CCCC 2005: ReviewReview: J.03 Analog Asynchronicity: Competing Philosophies of Composition Gerald Mulderig presented “Thirty –Five Years after ‘Uptaught’ and ‘Rhetoric: Discovery and Change’—What We Have(n’t) Learned about Teaching Writing.” Mulderig took off reading his paper at a ferocious speed but he was not just negotiating conference time in his attempt look back and reflect on thirty five years of progress. He doesn’t think we’ve fulfilled the expectations established thirty five years ago by Young, Becker and Pike’s innovative rhetorical emphasis and Ken McCrorie first treatise on expressivist pedagogy. Mulderig distinguished between the scholarship of Rhetoric and Compositon and the practices of teaching writing. The professionalism of composition studies that emerged from theories established in the sixties highlights what Mulderig sees as a regression today. His experience with publishers for “higher level composition books” indicates that we are focused on handbooks and readers organized with modes and he sees that as a failure of field growth. Despite Bob Connors declaring teaching with the modes is dead in the early 80s, Mulderig cited a current thread on WPA-L and use of modes in our texts as evidence to the contrary. Mulderig furthered his analysis by showing how different text books classify the same essays in different modes. Mulderig took the strong position that our field scholarship has used 19th century ideas about rhetorical modes despite knowing better, and challenged text book writers to become more ethical about how they configure texts. In other words, the most conventional ways to present essays in readers are not the most advanced ways based on our current scholarship. “Can we halt this advance to the past?” asked Mulderig. In other words, why do we let the text business ignore what theory informs us of? Katherine Frank Dvorsky presented “Succeeding through Problem-Solving in the Composition Classroom” to offer a hybrid pedagogy that emphasizes communication and collaboration to write beyond the walls of the academy. She sees the problem as a paradox when the academic essay in her institution is still the learning currency there, but not in the worlds students will work in later, or might more powerfully learn with in their college education. Academic writing and critical thinking tends to emphasize single authoring, according to Dvorskky. She breaks down practices in writing classes from discussion to peer feedback to show the collaborative nature of the processes and questions the paradox of single author expectations. She combines social epistemic and problem solving approaches as her idea of hybrid pedagogy. Dvorsky offered new energy to the ideas of using critical thinking and discussion by fostering problem solving approaches to learning about learning while practicing collaborative writing. She argues that convincing students to understand the power of collaboration and to see through the myth of the solitary author helps students to more actively participate in and own their education. She honestly sees her own dilemma in bridging traditional academic worlds and her self-criticism and analysis were most refreshing. Sadly, I was unable to stay for the presentations by Michael Stancliff and Maureen Goggin. This session was very effective experience because compositionists had to question there own links between theory and practice and the guidance of Mulderig and Dvorsky helped to make our own self-criticism valid and probably useful. |
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