4/15 - Theories of Pedagogy

"...in teaching writing we are tacitly teaching a version of reality and the student's place and mode of operation in it. Yet many teachers (and I suspect most) look upon their vocations as the imparting of a largely mechanical skill, important only because it serves students in getting them through school and in advancing them in their professions. This essay will argue that writing teachers are perforce given a responsibility that far exceeds this merely instrumental task." (Berlin 766) 

"...ours is a truth-telling course; it forefronts the field's current labor practices and requires that we ask how FYC students are currently being served by writing instructors who couldn't teach a writing studies pedagogy. Our field's current labor practices reinforce cultural misconceptions that anyone can teach writing because there is nothing special to know about it." (Downs and Wardle 575)

Hillocks, George. "What Works in Teaching Composition." (1985)

• Duration of treatment
• Mode of instruction: Presentational, Natural Process, Individualized, Environmental
• Focus of instruction: Grammar, Sentence Combining, Models, Using Criteria, Inquiry, Free Writing

Berlin, James. “Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories.” College English 44.8 (1982): 765-77.

• Epistemology = what is knowable
• Major pedagogical theories: Neo-Aristotelian, Positivist or Current-Traditional, Neo-Platonic or Expressionist, Epistemic Rhetoric

Breuch, Lee-Ann M. Kastman. “Post-Process ‘Pedagogy’: A Philosophical Exercise.” Villanueva 97-126. (2002)

• Rejection of mastery
• Post-process assumptions: writing is public, writing is interpretive, writing is situated

Fulkerson, Richard. “Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century.” CCC 56 (2005): 654-87.

• Fulkerson's metatheory of pedagogy: axiology, process, pedagogy, epistemology 
• Three major approaches to teaching of composition: critical/cultural studies [CCS], expressivism, and procedural rhctoric

Downs, Douglas, and Elizabeth Wardle. “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning ‘First-Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies.’” (2007)

• Rationale, pedagogy, challenges, benefits
• How would Fulkerson classify this course?