Mutually Humble Collaboration in College Literacy Courses: Same Papers, Dialogical Responses

Abstract

Abstract Each fall, first-year college students enter required composition courses with the expectation that they will learn the necessary skills to write competently for their collegiate careers. Quickly, students who survive and thrive discover that complex factors such as experience, academic cultural etiquette, self-regulation, and relationships with professors and classmates combine to set them on paths of success or failure. I examined the literacy induction experiences of college composition students at a private Christian college in the Midwestern United States through a constant comparative analysis framework utilized in a grounded theory research (Strauss & Corbin, 1998, 2008; and Charmaz, 2007.) Through surveys, interviews, and observations in three composition classrooms, I used social cognitive and sociocultural frameworks to focus on participants’ and their professors’ actions and perceptions. Using data from the interviews and observations in a positive deviance selection process (Pascale, Sternin & Sternin, 2010), I narrowed my focus to four participants whose narratives revealed grit (Duckworth, 2016), growth mindset (Dweck, 2015), and evidence of mutually humble collaboration (MHC), the theory that emerged from this study, which serves as the super framework over the themes I examine. My findings indicate that professors and students facing literacy challenges who engage in mutually humble collaboration establish dialogical relationships (Freire, 2009) that foster passion and perseverance leading to success. In this study I address the pragmatic question of how sociocultural concepts such as scaffolding (Vygotsky, 1978), and the dialogical relationship ending the oppressor - oppressed cycle described by Freire (2009) may be initiated. Keywords: mutually humble collaboration, grit, literacy