Reviewer Feedback

Editors have recommended that you revise and resubmit

Thank you for considering Enculturation as a venue for your work. The reviewers of your essay see great promise, but they have both recommended that you revise and resubmit. As you'll see below, the reviewers make a number of recommendations. Both reviewers have concerns about some of the conclusions you draw from your textual analysis, and they also both feel that Tony (and his writing) get a bit lost as the essay progresses. Both reviewers suggest that Tony needs to take a larger role in the piece. Though, Reviewer 2 also suggests the possibility of not making Tony's essay the central concern. S/he also grants that this would be a fairly radical revision.

How you address revisions will ultimately be up to you, but I hope that these reviews provide you with a way forward as you consider whether or not to resubmit this piece for review with Enculturation.

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Reviewer 1:

As the author notes, the trend in post-secondary education towards adult or non-traditional students is growing. This manuscript focuses on one participant and one piece of writing. I find the concept of identity and how it relates to adult students interesting and worth pursuing, especially within a qualitative study. So, I appreciate the work behind this submission. Moreover, I find the use of Ivanic's conceptualization of identity useful for exploring adult students (even all students, in some respects). I appreciate the writer's background on Tony, the participant, especially the role of education in Tony's life.

However, I must admit that after the description of Tony and Tony's educational background, I found myself missing Tony. He disappeared in the analysis of the essay. We get Ivanic's framework and the writer's analysis of the essay, but we don't get Tony's reflection on the essay. This is problematic because Tony discounts the class and notes his lack of effort. So, it seems problematic to rely on one essay for conclusions about identity. There are more than a few assumptions about what Tony might mean or might be showing in certain passages. But, we don't get Tony's interpretation of the passages. If relying on one essay (and an essay that already was central to another article), the writer might be careful as to how much can be concluded from the essay.

Also, I found the writer's and Tony's conception of writing or literacy slippery. This was troubling for me as the writer and Tony moved between home, work, and school. In these different contexts, literacy was conceived differently. When switching between the two main sections (Tony and essay), the conception of writing shifts, yet the analysis doesn't recognize that shift. In turn, we get conclusions at the end that seem disconnected from some of the previous essay.

Finally, I'm nervous that in the discussion section the writer undermines her/his conclusions. In the description of adults and participants for the larger study, the writer comments on varying identities and roles, many of which were inconsistent between participants. I appreciate the analysis of the demographic data and participant data and this does not necessarily change conclusions. However, this issue might be incorporated into manuscript rather than revealed in discussion.

I'm wondering if the larger study has any writing from on-the-job? I'd like to see various genres and documents rather than one essay from one class. I hope this feedback helps!

Reviewer 2:

This article addresses important questions about how individuals negotiate multiple identities in their writing, and it shines a light on a generally under-studied population: nontraditional (i.e., adult) students. I found your case-study approach perfect for discussing these issues, and your thick description of Tony Vaccaro is incredibly engaging. I found myself wanting to know more about him as the article progressed. You rely quite heavily (a bit too heavily?) on Roz Ivanic's _Writing and Identity_, but her work provides a helpful framework for discussing Tony's literacy practices.

The first two-thirds of the article are remarkably strong. With the exception of a few minor spelling and punctuation errors, your prose is smooth and polished. You have skillfully woven your case study into the larger fabric of literacy and identity studies, and the description of your methods is comprehensive without being tedious. The "Theoretical Framework" section at the beginning of the article is quite thin, but you successfully integrate theory throughout the rest of the article.

The article loses its momentum when you get to the key artifact: Tony's essay, "The Entitlement Generation." Several times throughout the article, you mention that your analysis of Tony's various identities will draw primarily from this one artifact, which heightens your readers' expectations for the essay. However, the essay itself is underwhelming, not only as a piece of college writing, but as an artifact worth studying in this context. In the essay, Tony doesn't explicitly discuss himself, his education, or his professional background, so much of your analysis of Tony's discoursal self comes across as ungrounded and idiosyncratic. In the section "Constructing a Discoursal Self," you draw several conclusions that don't seem to be supported by Tony's essay, and some of your findings here feel more like amateur psychology than textual analysis. With the exception of this section, I found the article to be quite sound, but given that Tony's essay is at the heart of the article, this section needs to be carefully reconsidered.

At the conclusion of the article, after citing Ivanic on the importance of students examining their own life-histories, you write, "I cannot read these words without wondering what the opportunity for such critical reflection might have afforded Tony." I found myself wondering the same thing as I read your article. Considering the nature of this study, would it be possible for you to reconnect with Tony and ask him for his reaction to your analysis of his essay? His response might confirm your findings (and thus strengthen that all-important section of your article), or he might shrug off the entire thing ("Oh, that? I wrote it right before class started."). Either way, re-introducing Tony's viewpoint in the final section(s) of the article would prevent the article from veering away from its strong beginnings.

I would like to see this article published, but I'm not convinced the findings match the sound methodology and the excellent prose. An even more radical solution to the problem would be to reframe the article without Tony's essay, or with the essay playing a much smaller role. Any gap left by the missing (or minimized) essay could easily be filled by more data taken from your interviews with Tony and/or more analysis of his interview responses, which are fascinating and seem worthy of greater consideration.