I have to say that this class clearly embodies the constructionist theorists who we are reading. In our talk about language assumptions, I found myself considering unfolding/emerging/not yet finished meanings for both particular words and for larger "conceputal chunks" in 10 statements we were discussion. I also notice my language "looking forward" or putting itself forward in the conversation in light of what I was anticipating in return (rather than exclusively in light of my past language experiences), and I noticed conflicts in my talk which clearly connected to a "continuously responding self" who was not categorized and logiced quite the way my official teacherly self is. So that was a lot to take in. But from my perspective, extremely useful. Although the class went a little more outside of the "boundaries" that are unusally in place for classroom discussions, I think it was exactly those aberrations where it was most easy for me to notice myself engaging directly with experience - rather than my representation of it.
So with that said, I have posted the notes I took on the language assumptions, and my speaking notes for Shotter (to the right under Class notes). What appears below is more of a summary of main points covered in the two discussions surrounding the assumptions about language, and Shotter's discussion of toolw/approaches for "walking around in" a continously responding self.
Assumptions about language
As noted above, this discussion was lively and not without confrontation. As a group, we watched ourselves struggling with words that either over generalized or too tightly confined the range of a statement, as in direct statements without qualification as in (some featuers) ARE (description) or stating that a factor was "never" applicable. At the same time we also struggled with adverbs to limit or qualify the verb's power to include and exclude - such as the use of "typically" (what is typical?) in statement 7. We also struggled with words like "real" and "true" (is it "real" or "true" if there is more than one "real" or "true"? what kind of real and true are we talking about?).
Perhaps most importantly, we found ourselves in conflict with our own earlier statements in terms of our positions a number of statements. In particular (some of us) found ourselves both invested in (or at least partial to) the idea that words both have clear meanings or some power to correspond to what is "real" AND beliefs that meanings are contextual, created within conversations, or even (to some extent) inside an individual as a starting place prior to communication.
Although we did not get to explore these contradictions because of time constraints = it is important to note these contradictions in light of the points made by Shotter. These contradictions provide us with a stable point of entry into our experience of language - that is, they provide a window into our unconscious, continuously responding relationships to the forms we use to "write."
As Shotter pointed out = one disadvantage of putting our experience into language is that it causes us to "lose the phenomenon", or distance ourselves from the experience in ways that we "forget" the parts that don't fit into the linear logic of language. Our discussion of our assumptions - in very real ways - made clear some of the ways our EXPERINCE of language (and therefore the ways we can access it in order to write) FAR EXCEED the ways we talk about it. In other words, what we "think" about our relationships to language (where meaning is, how we make meanings, its truth, its power => and therefore our expectations about ourselves and our abilities to use language) is a radical reduction of how in fact we experience language.
Think about that one for a minute. It is profoundly relevant to the objectives that are at the center of this course. It suggests that to teach writing - we need experiential tools to 'unpack' the reductive, languaged representations of what writing is and and how it works so that we can support writers in engaging their whole (conflicting, illogical, always changing, flowing into the future)repertoire of moves for experiencing and participating in meaning making. As pointed out in class, pedagogical theory and practice posed by compositionists such as Elbow, Perl, MacCurdy and DeSalvo are approaches that respect the unconscious, felt features of the move from experience to language. They are a start. Work to analyze discursive relationships between "being" and "writing" (that is to explore the ways we can use language to facilitate the leap from experience to the written word) are what we are doing in this course.
Discussion of Shotter.
At the beginning of this discussion, as a way for us to think about the two kinds of "selves" Shotter was posing, I asked you to write a description of what took place in the discussion of language assumptions from two perspectives. a "rational" self who observed and put into language what took place, and a continuously responding self who WAS IN the experience of the unfolding classroom conversation.
You noticed that the rational self sounded more or less like academic writing. It was reasoned, took and took an "objective" stance. You reported that he continuously responding self represented what happened in less well composed sentences, in collections of words and phrases that did not necessarily cohere into a story, had more metaphors and similes and more references to 'I" and was generally more subjective, was less edited and included words that were "inappropriate" for the reasoned representation. It was "like freewriting" in that it was associative and felt.
What differences in these two selves means for teaching writing (or understanding one's own writing). This continuously responding self offers us a different (and powerfly detailed) perspective on our experiences => a wholly different view of 'reality'. It represents a kind of "thinking" that is not neatly packaged in the conventions of language. When this self appears in writing (as it often does either in a whole composition that is at the drafty stage or in the less completely processed parts of any given piece of writing) => it is often interpreted as a "mistake" or "bad writing". Logical errors (like the kinds we noted in our discussion of our assumptions about writing), focus that leaps from one perspective to another, an excess of "felt" presence (as opposed to objectivity), language choices that do not reflect appropriate audience considerations may all be features of (unconscious) resort to an experience-based self => where the experiences have not yet been fully processed into the conventions of language. So the problems unfold not in terms of how to "correct" the grammar - but how to distinguish between a continuously responding self and a reasoned self, how to support writers in becoming aware of diffrent realms of "being," to provide guided experiences in moving from feeling to language, and to mentor socialization in conventions for moving from feeling to representations in (academic/whatever genre is chosen) language.
In many ways these teaching moves reflect what process teachers do in the classroom - but the difference in the assumptions that underly those moves, and the particular tools that psychoanlytic research can provide us suggest that this is -if not a wholly new idea in teaching writing - it can at least offer some embellishments on already existing practices for invention and revision.
Discussion of Shotter's other points -dialogic practices, differences between issues of intellect and issues of will, and what is involved in judging verus deciding is (hopefully) covered in the notes. If you have further reflections or questions - we can take this up at the beginning of class as a way to consolidate the new thinking we developed in class.
For next week
Read: Dufy, 269 in Lock & Strong; Daniel Goleman The Brain and Emotional Intelligence. There is a free download (you have to register) at the embedded link. If you don't want to do that, this book is available at any bookstore, or in a kindle edition through Amazon $6.99).
Blog 5: Speculations about a project in light of Shotter
Heads up so you can think about your transcription schedule. We talked briefly about how you were doing with your transcripts. Yes, it takes a while, and you have some time to work through this. At the same time, and to give you an idea of when you need to be finished = according to the calendar, you will be using your transcript as data over Spring break. That is, you will be looking at "stories" in your transcript and presenting an overview of some of the narrative themes in your interview on March 20.
What a remarkable class experience that was. I will be thinking about it for some time. I wish I had been more on top of pointing out how what we were doing connected strongly to what Shotter was writing about = but then I guess that is what this blog is for. See you next week.
So with that said, I have posted the notes I took on the language assumptions, and my speaking notes for Shotter (to the right under Class notes). What appears below is more of a summary of main points covered in the two discussions surrounding the assumptions about language, and Shotter's discussion of toolw/approaches for "walking around in" a continously responding self.
Assumptions about language
As noted above, this discussion was lively and not without confrontation. As a group, we watched ourselves struggling with words that either over generalized or too tightly confined the range of a statement, as in direct statements without qualification as in (some featuers) ARE (description) or stating that a factor was "never" applicable. At the same time we also struggled with adverbs to limit or qualify the verb's power to include and exclude - such as the use of "typically" (what is typical?) in statement 7. We also struggled with words like "real" and "true" (is it "real" or "true" if there is more than one "real" or "true"? what kind of real and true are we talking about?).
Perhaps most importantly, we found ourselves in conflict with our own earlier statements in terms of our positions a number of statements. In particular (some of us) found ourselves both invested in (or at least partial to) the idea that words both have clear meanings or some power to correspond to what is "real" AND beliefs that meanings are contextual, created within conversations, or even (to some extent) inside an individual as a starting place prior to communication.
Although we did not get to explore these contradictions because of time constraints = it is important to note these contradictions in light of the points made by Shotter. These contradictions provide us with a stable point of entry into our experience of language - that is, they provide a window into our unconscious, continuously responding relationships to the forms we use to "write."
As Shotter pointed out = one disadvantage of putting our experience into language is that it causes us to "lose the phenomenon", or distance ourselves from the experience in ways that we "forget" the parts that don't fit into the linear logic of language. Our discussion of our assumptions - in very real ways - made clear some of the ways our EXPERINCE of language (and therefore the ways we can access it in order to write) FAR EXCEED the ways we talk about it. In other words, what we "think" about our relationships to language (where meaning is, how we make meanings, its truth, its power => and therefore our expectations about ourselves and our abilities to use language) is a radical reduction of how in fact we experience language.
Think about that one for a minute. It is profoundly relevant to the objectives that are at the center of this course. It suggests that to teach writing - we need experiential tools to 'unpack' the reductive, languaged representations of what writing is and and how it works so that we can support writers in engaging their whole (conflicting, illogical, always changing, flowing into the future)repertoire of moves for experiencing and participating in meaning making. As pointed out in class, pedagogical theory and practice posed by compositionists such as Elbow, Perl, MacCurdy and DeSalvo are approaches that respect the unconscious, felt features of the move from experience to language. They are a start. Work to analyze discursive relationships between "being" and "writing" (that is to explore the ways we can use language to facilitate the leap from experience to the written word) are what we are doing in this course.
Discussion of Shotter.
At the beginning of this discussion, as a way for us to think about the two kinds of "selves" Shotter was posing, I asked you to write a description of what took place in the discussion of language assumptions from two perspectives. a "rational" self who observed and put into language what took place, and a continuously responding self who WAS IN the experience of the unfolding classroom conversation.
You noticed that the rational self sounded more or less like academic writing. It was reasoned, took and took an "objective" stance. You reported that he continuously responding self represented what happened in less well composed sentences, in collections of words and phrases that did not necessarily cohere into a story, had more metaphors and similes and more references to 'I" and was generally more subjective, was less edited and included words that were "inappropriate" for the reasoned representation. It was "like freewriting" in that it was associative and felt.
What differences in these two selves means for teaching writing (or understanding one's own writing). This continuously responding self offers us a different (and powerfly detailed) perspective on our experiences => a wholly different view of 'reality'. It represents a kind of "thinking" that is not neatly packaged in the conventions of language. When this self appears in writing (as it often does either in a whole composition that is at the drafty stage or in the less completely processed parts of any given piece of writing) => it is often interpreted as a "mistake" or "bad writing". Logical errors (like the kinds we noted in our discussion of our assumptions about writing), focus that leaps from one perspective to another, an excess of "felt" presence (as opposed to objectivity), language choices that do not reflect appropriate audience considerations may all be features of (unconscious) resort to an experience-based self => where the experiences have not yet been fully processed into the conventions of language. So the problems unfold not in terms of how to "correct" the grammar - but how to distinguish between a continuously responding self and a reasoned self, how to support writers in becoming aware of diffrent realms of "being," to provide guided experiences in moving from feeling to language, and to mentor socialization in conventions for moving from feeling to representations in (academic/whatever genre is chosen) language.
In many ways these teaching moves reflect what process teachers do in the classroom - but the difference in the assumptions that underly those moves, and the particular tools that psychoanlytic research can provide us suggest that this is -if not a wholly new idea in teaching writing - it can at least offer some embellishments on already existing practices for invention and revision.
Discussion of Shotter's other points -dialogic practices, differences between issues of intellect and issues of will, and what is involved in judging verus deciding is (hopefully) covered in the notes. If you have further reflections or questions - we can take this up at the beginning of class as a way to consolidate the new thinking we developed in class.
For next week
Read: Dufy, 269 in Lock & Strong; Daniel Goleman The Brain and Emotional Intelligence. There is a free download (you have to register) at the embedded link. If you don't want to do that, this book is available at any bookstore, or in a kindle edition through Amazon $6.99).
Blog 5: Speculations about a project in light of Shotter
Heads up so you can think about your transcription schedule. We talked briefly about how you were doing with your transcripts. Yes, it takes a while, and you have some time to work through this. At the same time, and to give you an idea of when you need to be finished = according to the calendar, you will be using your transcript as data over Spring break. That is, you will be looking at "stories" in your transcript and presenting an overview of some of the narrative themes in your interview on March 20.
What a remarkable class experience that was. I will be thinking about it for some time. I wish I had been more on top of pointing out how what we were doing connected strongly to what Shotter was writing about = but then I guess that is what this blog is for. See you next week.
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