I have been doing a lot of thinking on how to classify myself as a teacher into one of the four groups that Fulkerson set out in his article. I feel that I am not one single mindset of writing instruction but rather a conglomerate of multiple. I think the one I most align with is the social epistemic, because I find the process of peer response valuable. I think it a good exercise for the students to go through-not only the act of writing the response but also seeing how the other students are writing. I think students can learn more about form and style when they see how others are organizing and phrasing things in their papers, which will allow them as readers to decide what is working, what is not, and make adaptations to their own writing. I also like some of the cognitive school of thought. I don't know if i would go as far as to tape all the students and have them talk about their writing process, but after a paper is done I like to do a reflection which centers on process of writing the paper where they excelled/had trouble and also how they went about accomplishing what they did. This can be useful to reorganize the material and have reflections done to share and discuss as a wrap up to tie everything together that they did in writing the paper. I also feel that the other two models (formalist and expressive) are important as well but I would probably emphasize them less. Attention to form is good, but I agree more with universal error approach rather than a count every error approach. There has to be time dedicated to the formalistic apsect of the paper as well though. The expressive is also important to build a convincing ethos and style.
In all I think that I use a bit from each, but conform to none of them completely, so I am going to call myself a mix of all.
...'cuz this is where it's at.
Like you, I find myself in different camps. I think elements from each of Fulkerson's four philosophies inform what my thinking is. A good teacher, too, and bring together philosophies from others in the building or administration and one's own approach.
ReplyDeleteI like your thinking here. I didn't really see the point of peer response until graduate school, but now I find it quite valuable. When I was required to do it in my freshman comp courses, I was reading writing that was far less sophisticated than what I was producing and that only frustrated me. However, when students are closer together in ability, even if some are better or worse than the norm, reading one another's work can be helpful in learning to write and rewrite.
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