4.

9
Threshold concept activity

● writing is a process

I agree. Writing in class is a multi-phases process. It involves a prompt, class

readings, draft, peer review, revision, and a final portfolio.

By actively participating in writing activities, such as free writing, journal, literature

review, grant proposal, and peer reviews, I gained a concrete understanding of
these threshold concepts. Both project 1 and project 2 involve many stages of
writing, which is something that I had anticipated. During this writing process, that
involves free-writing, drafting, and revising, I learned to apply different thinking at
different stages. For example, for project 1, the first thing I did was to write a
memory jog of my educational experiences. At this stage, generative thinking
was at play. I put whatever I can think of on paper. In the drafting process, I tried
to remember as many details as possible about my educational experience,
pulling the smallest details out from my memory. When revising my story, I
applied critical thinking. I examined the whole structure of the story, deleting all
the redundancies, and making the story coherent with the educational theories.
From the writing process above, I learned that thinking is constantly evolving in
the writing process.

● all writers have more to learn

No writing is perfect, it can always be improved.

I didn’t quite get this concept right in the first place. Now looking back to this concept, I
think as a writer myself, I have learned a lot about education theories along the way,
many of which are completely new to me. In the first project, I couldn’t have understood
why my engineering class was so interesting and meaningful without learning about the
Gradual Release of Responsibility Model and inquiry-based learning. In the grant
proposal assignment, we composed a literature review to justify our project. We couldn’t
have done these writings without actively learning current educational research.

● writing is impacted by identities and prior experiences

Writers’ perspectives are changed by their identities and prior experiences. So different
writers write different things and can have different opinions on the same thing.
 I have really experienced this quote in the process of doing the grant proposal. I
have learned that not only our identities and prior experiences impact our writing,
but sometimes they are the reasons that we write at all. Julian comes from an
underfunded high school, and many students there are from low-income families.
After learning his prior educational experiences and the difficulties his school is
facing, we decided to build an engineering program to help his school. Julian’s
personal experiences became the motivation for our writing.

● “good” writing is contextual

A good popular science article is fun and informative. But it can never be a good
academic article since it tells scientists nothing new. Different writings have
different purposes, thus they have different definitions of what is “good”.

There are no fixed criteria in determining whether a writing is good or bad. For
example, I learned that repetition is not always a bad thing. Conversely, being short and
concise is not always good. When writing the grant proposal, I took Dr. Warwick’s
advice by briefly repeating the point made in the introduction and the Literature review
again. I reminded the audience in the project justification that Tulare Western High
School is currently underfunded and their students are from low income families. I drew
connections between student’s graduation rate and engineering education, telling the
committee that their funds directly contribute to the future success of these low income
students. This is different from what I’ve learned in my past writing experience since I
always tried to avoid repetitions.

● people collaborate to get things done with writing

I agree. For example, during peer review processes, we give other students
advice and receive feedback from others. It is collaborative.

I really enjoyed the collaborative experience when writing the grant proposal. The
grant proposal seemed to be a daunting task at first. But after dissecting it into
different parts and conquering each part one by one, the project is done easily.
When writing the proposal, each of the group members brought their expertise in
the group, which makes the writing a lot easier. I transferred my engineering
knowledge when designing the course syllabus, Ye brought his expertise in math
into this group and calculated the budget easily.
 ● reflection is critical for writers’ development

Reflection helps us learn what is good about our writing and what needs
improvement.

During the revision of project 1, I have reflected on my stories many many times,
deleting the stories that are not relevant to the main narrative and adding more
relevant details to support the educational theories that I am citing. Reflections
can be painful. It is a process of criticizing yourself. What’s more, as Dr. Warwick
said, too often you have to kill your darlings. But at the same time, it allows you
to have a better grasp of your story. That’s one development that I have made in
this course.

● writing is a knowledge-making activity

We are making new knowledge when we write. For example, we construct new
arguments; we offer new perspectives through writing.

In project one, by writing and analyzing my own educational experience, I gained new
understanding about myself. I learned that my success in my thermodynamics class is
not accidental, and that Prof. Gordon’s good teaching is transferable to other
engineering classes. In this sense, writing allows us to learn about ourselves.

4.19
Connect Freire to Ms. Toliver: According to Freire, problem-posing education is opposite
to the banking concepts of education in which students are told to simply memorize
knowledge. In problem-posing education, students are encouraged to learn through
asking questions, which is exactly what Ms. Toliver did to her class. Instead of letting
students solve math problems, she encouraged her students to find math problems in
real life. And then, students answer the questions themselves. Instead of telling them
the answer, Ms. Toliver guided her students to find the answer.
4.26

Reflect on past collaboration experiences by writing about the following:

● Negative collaboration experiences

● Positive collaboration experiences
● What are the characteristics of each? What characteristics did groups have to
make experiences negative? What characteristics did groups have to make
experiences positive?

I’ve had collaboration experiences that eventually result in a failure of the project. I
would say it’s mainly because the responsibility of each group member is unclear. I’ve
had experience that everyone within a group wanted to take on the same job, while
nobody wanted to take the other jobs. This eventually led to an unfinished project.
And even though the responsibilities are split up to each group member doesn't mean
that each person should work on their part independently without knowing what the
other group members are doing. Because, eventually all the parts have to be
assembled into a single project, this means that each part has to synchronize with the
other parts.

For all the successful collaboration projects I had, the responsibilities are divided clearly
and evenly. I think it is important to note that everyone has a similar workload. This can
prevent that someone is far behind the others in terms of progress. Apart from dividing
the responsibilities, when doing the project, it is important to communicate with the other
group members often to update progress and to ask for help. From my successful
collaboration experiences, my groups will often talk to each other through texts or group
chat to check our progress, and to discuss and solve the difficulties together. If
someone finishes early, he/she can always help the others who encounter difficulties.

5.15

Analysis of the sample scholarly conversation paper:

Which authors she makes connections between and the ideas they connect on?

1. It is a conversation between Dr. Rasha Diab and Dr. Henry Giroux on anti-racist
pedagogy.
2. Dr. Thomas Ferrel and Dr. Beth Godbeeab are co-authors with Dr.Diab on their
work on anti-racist pedagogy.
3. Then Christina joined the conversation, who is a friend of Dr. Rasha Diab.
Professor Shane Wood and Dr. Carmen Kaynard are friends with Christina.
4. Rasha and Christina have the same idea that minority students are
disadvantaged by their tutors and their teaching standards, since these
standards are classed and white-privileged. They think that the teacher should
adapt their teaching based on their students’ racial backgrounds.
5. Shane added his own idea to their conversation by pointing out that the current
assessment method failed to consider how students’ writings are affected by their
identities.
6. Rasha adds on to Shane’s comment by saying that they are in the position to
change current education pedagogy.
7. Henry started a new conversation by saying that teachers should encourage
white students to discuss white privilege.
8. Kristina expanded on Henry’s idea by saying that the conversation should be
open to all students and all topics, including race, gender, and sexual orientation.
9. Kasha and Dr. Giroux thinks the spaces for student discussion is important, and
at the same time they emphasize on the importance of one’s readiness to have
his/her own ideas challenged.
10. Carmon started a new conversation by questioning the effect of language on
anti-racist pedagogy.
11. Kristina and Carmon have the same observation that minority students are
punished for being poor at using standardized English.
12. Shane joined the conversation by proposing a solution to the problem: grading
contracts allows students to not be judged by their languages.
13. Finally Carmen and Rasha talked about the specific measures they took to
reduce white privilege in class.