PARA LA IDA

All of the participants generated some sort of pre-writing structure either in their heads, in brief words on a page, a diagram or copious notes. The quantity and mode of capturing these ideas varied from learner to learner. The translation of ideas from a plan into a first draft requires the formation of these into writing and this, according to Badley (2009, p. 212) is a ‘constructive and creative process of learning and transforming what we know’. Dam–Jensen and Heine (2013, p. 91) describe the composition of a text as a ‘design activity’ where the ‘text producer’s level of competence, memory, knowledge and logical and creative skills’ are conditions for a successful draft of text. I have previously discussed levels of competence, memory and knowledge and, to some degree, argued that writing is a ‘messy, iterative process’ (Cameron et al., 2009, p. 207) (see page 59). For those that were more successful writers, as defined by assignment grades for this study, there was more evidence that the process involved recursive ‘loops’ (Dam- Jensen & Heine, 2013, p. 93) of planning, composing, reviewing of cognition into a structured, cohesive text. These feedback loops have resonance with concepts in complexity theory as discussed on page 49. The loops that Dam-Jensen & Heine describe are not undertaken in a linear way, rather the central executive decides on which process at which point in the writing is required. In the process of enacting these loops, Epting et al. (2013, p. 247) suggest

185 that writers show evidence in their research of having what they term as ‘pause associated edits’ where the writer literally takes a pause to undertake ‘psychologically relevant activities like covert planning and editing’. The pauses are more prevalent in those writers who are composing on the computer. Pauses, according to Epting et al. (2013), when the writer is word-processing on a computer are shorter than those for a handwriter, but that there are more of them than for those writers using pen and paper to handwrite. Pauses in the translation of ideas into text are relevant to the participants who were all required to submit their written assignments in an electronically, word-processed format.

In the first tutorial Mary, Philippa, Isobel and Amber discussed how they had had a steep learning curve to start writing their assignments straight onto the computer. Word processing skills are an important aspect of learning at HE and for these learners, who are also the oldest participants within the sample, changing from writing by hand, had been a difficult transition. Amber hand wrote the first assignment in the first year and then typed the first draft onto the computer. She realised that this approach was unsustainable due to time and she acknowledged that typing straight onto the computer had been easier for subsequent assignments. She had learnt to cut and paste references that she had used before, that she used again into a reference list. Amber was aware that she was ‘not very computer literate really’ (Transcript 1, Amber). Word processing can relieve the demands for the secretarial aspects of writing; handwriting, spelling and grammar and supports the reviewing phase of the text with the cut and paste facilities as Amber described. Mary stated that she did things ‘old school’ (Transcript 1, Mary) and handwrote the first full draft, like Amber, before transferring this onto the computer. However, unlike Amber, Mary did not alter this process until the final assessments in year one:

‘Instead of [handwriting], it was just like, instead of down the pen it was- yeah- I thought ‘no’, move on girl, that’s how I did those two’ (Transcript 2, Mary).

186 She acknowledged that she had ‘moved on’ and in year two discussed the purchase of a devise which could scan quotations from a text and then be imported into her work which she felt saved her more time as she was relieved from having to type the quotation out herself.

In contrast to Mary and Amber, for Isobel the difficulty of writing on the computer had interrupted the flow of the translating process and she had to force herself to write directly onto the computer:

‘That is how it flows naturally [writing by hand] and I have struggled to do it straight on to the computer but that is something I have forced myself to do so it had slowed me down initially, definitely, but it was worth insisting with myself that I do because I would never have go to the point where…because I can now sit and just think it straight onto the keyboard, which I couldn’t before’ (Transcript 2, Isobel).

Isobel’s persistence had been worthwhile as she identified here although she had been resistant in this change:

‘...it’s been a really big battle for me’, because I love handwriting, you know, for me it’s quite a cathartic sort of feeling, you know, and you look at the page and ‘oh isn’t it nice’…so that detachment was quite a difficult transition…and I feel much more comfortable to be able to sit and type, like whereas I think of before, that sense of any flow, I didn’t have originally with sitting at the computer…I, you know, it is there to some degree’ (Transcript 3, Isobel).

The notion of ‘a really big battle’ was deeply connected to the emotional aspects of writing for Isobel where she declared a ‘cathartic’ pleasure in seeing her handwriting on a page. The physical connection of undertaking handwriting rather than typing was interesting for a dyslexic learner such as Isobel as much of the support offered at BGU lies in the form of the provision of a laptop and often with software that is voice activated to relinquish the demands of typing, or handwriting. This was at odds with Isobel’s declared pleasure in undertaking handwriting. This may be linked to the visual

187 pleasure of seeing a personalised representation of hand written text on a page, and also where technical errors in handwriting are less prevalent according to Mangen et al. (2015, p. 229) than on the keyboard. The mechanics of resolving errors in spelling and grammar may limit the aesthetic pleasure of writing that Isobel enjoys. The visual demand of watching the keyboard for more novice typists rather than the creation of the text on screen where the visibility of the writing is immediately affected is a potential difficulty for some writers (Galbraith, 1992). For Isobel, her dyslexia may have affected the ability to move between the keyboard and the screen and therefore the translation of her ideas into text which supports her preference for handwritten text.

The pauses in writing described by Mangen et al. (2015) are relevant to other learners as, for some participants these pauses became prolonged and can be termed as writer’s blocks in the translating stage. In the tutorial 1 Mariea spoke about staying inside all day just trying to find a way to write the first assessment. She ended up stopping working on the assignment with the hope that a change of environment and activity would allow her the space to be able to return to do the task. She talked about going out in her car and then driving back, very fast, with music blaring and the windows down and how this helped her to refocus herself:

‘…but I needed that, I needed to get the cobwebs off, but I kind of got to the roundabout and thought ‘right I’m going home now, I’ve got an essay to write’, and I felt like a completely different person, as opposed to getting up and looking at it and staring at it and thinking, I just put it down now, I’d go ‘right, if I write 100 words, I can have a malteser’ (Transcript 1, Mariea).

The breaking down of the task into smaller steps in writing one hundred words which was followed by a reward is an important aspect of her management of the task of translation of her ideas into text. Mariea was clear that the strategy of leaving the assignment and doing something else was successful as she achieved a high grade for this work:

188 ‘So yeah, it definitely worked for me, that did. And like you

say, you know I’ve got [her daughter] and I work five days a week, and I got 67%, I’m like ‘come on’ (Transcript 1, Mariea).

The struggle that Mariea disclosed with the first assessment was significant as it allowed for her to realise that she needed to adapt her strategy to writing the assignment into small sections at a time. Mariea ranked at second from the bottom in the radar graph data for the translating category, although this was somewhat misrepresentative due to a score of zero in the third tutorial where she did not disclose her strategies for translating at this stage. The other three tutorials, she was graded at five which indicated that she knew what she wanted to say but could not write (Appendix F) it exactly as in her head. She managed to write, but she was not content it was as she wanted it to be. As with the other marks of zero, if it was assumed that translating was not worthy of note by the participant, then Mariea would also score a five, placing her at third in the ranking overall. Third would indicate that Mariea found translating relatively easy beyond the first tutorial when she changed her approach.

Philippa also shared the demands of the written task at the composition stage and of having writer’s block. In the first tutorial, she commented on the distress she felt at not being able to translate her ideas into text and she talked about this being a recurring issue where she had been returning to taught session notes and tutors’ PowerPoint presentations to try to trigger some starting points:

‘I’ve found again, because I’ve just had this block I’ve been looking at, on my iPad, um, actually from the first one, um… the constructivist theories, just to sort of go through the PowerPoint’s, just to see if anything, just to try and get something working, because I’ve just, yeah it’s um… yeah I think at the weekend I did nearly cry, I just thought… just purely because I thought ‘I know it’s there but I just can’t’…’ (Transcript 1, Philippa).

Her frustration was tangible at being unable to organise her ideas into a written format. Philippa stated that she had been looking at academic sources to see how

189 introductions were framed so that she could mirror these as a starting point. I shared with Philippa that this was an effective strategy of using the literature as a model for an academic writing style and as a way into beginning writing. This ‘pause’ (Epting et al., 2013, p. 242) that Philippa described generated a powerful emotional response as it becomes her struggle. She also stated some sense in the pleasure of these sorts of challenges as she acknowledged the power of them in forcing her to make sense of them:

‘And, again, it sounds really silly, but I’m liking to have that experience, it probably sounds really silly because it’s how you work through it sort of thing’ (Transcript 1, Philippa).

The capacity to remain motivated and work through to resolving a challenge is a key aspect of transformational learning (Taylor & Jarecke, 2009, p. 283) where learners are led to the edge and in doing so learners are most susceptible to new learning. The programme demands of certain timeframes for work to complete assignments at a particular level of competency may be perceived as setting the ‘edge’. Philippa showed two key elements in transformational learning in fortitude and ‘agency’ (Archer, 2003). She demonstrated fortitude and motivation to continue to seek out strategies to support her writing, and also agency where she felt emotionally rewarded from managing the challenge that she faced where these were mutually reinforcing. The notion of agency is linked to self-efficacy as previously discussed on page 50 and forms a key concept in the data. The task environment that surrounds the context for the writing is bound within the motivation that Philippa felt to continue to find approaches to her writing which I argue was intrinsically interconnected with her feelings of self as an academic and also as a professional.

Philippa showed commitment to her role as a practitioner, evident in her narrative during the tutorials, and what she did to support the children in her care, as with Zoe. She used practice as her starting point for assignments and declared that she provided too much emotional commentary:

190 ‘so there is a lot of emotion because it’s what you believe

in, and you’re trying to sort of say ‘look this is…’, and then your sort of doubts, so obviously when you’re trying to write that and take emotion out, that is quite difficult’ (Transcript 2, Philippa).

‘I think with a work based degree, you’re sort of putting a lot of your experience in, you know the emotion, like the tutors keep saying ‘take the emotion out’, and I get that now, you just need that little bit of information, and then it’s what you build around it with all the theorists and actually, that is actually very interesting’ (Transcript 2, Philippa).

The rhetorical goal, for Philippa, was to exclude the emotion. The demand for an objective academic discussion was initially difficult when she felt she wrote about what she ‘believes in’. This had some resonance with Zoe’s notion of ‘cold’ words as discussed earlier and a professional commitment to reflecting on practice in an authentic way in assignments. The impact of the rhetorical demands of the task, in this case objectivity, established in HE to support deep thinking may indeed, for some writers, inhibit the capacity for writing to be transformational. However, this can be approached through a different process of writing where the writer is encouraged to just write the first draft in an uninhibited way to ‘release’ the ideas without hindrance or monitoring against the rhetorical goal such as Elbow (1981) describes. The crafting to meet the rhetorical goal can then become evident in the editing and revision process.

‘Pausing’ (Epting et al., 2013) during the writing process allowed for learners such as Zoe to plan, compose and review recursively throughout the process of text production. The pauses may be used to read and return to literature to support links and ideas under focus. Zoe commented that her strategy of continuing to read allowed her ideas to develop in the process of writing although it tended to slow down the drafting stage, and left her with little time to review the work as a whole. She found that she rushed her work at the end:

191 ‘I just find it really interesting that I do all this reading, find

other sources for it, and I’ve just gone so into it that it’s just gone totally away from the point and I’ve just sat there and thought ‘oh my god what a waste of time’ (Transcript 1, Zoe).

She used the word ‘focus’ eight times in the first tutorial and she perceived this more organic, potentially transformative approach to writing as lacking in focus. This has resonance with the lack of transparency about purposeful writing processes for knowledge transformation, where Zoe’s perceptions about successful writing approaches were at odds with those of more proficient academic writers (Cameron et al., 2009). The process of allowing writing to emerge meant that Zoe generated a lot of text, some of which she was concerned was not always in line with the assessment task, which she then had the challenge of revising and editing to meet the word count constraints of the assignment task and this took time. The rhetorical demand of the word count provided some restriction at the end of the process of completing a full draft in order to reduce the text. Zoe was ranked as sixth out of the sample of twelve participants for translating, although her score was relatively static (5, 6, 5, 5) across the four tutorials indicating that for Zoe her strategy towards translating her ideas did not change despite her concerns with her approach, as she reiterated in tutorial 3:

‘I find it difficult to write things and piece it together, I kind of just have to start and write the whole thing, if that makes sense, I can’t just put things in so I sort of build it up and then just go for it…’ (Transcript 3, Zoe).

At the last tutorial, Zoe shared with me that time pressures still presented the most challenge to organising her thinking:

‘That’s kind of what- I hate that feeling, and I hate like that kind of: ‘ah piecing it together, panicky’, and it gets done- I’ve always done it- even if I stay up all night, it’s always done. But it’s not the point, it’s not kind of how you do your best writing, is it?’ (Transcript 4, Zoe).

Time was a constraint for Zoe and she spoke, in the first year and then again in tutorial 4 with being ‘panicky’ and of the anxiety she felt when under time pressures. She

192 acknowledged that trying to get the assignment completed was not productive when she was feeling constrained. Time was clearly a challenge for work-based learners, many of whom are also managing their families, like Zoe, alongside their studies. In managing her time to make it the most productive that she could Zoe had, over the course of the two years, tried various strategies to find ways to undertake the assignment such as coming into University with her son, although she felt it was not fair to have him with her for six hours while she studied (Transcript 3, Zoe). As a way around this, she had tried to separate her studies from her home life and came into the library alone to study:

‘It sounds really selfish doesn’t it, but I do really enjoy- I do just like sitting and studying, and it is that time to just…yeah I really like that’ (Transcript 4, Zoe).

The task environment was critical for Zoe to undertake the assignment and to have the space, both mentally and physically, to write. Zoe did, however, acknowledge that