Adler-Kassner, Linda. “Ownership Revisited: An Exploration in Progressive Era and Expressivist Composition”. College Composition and Communication. 49.2 (May 1998), pp. 208-233.
This week I read “Ownership Revisited: An Exploration in Progressive Era and Expressivist Composition” by Linda Adler-Kassner. When I began reading this article, I incorrectly believed that ownership referred to intellectual property, and thus plagiarism. I found out that ownership in this sense refers to students perceiving their writing as belonging to them because they created it, as opposed to students perceiving their writing as being dictated by the teacher. Although the concept of ownership may not be related to the concept of intellectual property, it is related to the concept of authorship discussed by Ritter and Valentine in the other articles I have reviewed. I believe it is important to foster the concept of ownership in the classroom to help students understand why plagiarism is frowned upon in academia.
Alder-Kassner discusses three different conceptualizations of ownership. Those who advanced the idea of ownership in the progressive era at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, believed that students should write for the democracy in order to foster a sense of community, or a group of people who shared the same values (210). In the mid-20th century, Expressivist scholarship was a more important concept. Though it was informed by the Progressive Era, advocates of Expressivist scholarship believed that composition ownership was an insular experience fostered within the individual (221). Alder-Kassner claims that scholarship is currently moving beyond these two concepts of ownership, especially in the realms of “portfolio assessment” and “service learning based composition courses”. Portfolio assessment courses foster a sense of ownership by encouraging students to master a variety of “literacies”, ensuring many opportunities for relating to the compositions they write (225). As long as the Service learning based courses reflect the student’s values, they are also a good way of fostering a sense of ownership. If the student believes in the cause they are working for, they may eventually begin to work for the cause of the sake of the cause instead of to fulfill course goals (228). Both of these classroom concepts incorporate “student identity and multiple discourses” in order to foster a sense of ownership (230).
As I stated earlier, I believe that a feeling of ownership is similar to a sense of authorship. If a teacher encourages a sense of ownership in the classroom, it may become easier for students to understand authorship in terms of something that is created as opposed to something that is purchased. However, it might be good to explicitly teach the concept of ownership in the classroom because I do not think that the concept of ownership is developing, rather I think there are many different ways for students to feel ownership for their work. Perhaps having them write a personal essay describing their personal concept of ownership would be a good way of introducing this idea, and thus the idea of authorship and plagiarism to the class.
