As Bizzell, explained and discussed different models and theories spending a lot of time of the Flower and Hayes model, one question pulsed in the back of my mind...Are we over complicating the already complicated process of writing? Wow, now seeing it typed, I am taking in the whole impact of that question. The answer is yes, we do, by our very English loving nature we over complicate things, I cannot tell you the last time that I didn't automatically use the deconstructionist lens when watching television. It is how we think and the way we are, so I suggest we put all that aside and begin to really use what works when it works and realizing the use of one theory or practice will not work for all students.
I really liked that Flower and Hayes began by explaining how their writing process works as well as their own thinking in creating each of the three stages including how they decided to name each one. The idea of "embedded" parts that exist within each of the stages is what caught my attention, the idea that each process is not one concrete stage of the process but that each step has multiple sub-stages that do not end. For example, in the first stage of planning is included generating ideas, organizing, and goal-setting (281) and this can occur on the page or in one's mind. This is a very important point, this model is all about fluidity and the ability to move within and among the different stages at any time in the writing process. This complements the very essence of writing, a good writer should not feel complete satisfaction, the process is ongoing rather than set levels that could be checked off like a "to do" list.
At the center of all of this is the constant goal setting, having goals in mind and constantly going back and revisiting these goals as well as creating them anew as the writing evolves. For me, Flower and Hayes out of all the articles I have read so far for this, best explain and show through referencing protocol analysis (the use of writers verbalizing their thinking processes) the inextricable bond of thinking and writing. I often model for students my thought processes when I write, but after reading this article, I am beginning to strategize how I have my students to use protocol analysis to improve my understanding on what they think when they write.
"To understand what writing is, which means to understand it in relation to its past, to orality, one must honestly face the fact that it is a technology..."(Ong, 24). Like a really fantastic book, I could not put Ong's article "Technologies for Literacy" down. Even now as I type, feel that I am doing him an injustice by trying to respond to his absolute eloquence. My thinking on the history of writing and writing versus orality were taken to another universe by reading his words. The presentation of the never ending paradoxes that exist among literacies, have my mind going a mile a minute. I can honestly say that I have never read anything like this before, it is a milestone in how I will view writing from here on out. The historical referencing from oral cultures to quoting Plato's Socrates to computers as a the next natural step from writing, unfolded an obviously powerful argument.
Ong comments throughout that "Writing separates the know from the knower" (29) the integration of computers into mainstream society furthers this distance. As is pointed out in explaining fourteen major ways that writing separates us from our orality, that the words lose life once written, only to be revived by the reader but not in the same manner. The paradoxes are proven by showing example after example that we have to have words to form the social structures we live in. Words are power, yet can lose power once taken out of context.
Distributed cognition defined simply, is the way in which someone thinks based on their experiences, the task or job they are doing and what is expected of them. Understanding that "Distributed Cognition at Work" is but one chapter from the book, I will attempt to hold back some of my criticisms. In this chapter, the financial responsibilities of the Bank of Canada (BOC) and the distributed cognition there are compared to that in a university classroom. The analogy to navigating a ship in relation to the workings of the BOC was a helpful frame of reference when reading about the actual inner workings if the bank. After explaining the collaboration, responsibilities, and skills involved in making the bank successful, the incredibly brief conclusion of the chapter is that there are huge discrepancies between the workplace and the university. This is due mostly to the structure of the classroom, where the teacher is the expert and the students come and go each semester making them inconsequential to the larger goal of the university. I don't think there could be a better example to display that education needs to be revamped. It is not difficult to make the student an expert as well, part of the learning process needs to include the teacher and students working collaboratively. As well as bringing guest speakers, having students do onsite visits, and giving them assignments that are as reflective as possible of the work they will be doing after graduation. Just as professors complain that teachers do not prepare their students well enough for college, executives and administrators complain that new hires are not prepared to join the working world. This can be changed!
Clearly, all of these articles involved the manner in which instructors, theorists, and writers think about writing. What I enjoyed about each of these articles, is that they all made me think differently about writing, from meshing theory and practice, to writing as an abstraction, to comparing writing to the business world, I am redefining how I think about writing. It was also refreshing to read some articles that were outside of the normal educational box.
1 comment:
I liked how you discussed Flower and Hayes notion of goal-directedness. I think that's a weakness of novice writers; they don't have clear goals. A lot of that has to do with inauthentic, de-contextualized assignments, i.e., students aren't really motivated to complete the writing task, so they don't know why they're writing, what their purpose is, etc. Clearer assignments certainly help. But that somehow seems "outer-directed" and part of the Bizzel-inspired emphasis on community, i.e., how the writing context (classroom) shapes the writer's actions.
Of course, I used to think the Dias et al. book that compared the differences between school and workplace writing was illuminating in showing just how much different the writing is in both contexts. Maybe it was a lack of seeing the whole book, but I was surprized by the classes reaction. Dias et al. point out that, unlike the workplace w/ supervisors and employees, the classroom does not put teachers and students in a similar long-term relationship. It is more (at least traditionally) more of an adversarial relationship (personality differences aside in both contexts). Well, we could go on and on about this-as we did a few weeks ago--but the point is with this week's reading is the social context inextricably shapes the writing act.
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