Method: Metaphors, Models, Maxims
(3) “The way to learn to do that [continually circle back, review, rewrite] is to practice doing just that.” ***The environment in which to learn to do that…. My work brings “the ‘physical’ and ‘digital’ material” into discussions of writing pedagogy.
(3) “It is far easier, I think, to teach those who have had no training in writing than it is to unteach the anticomposing that so many have learned.” ****What Berthoff means by “anticomposing” seems difficult to understand through her criticism & critique. But it speaks to the “pedagogical imperative” she takes on throughout her work, the relentless focus on allatonceness and the various concepts it generates for the teaching of writing. For Berthoff, if the result of a pedagogical method or practice is something other than the generating of student consciousness about the ways they form meaning, and the role of composing in that formation, or a method building from that consciousness, then it is counterproductive; it is anticomposing.
(3) “But theory is not the antithesis of practice and, in fact, can only serve an authentic purpose if it is continually brought into relationship with practice so that each can inform the other.” ***Theory/practice divide
(4) “A method is a way of bringing together what we think we are doing and how we are doing it: meta + hodos = about the way; the way about the way.” ***The pedagogical objective in a Berthovian classroom is raised consciousness/metacognition; students becoming aware of how they make meaning (interpretation/reading/construing & writing/composing/constructing).
(4) “Ideas in any field are not only what we think about; they are what we think with.”
(4) “ The most powerful speculative instrument English teachers have is imagination. If we can reclaim the imagination, seeing it as a name for the active mind, we can use it to think with when we come to teach writing as the composing process. Its power lies in the fact that it makes possible so many fruitful analogies between writing and all other acts of mind whereby we make sense of the world. Imagination can help us form the concept of forming. Forming depends on abstraction, symbolization, selection, “purposing”… Forming is the mind in action. It is what we do when we learn; when we discover or organize; when we interpret; when we come ot know. Forming is how we make meaning.” ***So is there a particular “learning imagination”? An imagination ‘purposed’ towards a particular type of forming?
(6) Re: Berthoff’s passage from Forming/Thinking/Writing… talking about “the gathering hand” of the paragraph. This metaphor brings attention to the relationship between content and form in the making of meaning. Digital writing pedagogy adds another layer to the discussion: multimodality & materiality.
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