Lauer's "Writing as Inquiry"

Lauer, Janice M. “Writing as Inquiry: Some Questions for Teachers.” College Composition and Communication. 33.1 (1982): 89-93.

First, a note:

I began this series of blog posts hoping to discover more about how inquiry as a pedagogical framework figures into the teaching English.  I have been surprised by the paucity of related articles (and as a result am still hoping to find the magical term that is being used in English studies to talk about this concept—because surely people have talked about it more than it appears!).  Thus, I was pleased to find this (albeit brief) 1982 article exciting and full of promise.  But then Google Scholar revealed that only 19 articles cite it, and many of those are irrelevant or published in less prominent journals.  I find myself back where I was, wondering why inquiry has been discussed so little in our field, or only as a part of larger constructs such as critical pedagogy.  It may be that I must do as Janice Lauer did and venture outside our field to learn about inquiry and then draw my own connections to the English classroom.  

Second, a summary and review:

Lauer offers a sort of survey in which she summarizes findings and theories related to inquiry, considers them from a compositionist's perspective, and then offers a number of questions that emerge from them for instructors in our field.  The thinkers whose work she surveys include Lonergan, Piaget, Festinger, Rothenburg, Young, and Wallas.  Lauer’s questions are too numerous to list here, but I will review a few of the most interesting (which also touch on some of her others). 

First, any teacher who hopes to inspire students to have questions, pursue them, and have insights has wondered “What creates the tension of inquiry for the writer? What ‘inner conditions’ are conducive to insight?” (90).  These seem the most universal and pressing questions for instructors of captive audiences—students enrolled in required courses.  If their own interest didn’t land them in our classrooms, how do we motivate often apathetic students to have questions, to think beyond the surface, to wonder?  And if they do produce a rich question or develop the “tension of inquiry,” how can we create an environment that somehow helps them to achieve the states of incubation, flow, and so on that allow people to have insights?  In short, how can we use artificial means to elicit the genuine?

Second, inquiry raises the question of how instructors can balance opportunities for students to pursue, attempt, personalize, and even fail with opportunities for students to learn by following processes and structures that we already know to support success.  In my own practice, I have experimented at both ends of this scale, finding great success at times (invariably with motivated, high-achieving, and/or more developed students) but also struggling as my problem-solving attempts reveal that both structured and unstructured approaches seem about equally successful and disastrous (especially with more diverse, less developed, and less internally motivated classes…i.e., ninth-graders).

Due to its brevity, Lauer’s article does not give me the sense that I have grasped what Lonergan et al. have written, but it does give me a clear sense of where I could go next in pursuit of either deeper discussions of inquiry outside our field or related terms that might lead me to richer caches within our field. 

What Is Literacy?

A ten-minute (yeah, right) brainstorm based on ENG820 thus far

My primary understanding of the meaning of the word literacy is unchanged; I continue to see it as the ability to use symbol systems, usually both by deciphering others’ use of them and by producing original communiqués using them.  This basic definition is the one appropriated by many fields and applied to many symbol systems.  Wysocki and Johnson-Eilola lament this use of the term because it brings with it too many faulty assumptions that any kind of “literacy” is “some basic, neutral, context-less set of skills whose acquisition will bring the bearer economic and social goods and privileges” (352).  Wysocki and Eilola question the cultural implications and baggage associated with reading/writing literacy or lack thereof, which is masked by overly flexible use of the word.  Fox’s explanation of how literacy instructions for African-Americans following emancipation was a vehicle for the behaviors and values whites would place on blacks supports their perspective.  Gee outlines clearly a second part of a defintion of literacy to take these issues into account, explaining that literacy is not only the understanding of the symbol system itself but of when and how to use it based on social and cultural contexts.  Bartholomae’s discussion of college students supports this idea, since students must “fake it until they make it” as they recognize new contexts for their writing but are not yet literate in the ways that scholars use language in those contexts.

Ong and Olson further reveal often-unnoticed implications of literacy, since it cannot be assumed to be a skill a person acquires (or has deposited, in Freire’s terms) with little impact on the person’s thinking and behavior; in fact, gaining the ability to use the symbolic codes (presumably only of reading and writing, but potentially of others) changes the way we think about the content, delivery, and interpretation of ideas being communicated and about our interaction with our interlocutors.   Thus, literacy is an ability that changes not only our external interactions with others but also our internal cognitive processes.

Pedagogical Tool (Text) Review

Appleman, Deborah. Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents. New York: Teachers College Press, 2009.

In the second edition of Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents, Deborah Appleman aims “to bridge the divide between secondary language arts teachers and college English professors” by offering guidance for teaching literary theory to secondary students (ix).   She argues that literary theory helps teach students to think critically as they encounter the ever-present voices that seek to “sell us their version of the truth” (1) because learning to apply multiple theories helps students recognize the ideologies behind other people’s texts (whether those be written, visual, or oral).  In Freire’s terms, learning theory prepares students to read both the word and the world.

Appleman’s book, which is available through NCTE and many booksellers, is carefully crafted to appeal to an audience of secondary teachers, who generally don’t feel that they have time to read long inventories of research or extensive theoretical grounding; they often demand to know what a writer suggests they do in the classroom and what value such a practice will add.  Thus, Appleman’s first chapter includes only 15 pages of literature review, which she also uses to convince her reader that literary theory should and can be brought into high schools. She demonstrates that her work grows from and is affirmed by the work of Applebee, Bonnycastle, Eagleton, and Emig among others who have argued for the value of literary theory in general and for its teaching in secondary or other “lower level” courses.

Appleman offers a chapter on each of five critical lenses (Appleman’s less-intimidating term for literary theories): reader-response, social class/privilege, gender, postcolonialism, and postmodernism.  Note that Marxist and feminist theory have been given new names that are less likely to call up reactionary resistance from teenagers and their parents.  Each of these chapters makes a case for teaching the theory in question, demonstrating how it is relevant to the texts secondary students study, the lives they live, and world they face.  Each chapter also offers one or more anecdotes demonstrating a classroom lesson focused on applying that critical lens.  Such anecdotes characterize the entire book, and although they suffer from the too-neat dialogue that tends to permeate classroom stories in books for teachers, they are effective demonstrations of Appleman’s points.  Most of the materials mentioned in these anecdotes also appear as appendices (34 activities and assignments in all), making the book useful for transferring or adapting example lessons into the reader’s real classroom.  The activities themselves do better than most at recognizing the real-life (not conveniently simplified or idealized) interests and abilities of high school students.  They offer useful analogies and ask appropriate and interesting questions that do not have single, correct answers; graphic organizers, when they appear, assist cognition instead of simply looking pretty, and the anecdotes and examples offered as teaching tools don’t ring false as so many others do.  I rarely see activities I would be willing to use just as they appear, but these are the exception.  Many are also easily adaptable for different novels or student ability levels. 

Appleman rounds out these chapters on individual theories with two more: one on teaching theory to diverse learners, and one on the value of applying multiple lenses to texts and the world.  She seeks to disprove the misconception that theory is “intellectual cake for adolescent cake eaters” by pointing out that “students on the margin, for particular reasons—ethnicity, class, ability—are often more receptive to the basic ideological premises of these theories than are their more privileged peers” (112).  Appleman goes on to demonstrate the valuable work done and valuable gains made by non-elite students when asked to engage with literature through critical lenses.  Although she does not say it in so many words, her examples demonstrate one of the greatest opportunities opened up by teaching theory in classes of mixed ability: even if a teacher must teach works in which the words-on-the-page difficulty level is suitable for students with lower reading comprehension, critical lenses offer a way to elicit rigorous intellectual engagement and critical thinking.  In other words, literary theory offers us ways to challenge students in an English course not through difficult-to-read texts but through an expectation of original thought, and as we teach students to apply those lenses, we offer scaffolding to help them discover how to have those original thoughts.  

Appleman’s final chapter, which reiterates the benefits of teaching literary theory to high schoolers, also demonstrates the value of her book as a whole.  She asserts that the goal of teaching theory is to move away from teaching students that a teacher will reveal the “hidden meaning” in a text and the student should take notes and prepare to repeat back that hidden meaning.  Instead, Appleman hopes that teaching students to apply multiple theories will give them the tools to interpret literature for themselves, revealing the significance they find there.  As teachers in English studies and beyond seek to teach not only content-specific knowledge but also the skills students will need to navigate and succeed in a globally connected society, the ability to critically examine and interpret texts produced from within many different ideologies is vital.  Literary theory, with its firm roots in English studies and its relevance to navigating a media-drenched world, is indeed worth high school teachers’ and students’ time.  Appleman’s book, with its effective activities and useful analogies, demonstrates a clear understanding of the high school world and the students we find in our classrooms. 

Critical Encounters is likely to appeal most to teachers like me who are not satisfied with our current ways of teaching literature.  In my own classroom, I have been frustrated when the curriculum (or perhaps just my enactment of it) invites only cultural studies or preaching about themes and their relevance to our lives.  While describing one teacher’s classroom, Appleman sums up her vision of what could happen when teachers use her book: “Rather than simply covering literature as cultural content or focusing exclusively on the skills of reading and writing, these students and teachers…constructed and enacted a different kind of knowing in the literature classroom” (127).  I am eager to apply the concepts and activities included in this edition, because another “kind of knowing” would add significant depth to my students’ study of literature.

Pedagogical Tool (Video) Review

A Pedagogy of Charity

Porter, Kevin J. "A Pedagogy of Charity: Donald Davidson and the Student-Negotiated Composition Classroom." College Composition and Communication 52.4 (2001): 574-611.

In “A Pedagogy of Charity,” Porter offers Donald Davidson's philosophy of language as theoretical underpinning for current practices.  First, he describes his students' responses to an evaluation assignment in which they over-focused on criticizing the writer’s work, using their performance to demonstrate the consequences of a “pedagogy of severity,” which decisively points out errors and thus closes the door to dialogue by presuming to know what students mean to communicate and how they should do so.  He argues that this method "often transforms students into the kind of harsh, antagonistic reader that they would otherwise resent" (577), as evidenced by his own students' work. Even positive feedback emerging from this pedagogy is dangerous, since "writing 'good job'" also puts an end to dialogue and fails to offer explanation (582). 

Next, Porter explains Donald Davidson's philosophy of language.  Davidson argues that each communicator brings expectations to a conversation and uses them to interpret utterances.  If the expectations or "prior theories" match, communication is successful (585).  If they do not, the communicators must each construct "a passing theory" that may then allow successful communication (585).  In this process, communicators rely on "charity, which requires us to accept others as rational beings with mostly true and coherent beliefs" (585). We do not choose charity; it is a "precondition for communication" (586) because we must assume that an interlocutor isn’t universally in error—all of his beliefs aren’t false or irrational.  But charity doesn’t require us to assume that all beliefs are correct or give up the right to reject any particular assertion.

Finally, Porter reports the results of a second evaluation in which his students responded critically and constructively after experiencing a pedagogy of charity.  He begins by denouncing practices ranging from “assignments that demand…summary over analysis” (586) to “teacher-initiated prefabricated discussion topics" (587), and uncharitably characterizes such pedagogy (and thus teachers using it) as one that "distrusts its students, who must be force-fed information and then constantly watched to ensure that the information is retained--and punished if it is not" (587).  Considering that he urges us not to assume error on the part of students, but instead engage in dialogue that recognizes their ability to make rational choices, this dismissal of other instructors as thoughtless and cruel seems contradictory, especially juxtaposed against the proceeding description and direct quotation of student work, which is characterized by a reflective and generous tone, even when a writer has, for instance, employed unfair stereotypes.

Porter's article clearly connects Davidson's philosophy of language and composition instruction.  The examples from his classroom demonstrate the concept’s importance, although his convenient assumptions of causality should be questioned (which he admits to an extent with his mention of Newkirk’s work). Further, his title seems to promise an equal focus on the "student-negotiated…classroom," but Porter simply refers to the concept, not even going so far as to define or summarize it.  In short, the article's methods make its evidence anecdotal at best, but the description of Davidson's concept of charity and the demonstration of its connection to the composition classroom are useful and valuable.