“What do you mean I Wrote a C Paper?” 2015 CELT Vol. VIII - Writing, Revision, and Self-Regulation

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by awa

2015 CELT Vol. VIII explores why students often fail to revise written work effectively, focusing on the gap between expectations and grades. Grounded in a winter 2013 action research study for a second-year university course, “Women and Leadership,” the work examines how targeted interventions reshape students’ mindsets about drafting and revision. The essay also synthesizes revision scholarship and self-regulation literature to offer reflective, classroom-ready suggestions for teaching revision through scaffolds and assessment design.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages36

Reading Time1 h 31 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Revision and its discontents

Visions of Revision

Uncertainties and opportunities

“What do you mean I Wrote a C Paper?” 2015 CELT Vol. VIII Writing, Revision, [celt. uwindsor.ca](celt. uwindsor.ca) [www.stlhe.ca](www.stlhe.ca) and Self-Regulation Mark Feltham Fanshawe College Colleen Sharen Brescia University College Students often express surprise at their grades on papers. This gap between expectation and achievement may stem in partfrom lack of facility with revision strategies. How, then, can teachers work with their students to foster more effective revisions? This question in teaching and learning has inspired an interdisciplinary collaboration: one of us is a management and leadership professor (Sharen), and the other is an English/communication professor (Feltham). In this essay, we describe a research study from winter 2013 in which we explored how a series of interventions improved students’ mindsets about the process of drafting and revising reports for a second-year-university course entitled “Women and Leadership.”After outlining key aspects of this study that we feel are of general interest, we then present a series of reflective suggestions about how to teach revision derived from both our experiences anda selective survey of the literature on both revision andself-regulation. Introduction Revision and its discontents InanMeaayrl2y01d4ra,feofcnhdisuctpedapea wr arksthheopSobaciesedty ofonr Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) conference. During this workshop, we asked participants whether their students’ inability to revise written work created gaps between student expectation and achievement. Most hands shot up. We then asked them whether they explicitly integrated revision into their teaching. Significantly fewer hands went up. These informal polls reflect a situation all too familiar to teachers: students do not always revise effectively, and teachers aren’t always sure how (or whether) to address the problem. These gaps in student knowledge and pedagogy can create additional gaps between what teachers expect from the students and the actual results and also between the grades students expect and the ones that they actually receive. Our awareness of these problems has inspired a small-scale study, the aforementioned conference session, and now, this essay. We think of our study and our ongoing conversations about it as inner and outer frames for this essay. The inner frame includes what we did, why we did it, and what we learned. Initially, we asked these research questions: to what degree do students view their writing skills as fixed or subject to growth, and does this mindset itself change as a result of classroom interventions involving revision? Would experiencing a mandatory, revision-friendly scaffold show students the benefits of revision and thus begin to nudge them from a fixed mindset towards a growth mindset? Is seeing believing? The outer frame involves more general questions surrounding revision and its integration into courses of all sorts. Specifically, our initial study involved action research to address whether students viewed writing and revision in terms of a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. This narrower set of questions, however, leads outwards into broader questions about revision, how to adapt what we’ve learned to assignment design and assessment, and what we might do better next time. In what follows, we invite readers to share in these ongoing reflections, and we hope, to be inspired to “try this at home” with their students. Visions of Revision Uncertainties and opportunities In light of this essay’s reflective focus, we have not conducted the same level of literature review as we would have for a more conventional scholarly paper. Nevertheless, a brief overview of some important concepts in the literature will help establish a context for our reflections in the rest of this essay. There are several patterns in the literature on revision that parallel the uncertainty about the subject that we experienced

FAQs

Why do students’ writing expectations and achievements diverge on papers?

The essay argues the gap can stem from limited facility with revision strategies, leading to mismatches between what teachers expect and students actually submit, and between anticipated and received grades.

What does the winter 2013 study examine in the course “Women and Leadership”?

It investigates how interventions can improve students’ mindsets about drafting and revising reports in a university context, including whether a mandatory revision-friendly scaffold encourages a shift toward growth mindsets.

How does the essay characterize revision in the literature?

It highlights definitions emphasizing revision as an ongoing, complex process involving changes over time—adding, deleting, moving, and refining ideas, words, and phrases—while noting ambiguity and difficulty in teaching revision.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by awa