Inching towards a better question; with thanks to Teresa Bunner

[Steve Shann]

So. Here I am, at the coast on my own for three days. Time to think and read and write. Bliss. It’s 7.30 at night and I’ve finished dinner (but still got my apron on); a salmon and bean frittata with an avocado, pea and olive salad. A glass and a half of cheap but pleasant red wine. I’ve been for a walk on the beach during a break in the wet weather, there’s a fire on, and I’m like a pig in poo.

I’m planning to write a short blog post each day. I’m here to sort out the focus and structure of the second half of our ‘literacy across the curriculum’ unit which I wrote about in my last post. The focus for our final four weeks is writing.

I’ve just re-read the post, and Teresa’s comment. She wondered about my proposed research questions, and very politely suggested that they didn’t quite hit the mark. She’s right. They lack punch. They have no real charge, they don’t challenge pre-conceived assumptions. I need to work on them.

My students come from all the secondary disciplines, and they’re in the middle of a five week block in schools, where I’m guessing some of the bigger educational questions will be subsumed by concerns about classroom management and finding the time and energy to prepare properly. Some of the students may well be wondering about the relevance of four weeks back at university thinking about writing.

And while they’ve been out in schools, I’ve done my own wondering. I’ve been thinking and writing about the many different tacks that we might take when we’re looking at writing. What is the function of writing? Does writing imply an exclusive focus on the written word? What about multiple modalities? 21st century literacies? Literacies in the digital age? There are so many potential tacks that it’s easy to get lost.

So today I’ve been trying to find a charged and challenging question that cuts through some of this. Something that takes us into the heart of all this complexity and tension.

How about something like this:

Writing-as-composing, Multiple-modalities-in-writing, writing-for-web-2.0. What Now? What Next? Is all this distracting me from my core disciplinary business?

I like that this one acknowledges the skepticism, then asks us to examine it. I also like the way it invites us to think carefully about what our core business is, and to see if re-thinking aspects of writing fit into this core.

And it doesn’t have a simple answer, like my earlier version. There’s a strong debate going on in educational circles about this very question.

How does it sound to you Teresa? Others? Better?

****

Finding the right words for our focus question is just one part of the planning. There’s also the students’ reading (I’m going to adapt Michael Wesch’s idea on ‘how to get my students finding and reading 94 articles before the n...‘); the development of a composing skill (I wrote about this in my last blog post); the way we might use the University Moodle and a Ning; the content of the tutorials; and so on. In some ways, the precise wording seems such a small part of what needs to be done. But (because I’m going through a bit of a Dickens-phase in my reading at the moment), I’m reminded of the way Dickens used to spend weeks playing with titles for his books before he could begin the real creating. The title often held some kind of essence for him. That’s how I feel about the focus question.

[Steve Shann]

Oh, and Elfarran, I've been thinking about your reminder that what stimulates my thinking won't necessarily stimulate theirs. I'm going to run this by them before the four weeks, to see what they think. Also I tell myself that (a) these are postgraduate students, many of whom have done a lot of thinking about the nature of their discipline and (b) they're each doing a concurrent unit at the moment based on their discipline.

[Steve Shann]

Thank you all. I have been working with your thoughts today and later tonight will post again.
And Elfarran, after I've finished typing this I'm going to cook. Dinner in about an hour? Can you make it?

[Karen LaBonte]

Hi Steve. I left a comment on your blog.

[J. D. Wilson, Jr.]

I posted something like this to your web site, but I do not think your web site likes me.

I enjoy your reflective writing. I think reflection is one of the most important things a teacher does. I think when it comes to teaching across the curriculum we need to ask ourselves why we do it, what we hope our students will gain from it, what we hope to accomplish (among other things)? I hope my students will use some of the logic skills they gain from their geometry and algebra classes when they work on an analytic essay. I hope my students remember what they learned about the scientific method when they are trying to solve a literary problem, that they will examine what works and what does not. I hope students will look at the historical and cultural settings and contexts of the stories they read and ask themselves what they think the author is trying to accomplish though her or his use of these contexts and settings.

I think the most important question you ask is, "Is all this distracting me from my core disciplinary business?" I think we all teach a specific discipline for a reason and that is our primary responsibility, but I also think it is important that students see that we employ the other disciplines in our daily life and work, that there are connections between the disciplines, and that we do not file away in some dark corner of our mind our math or science skills when we enter an English class. Keep up the good work.

Cordially,
J. D. Wilson, Jr.

[Daniel Sharkovitz]

Steve,

You wrote that “literacy and love are connected, that literacy development is excited by exciting relationships, that a person is motivated to become literate through a desire to belong.”

I believe that the perspective about learning embedded in this assertion, especially the idea about the significance of the role that context plays in learning, should a huge part of any inquiry into ways to improve writing instruction.

It is exciting and worth studying. As I have noted elsewhere on the EC, teaching students how to write more effectively is not about rubrics and teaching 6 or 9 or 100 traits, rather it is about creating circumstances within which students choose to write, choose to recognize the limits of their knowledge, and choose to ask for help to move their writing beyond what they currently know and can do.

For years, I taught a poetry writing workshop at the Stone Soup Gallery in Boston as part of John Holt and Jack Power’s Beacon Hill Free School. Thinking back, I wonder why so many persons came by every Tuesday evening to read and discuss and learn about poetry? Some attended for almost a decade until the place closed around 1980. I do not think that it was my teaching that pulled writers into our gallery. It was way more complex a set of circumstances. I think your comment about literacy and love being connected helps describe and explain what was going on--at least in part.

We do not write our best to respond to prompts.

Perhaps, then, one way your students could frame a question would be something like

Is literacy development in fact improved by a context that engenders exciting relationships, relationships that writers want to participate in?

Thanks for asking some intriguing questions.

Dan

[Kim McCollum-Clark]

Also, can I just say, you can be my personal chef anytime. . . that menu has me salivating from across the oceans! And it's just past breakfast here! :)

[Kim McCollum-Clark]

Steve, it may be that the question for YOU and the questions that will sufficiently animate YOUR STUDENTS concerns may be very different. You have the background knowledge and experience to generate a great Q? like the ones above--they are starting at a very different place. They are (it would seem to me, thinking of my own young'un English teacher students) just starting to paddle in the "what is my core disciplinary business?" pool. So maybe their questions is "What IS my core disciplinary business? And how does this connect to the discipline a) in its "traditional," historically approved version? b) in my personal "heart of hearts" version? c) in the radically transforming literacy landscape we live with now version?"