Shipka, Jody. Toward a Composition Made Whole. Pittsburgh University Press, 2011. Print.
This volume thinks forward without resorting to “beyond.” Shipka anchors her call for a new “whole” approach to composition (as a teaching subject and as a practice) in scholarship mainly of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, referencing often Latour, Selfe, Lemke, Barwashi, Kress, Trimbur, and other major names of the field. However, the roots of the “framework” Shipka offers are in James Wertsch’s mediated activity theory; “…this chapter draws primarily on the work of James wertsch (1991, 1998) and explores the advantages of adopting as our primary unit of analysis the ‘individual(s)-acting-with-mediational-means” (1998, 24)…I argue that granting analytic primacy to mediated action provides us with a way of examining final products in relation to the complex processes by which those products are produced, circulated, and consumed” (40).
Shipka identifies the isolation of particular composition events or modes (such as academic writing, or talking, or product, or…) as a falsifying of the reality of the composition experience to the extent of handicapping students (and disciplines) to the possibilities and responsibilities of meaning making. By decontextualizing and privileging alphabetic text over all other modes of communication, our discipline and the courses it offers, dishonors the fact that we all compose all the time; we are already “writers,” and fosters less helpful goals than the metaconsciousness that can create strong decision makers when it comes to communication. She claims her goals are arguing for “creating courses that increase the meditational means (or suite of tools) students are able to employ in their work…to underscore for students the fundamentally multimodal aspects of all communicative practice…provid[ing] students with a greater awareness of, and ability to reflect on, the ways in which writing intersects and interacts with other semiotic systems…” (137).
The book provides detailed, specific examples of assignments that adhere to the “mediated activity-based multimodal framework” she’s created, and student responses to those assignments (from her own classes). Students are given a specific task, but the mode of representation of the result of fulfilling that task is up to them (video, performance, report, etc.). Students are responsible for making specific choices—based on audience(s), purpose(s), materials availability, etc…. And then being accountable for those choices via a SOGC (statement of goals and choices) (113). Shipka takes great care to position the SOGC historically within the process movement, but to distinguish it from the expressivists via its focus on describing choices (not self-judging or grading or describing process merely).
This work is incredibly useful for teachers and researchers in Comp/Rhet; it provides incentive for and examples of honor students by giving them choices and making them responsible for those choices. Teachers, however, are largely neglected in this work. In fact, Shipka argues in the end that the “framework” doesn’t require much “more” of teachers than to free students to work within their chosen “mode/s” and to make them responsible for expressing reasons for their choices (138… “in keeping with the goals of many writing courses…”). Little to no attention is given to what, exactly, a course within the framework “teaches.” It “provides opportunities” (135) and encourages a meta-awareness of process, audience, choice making, modes, tools, etc. But what exactly do we teach? And what, exactly, does it mean “to choose”?
The biggest limitation to the argument (which I highly respect, by the way) seems to be its ignorance of invention. The work references “meaning making” often, but conflates the term with “process” (101) or ignores it altogether (90-91). The focus clearly lies on modes of expression, not invention; the student examples illustrate clearly students who know what they want to say and must go through considerations of “mediating activity” to figure out how to express that. Clearly ideas change through the process, but the idea is present to begin with. I can imagine most of my students having a serious problem with this. Other limitations involve assessment. Shipka includes an “assessment” chapter, and she offers the SOGC as a tool for assessment, but no talk of value or grading ensues. I do like how she cites the Statement of Outcomes in several places in the book; though she doesn’t detail how her assignments align with the outcomes. She merely claims that they do.
This awesome work speaks a lot to my current studies, particularly in terms of designing courses that respect the liberty of the student, the state of the student in terms of her current abilities, tendencies, and situation. It’s a strong model of how to situate personal teaching experience and ideas within the scholarship. And it offers opportunity for expansion and development.
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