Berthoff, Ann. “From Dialogue to Dialectic to Dialogue.”Reclaiming the Classroom: teacher research as an agency for change. Dixie Goswami and Peter Stillman, eds. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1987, pp. 75-86.
This is an incredibly important essay, I think, because it communicates Berthoff’s identity as a teacher, and her evolution as a teacher-scholar.
“I reclaimed that morning the knowledge that dialectic and dialogue are consonant and cognate, simultaneous and correlative” (77).
“…dialogue with the text, which is the point of departure for all critical reading, is being RE-presented ina social context and has thus become accessible to critical response and review.”
“I was ready, then, in 1974, to compose a composition course dialectically, letting the exercises and assignment grown from one another, encouraging a spiraling by which we could continually return to the fundamental acts of mind which are in operation at all times as we make sense of the world. I began with the premise that composing is what the mind does. Writing, therefore, is of a kind with perception and the agent of writing, as perception is of imagination. My point of departure was the idea that whenever we respond critically to what we see, we apprehend form; forming, thinking, and writing are thus consonant with one another and whatever can be learned about one will strengthen the others” (81). *******F/T/W
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