Authentic for Whom? An Interview Study of Desired Writing Practices for African American Adolescent Learners
Across theory, research, and learning standards, there is a clear call for authentic writing experiences to increase achievement and engagement. According to theories of authenticity that stress its subjective nature, a writing task is authentic when a student perceives it as relevant to the real world as they define the real world. Moreover, there is a need for authentic writing in classrooms that connects to increased student engagement, but the reality of writing instruction across schools in the United States remains rote and teacher centered. These narrowed views and perspectives are further exacerbated when it comes to teaching African American youth in classrooms. Using qualitative interview data involving 12 African American students in the middle grades, the researchers examined the following questions: 1) How do African American adolescents describe their classroom writing experiences? 2) What factors do African American adolescents desire related to authenticity for writing instruction? Researchers found 24 present, desired and undesired practices expressed by participants when describing their classroom writing experiences. In this article, eight of the most prevalent factors (i.e. expression, personal connections, sharing with peers, sharing with teachers, structured writing, student and teacher choice of topics, and writing for impact) are illustrated to understand how these variables contributed to authentic writing experiences. Findings from this study suggest that more research is needed within classrooms that attempt to increase the perceived authenticity of writing tasks among African American youth. Writing is a way to express yourself. I mean, people don't listen to you when you just speak. People are like, "No, I hear with my eyes," you know stuff like that. It's like ok well if you won't listen to me when I speak, how about I write something down and make it beautiful and fluent and just powerful. And then you will pay attention to me and what I actually have to say. The above quote comes from the interview transcript of Jasmine, a 13 year old African American girl who was asked, Why is writing important to you? In her response, she illuminated the purpose and power of language through writing. In her conceptualization of writing she deems it as the means for selfexpression and a tool to engage others to listen to one's thoughts. Her words especially resonated with us as former middle school teachers and current writing researchers, and her words charged us to inquire about the writing experiences of African American youth in middle school classrooms and if classroom instruction supports writing in ways that Jasmine described as beautiful, fluent and powerful. We also questioned the construct of authenticity in writing instruction and the degree to which authentic writing is experienced by Black youth in school spaces. We draw upon a conception of authenticity as a subjective judgment about the real world relevance of a task (Splitter, 2009) In other words, to be authentic, the writing task must connect to the lives of the youth. Moreover, an authentic writing task needs to be perceived by students as relevant to the real world as they define the real world (Behizadeh, 2014) By asking Jasmine why is writing important, we were beginning to listen to her voice and why she feels writing matters. Her words suggest that an authentic writing task requires the purpose of engaging others in writing. Thus, for Jasmine, a 1 Muhammad and Behizadeh: An Interview Study of Desired Writing Practices for African American Adolescents Published by ScholarWorks UVM, 2015 topic and an audience that matters to her may be required for authenticity. For example, based on our knowledge of Jasmine and the topics that matter to her, we could ask her to write to an audience on the current state of media representations of Black girls (a topic in which she has expressed interest) In contrast to this, a less authentic writing assignment for Jasmine might be to write a persuasive essay on a prompt that will only be read by the teacher on a topic that she perceives as irrelevant. Because of our framing of educational authenticity as residing within a student's perceptions rather than a task, the only way we can know what is authentic for Jasmine or other students is to ask, which is what we engaged in for the purposes of the current study. Purpose of the Study Our desire to support Jasmine and other African American students who "have something to say," led us to develop a study that draws upon qualitative interview data from two separate studies (Seidman, 2013) with adolescent African American students in the middle grades to respond to the following research questions: 1. How do African American adolescents describe their classroom writing experiences? 2. What factors do African American adolescents desire related to authenticity for writing instruction? We chose to draw upon interview data because this source of data affords opportunities to provide thick descriptions of the voices of participants. This study was planned to project the voices of African American adolescents in their own words, as their voices have been historically marginalized in classrooms across a wide span of years (Howard, 2001) However, if we understand the classroom writing experiences of African American youth, we can push toward improved practices in middle level classrooms and increase the experiences that youth find real, meaningful, and connected to their lives. Review of Literature We examined the actual and desired practices of African American adolescents drawing on three major bodies of work: authenticity in writing; historical purposes of African American writing; and assessment reports on U.S. writing instruction. These three bodies of work informed our data collection and analysis and contribute to establishing the significance of this work. Collectively, researchers suggest that student conceptions of authenticity in writing classrooms are overlooked when it comes to informing curriculum and policy decisions and are not widely reported in large scale assessments. Moreover, the purposes for writing that African Americans held historically are largely absent from the ways writing is privileged in language arts classrooms and within assessments. Authenticity in writing practices. In previous research that uses the term authenticity related to educational settings, a narrow conception of authenticity is often employed and a lack of student perspectives is offered (Ashton, 2010; Behizadeh, 2014; Newmann, Marks, Gamoran, 1996; Splitter, 2009) Authenticity in education is often thought of as residing within a particular task, rather than being a judgment of a task by a student (Behizadeh) In this study, we operationalize a definition of authenticity in writing drawing on Behizadeh's previous review of educational authenticity. In this past work, Behizadeh defines authenticity as "a student's perception that a school task connects to his/her life" (p. 28) She draws on the work of Ashton (2010) and Splitter (2009) who counter the common assumption that authenticity is a characteristic of a task and position authenticity as person dependent. This is a critical orientation for researchers exploring authentic literacy experiences with youth; researchers and teachers cannot assume that writing tasks that align with their conceptions of the "real world" are actually perceived as authentic by the students with whom they work. In the current study, we sought African American youth perspectives on desired writing, and although we cannot designate these desired practices as more or less authentic based on mere 2 Middle Grades Review, Vol. 1, Iss. 2 [2015] Art. 5 https:/scholarworks.uvm.edu/mgreview/vol1/iss2/5 desire, we can take these desired practices and compare them to the tenets of authentic writing described in our conceptual framework to begin the conversation about authenticity for African American youth in U.S. schools. Notwithstanding the lack of a clear consensus on defining authenticity, calls for authenticity in literacy education prevail. In a review of a century of literacy research, Hillocks (2011) posited, "We know from a very wide variety of studies in English and out of it, that students who are authentically engaged with the tasks of their learning are likely to learn much more than those who are not" (p. 189) However, it is not clear in Hillocks' review what contributes to this authentic engagement. Also speaking to the need for authenticity, Applebee Langer (2011) in their review of writing practices across the US made the following points: The actual writing that goes on in typical classrooms across the United States remains dominated by tasks in which the teacher does all the composing, and students are left only to fill in missing information, whether copying directly from a teacher's presentation, completing worksheets and chapter summaries, replicating highly formulaic essay structures keyed to the high stakes tests they will be taking, or writing the particular information the teacher is seeking. (p. 26) Thus, there is a call for authentic writing in classrooms that connects to increased student engagement, but the reality of writing instruction across schools in the US remains rote and teacher centered. Furthermore, these narrowed views and perspectives are exacerbated when it comes to honoring the voices of African American youth in classrooms (Ball Ellis, 2008; DarlingHammond, 2010) Honoring the voices and needs of African American youth is especially important for this population of students, as they have been historically underserved in schools. Ball and Ellis argued that writing instruction for students of color is often relegated to drill exercises rather than instructional practices that are "interactive, meaningful approaches that require extended writing, reflection, and critical thin