking. Moving from item to item on the syllabus--increasingly regarded as a contract rather than a general guide to the learning to be promoted in the course--students often feel justified in practicing a form of triage based on assignment weight. Teachers whose pedagogy eschews constant, grade-bearing monitoring of student performance should not have to simply tolerate the fact that their course may be assigned low priority even by many otherwise conscientious students. We must find ways to help students value and make time for the learning process, without having to resort to frequent graded assignments. We can only accomplish this through college-wide discussion and commitment by faculty.

Constructing the Course

In spite of these problems, the next time I taught the course I decided to give students even more responsibility. The trick, I believed, would be to allow students a considerable decision-making role, while offering choices that would help structure their work. With fewer than 15 students, the course would be the perfect size for the process I had in mind: to construct the course as a group, working from a few preset guidelines. We would choose the reading list and compose the objectives, thinking carefully about how these activities interlock. I hoped to engage students on a level that would encourage greater personal investment and serve as useful experience for prospective teachers. I looked for a number of other outcomes as well. I believed that surveying a range of choices and making decisions provided a concrete, experiential way to consider assumptions about the canon, and to think critically about genre and what constitutes fruitful study of it.

On a more playful level, I wanted the process of composing the course to parallel the idea of the novel: an innovative form, without an extensive set of traditional expectations, with potentially democratizing effects. Ironically, in its constitution and reception the course mirrored the earliest days of the novel in ways I had not anticipated--a little rough-edged, a bit loosely plotted, not always recognized as a separate genre, considered suspiciously unorthodox, and (mis)judged according to a set of conventional standards. The first day of class, students wrote about and discussed ideas they associated with novel reading, identified novels they were familiar with from the different periods (very few), and isolated what they felt were defining formal characteristics of the genre. My handout outwardly resembled a standard syllabus but included a list of possible readings categorized by century and subgenre, a "menu" of assignments, a set of basic questions to help direct our inquiries, and a blank calendar.

A brief course description outlined expectations for student participation and sketched our tasks. These included: identifying issues and questions for investigation, creating a rationale for novel selection, selecting and scheduling readings, and choosing writing and research activities (and their grade values). I set attendance policy, mandated several oral and discussion-oriented activities for a consistent minimum level of individual contribution, and welcomed any discussion of additions to the list of possible readings. I explained that as a class we would determine our own more specific objectives. Our group starting point would be to inquire how to define and investigate the issues integral to thoughtful examination of the British novel as a genre. In our first sessions students examined sample copies of the novels. I gave oral abstracts of each, and presented other contextual information. We continued working on definitions of the novel and of what would constitute a serious course of study. Articles theorizing about the genre's origins supplemented our discussion. Although some of these were quite challenging, students discussed them intelligently. Debates over the novel choices were lively, and when asked to defend certain decisions--such as the one that ousted Charles Dickens--students generally offered acceptable rationales.

Signs of stress also appeared at this point, however. Several students expressed deep frustration about the difficulty of decision-making. Our opening discussions had revealed that most students had a limited background knowledge, had read none of the possible choices before, and did not even have name recognition of many. Such a choice among unknowns is understandably difficult, and entirely unlike the professor's typical experiences planning a course. Nevertheless, by the end of these sessions students had constructed an ambitious reading list. Our rationale took the form of a set of statements about what our list would enable us to do. We posited that our reading selections would enable:

* an examination of characteristics of the genre in early formation

* a consideration of noncanonical as well as canonical texts

* a view of a range of subgenres, including the autobiographical novel, the Bildungsroman, the mystery/sensation novel, domestic fiction, speculative fiction, and the historical novel

* an investigation of the historic treatment of class, gender, and other social issues

* an examination of a variety of narrative frames

The students also chose a set of assignments that allowed for flexibility but required constant attention, as they were so numerous. In fact, they chose more assignments than I usually require. This looked like an auspicious beginning.

Of the problems that later arose, some were typical of college literature courses that proceed primarily by discussion; some seemed typical but magnified by the course format; and some seemed distinctly part of this approach. The problems fell into categories I will loosely term logistical, critical, and interpersonal, but these often overlapped. The least complex were the logistical. For example, our decisions took several of our early class periods, delaying book orders. This didn't trouble me: our historical and theoretical materials offered plenty to engage us. However, this was a period later referred to by one student as "all that time we wasted waiting for the first novel to come in." Since no one seriously challenged this view, others may have shared it. This dismissal, or erasure, of the critical and theoretical readings stems from both cultural and institutional mindsets. Because novel reading is popularly viewed as a leisure activity, students tend to resist attention to history, criticism, or theory. This bias has been inadvertently supported by time constraints in coverage-driven courses; copyright restrictions and costs; certain surviving elements of New Criticism; and teachers' commendable desire that students not only be able to read the primary literature closely, but appreciate and even enjoy it. However, these are not the only possible explanations for this particular student's criticism. Within a course that purported to value student choices, another reason may have been that students felt little "ownership" of these articles. Were I to use this approach again, I would involve students in choosing the theoretical readings.

The "critical" category of problems refers to student responses to the novels. Our foundational discussions of the issues involved in constructing our list clearly did not counteract the force of student preconceptions and judgment systems. Students still tended to apply contemporary standards to the earliest texts. For example, by the end, many still dismissed our eighteenth-century novel as a "bad choice" because it was loosely structured and unrealistic, despite having learned about both the episodic nature of many early plots and the relatively recent development of our own concepts of realism. Along with these misapplied critical standards, which perhaps could have been addressed by simply spending more time studying the history of both the composition and reception of the genre, came the problem of the inappropriate application of personal value systems. Some of the more vocal students not only judged the texts by entertainment factor, but analyzed characters according to personal standards. Certainly, comments such as "I would never have done that if I were her" are common enough in discussion-centered classes. However, the nature of the form itself--readers' tendencies to react personally to the action having long been a part of what made the novel popular and feared--and the freedom established by the course format may have invited even more of these highly subjective responses. The latter factor moves us toward the category of interpersonal problems.

Both class size and emphasis on group construction of knowledge probably magnified the interpersonal elements. A format based on substantial individual student input is automatically at risk if students are frequently absent or late, if there is too great a disparity among their skills and confidence levels, if long-held habits of student-as-listener and teacher-as-speaker cannot be disrupted, or if new patterns of teacher-student relationships cannot be maintained comfortably. Although we had entered the course with an explicit understanding of every individual's role as an explorer, I soon felt obliged to be trail blazer, cartographer, and pack animal, instead of expert resource person. After the initial excitement of choosing texts and arguing out rationales, a lapse into "business as usual" took place. Unfortunately, some of the quieter students were the most knowledgeable. At the extreme ends were an inexperienced freshman with poor study skills and pressing personal problems and a garrulous, overconfident senior who regaled us with stories from her private life. Students didn't take sufficient ownership of the course after the early momentum slowed. For example, unless I circulated the dates frequently, students forgot to sign up for or delayed doing their oral presentations. Again, it may be significant that this resistance centered mostly on assignments I had set rather than those the students had decided upon.

Examining Evidence, Raising Final Questions

Generally speaking, the quality of class discussion varied, with much swinging between the sublime and the absurd. The quality of student writing did not differ much from that of my more conventionally taught courses. Without any mechanism for long-term follow-up, few conclusive judgments seem possible. It is frustrating to admit that I do not know whether this course "worked." I witnessed many moments of real discovery and intellectual activity, and, although I suspect they didn't realize it, students were often problem-solving on a level they rarely approach in my other classes.

Among the factors I have outlined--heavy student workload, text availability, time constraints, etc.--perhaps the greatest obstacle to implementing novel approaches is the force of habit. Students' often limited assumptions about what constitute "normal" course expectations can create obstacles. When we shift students out of their comfort zones, do we create openings for future development or simply provide an anomalous experience? Will occasional encounters with unorthodox approaches matter? When an innovative approach has not seemed successful, is it because it was ill-conceived and/or ill-executed or because the same efforts need to be redoubled, intensified? Faced with students' entrenched learning patterns, we may well wonder whether an innovation has failed or whether it simply has not had time to take effect.

What does seem clear is that we need new methods for a new generation of students, students who exhibit declining reading and writing skills along with a decreased ability to focus, analyze, and problem-solve independently. In addition, assessment pressures at the secondary level mean students come from ever more standardized classroom experiences. Many have become adept at "working" the conventional syllabus to receive a pass while receiving the least impress from the material. The syllabus itself is pedagogical. It implicitly teaches about the roles, values, and aspirations of the professor, the discipline, the institution, the students, and the culture. What happens when we make such pedagogy explicit? We may individually do little to effect institutional and cultural change. However, opening the syllabus to reveal the architecture of literary study, and involving students in the process, provides a qualitatively different learning experience. It is the experience, even if subtle, of release from unexamined habits and ideas. The implications for students' future learning may not be measurable immediately, if at all, by conventional standards.

We need to stretch concepts of what a course in the novel can do, and reflect often on the uncomfortable questions raised when we put our visions into action. Because innovation requires extensive preparation and energy, ambiguous early results tempt us to retreat into familiar territory. Resist temptation. A body of data is required before drawing conclusions. Furthermore, student learning can only be deeply affected by unorthodox pedagogies once a critical mass of professors employ them. The novel, with all its intricacy, prolixity, historical specificity, and social and personal relevance, is fertile ground for such novel pedagogies.

Ruth Ann Smalley, The College of Saint Rose, NY

Ruth Ann Smalley is an associate professor of British Literature, specializing in the Victorian period, at undergraduate and Master's levels.