Retention and Resistance
Retention and Resistance: Writing Instruction and Students Who Leave
PEGEEN REICHERT POWELL
Copyright Date: 2013
Published by: University Press of Colorado,
Pages: 136
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vkjnh
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Book Info
Retention and Resistance
Book Description:

Retention and Resistancecombines personal student narratives with a critical analysis of the current approach to retention in colleges and universities, and explores how retention can inform a revision of goals for first-year writing teachers.

Retention is a vital issue for institutions, but as these students' stories show, leaving college is often the result of complex and idiosyncratic individual situations that make institutional efforts difficult and ultimately ineffective. An adjustment of institutional and pedagogical objectives is needed to refocus on educating as many students as possible, including those who might leave before graduation.

Much of the pedagogy, curricula, and methodologies of composition studies assume students are preparing for further academic study.Retention and Resistanceargues for a new kairotic pedagogy that moves toward an emphasis on the present classroom experience and takes students' varied experiences into account. Infusing the discourse of retention with three individual student voices, Powell explores the obligation of faculty to participate in designing an institution that educates all students, no matter where they are in their educational journey or how far that journey will go.

eISBN: 978-0-87421-931-9
Subjects: Language & Literature
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii)
  3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (pp. ix-xii)
  4. INTRODUCTION: Paying Attention to the Discourse of Retention in Higher Education
    INTRODUCTION: Paying Attention to the Discourse of Retention in Higher Education (pp. 1-30)

    In the fall of 2008, my two sections of first-year writing were positively electric with the excitement of the campaign and ultimately the election of Barack Obama. I had designed the course to tap into that fall’s election, and I enjoyed teaching these two particularly motivated, bright, cohesive groups of students. Two years later, in fall 2010, only eight of the twenty-four students from those classes were still enrolled at my institution. Our institution-wide retention rate for their cohort two years later was 52 percent, and our current graduation rate is 41 percent; neither are rates my college is satisfied...

  5. 1 A STORY OF RETENTION RESEARCH
    1 A STORY OF RETENTION RESEARCH (pp. 31-51)

    Helen is one of the toughest students I’ve ever taught. By this I mean that, at times, her demeanor is tough. Her language is tough. And she would admit parts of her background are pretty tough, too. I also mean she is probably one of the brightest, most earnest, most hardworking students I have ever met, and it was tough to teach her when I knew she was struggling with money and family and relationships and her vision for the future and her own sense of herself. She approached the writing and the reading with an enthusiasm that made our...

  6. 2 THE SEDUCTION AND BETRAYAL OF THE DISCOURSE OF RETENTION
    2 THE SEDUCTION AND BETRAYAL OF THE DISCOURSE OF RETENTION (pp. 52-82)

    I have begun to understand that students leaving my college before they graduate is less a problem I need to solve and more an occasion for me to be creative, an opportunity to invent meaningful pedagogical responses to the unique forces circulating in their lives and in my classroom. However, from an institutional perspective, the goal of retention research is still to prevent students from leaving, regardless of the possibility that such efforts may be futile: as the idiosyncrasies of Helen’s story illustrate, each student’s background and experiences create a unique complex of factors, so there are few—if any...

  7. 3 THE POSSIBILITY OF FAILURE
    3 THE POSSIBILITY OF FAILURE (pp. 83-105)

    If you do a search in Amazon for books with the keywordfailure,the vast majority of titles are about success:The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life’s Setbacks into Success; Famous Failures: Hundreds of Hot Shots Who Got Rejected, Flunked Out, Worked Lousy Jobs, Goofed Up, or Did Time in Jail Before Becoming a Phenomenal Success; Success Through Failure; Great Failures of the Extremely Successful; Failure: The Back Door to Success.In other words, if you went by nothing other than these titles, you would think it a great stroke of luck if you failed tremendously at...

  8. 4 BEYOND RETENTION
    4 BEYOND RETENTION (pp. 106-134)

    My argument throughout this book has been that trying to prevent students from leaving our colleges and universities before they graduate is ineffective at best: an institution can simply do very little, if anything to address the complicated reasons surrounding students’ leaving, the fact that students’ chances of success are largely determined before they step foot on our campuses, and the reality that a four-year college education earned at one institution right after high school is not typical for the majority of the population anymore. And trying to prevent students from leaving is downright unethical in situations in which staying...

  9. REFERENCES
    REFERENCES (pp. 135-141)
  10. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR (pp. 142-142)
  11. INDEX
    INDEX (pp. 143-144)