Lesson Study in English: Engaging Students Critically in Stakeholder Analysis

Title: Challenging Students in a Professional Writing Classroom to Engage Critically in Stakeholder Analysis
Authors: Kopp, Bryan; Moeller, Marie; Friesen, Ryan
Discipline: English
Submission Date: June 12, 2015

Abstract: Goals for the Activity: 

1. Offer students an opportunity to engage thoughtfully and critically in a stakeholder analysis activity.
2. Engage in the complexity of responding in writing, post-stakeholder analysis,vis-à-vis dialogue with their group members.
3. Employ varying concepts and theoretical understandings of professional writing in undertaking, analyzing, and responding to a professional writing problem.

Lesson Plan: Prior to this course, students had been discussing the history of the field of professional writing. This moment was where the field was turning both to the
social and the ethical implications of the work of professional writing. Prior to this
particular day, students read a piece by Steven Katz regarding the use of rhetoric in
the German holocaust—the piece articulates how professional writing can be seen
as a commitment of the time in which it is generated, as well as a vehicle that can
drive commitments, as well.

With that background, students were to engage with, negotiate about, and then
find a way to respond to the form in Appendix A, and were grouped in 3 groups to
do so.

Major Findings: Students were able to engage with the form in intellectual ways, and were able to see multiple perspectives in response to the form. As the instructor, Marie was happy to see those things happening. The one major finding we came away with, though, was that it is clearly difficult for students to not identify with the
institutional role they were given, and oriented themselves not to a broader context of ethical implications of this form, but very easily took on the role of the institution, even after having read the article by Katz and talking about how difficult it is to step outside the bounds and consider all aspects of a situation, and their own place and responsibility of perhaps changing the institution rather than the individuals. As an instructor, Marie will be continuing to work on making such implications clear in her writing classes.

Challenging Students in a Professional Writing Classroom to Engage Critically in Stakeholder Analysis - Full Report