The implications of the "new" majority of non-tenurable faculty for first year composition curricula and critical pedagogy
Date
2014
Authors
Austin, Sarah E., author
Doe, Sue, advisor
Langstraat, Lisa, committee member
Dickinson, Greg, committee member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract
Of late, much discussion has arisen around university employers' treatment of the "new" majority of contingent faculty. However, little is being said regarding two important points: first, that in the field of rhetoric and composition and in first-year writing classrooms, especially, this majority of contingent faculty is not at all new. Secondly, that some attention should be paid to what effects this writ-large university labor shift may be having on the pedagogical and curricular decisions within composition programs, particularly as they pertain to faculty's academic freedoms and the teaching of critical thinking skills. As such, this thesis sought to attend to both of the above issues by documenting the history of rhetoric and composition's labor force, aligning that history to activism and critical pedagogies and, through a local example, discussing the implications of the "new" majority of untenurable faculty on the pedagogies and curricula utilized in first-year composition. My findings indicate, as suspected, that the majority of contingent faculty is not a new phenomenon to the field of composition. Nevertheless, this contingent majority does impact the ways in which critical thinking and pedagogies may be used within the first-year composition classroom. Results seem to show that such a shift in university faculty profiles will indeed affect professors' abilities to wield traditionally understood ideas of academic freedom but that, drawing on Foucault's notions of power and his term "specific intellectual," individuals within composition departments, and perhaps university-wide, are able, through conscious action to uphold the democratic ideals of a postsecondary education: to create civic-minded, critical thinkers.