[Teaching_Composition] Re: Teaching_Composition

[Neal Lerner]

On Apr 8, 2007, at 12:16 PM, Charles Nelson wrote in part:
> Yes, it's considerably harder to have concrete results in composition.
> But perhaps part of the fault is related to our lack of having a
> background in learning psychology. Understanding theories of rhetoric
> and composition is one aspect of teaching students to write. Another,
> and crucial, aspect is having a through understanding of theories of
> how people learn. Outside of the fuzzy truism that people learn
> through participation in communities of practice, I see very little
> related to the psychology of learning. Perhaps this is why Fred Kemp
> wrote on the WPA-L listserv on a thread that began about Les
> Perelman's CCCC presentation:
>
> "The psychology of writing instruction and the ADMINISTRATION of  
> writing
> programs is everything.  This list and this group of discussants is  
> not
> talking about this.
>
> That's usual."

Charles, I don't disagree with your (and Fred Kemp's) assessment, but  
it's not as if composition studies has never looked towards theories  
of learning--and by extension, the claim that, if we suddenly do, our  
problems will go away.  I'm thinking specifically of the writing  
process movement as a whole and how the original studies by Janet  
Emig, Nancy Sommers, James Britton and others came from developing  
theories of the psychology of writing based on research on real  
student writers. It's clear that the field's turn towards the  
"cognitive" in the 80s led by Linda Flower, John Hays, and others was  
a clear connection between theories of learning and composition, and  
it's also clear that the turn led to a dead end amid criticism that  
the theories didn't account enough for elements outside of  
psychology. I'm also thinking of earlier moments in composition's  
history, particularly the early 1960s when teaching writing was  
closely tied to Jerome Bruner's theories of the "spiral" curriculum,  
which came from psychology of learning. Those efforts produced a  
great deal in terms of curriculum (something we could actually  
"own"!), and perhaps led to studies of process, but I'm reluctant to  
say the effort resulted in widespread reform. I'm really not sure how  
current efforts would address the mis-steps of these earlier ones.

Neal Lerner
MIT