3/10 (2)

And today (3/6), I read:

Connors, Patricia. "Attitudes of Returning or Older Students in Composition." CCC 33.3 (Oct. 1982): 263-266.

An interesting piece. She begins: "In recent years, a growing number of older students have begun or have returned to college" (263). This sounds strikingly familiar. She continues:

Although there are a few special courses and programs for these students, most of them are mainstreamed at once into classes with students of traditional college age. The growing number of returning or older students in freshman composition courses, in particular, raises questions about whether they should be taught in the same way as their younger classmates. (263)

Wow. These are the same observations and questions I had twenty years later. The article goes on to detail an "experiment" Connors conducted with two groups of students--traditional and nontraditional in age. She essentially put together a survey and asked them a series of questions about their attitudes towards and about writing and learning. Her purpose, she explains, was twofold:

(1) to discover whether or not there are measurable differences between students of traditional and those of non-traditional age, and
(2) to consider what pedagogical implications such differences might have, if any were discovered.

She culls, from her experiment, several "conclusions" (which really don't seem too far off):

1) They are similar to students of traditional age in many of their attitudes toward writing and toward the teaching of composition.
(2) They differ from younger students in that they are likely to spend more time outside class revising essays and preparing for class.
(3) They are likely to manifest greater desire for direction, guidance, and limits on writing assignments than students of traditional college age.

Her "conclusions" of course are fairly unscientific, because her "experiment" was fairly unscientific. But, they are interesting, nonetheless. Connors then goes on to list pedagogical applications (or implications? or suggestions?) from her study. Among which are:

(1) being patient with non-traditional students' requests for directions while encouraging more autonomy;
(3) inviting both age groups, especially the non-traditional, to share and write about their work and life experiences, to build awareness of the subject matter available to them;

What strikes me as interesting from this piece?

• The familiar trope: there are more and more adult learners in our classes. We need to do something about this. (In Connors' words: "...I do wish to urge composition teachers to be ready to adapt their courses to meet the needs of the returning or older students who comprise an increasingly larger percentage of our composition courses" (266)).
  
• A practitioner taking matters into her own hands, conducting a very unscientific study...and she is someone OUTSIDE the field of composition/rhetoric.
  
• The focus on classes which are composed of both traditional and nontraditional students.
  
• The lack of voices of the nontraditional students themselves. 
  
• There was a panel at C's in 1980 on nontraditional students--might be interesting to try to find this.