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Scholarly IdentityThis section addresses
the way the scholarly foundations of the Teaching of Writing
course made the course a perfect arena for exploring
the issues, concerns, reforms, and innovations of a
technology-enhanced learning environment. First, I look at
writing in an attempt to prioritize context over
text in the writing process, and then I analogize the
diffusions of context (vis-à-vis text) with
the complexities of chaos (vis-à-vis
technology projects). As good writers are those who learn to
inhabit the context of their texts-in-making, good
technology-using teachers are those able to inhabit and
encourage the chaos that surrounds and gives rise to
technology projects. Given this key insight as the backdrop,
I sketch the compositional curriculum of the teaching of
writing class, and the special ways it correlates to larger
issues of academic technology. Submergence in the Context/Chaos A story: My rite of passage in graduate school was the take-home final exam for my twentieth century rhetoric class. I don't remember the question, but I do remember the complete text of my response, which I quote it in its entirety here: The greater part of any text is its context. Who could argue with that? (I've silenced the rhetoricians!) In truth, I wasn't bold enough to let my Orphic statement stand in its decontextualized nakedness. I footnoted the statement as follows: Since context is the unwritten already-written, the greater part of any text will have meaning only once a reader (re)writes a suitable context for it.1a And I footnoted that statement ("1a"), and I went on to follow a riot of linkages that would be somewhat passe to a contemporary, hypertext-savvy reader. But to me, at the time, I was at the edge of discovery and it was all very amazing. The date of the exam was November 23, 1988, well before the invention of the Web, and just before my first reading of Attitudes Toward History, where Burke "invents" a quasi-theory of hypertext in his use of footnotes in that work, a book which gives equal time to its footnotes and text. What this episode indicates was that I
got it--the relationship between text and context, or
presence and absence, or as I will analogize here,
technology and chaos. On Text and Context: If text is the squiggles on the page or screen, "con"-text is all the stuff that comes "with the text"--first, the surrounding words, then the "context of the situation"--all of which contain what cognitive psychologists call the "spreading activation" of meaning. The task of writing becomes: how do you use text as markers or stimuli to structure the "contextual summonings" (reader response) of the reader? Or, to use a term favored by cognitive psychology, how does the writer structure the "inferential pathways" of the reader? But the main point here is that invention in writing (and comprehension in reading) has less to do with the actual text on the page, and more to do with the stuff behind that text somewhere in the networks of meanings that the text connects to. And the challenge for instructors becomes the task of helping writers inhabit a context with sufficient thoroughness and openness so that the nodes of meaning can be found, stimulated, sketched, or made to assert themselves. The task is one of creating the appropriate disposition in the writer, a readiness to lose focus perhaps, and prepare for indirect modes of making connections. There is a principle of indirection implicit in all language use (language is "symbolic action" Burke would say, and all symbols are "inherently" indirect, as they point both to themselves and to the things they refer to, which themselves can be saturated with re-directing meanings). The writing process is particularly tinged with indirection, sometimes called recursiveness. In any event, if the writer's first task is to inhabit a context of meanings fully enough so invention (the finding of materials and connections) might happen, the second task is to "re-present" the "textual markers" (i.e., the text of the writing) to pull up and organize some kind of shared context for writer and reader. How do you, as a teacher, create a learning environment where immersion in these attitudes produces the kind of routines that lead to skilled writing? Those are the questions of composition pedagogy. My point here is that the answers to these questions are a very good fit for the question facing teachers who would learn to use technology in their teaching. For in this other area, too, the focus needs to be on environmental issues--attitudes about learning, communication, and the indirect connection among apparently disparate, distracted, incoherent professional activity. Elsewhere in this hypertext, I have told a few stories about the underlying chaos of my professional development. The list below names the prominent "chaos components" I experienced to arrive at the "broader perspective." If I had been told that learning how to bring technology to my classes necessitated these things, and if I could have been told that such activities were viewed as intrinsic and synergistic to one's complete professional life in teaching, scholarship, and service, I am certain I would have suffered much less stress and guilt:
But faculty development initiatives in technology (at any level of P-16 education) typically take an overly narrow perspective on the significance of teaching with technology. Faculty will attend workshops in courseware, or local systems, or software packages, in order to hear about a set of tools, but rarely is the focus on these larger issues and value of chaos in education. Until the focus gets there, the full relevance and significance of new methodologies will not be sufficiently understood, and morale will suffer. To educators who have not jumped aboard the techno bandwagon, technology is a distraction, a hoop one can't get around (but would, if possible), a necessary evil. What if, however, development programs emphasized--and provided rewards for--the use of technology's problems for the types of prompts and resources those problems provide for reflective learning? Or if the constructivist methodologies natural to technology-enhanced pedagogies were systematically supported in programs involving learning communities, long-range mentoring, and other deep-support mechanisms? These are just two examples, but the point is that a focus on specific skills almost prevents the kind of inhabitation of attitude that turns technology learning into a way of life, rather than something to be tolerated as a necessary evil. It is unlikely that institutional planners will replace apologies for chaos with such efforts to programmatize it, as I have hinted at above. But such a programmatic connection to chaos comes naturally to the role of technology in the Teaching of Writing class. The course provides a perfect arena for deep infusion of technological enhancements. The composition emphases of the class--portfolios, workshops, networking, constructivism, invention, collaboration--correlate with technological chaos in almost too orderly a way, and the teacher education aspect of the class provides an overarching spirit of reflectiveness on learning--ideal for the purposes of "smart" implementations of technology--as students are asked to record and explore their views of teaching and learning vis-à-vis the role of technology in facilitating or impeding these activities. Because of the long-established computers and writing research tradition, I was able--with a clear, guiltless conscience, and without institutional or professional interference--to convert the teaching of writing class into a "technology-chaos bin," way over-saturated with the full package of conditions, causes, and effects of the chaos process that I had experienced in my own professional development. I intentionally over-loaded the class to force the issue, since students can sometimes be so wiley in dodging both technology and reflectiveness. The following list provides perspectives on key components (curriculum, theories, issues, practitioners) of the Teaching of Writing class and the ways those components foster an immersion in the broad issues of technology and ongoing teacher development: Portfolios: The course features the study of portfolios in theory and in practice. Selected readings from Yancy's Situating Portfolios and Cambridge's Electronic Portfolios along with an in-depth study of Kent's Room 109: The Promise of a Portfolio Classroom provide background in the possible purposes and procedures for both hard copy and electronic portfolios. Each student builds an electronic portfolio--essentially a Web site in Web space allocated on the English server. The course portfolio is defined as a living, "permanent," authentic document that the student can continue to develop for various professional purposes within and beyond the scope of the class. Process: The course covers the conventional theories of process (e.g., prewriting, writing, rewriting). Definitions/illustrations/discussions of recursiveness in the process are posted at the course Web site. Explorations of the varieties of process are made through spontaneous in-class creative writing sessions, read-arounds, and reflective discussions. The epistemic processes of writing as a mode of thinking and learning is explored in discussions and journaling. Through self assessments, Learning Record Online data gathering and reflection, and the Webfolio reflective introduction, students are asked to investigate and comment on their learning and writing processes. The culminating process orientation of the class is summed up in the slogan, "Inhabit the sprawl"--a whimsical codification of the indirections of creativity, the associational powers of invention, metaphor, magic, synchronicity, and modes of invention that lie outside the realm of conscious control. Networks: The class relies on networks in several way. Foremost of all, the class Web site (in courseware) provides bulletin boards for postings of weekly journal responses to course readings. Students are given workshop time each week in class to read and respond to one another's journal responses. A second way the class is networked is via the Internet to online clinical sites where TW tutors interact with middle and secondary students in the SXU MOO and in bulletin boards. A third way the class is networked is via listservs (a class list and various professional lists). Finally the class is networked via the Internet for link sharing and Web surfing on teaching of writing issues. Constructivism: Each three-hour weekly class is divided into two equal portions: workshop in an Internet classroom and whole-class lecture discussion. I structure in deliberate chaos in the workshop portion by simply telling students the time is theirs to use on their projects. Increasingly as the years passed, and more and more students complained about getting their money's worth from a university class, I caved--almost to the point of providing minute by minute instructions on how to use workshop time effectively to build Webfolios, respond to journals, document LRO's, perform clinical tutoring, and so on. Student unfamiliarity with constructivist rationales, methods, and experiences (in school settings) continues to be the biggest challenge in securing full cooperation in students. Grammar B: Drawing on the work of Winston Weathers in An Alternate Style and the recent homage collection, Elements of Alternate Style, students learn and experiment with specific Grammar B techniques (crots, labyrinthine sentence, pastiche, lists, etc.)--but more important than the techniques is the psychology of Grammar B, as representative of the "sprawl," the place to inhabit for invention, if not for the final products of composition. Students are asked to consider the possibility of Grammar B as an early, natural stage in the process toward more conventional forms and written products. Nancie Atwell: Atwell, probably one of the least techno-savvy of the featured practitioner/theorists of the class, articulates best the compositional principles upon which the course is founded. The components that form the curriculum's dominant themes are most thoroughly illustrated by Atwell--portfolios, workshop, process, dialogue, mini-lessons, self-assessment, goal setting, skill-building, and so on. But more important than these components is her modeling of method generation. She generated her method in response to a self-reflective analysis and study of what children need in order to write. She found children (all writers) need three things: time, ownership (later changed to responsibility), and response. She asked herself, "What would an instructional environment and the activities there look like if it were organized to support these three principles?" Her In the Middle is the answer, and the teaching of the book in the context of a networked constructivist classroom provides a rich example of how to translate methods developed in non-technological modes into technology-enhanced modes. As another example of a method generation/adaptation vis-à-vis identified principles, I have TW students review the freshman composition course I've developed around technologized Atwellian principles. Kirby-Liner: Dan Kirby and Tom Liner's Inside Out has held up remarkably well despite the twenty-plus years since its original publication. As the first text read in the course, it provides the class a cogent, entertaining and inspiring introduction to the process and expressivist emphases of reform-oriented composition theory. The book is extremely popular among students, and it provides a bridge between student expectations of the course curriculum and the course's more radical emphases. MOO: The MOO is used primarily for clinical experiments and for possible group chats for Webfolio projects. The MOO usually pushes the overloaded student over the edge, so I typically downplay it as a required activity. It is an under-utilized resource in the total TW experience, but it is there, in the context/chaos of class, available for those who find value in it. Introspection: From the course syllabus: The premise of this course is my belief that the best way to begin learning how to teach writing is to study how you yourself have learned (and continue to learn) to write. That kind of introspection will be useful to you throughout your career as a writing instructor (or writer, for that matter), but it is especially helpful at the start. Students are invited to contextualize
their course readings journal in terms of their memories of
their development as writers. And student Webfolios require
a "reflective introduction"--a substantial essay that
provides a context of the student's introspection. Forms of Wondering:
Forms of Wondering is a composition textbook, written
by William A. Covino, that presents postmodern and classical
ideas and methodologies of dialectic and rhetoric in the
texture of a lively discussion interspersed with
entertaining readings. The book is dialogue of
"Covinos"--versions or voices of the author (e.g., Covino
the Epistemologist, Covino the Radical, Covino the TV
Watcher, Covino the Administrator, Covino the Sophist,
etc.). One of the Covinos (I believe the one who wrote the
preface) commented on the dialectical tension of the book's
title. In terms of this article, "forms" is an "order" or
"text" word, "wondering" is "chaos/context" word. Rather
than using writing "to stop thinking" about a subject, the
Covinos discuss ways that writing can be used "to keep
thinking, and wondering." Forms of Wondering is
discussed early in the semester as a tone-setting work that
helps address key terms like "form,"
"formalist-objectivist," "dialectic," "rhetoric," dialogue,"
"wonder," and more.
The Perfect Arena If the teaching of writing is really the teaching of context, and the teaching of technological pedagogical enhancements is really the inhabitation of chaos, there can be no better arena for reflective study of how to teach and think with technology than in the teaching of writing class. Teaching
of Writing Program Site with Links to Student
Webfolios
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