Articles
‘‘My Understanding Has
Grown, My Perspective Has
Switched’’: Linking Informal
Writing to Learning Goals
Teaching Sociology
39(2) 179–189
Ó American Sociological Association 2011
DOI: 10.1177/0092055X11401563
http://ts.sagepub.com
Suzanne S. Hudd1, Robert A. Smart1, and
Andrew W. Delohery1
Abstract
The use of informal writing is common in sociology. This article presents one model for integrating informal written work with learning goals through a theoretical framework known as concentric thinking.
More commonly referred to as ‘ the PTA model’’ because of the series of cognitive tasks it promotes
—prioritization, translation, and analogy (PTA)—concentric thinking practiced through PTA provides
a basis for structuring students’ informal writing over the course of a semester. The authors present
data in which students use PTA to assess their journal entries as text at the end of the semester. The
students’ informal responses to their own writing demonstrate the achievement of an important course
goal—the development of sociological mindfulness—while they also reveal a deeper understanding of the
important features of written work. The authors conclude that when informal writing is purposefully
linked to a set of thinking goals and learning outcomes that are necessary to complete formal course
requirements, it can serve as a powerful teaching tool to enhance both thinking and the ability to convey
thoughts in writing. Structured in this way, informal written work can enable us to observe and assess
changes in students’ learning that would otherwise remain invisible, and it can alter our pedagogy in fundamental ways.
Keywords
writing, informal writing, pedagogy, learning goals, analogy
WRITING AS A FORM OF
THINKING
For more than two decades, composition theory
has adhered to the paradigm that writing is a social
act (Bruffee 1986; McComiskey 2000). The
underlying philosophy of the writing-across-thecurriculum (WAC) movement, which espouses
the importance of writing instruction in disciplinary courses, emphasizes a set of principles that
resonate with sociologists: the classroom as
community and a shift toward student-centered
learning (Russell 2002), the connections between
writing and social action (Miller 1984), written
work as a form of social power and the act of writing as a reproduction of culture (Herndl 1993),
and the important relationship between writing
and the institutional (Herndl 1993) and disciplinary (McCarthy 1987) contexts in which it occurs.
Sociologists have written much about the forms of
1
Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT, USA
Corresponding Author:
Suzanne S. Hudd, Quinnipiac University, College of Arts
and Sciences 1 339, 275 Mount Carmel Avenue,
Hamden, CT 06518-1908
Email: [email protected]
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Teaching Sociology 39(2)
written work we use, our writing pedagogy, and
its relationship to the learning outcomes we seek
to achieve in our classes (for an overview on the
uses of writing in sociology, see Grauerholz
[1999] and Stokes, Roberts, and Kinney [2002]).
While written work is associated with a variety
of goals in our discipline, sociologists have
expressed a relatively consistent dissatisfaction
with the quality of the formal papers that our students produce. Perhaps this is due, in part, to the
predominant use of writing as a ‘‘means’’
(Grauerholz and Gibson 2006) for achieving
learning outcomes, rather than treating writing as
an ‘‘end,’’ an essential part of what we teach. To
ensure that our students learn to write, we must
do more than assign it; we must teach it with
explicit purpose. One means for situating writing
as process within our pedagogy is to create
explicit links between the written work we assign
and the learning outcomes that we expect our students to achieve (Segall and Smart 2005). By
articulating these connections for our students,
we privilege and make visible the cognitive role
of writing, its ability to enhance comprehension
and ‘‘make thinking more active, alert and alive’’
(Cadwallader and Scarboro 1982:362).
While it is subtle, this shift from ‘‘using writing’’ to ‘‘teaching thinking through a series of
written assignments carefully linked to cognitive
goals’’ can be provocative. This more purposeful
application of writing in a course can enhance
comprehension and increase engagement. When
we connect informal writing to the thinking tasks
students are required to complete in more formal
assignments, their written work can enable students to cultivate the thinking practices that our
discipline demands. And so, informal writing
facilitates a process of guided reflection in which
students develop and refine their thinking under
the ‘‘watchful eye’’ of the instructor, who can
observe and guide meaning making related to
course concepts as it occurs. These active interchanges can also become the basis for increased
student engagement (Bean 2001; Karcher 1988;
Stoecker et al. 1993).
According to data from the National Study of
Student Engagement (2008), students who are
provided with intellectually challenging writing
activities participate more deeply in the learning
process. When students practice the skills of written analysis and synthesis, it encourages them to
grapple more with course ideas both inside and
outside of class, and it provides them with
a greater sense of ownership and an awareness
of their academic growth as learners (Emig
1977; Paine et al. 2009). Sociologists have used
a variety of informal writing techniques, including
journals (Hollander 2000; Karcher 1988; Keller
1982; Reinertsen and DaCruz 1996; Wagenaar
1984), dialogue journals (Hylton and Allen
1993; Reinersten and Wells 1993) and freewriting
(Singh and Unnithan 1989). In each of these various forms, informal writing emphasizes reflective
thought rather than the ability to display technical
writing skills (Singh and Unnithan 1989).
Research has shown that reflection through writing can enhance learning (Moynihan 1989).
When we carefully construct our informal writing
prompts with an eye to the learning goals embedded in course materials, we facilitate a process of
textual interaction (Stokes et al. 2002) that enables
students to develop more thoughtful formal work.
While informal writing is geared primarily to
reflection and deep learning, researchers have
argued that it can contribute to the development
of formal writing skills, a kind of ‘‘practice makes
perfect’’ approach (Coker and Scarboro 1990;
MacDonald and Cooper 1992; Moore 1993;
Turley 1999). The ability to put pen to paper
and record one’s thinking tends to improve both
writing and thinking the more we do it (Bean
2001; Roberts 1993), and so the overall quality of
students’ formal written work can indirectly benefit
from informal writing related to class topics. In
essence, treating thinking and writing improvement
as separate tasks is a pedagogical mistake since
there is a significant degree of recursivity between
the two (Cadwallader and Scarboro 1982; Flower
and Hayes 1977; Light 2001).
Because written reflection and directed practice often enhance students’ understanding of
what they learn in important ways, they can be
used to document changes in knowledge as well
as changes in the ways in which information is
accumulated and processed over time. In this
sense, informal written work can offer us a unique
opportunity to observe the learning process and
then to adapt our pedagogy based on what we
see. In sum, as faculty, we should carefully consider how we implement informal writing in the
service of specific course goals. And so, rather
than adding on informal, low-stakes writing
(Bidwell 1995), we structure it such that it is integral to curricular enhancement and assessment.
The exercise we present here has been created
with an eye to this essential tenet: We rely less
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181
Figure 1. Concentric thinking model
on the ‘‘accidental effects’’ of writing (Hylton and
Allen 1993: 73), and instead we forge visible and
meaningful connections between thinking and
writing. In doing so, we create a more active place
for writing pedagogy in the sociology classroom.
A SYSTEMATIC MODEL TO
ENHANCING THINKING
THROUGH WRITING
Organizing Thinking through the PTA
Model
Compositionists contend that writing is a form of
thinking (Emig 1977). Similarly, sociologists
have observed that ‘‘writing about any subject
encourages deeper thinking about it’’ (Stokes
et al. 2002:5). Our campus writing program is
founded on this principle: that informal writingto-learn assignments enhance critical thinking
and prepare students to create better, more
thoughtful, formal written products (Bean 2001;
Segall and Smart 2005). To respond to demands
that the thinking–learning–writing nexus be
open to more useful measurements of success,
we have developed an approach to teaching
thinking and writing that builds on a hierarchy
of small, linked cognitive tasks that can be used
quickly and effectively in a wide range of classes. The basic idea is that we will accomplish
three things if we teach students to manipulate
for themselves the cognitive tasks that we want
them to master by crafting the assignment
prompts around these same processes: (1) Our
expectations of the students will become clearer
and more specific, (2) the prompts for our assignments will become more useful and accurate, and
(3) the analysis and arguments in the finished
assignments that students submit will be more
thoughtful and effective.
We call this pedagogical approach a model of
concentric thinking, more commonly referred to
as ‘‘PTA’’ because it creates a hierarchy around
three linked tasks: prioritization, translation, and
making analogies (see Figure 1).
The PTA model suggests that students must be
able to prioritize material from their reading and
discussions—including being able to explain the
logic for the order of priority they have chosen—
before they can translate difficult passages into
their own words. Additionally, they must be able
to both prioritize and translate in order to say
that one issue, situation, or problem has relevance
to another, that is, to draw analogies.
The traditional understanding of analogy that
comes from literary study (i.e., extended metaphor) is too limited for any practical use in the
critical thinking context in which we apply it.
Instead, the term ‘‘analogy,’’ as we use it here,
derives from newer work in cognitive science
(Hofstadter 1995; Holyoak, Genter, and Kokinov
2001) in which analogy is considered to be
a broad, conceptual term that covers deeper and
more complex cognitive terrain. According to
Holyoak et al. (2001), analytical thinking involves
a process of mapping new information against
data stored in long-term memory to make inferences and then to create new knowledge from these
inferences. In the cognitive sense, we use analogical skills to first access stored information and
then to map new information to old and identify
similarities and differences between the two.
This process of creating connections allows for
the development of inferences, and learning
occurs as new categories of knowledge are created. As Marcus (2003:138) observes, our ability
to analogize comprises ‘‘the almost magical ability
of humans to combine simple elements into more
complex ones that can serve as elements in further
combinations, an idea sometimes referred to as
‘recursion.’’’
Assessment data on our campus from classes in
a wide range of disciplines suggest that the
assumptions inherent in this model are correct:
Informal written work structured with an eye to
increasing student facility with prioritization,
translation, and analogy can serve as a means to
fulfill important course objectives related to thinking. Evoked in this way, informal writing enables
students to ‘‘internalize’’ course content (Stokes et
al. 2002), understand it, and use it as the basis for
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Teaching Sociology 39(2)
forming new knowledge. For students, prioritization is the ‘‘gateway’’ cognitive skill for contextualizing information, translation demonstrates their
ability to use this understanding to make sense of
difficult explanations and applications, and drawing analogies shows that they can transfer this
understanding to new and unfamiliar applications.
These three cognitive skills define disciplinary
mastery for our students.
The progression of PTA skills enables students
to shift from the analysis of surface structures in
sociological texts to examining deep structures
(Roberts 2008). As a result of this process, they
are able to employ their understanding of one
text to make sense of another (Willingham
2008). When they are able to practice these skills
through sequenced, informal written work, both
the depth of class discussion and the clarity of students’ thinking in relation to key course concepts
are improved; the process of ‘‘textual interaction’’
is reified (Stokes et al. 2002). In essence, this
exercise simultaneously models the thinking skills
and writing practices that we want our students to
exhibit when they prepare formal papers or, ultimately, when they work to resolve problems in
their future employment. It teaches them the
importance of framing their responses to problems
by building on prior knowledge and experience. In
addition, it puts writing in a central location in our
pedagogy and models the writing process as integral to learning. Thinking like a sociologist thus
becomes a habit of mind.
Implementing PTA in a Social
Stratification Class
PTA can be used in a wide variety of sociology
classes. For the past five years, one of us (Hudd)
has used it in Social Stratification, a course that
helps students observe the important transitions
that occur in their thinking as they learn to appreciate the perspectives of marginalized groups.
Students entering Social Stratification have been
exposed to Introductory Sociology and generally
to one or two other sociology courses, sometimes
more. The Social Stratification class is populated
largely by sociology majors and minors, although
a small number of students from other majors use
the class to fulfill general education requirements.
Most of the students in Social Stratification are
sophomores and juniors. The class is required
for sociology majors. On average, it is composed
of between 20 and 30 students.
Informal writing is included as one element in
the overall grade that students receive in the
Social Stratification class. In addition to the writing that they do each day, which is counted as part
of their participation grade along with their attendance and contributions to class discussion,
students in the Social Stratification class must
complete a reflective essay, a formal paper,
a group project, and a final exam. The in-class
writings are collected several times during the
semester. At the preliminary collection points,
the informal written work is not graded. Instead,
students receive guiding questions and comments
to foster a deeper thought process (e.g., ‘‘Keep
this observation in mind when we consider the
plight of the working poor later this semester.’’).
At the final collection point, the students receive
a grade that is based on both their participation
(i.e., the number of responses that they have completed) and their engagement (i.e., the depth of
thought inherent in the responses).
Students are given a blue book on the first day
of class, and they are provided with supplemental
blue books as needed to complete the daily writing. The blue books serve as in-class journals
that are easy to collect and carry when the time
for grading arrives. Each day, the students respond
to a prompt during the first 10 minutes of class
that is designed with the PTA skills and learning
goals for the day in mind. On occasion, the students complete their informal written work outside of class and bring it with them (e.g., they
may be asked to prioritize—to record in their
blue book the most important sentence from the
reading assigned as homework along with a brief
explanation as to why they chose that particular
sentence).
During one of the last class sessions, the students are charged with conducting a PTA interrogation of all of the informal writing that they have
completed over the entire semester. This final
journal interrogation exercise (see the appendix)
essentially requires them to complete a metacognitive analysis: to respond to their own thinking, as
evidenced in their writing, as a text. Thus, while
the students have responded to assigned texts, videos, and class exercises throughout the semester in
their informal writing, at the end of the semester,
their personal writing becomes the text, and so
they react to themselves as authors. Often, these
informal texts reveal more deeply the students’
mastery of disciplinary thinking not only to the
instructor but to the students themselves as well.
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Here, we use these metacognitive writings prepared at the end of the semester to analyze the
effects of the PTA approach.
PTA IN PRACTICE: OBSERVING
LEARNING THROUGH INFORMAL
WRITING
The Social Stratification course is designed to
achieve a number of goals, including (1) enhancing students’ understanding of race, class, and
gender; (2) helping students to observe the ways
in which these stratification forces are institutionalized, as well as the ways in which they have
affected their personal lives; (3) developing students’ skills in critical reading and writing; and
(4) teaching students to be sociologically mindful
(i.e., to recognize that individuals have unique
qualities and, thus, unique perspectives and to
value these differences). This latter course goal
is perhaps the most important because without
sociological mindfulness, students do not achieve
a deep appreciation for the structural aspects of
social class, and instead they remain rooted in
an individualistic orientation to the concept of
stratification. By applying PTA to their semester-long journal entries, students can see the
ways in which their ideas shift as they acquire
new information and respond to it with a more
thoughtful approach. The recursive nature of this
end-of-semester exercise provides students with
unique opportunities to track changes in their
understanding and so to enhance learning (Hudd
and Bronson 2007).
One of the class texts, The Sociologically
Examined Life: Pieces of the Conversation
(Schwalbe 2005), is focused on the development
of sociological mindfulness. As Schwalbe
(2005:28-29) describes it:
Being sociologically mindful, we thus see
that human beings are both social products
and social forces. Though we are shaped by
the world, we are still, each of us, a place
on earth where ideas and feelings clash
inside a body that can act to affect other
bodies. And that is how change is made
to happen. . . . Being sociologically mindful
is thus not a way to see everything, as if
everything could be so easily seen. It is
a way to see more deeply into the process
of world-making and to appreciate the
nature of the social world as a human
accomplishment.
Students read a chapter from Schwalbe’s text
each week with the goal of deepening their ability
to observe stratification from multiple viewpoints:
to practice understanding rather than judgment
and to consider more deeply their personal experience with stratification. Schwalbe (2005:8)
observes that when we are sociologically mindful,
we realize that in order to fully understand a situation, we must first realize that ‘‘we cannot claim
a monopoly on the truth.’’ The PTA prompts in
the final journal interrogation exercise are
intended to foster the development of sociological
mindfulness through informal written work that
requires students to integrate the personal and
the social (i.e., exercise the sociological imagination) and, in doing so, to deepen their understanding of course content. The student data we present
here are from the most recent Social Stratification
class (N = 22), but they are representative of
responses that students have provided for about
the past five years.
The first prompt in the interrogation assignment asks students to pick the strongest journal
entry from the texts they have written and to
explain why it is the strongest. In this way, their
informal writing is used to make the practice of
prioritization visible in their thinking. As one
might expect, students choose a wide range of
responses in relation to this prompt. Consistent
with the PTA approach, the more important aspect
of their writing is the ‘‘why’’ portion of the
response, as this gives the instructor a window
into the types of thinking that students privilege.
The reasoning underlying students’ selections of
their strongest written responses can be themed
into three main categories: (1) They exhibit qualities students identify as inherent in good writing,
(2) they demonstrate students’ ability to articulate
more than one interpretation of a situation, and (3)
they describe an experience of self-growth (i.e.,
moving beyond a prior understanding). These categories are not mutually exclusive, and the distribution of the responses between them is relatively
equal.
One important outcome of integrating the
goals of creating sociological mindfulness and
improving critical writing is that this enables students to become more mindful of the writing process itself. Noelle, for example, notes that her
most powerful response ‘‘provided a strong main
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Teaching Sociology 39(2)
idea that was followed by good supporting
details.’’ Cassie highlights the important role that
environmental factors can play in enhancing writing quality: ‘‘One main reason [for the strength of
this response] was that I had a sufficient amount
of time to brainstorm and to reflect on my
response. There was no pressure to finish because
I was not in class.’’ Finally, James observes that
his strongest response demonstrates the important
connection between writing and thought: ‘‘While I
was writing, I was also developing my own
thoughts and principles. I already had these views
in my head, but . . . putting it all on paper really
made me to come to terms and understand many
of my own personal values and beliefs.’’
Another group of students, about equal in number, select a strongest answer that demonstrates the
ways in which their perspectives have been broadened, making them able to entertain multiple viewpoints on either a personal situation or toward the
class materials. Ashley notes that her strongest
response examines a personal situation both from
her point of view and from the effects that it had
on those around her. In doing so, she speaks of
her ability to see both sides of a situation as ‘‘a
new way of thinking.’’ Sarah states that her strongest
entry was one in which she demonstrates that ‘‘both
[class and money], rather than just one, validate feelings of superiority,’’ while Gina notes that her strongest response reveals her ability ‘‘to recognize when/
where context about something can be lacking and
give outsiders a false belief.’’ In each of these cases,
the students demonstrate an ability to look beyond
a single or simplistic interpretation of a situation
and to appreciate more complex interpretations.
On the surface, students in the third group, who
choose a more personal response as their strongest,
would seem to have not developed a sense of sociological mindfulness or an appreciation for alternative viewpoints. Schwalbe (2005:13) suggests,
however, that the process of acquiring a richer
understanding of social contexts first necessitates
a deeper awareness of the self: ‘‘[A] perspective
should be based on the values it proceeds from
and reinforces.’’ In this vein, many of the students
in this third group describe themselves as in the
midst of reinterpreting situations that have
‘‘changed [my] life’’ but which ‘‘[I] never really
thought about before’’ or ‘‘developing [my] own
thoughts and principles’’ and ‘‘com[ing] to terms
and understand[ing] many of my own personal values and beliefs.’’ In these cases, informal writing
becomes a vehicle for making visible aspects of
the self that would otherwise be invisible but that
influence life events and the ways students respond
to course materials.
The third question in the end-of-semester
journal interrogation (see the appendix)—
‘‘[Which response] does the best job of demonstrating your values and beliefs in a general
way . . . describe what these attitudes are and
how they have affected your ability to understand
what we have been studying’’—is intended to test
students’ ability to translate their attitudes from
their earlier writing, that is, to practice the second skill inherent in the PTA framework.
Interestingly, in responding to this question,
while some choose a more personal answer
(most notably, their experiences in the education
system) as demonstrative of their attitudes, more
often the students frame their attitudes in relation
to a predominant theme from the course or
a more discrete aspect of course content. Joe’s
response offers an excellent example of this. He
describes his thoughts in relation to a reading
about consumerism as exemplifying his attitudes
toward social class differences:
This class has opened my mind up to many
social agendas I was not previously aware
of. I feel access and the ability to have
access to a whole slew of things. . . .
People of less access seem to be prosecuted
[sic]. . . . Access plays a huge role in the
success and attitude of the person.
Overall, the students select an array of course
themes as a framework for the formation of their
beliefs. These include economic forces (‘‘It is
my belief that all sociological stratification stems
from the competition and capitalism in our country’’); gender (‘‘Our society has made greater gains
in terms of race than gender. . . . This course has
helped me rework my attitudes on this subject’’);
individualism (‘‘I see society as individualistic’’);
and a sense of obligation to community, expressed
by one student as ‘‘morality’’ (‘‘Morality is the
most important piece to being sociologically
mindful. . . . I was frustrated with the reading
because people lack it. Morality with unconditional empathy and cooperation is key to ending
stratification’’). Underlying the selection of these
various themes is the ever-present tension
between social and individual obligations. This
is a core theme that we revisit multiple times during the Social Stratification course.
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In addition to demonstrating their knowledge
of key concepts, these responses reveal that
many of the students grasp and are now trying
to emulate important attributes of sociological
mindfulness. In describing her views, Susan
observes that for her, it is ‘‘important to respect
others and not judge people according to certain
stereotypes . . . people don’t choose the world
into which they were born.’’ Alec references his
ability to see the ‘‘little things’’ (invisible features
of our class that suggest what the professor privileges) has grown. Finally, Elena is able to connect
our class content (i.e., the extent to which people
from all social classes have equal opportunities to
realize their talents) to her current role as an intern
in a public school:
The reading by Tumin (1953) depicted how
some children don’t have the ability to discover their talents really hit me at home. I
work with inner city school children every
week trying to make positive impacts on
their lives. School is for them more like
jail. One would never know this unless
they sat a day in their shoes.
Thus, even in describing their own attitudes,
the students are able to ‘‘pay attention to the hardships and options other people face’’ (Schwalbe
2005:5).
The final prompt is designed to test students’
ability to construct cognitive analogies. While it
does not demand the construction of an analogy
in the narrow and traditional sense of the word,
the last prompt in the journal interrogation asks
students to ‘‘[l]ook at the responses from the first
couple of weeks in the semester and compare
them to your most recent responses.’’ It is
designed to enable students to demonstrate sociological mindfulness by witnessing subtle changes
in the way that they express themselves and to
encourage the transfer of understanding developed in one context to another, new context.
Thus, the students employ analogization in the
service of what Marcus (2003:138) termed
‘‘recursion,’’ the ability to revisit a problem or
constellation of problems armed with new
understanding.
Virtually every student in the class is able to
describe either a transition in sociological mindfulness, a change in the quality of their writing,
or both. Many are critical of their earliest entries.
As Jane notes, ‘‘I was egocentric.’’ Cathy observes
that she ‘‘took the questions at face value’’ early
on, instead of exploring deeper meanings. And
Jon describes how the process of writing ‘‘made
a large difference in my thinking. Reflecting on
paper and in your head is completely different. I
have learned more since I have had to write out
my feelings.’’ Casey notes how she now is able
to ‘‘think about situations other than [my] own .
. . and really begin thinking about my values
and beliefs . . . I think about all sides of a situation
now, not just the most obvious one.’’
The results of this final assessment provide
valuable feedback on a number of fronts. They
enable students to observe changes in the ways
they write and in the ways in which they think
about complex social situations: ‘‘I process material within a wider spectrum. It’s not just about me
and my world, but it’s also about others.’’ Even
the seemingly limited observation of change
expressed by Teresa, ‘‘the only difference I really
noted was as the semester went on, the blue book
writings became more natural. . . .’’ suggests that
there is value in putting pen to paper, if for no
other reason than to promote the practice of integrating writing and thought. Mary can see that
‘‘being able to respond on paper and elaborate
afterwards with class discussion has provided me
with a much greater understanding of course
topics in a broader spectrum and from many different perspectives.’’ Thus, students also practice
sociological mindfulness in the classroom as
they hear and respond to the informal writing of
their classmates.
The use of PTA, as we structure it here, is
intended both to broaden thinking through the
development of sociological mindfulness and to
enable students to translate these more complex
thoughts in writing. While students’ subjective
assessments suggest that the first goal is achieved,
their final grades on other writing assignments
completed in the Social Stratification class affirm
that both their thinking and ability to translate
their thinking in their writing are improved.
While the average student grade on the first piece
of graded writing completed in the first week of
class was a ‘‘C1,’’ the average grade on the written final exam was a ‘‘B.’’ The final exams in the
Social Stratification class are characterized by
a rich appreciation for nuances in the social
structure that can affect individual outcomes.
Likewise, students generally demonstrate proficiency in selecting, translating, and then applying
course concepts in support of their reasoning.
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(See Hudd and Bronson [2007] for data that offer
a more detailed comparison of student performance on early and end-of-semester writing
with a different group of Social Stratification students who also completed informal written work
throughout much of the semester.) The PTA journaling project we describe here supports the
assertions of composition theorists that informal
written work can affect students’ ability to write
in more general ways (Bean 2001; Fulwiler 1987;
Fulwiler and Young 1986).
CONCLUSION: INTEGRATING
WRITING AND THINKING
The use of PTA encourages faculty to approach
writing pedagogy more thoughtfully and to
consider the ways in which writing can be integrated with course work to facilitate learning—
particularly the ‘‘invisible’’ parts of learning that
occur as students reflect upon course content and
revisit it (Flower and Hayes 1977). The treatment
of student writing in a recursive way, such that
their own writings become texts to which they
respond coupled with the organization of writing
prompts in relation to thinking goals, provides
us with a window into their metacognition: We
are able to see how students think about what
they think. More importantly, this recursive learning through written work increases student understanding (Flower 1996).
We contend that writing assignments that are
thoughtfully embedded in the curriculum to
improve cognitive skills and that are tied to learning goals with a sense of purpose will improve
students’ formal writing by first addressing the
thinking they need to master. Many of us, as sociology instructors, integrate written work into our
classes with the implicit goal of improving our
students’ ability to write. When we integrate
informal writing with an eye to our cognitive
goals as well, we observe that informal writing
first ignites a thinking process that enables students to see nuances where none were previously
visible. As Ellen notes at the end of the semester,
‘‘[M]y understanding has grown . . . my perspective has switched from a victim, to an observer
of stratification. I see it everywhere . . . I was
blind to it before in my everyday life.’’
Ironically, however, the effect of the writing
exercise we present here on the more tangible
product—the quality of our students’ writing—
may, in the short term, be detrimental. Put simply,
when the thinking process becomes more complex, so does the writing process. This may be
why some have found cause to speculate whether
‘‘. . . WAC promises more than it can deliver’’
(Day 1989:458). The ability to summarize and
synthesize various viewpoints and then to generate new ideas that advance others’ thinking on
the topic within a coherent text can be a daunting
task. The use of PTA is founded on the belief that
if students are to master these skills we need to
offer them systematic opportunities to hone their
thinking skills by integrating the ‘‘building
blocks’’ of complex thought into our informal
writing assignments. In this way, informal writing,
structured through PTA, can serve as a means both
to organize thinking and to practice the process of
translating complex thoughts into writing.
One underlying premise in using PTA is that by
explicitly and consistently practicing the skills of
prioritization, translation, and drawing analogies,
our students will be better able to apply these skills
instinctively in other contexts when the occasion
arises (e.g., in their research and writing of formal
papers or in the ways in which they consider course
materials for all of their classes). Experience in the
Social Stratification class suggests that when they
shift to formal written work, the skills they develop
through PTA are then carried forward. When students observe the intentional links that we craft
between content and writing, we model for them
the important relationships between writing, thinking, and understanding.
In addition to its effect on student work, when
we use PTA as a guiding framework for organizing learning in our classes, we essentially transform the process by which the syllabus is created.
Instead of beginning with the content we intend to
teach, the starting point for designing each class
session is the thinking goals, followed by a consideration of whether and how informal writing
might be used to advance, observe, and guide
the thought process. By returning to content after
a careful consideration of learning objectives and
the use of written work to achieve them, we facilitate comprehension by taking advantage of the
critical relationship between thinking, writing,
and learning.
In sum, PTA can transform both the teaching
and learning processes in valuable and meaningful
ways. The use of PTA creates a visible, cognitive
scaffolding through which students can learn to
contextualize their thinking and practice the
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process of creating sociological knowledge. As we
witness the ongoing organization of students’
thinking through writing, we can remain cognizant
of the ‘‘fits and starts’’ that are characteristic of the
process of selecting, understanding, and then
applying new information. PTA is applicable in
sociology classes that emphasize both quantitative
and qualitative approaches and in classes where
writing is not traditionally a focus (e.g., statistics).
By responding primarily to student thinking, we
reduce grading time and so open up greater possibilities for the application of writing to learn in
larger courses as well.
When it is structured in a way that fosters basic
thinking skills, informal written work can help us
to understand what students learn, how they learn
it, and the effects that they perceive their new
knowledge has had on their lives. As we come
to more fully appreciate the evolution of thinking
through writing and the challenges it poses, we
will be better prepared to facilitate a deeper process of knowledge making, a process that will
become the means for ongoing personal growth
and development throughout our students’ lives
(Berthoff 1981). By teaching students a process
for connecting content and thought, we model
for them a process of lifelong learning that will
serve them throughout their professional lives.
And in our classrooms, we are able to shift our
own thinking: We are no longer ‘‘teaching writing’’ but, rather, ‘‘promoting learning through
writing.’’ While subtle, the difference is profound.
APPENDIX 1
Step One. Look back at your responses to the
questions I’ve been asking. Circle the strongest
response. Write ‘‘STRONG’’ next to it. In a sentence or two, BRIEFLY describe what makes
this entry the strongest.
Step Two. Circle the response that was the
hardest for you to answer. Write ‘‘DIFFICULT’’
next to it. Again, in a sentence or two, say why
you think it was the hardest question to answer.
Step Three. Circle the answer that you feel
does the best job of demonstrating your values
and beliefs in a general way—attitudes and beliefs
that you have brought to your study of stratification this semester. Label this response
‘‘ATTITUDES’’ and briefly describe what these
attitudes are and how they have affected your ability to understand what we have been studying.
Step Four. Look at the responses from the first
couple of weeks in the semester and compare
them to your most recent responses. Have your
responses changed over the semester? Write a short
paragraph that describes any changes you see in
yourself or in your ability to understand what we
are learning about in this class. Is there something
you understand or think about differently than you
did at the beginning of this semester? What and
why? If not, why don’t you think so?
Step Five. Describe your reaction to doing these
blue book writings this past semester: (1) Has the
writing you have done here affected your thinking
about social class? (2) Has the writing affected
your understanding of social class? (3) Has the
writing affected your behavior in any way?
FUNDING
Journal Interrogation Exercise
Journal Exercise
To Be Completed in Journals as a Final
Writing Exercise
After journaling for nearly the entire semester
about the issues and implications inherent in the
readings we have done, I want you to take a few
minutes to consolidate and revisit your work
before you hand it in to me for a grade. This recursive exercise is called ‘‘interrogating the text,’’
since you’ll be asked to review something that
you now know fairly well and then ask broader,
connection questions of the writing. The result is
that you’ll understand the work you did more
deeply. This will take about 30 minutes.
The PTA model evolved from our work training faculty from a variety of disciplines in writing to learn
principles. The training program was supported, in
part, by funds from the Davis Educational
Foundation.
NOTE
Reviewers for this manuscript were, in alphabetical
order, Diane Johnson and Nancy Malcom.
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BIOS
Suzanne S. Hudd is a professor of sociology and codirector of the Writing Across the Curriculum program at
Quinnipiac University. She spent the past year interviewing sociologists about the ways in which they define
and implement writing in their classes, and she currently
is preparing an analysis of the findings. Her research was
funded, in part, by the American Sociological
Association’s Teaching Enhancement Fund. She also
has published on social and cultural factors that influence character development during adolescence.
Robert A. Smart is professor of English and chair of the
English department at Quinnipiac University, where he
teaches advanced writing and Irish and Gothic Studies
courses. Smart is the founding editor of The Writing
Teacher (National Poetry Foundation), coeditor of
Direct from the Disciplines (2006), and author of The
Nonfiction Novel (1984). He has published on Irish
and Gothic Studies in several anthologies and in
Postcolonial Text.
Andrew W. Delohery is the associate vice president for
Retention and Academic Success at Quinnipiac
University. While providing oversight to the university’s
Learning Center, he also collaborates with many programs and departments to help improve student success.
He is a founding member of the university’s Writing
Across the Curriculum program and a coauthor of
Using Technology in the Classroom (2005).
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