Towards A Rhetoric Of Neo Hybrid Pedagogy:A Comparative Analysis On An Effective Teaching Methodology Applied To Writing Portfolios For African American Students At A Historically Black University

Abstract

While many English composition and rhetoric scholars argue that using writing portfolios in courses can be an excellent tool for assessing students' work authentically, educators run into difficulties with some African American students who struggle to publish quality work in a writing portfolio. In the past decade theorists have provided practitioners with solid research to argue why portfolios are beneficial in writing classes; however, many composition teachers force scholars to reassess how educators experience difficulties with using portfolios as a guide to assess all students' writings. This is especially problematic for minorities who may be unfamiliar with the academic discourse, Westernized pedagogies, and struggles with high expectations to already know how to speak Standard English and produce ideal portfolios in Standard Written English, even if their first language is not English but rather the African American Vernacular English. As a result, this research will address concerns regarding African American students' struggle to adapt to writing portfolios in regards to conflicting teaching styles, Western Culture's influence on the academic discourse between the student versus the teacher, and effective teaching methodologies for African American students. In addition, notions concerning writing portfolios will be reexamined in order to offer some solutions for marginalized students who struggle producing quality work. This study will follow a True Experimental quantitative research design to compare effective teaching methods of instruction used to improve African American students' writing and to enlighten educators on how to produce better writers, comparing three different writing pedagogies, namely Process Pedagogy , the traditional method of instruction that is student focused with an emphasis on helping students' find their voice without restricting them to certain structures and rules within genres of writing; Current Traditional Rhetoric Pedagogy (CTR), a teacher focused method of instruction with an emphasis on outlines, direct instructions for writing essays and product over process; and Neo Hybrid Pedagogy, a mixture of teacher and student focused instruction with an emphasis on implementing African Americans' culture and social discourse into the method of instruction. Specifically, 72 random African American college students who failed the Accuplacer exam at a Historical Black University were grouped into three Freshmen Studies English Composition 101 courses. All three groups received a different teaching style for writing from their English Professor, and their pre-test and post-test essays from their writing portfolios served as a tool to assess which methods of instruction in writing proved most effective for African American students. The Analysis of Variance One-way two by three was used to assess the students' progress or regress in their writings after being exposed to treatment. Findings from the research conclude that African American students in Freshmen English Study courses produce higher scores on their writings compiled in writing portfolios when they are exposed to a teaching writing methodology that consists of a hybrid between the academic discourse that is highly influenced by mainstream society's methods of instruction and interwoven with an approach closely related to African American students' social discourse and their cultural background within the African descent-- known as Neo Hybrid Pedagogy.