More Questions than Answers

I have a feeling that this blog entry is probably going to read somewhat like an abstract painters work. You know something is going on in the composition on the canvas but sometimes nothing comes out clearly. In fact, this entry is probably very reflective of my current frame of mind about writing because at this point in the semester I'm full of more question than answers and one idea after another. I’ve also been doing some serious introspection with respect to community, writing/text, change, identity, power, semiotics, aesthetics, and artfulness. What is writing? How do we define it, pin it down, put a rock on it? How do our perspective on writing illuminate certain ideological underpinnings? So, my apologize in advance if this is more like ideas bouncing on, off, between, around, and into, each other rather than neat-and-tidy, fully fleshed out ideas.

For this entry I’d like to spend time briefly on my impressions from Chapter 26 in the Handbook of Research in Writing about adolescent and adult writing development. I found the chapter’s contents to be informative especially with respect to learning about the various pedagogies and policies surrounding writing, but I would agree with the authors’ statements that for adolescents and low-literate adults writers pedagogy, federal education, and labor policy have not always been learner centered and the models of writing development are not conducive for learners, especially from a sociocultural perspective. I would also say that such perspectives on writing don’t position writing as an endeavor embodying the spirit of democracy, imagination, creativity, artfulness, experience, process, and/or community. In addition, I was left with an unexpected bitter taste in my mouth form of the kind of language sometimes used to discuss writing. I’m by no means attempting to place fault on the authors of the chapter because they’re simply synthesizing research studies for the purpose of the handbook, but what I’m left questioning is the kind of vocabulary used in discussion around writing. Some of the examples from the text included: skills-based, writing skills development, competency-based, on-demand assessment, skills acquisition, writing as task, etc. Doesn’t all this vocabulary seem somewhat counter productive to what we are learning about writing?

Some of the question I was left asking myself after reading this chapter. 1). With all these research about adolescents and adults, where are the voices from the adults and youngsters? What do they have to say about literacy, teaching, policy, etc, and how much influence does their perspectives on literacy have, if any? 2). Another thing I’ve been questioning has to do with the ideas expressed in the adolescence in literacy section of the chapter about in and out of school literacy as well as a “third space” to witness youths’ writing practices. This idea of the third space left me wondering about how much teachers should bring out-side school literacies into the classroom and what are the ramifications of doing that? How are we affecting/changing those literacies when we attempt to bring them into the context of schools?

All this said, I can't help but wonder how are we teaching writing and what for? I'd like to end with a passage from Maxine Greene (1995) Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change, which for me speaks to some of the issues raised in this chapter on adolescent and adult writing development. Maxine wrote the following:

Those are are labeled as deficient, fixed in that category as firmly as flies in amber, have little chance to feel they can be yet otherwise than what they have become. Marginalized, they are left to the experience of powerlessness unless (usually with support) they are enabled to explain their "shocks" and reach beyond (p. 39).