Teaching Writing, Teaching Reality

The readings for this week—grouped under the title Theories of Pedagogy—ask questions about ways in which we teach composition. Which pedagogy is most effective? Are experimental methods useful? How can we classify these pedagogies? Do all theories need to apply to the classroom setting? Whatever the question asked of by each scholar this week, each study seeks to expand the field of composition studies by re-envisioning the composition classroom and the main elements (writer, reader, teacher, reality, and the such) that make it work.

We open with George Hillocks, who presents a massive meta-analysis of over 500 experimental studies of the composition classroom between 1963 and 1982. Utilizing the sophistication and scientifically tangible results of statistical analysis, Hillocks brings a great deal of credibility to experimental studies in the writing classroom. For example, Hillock classifies his 60 sample studies into different categories depending on such elements as the mode of instruction in the classroom and the focus of instruction in the classroom. Using these classifications, Hillocks proves that classrooms which create an environmental mode of teaching (which, among other things, promotes both peer and teacher feedback to work and direct instruction to clearly-outlined goals) perform better than those which implement a natural mode (where teacher is simple facilitator of positive feedback) or individualized mode (where instruction is done on an individual basis, mostly by tutors).

Furthermore, Hillock proves something that must have been rather shocking for his day and audience: when studying the focus of instruction, Hillock proves that classrooms that study grammar and mechanics perform nearly a third lower than classrooms that study no grammar and mechanics. Taking up these controversial topics in the early 80s, Hillock paves the way for more experimental research in theories of pedagogy in a time when many thought they were to a large extent a waste of time and energy.

Going even a few years before Hillock, we then turn to Berlin who, writing in 1982, outlines the major pedagogical theories of the time. Interestingly, Berlin supports a classification of pedagogical theories not interested in the emphasis of one element of the composing process over the other (e.g. writer, reader, reality) but rather by the way in which these elements are envisioned and how they are changed from one theory to the other. Not surprisingly, then, most of his classifications are based on philosophical interpretations of rhetoric: the dominant Current-Traditional Rhetoric and his reactionary Neo-Platonic, Neo-Aristotelian, and New Rhetorics.

These divisions are not so new to me, but as I became reacquainted with these schools of thought I was surprised to see how much my own philosophies on rhetoric have changed over the past five to seven years. I recall first being introduced with the New Rhetoric and being totally won over. But now I see major compositional problems with viewing a writer as creator of truth and audience as shaper of the writer’s universe. Instead, I keep being yanked back into reader-response and wonder as this theory does about the relation between writer and reader, or more importantly about communities. If the writer is actually at most times a reader who actualizes her own text as her audience must do after publication then this would not place the creation of truth inside the writer as New Rhetoric does but in the community, in the writer as a reader. But I digress; Berlin’s contribution to our list of readers this week is that studying different pedagogies does not merely mean we study different subject areas over others, it means we begin to be taught different theories of reality, different theories of truth.

Our final three readers bring theories of pedagogy into the current century with Breuch writing in 2002, Fulkerson in 2005, and Downs in 2007.

Breuch finds problems with the contemporary (negative) view of that post-process approach to teaching composition, that process theory is simply a call for the codification of writing steps which can be taught in the composition classroom. Specifically, she argues that post-process theory contributes to theories of pedagogy not as a concrete application to the classroom but rather as a redefinition of writing as "an activity rather than a body of knowledge” and that “communicative interactions with students [are] dialogic rather than monologic" (98-99). Her work suggests that studying theories of pedagogy goes beyond simply applying study to the classroom; her work suggests a reexamining of the definitions and players within that classroom itself.

Fulkerson and then Down and Wardle argue that writing has dramatically changed since the turn of the new century. Fulkerson supports that writing in college has become a topic of great argumentation among composition scholars since the boom of cultural studies hit the university. Down and Wardle argue that teaching writing in the new century has become an opportunity to teach writing as a legitimate discipline. They suggest, too, that writing in the new century has become a battle to support one method of thinking over another; however, this thinking envisions writing as a sect of scholarship with a rich and diverse history with much to add to study at the university aside from its function in preparing students for the writing they must complete while in college.