Rescuing the Subject

Miller, Susan. Rescuing the Subject: A Critical Introduction to Rhetoric and the Writer. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 2004. (2004 paperback 2nd edition, originally published 1989).

Susan Miller's project in this text predominantly is to refigure the rhetorical tradition to highlight the significance of writing as opposed to oratory in how we conceive this tradition and how we understand "the subject"--i.e. the writer who writes. Do we conceive of the writer and what the writer is about through the lens of a rhetorical tradition dominated by concerns and figurations of oratory, or do we see the writer through a lens of "textual rhetoric?" It seems clear to me from how she ends the text and her special focus on Mina Shaughnessy and the struggles of developmental writers that she is discussing what I might call "textual literacy." She means the cognitive and linguistic skills to read and write text on a page. By recasting the rhetorical tradition and illuminating the prominence of thinking and philosophizing about the written word all the way back to Plato, Miller is "rescuing" the writer (the subject who writes) from a tradition biased toward the spoken word. She valorizes the scholarly study of the written word as unique. Charles Bazerman seems to be the most prominent scholar in "discourse studies" who has extended Miller's project in terms of research (though I could be wrong).

I recall a comment that John Schilb made in the video Take 20 about the difficulty Composition Studies (or Writing Studies) will have in the face of our modern transformation in literacy to a "new media" literacy. In the face of multi-modal texts, he said, we will face special challenges to define the nature of and relevance of written texts. He might have just been conservative here--guarding his traditional bastion of disciplinary work--but I think he speaks from the perspective of Miller's "textual rhetoric." Schilb's comment makes me wonder if Composition really ranges within the narrow walls of "textual rhetoric" or if it should range beyond just words on the page. I think this question is one of the largest questions facing Freshman Composition classes around the country. Perhaps some innovative teachers have broadened into new media literacy in both reception (critical reading) and production (critical "writing") of new media "texts," but I would guess that the majority of "English" teachers teaching writing have not. I know I can't claim to have made this transformation (though I peck at the edges), and I certainly don't see it amongst my colleagues. These musings make me wonder if Miller's point to recover writing in the rhetorical tradition isn't to a degree moot now. The problem now is that we use textual paradigms (print-based literacy) to describe and understand the new form of new media literacy. What is "remediation" after all but this way of using one construct to formulate another construct.

I want to return to the title of Miller's work--rescuing the subject. My interest in this book was predominantly in the title. I am interested in various conceptualizations of "the subject"--the writer who writes, the thinking agent who puts words to page. For my own research focus, I will have to present my own conceptualization of "the subject" since implicit in my understanding of process and reflection is a writer who makes decisions and choices about their writing. My special affinity with cognitive views toward composition (Flower and Hayes) presumes a thinking subject with power over how they conceive their own sense of reality. I think this cognitive tradition can be too narrowly reduced to the "unified self." Flower's own expansion into the "social cognitive theory of writing" is about taking into account these "outside" influences on writers.

I must say that Miller's thoughts on this issue of "the subject" are disappointing. However, she does describe the dynamic of the modernist "unified subject" theory and the post-modernist, deconstructionist indeterminant subject who faces being "written" by culture, conventions, and language itself. Let's see if I can find a few quotes:

"In this broader space, an originating presence to a text, the forgotten writer, is more complex than the individual and imaginatively 'masculine' subject, who we conceive of as an independent, potentially totalizing, univocal source of statements. It has been a relief, not just a logical linguistic and theoretical conclusion, to proclaim the recent 'death' of that figure.

The writer who enlarges our vision of what it means specifically to explain written discourse lives ... in a complex textual world. The writer knows especially about convention, precedents, and 'anxieties of influence,' the control of already written language over both meaning and the further actual results of writing. The writer, who is admittedly a fiction whose existence is never called into play outside a theoretically conceived writing event, both originates with, and results from, a written text. ... this writer simultaneously sacrifices 'meaning' to the resistance of written language, and written language to 'meaning,' in actual, time-bound performances." (15)

---
"The premises for this theoretical proposal are that writing cannot now be imagined only as a 'medium' for direct communication from a singular individual, and that it is always the living embodiment of a risk whose description must vary historically, but which is always the province of a textual 'actor' taking in hand a language that in fact can only fictionalize such assertive control." (36)
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"I have assumed that working out this theory of writers historically, philosophically, and in terms of definitions of rhetoric will contribute to ongoing reconceptualizations within compositions studies because I take the act of writing to be still somewhat hidden in the persistent convention that writing only 'contains' individual speech or thought. Most theorists and teachers of written composition still unquestioningly emphasize a direct connection between thought and spoken-to-written language. Many lament the difference between 'authors' and the halting textual voices of imitative ... student writing. They aim to produce 'student writers' who write and read 'for themselves,' assuming that a thesis may be 'stated' with discernible clarity, coherence, and completeness. Composition, more than any other textual study, necessarily confronts writing as discovery, as play, and as process because it faces unstable student texts that have been written by those who seem to know only their own oral culture. But common practices in the field persistently honor oppositions to discovery, play, and process: product, seriousness, and perfect communication. Even the most enlightened often relegate the instabilities of writing to 'pedagogy' while retaining in their descriptions of 'rhetoric' an ideal of assertive and stable texts.

Alternatives to these tacit assumptions and their results depend on reconceiving both student writers and the act of writing." (150)
---

I think the missing link, or undeveloped promise, of Miller's book is its application in the classroom. She does a lot for the scholarly study of written communication, but only holds out a changed premise for writing teachers. It is up to the writing teacher to see where this new premise--the reconception of student writers and the act of writing--will take their pedagogy. From the quote above, it appears she offers a solidly "process" pedagogy as an alternative to current-traditional pedagogy by opposing process vs. product, play vs. seriousness, and discovery vs. perfect communication (if this last pair fit). From my perspective in 2008, I find this a disappointing way to reduce her thoughts on teaching. It is her enhances sensitivity to what is involved in the act of writing, her presentation of an expanded picture of the writer and writing with a long tradition behind it, that makes her book important. I keep coming back to Foster's "networked subjectivity," and I think that Miller would probably like Foster's notions of the writer.

The Electronic Writing Workshop and the e-Rhetorical Forum

I talked previously about the importance of choice for student writing in our classrooms. I want to discuss now the difference that using technology can make for conducting our "writing workshop" where students write on topics of their choice. I have taught in a teaching context where students shared and responded to each other over electronic networks for over fifteen years, and in that time I've noticed some important differences from what we might call a "traditional" classroom learning environment (i.e. non-mediated).

The first set of differences is merely a matter of mechanics. An electronic network makes a writing workshop work so much better. Student writing posted to an online setting is instantly available to everyone in the class. When doing peer response, there is no need to make multiple copies for the whole group to read, nor is there the need for turn-taking in the act of peer response. Multiple readers can be responding to the same text concurrently. Lastly, the electronic writing workshop explodes the walls of the classroom so that students can access and respond to this writing outside of class.

The next difference in the Electronic writing workshop is really in degree not kind. One of the strengths we know of writing workshop is the peer and collaborative nature of the classroom ecology. Students don't just feed all their writing to the teacher but share their writing with their peer or response group. This peer influence is crucial to the difference writing workshop makes for student writers. The electronic writing workshop heightens this peer and collaborative influence significantly. I believe sharing and responding to writing within an e-Rhetorical forum--a recurring place for posting and sharing writing--positions student into a unique dual role I call the "role of the spectator-participant." My meaning, however, does not imply the objective distance that term implies from ethnographic methodology. Within a learning context where students are posting and responding to each others writing over an online network, the students posting writing are all participants; however, at the same time they are spectators because they are reading and watching the posts of their peers. Each role has what we might consider a symbiotic relationship to the other role. The knowledge that one's writing will be going in front of the entire class influence our participation; likewise, since we are observing the performance of others we see things that influence what we decide to do when it is our turn to perform and put our writing in front of the group.

I have defined six key influences that this role of the spectator-participant has on student writings within an electronic writing workshop:

Peer Influence/Membership: Students experience a sense of common identity and common activity. Within this group they look to each other for support, ideas, and examples. The sense of membership fosters an interest for the spectator in the activities of the other members and stimulates the participant into more engaged participation in the group.

Audience: Because students know that their writing sent to the group in the network will be read by the others in the group and that their writing will be compared to the writing of their peers, students experience a greater sense of audience. Although participants don’t have a uniform reaction to this awareness of audience, many student/participants experience a feeling of engagement, an openness and comfort to try more things with their writing, and a pressure to make their writing better and fit more into the “normal discourse” of the group.

Multiplicity: One of the chief experiences for the spectator is a sense of multiplicity. They are exposed through the network to many viewpoints and ideas. Through the exposure to different ideas and perspectives (the “other”), students are given an expanded base of information and they experience a sense of displacement from their original viewpoint.

Comparability: Multiplicity stimulates an experience of comparability for the spectator. The students compare their writing to the writing of their peers and they compare the writing of their peers to each other.

Orientation/Perspective/Normalizing: What the spectator experiences and then the participant attempts to incorporate into their participation is a sense of orientation or perspective. If multiplicity exposes the spectator to new ideas, comparability and evaluation of that multiplicity help to form a new sense of where they fit in to the larger discourse of the group.

Disembodiment/Virtual Time/Objectivity: The computer interface makes the sharing and responding to texts different. Because the spectator-participant reads and shares writing through the computer (disembodied and in virtual time), participants experience distance from the person they are responding to, free from the social dynamics of face-to-face communication. For spectators and participants, the computer interface also can lead to more deliberative communication.

Students placed into the learning context of the electronic writing workshop are placed into a different position, a different dynamic than the traditional classroom writing workshop that influences their learning and engagement in the writing classroom. I'd like to say this context is qualitatively better, but I can't. I energy of a face-to-face writing group is very powerful, so I think we need to take a critical look at the electronic writing workshop to see the gains and losses. My belief is that the electronic writing workshop is broader and potentially deeper, but not necessarily so (just as the traditional writing workshop is no guarantee). The greatest loss is the body--the voice and flesh of face-to-face interaction. The impact of this loss should not be slighted; however, there are gains in the online setting, especially regarding multiplicity and comparability.

"as participants we APPLY our value systems, but as spectators we GENERATE and REFINE the system itself." --James Britton, "Spectator Role and the Beginnings of Writing"

Choice and Writing Instruction

Who likes to be told what to do? Who likes to have little or no choice in what we do? No one, of course. What did William Blake say? Why is it that everyone is born free but everywhere in chains.

Choice has the connotation of "freedom" while the lack of choice gets lumped into slavery or oppression. I don't think this dichotomy fully gets to the matter of choice. If we once admit that by definition and by nature we live within structures (variously called ideologies, genres, terministic screens, conventions, traditions), then we can see that choice in an ultimate sense is a fiction. Our choice to a degree is always circumscribed by limits we may not be aware of. Yet, we have choice. Choice exists, even if it is only a choice between this and that.

As I examine the subject of choice in writing, I believe it is essential to make choice a substantial option available for writing students. Perhaps it is a strawman argument, but many teachers offer little or no choice to their students just as teachers often limit the kinds of audiences and purposes for which students write (i.e. only to them and only to be graded). See Elbow's Map of Writing:
Thinking in parallel to Elbow's assertion that writers need to write all across this map of different locations related to audience and response, I came up with what I refer to as the Continuum of Choice and Writing

----- Student choice of subject, form and purpose
----- Student choice of subject and purpose;
Teacher choice of form
----- Student choice of subject;
Teacher choice of form and purpose
---- Teacher choice of subject, form, and purpose

I know that I tend to reside in the middle with my writing assignments. I may choose the form and the purpose, but let students find their own topic to write about. Or perhaps I come up with the form (say the Illustrative Essay) but let students determine their own subject and the purpose for why they are writing. What would it be like to let students entirely choose their own subject, form, and purpose? I don't know. I know it would have me think more deeply about the ultimate goals of what I wanted to teach (probably in a positive way).

Fletcher and Portalupi in the 2001 Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide say this about the importance of choice in writing (which is how writing workshop operates in its orthodox form):

“Why is choice so important? ...while teachers may determine what gets taught, only students can determine what will be learned. This is true for learners of any age. We learn best when we have a reason that propels us to want to learn. When students have an authentic purpose for their writing—whether to document an important event in their lives, get classmates to laugh, or communicate a message that matters—they pay attention differently to instruction. Our students know best which topics and purposes for writing matter most to each of them. Letting them choose their own topics and set their own purposes makes it a lot more likely they'll be engaged and receptive.”

I think the key here is when students take ownership themselves of their learning. This is often a rare phenomenon in a school setting, so to find a way to broaden and deepen this kind of learning I think is fabulous. Isn't that what we want? But is this self-sponsored learning what students want or are ready for? This question reminds me of Sheridan Blau's notion of "interpretive dependency" where students come to lean of the teacher to interpret for them and give them the answer. The same holds true for writing instruction and what we might call "productive dependency." Students depend upon their teachers to do the writing for them, to fix it to make decisions about what makes the writing good or bad.

Choice then puts a responsibility on the student's shoulders. It makes them responsible for their own decisions and work. The teacher, then, has the tough job of supporting this growing responsibility without squashing it with criticism. All of this thinking on choice in writing is pushing me toward incorporating it into my curriculum in a more radical way.

Genre and the Invention of the Writer

Bawarshi, Anis. Genre and the Invention of the Writer. Logan: Utah State Press, 2003.

It has been my contention that when writer's reflect between drafts that the predominant thing that they do is “negotiate their rhetorical stance.”  Bawarshi's book is a significant support for this theory. She looks to Richard Young, Alton Becker and Kenneth Pike's assertion in Rhetoric: Discovery and Change (1970) that “invention involves a process of orientation rather than origination” (6). For Bawarshi, genre's represent one of the most (if not the most) important factors writers consider as they examine a rhetorical situation and write. 

Bawarshi's book reads as if it had been a dissertation. It has a beautiful laser-like focus on an idea that gets repeated over and over again as that idea is considered in multiple ways. To her credit and to the credit of her main idea, she never gets old or uninteresting in her discussion of this idea.  Her basic assertion is this: “Writers invent within genres and are themselves invented by genres” (7). But what is a genre, in her view?  She builds from Carolyn Miller's notion that genre's are not predominantly forms but are typified rhetorical ways of acting in recurring situations.  Bawarshi would give a large degree of agency to genre's themselves.  She looks to Pierre Bourdieu's notion of “habitus” as a parallel definition for genre's.  “Habitus” for Bourdieu are “structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures” (qtd. in Bawarshi 8). As such, genre's function as a kind of “topoi” plus: “Like habitus, genre both organizes and generates the conditions of social and rhetorical production” (8). It isn't that genre's structure and to a degree determine rhetorical action alone; genre's also have an epistemological or ideological component. Using the notion of the “rhetorical ecosystem,” Bawarshi argues that “genre's maintain rhetorical conditions that sustain certain ... ways of discursively and materially organizing, knowing, experiencing, acting, and relating in the world.”  Bawarshi interestingly moves in the same direction as Louise Cowans in her essay “Epic as Cosmopoesis”  

(http://lonestar.texas.net/~mseifert/epiccosmos.html) where Cowan asserts that genres present an ontological position, a kind of way of being that each form of literature presents to the reader. We recognize a genre, she says, not so much by its form, but by this ontological position.  Bawarshi's point is that genres are “discursive and ideological conditions that writer's have to position themselves within and interpret in order to write” (170).  As ideological structures they generate a particular knowledge, world view, motive to act or desire, as well as particular kind of articulation: “Genres are places of articulation. They are ideological configurations that are realized in their articulation, as they are used by writers (and readers). Genres also place writers in positions of articulation” (9). Cutting to the chase, we can use Bawarshi's own ending to summarize her main thesis: “By encouraging student writer's to recognize beginnings as genred positions of articulation, and by teaching students how to inquire into these positions, we enable them to locate themselves more critically and effectively as writers within those beginnings” (170).  What a beautiful quote! I would agree with everything she says here.

Let me add to her thinking my own thoughts related to reflection. If invention is a form of orienting and positioning (as well as being oriented and positioned by the genre), we would both agree that this dialectic process of invention doesn't just happen within pre-writing but is an on-going dynamic that occurs throughout the activity of writing.  As teachers, then, how do we “teach students how to inquire into these positions” and “enable them to locate themselves more critically and effectively as writers” within these genres? Of course, we would do multiple things like the heuristic exploring of a genre that she includes at the end of the book. We would model a critical examination of a genre. We would make considerations of genre part of the language of our course. In peer response we would ask students to consider notions related to genre in students' examination of each others' writing.  But if this orienting and locating is as she repeatedly discusses, a form of negotiation (similar to Flower's construction of negotiated meaning), then where and when does this negotiating happen.  Bawarshi answers this question, in part, herself: “The rhetorical art of adaptation or repositioning should become central to our teaching of writing, especially our teaching of invention, which would then become the art of analyzing genres and positioning oneself within them” (156). By highlighting adapting and repositioning” as the essence of the rhetorical art (finding the available means, but more), she is touching on the ancient notion of to prepon, appropriateness, as well as decorum.  

But where and how to we encourage this “adaptation and repositioning?”  Surely all this positioning doesn't just happen at the beginning of writing, but must be encouraged throughout the activity of writing. It is my belief that reflection is one powerful way that teachers in a structured and prompted way can encourage students (novice) writers to “adapt and reposition”--to invent their rhetorical practice as they negotiate their rhetorical stance.  Where we as teachers can help these student writer's become more adept at this negotiation and positioning until it becomes a tacit skill in their own rhetorical practice. Where Bawarshi and I might diverge is the degree to which she considers that genre dominates this rhetorical stance. Perhaps she is right, but I think the writer is also negotiating a whole host of complex considerations that might fall outside the world of genre including the task, their self-image, their knowledge, their audience, the text they have on the page vs what they intend. Bawarshi argues for a BIG GENRE (like Big Rhetoric) such that everything folds into the world of genre—everything is a genre—so from her perspective she may be right.  

Below will follow a number of snippets or jewels from her text.  

“I am interested in the synchronic relationship between genres and writers, especially the ways this relationship gets enacted during the scene of invention, where genre knowledge becomes a form of what Berkenkotter and Huckin call 'situated cognition'” (10). 

“Genres themselves take place within what Bakhtin calls larger 'spheres of culture' (1986), what Freadman calls 'ceremonials' (1988), and what Russell, borrowing from activity theory, calls 'activity systems' (1997). Within these larger spheres of language and activity, writers negotiate multiple, sometimes conflicting genres, relations, and subjectivities” (11). 

“We cannot, I argue, full understand or answer the question 'what do writers do when they write?' without understanding and answering the question 'what happens to writers when they write?'” (13).

production of the text – production of the writer

A Burkian definition of genre: “Genres are discursive sites that coordinate the acquisition and production of motives by maintaining specific relations between scene, act, agent, agency, and purpose” (17). 

“genres are not only typified rhetorical responses to recurrent situations; they also help shape and maintain the ways we rhetorically know and act within these situations. In other words, as individuals' rhetorical responses to recurrent situations become typified as genres, the genres in turn help structure the way individuals conceptualize and experience these situations, predicting their notions of what constitutes appropriate and possible responses and actions. That is why genres are both functional and epistemological—they help us function within particular situations at the same time as they help shape the way we come to know and organize these situations. ... To argue that genres help reproduce the very recurring situations to which they respond (Devitt 1993) is to identify them as constitutive rather than as merely regulative” (24).

“It is the genred positions, commitments, and relations that writers assume, enact, and sometimes resist within certain situations that most interest me. In particular, I am interested in the way these positions, commitments, and relations inform the choices writers make during the scene of invention” (45)

---and I would add “during the scene of reflection”

“We can learn a great deal about how and why writers invent by analyzing how writers get positioned within genred sites of action” (48).

“By focusing mainly on the writer as the agent of his or her cognitive processes, the writing process movement has provided only a partial view of invention. While the writer is certainly an agent of writing, to locate him or her as the prime agent of writing is to ignore the agency that is already at work on the writer as he or she makes decisions, shapes meaning, and reformulates it” (68).

“Following Ernst Cassirer, LeFevre argues that language does not mirror or copy an external reality; it helps constitute that reality” (70).

“Le Fevre calls for a continued inquiry into 'the ecology of invention--the ways ideas arise and are nurtured or hindered by interactions with social context and culture'” (71).

“it is perhaps more accurate to say that invention does not so much begin in the writer or even in some abstract social collective as it begins when a writer locates himself or herself within the discursive and ideological formation of a genre and its system of related genres” (72). 

“Each textual instantiation of a genre is a result of a unique negotiation between the agency of a writer and the agency of a genre's conditions of production. ... It is within the discursive and ideological space of genre—which I will later describe as the intersection between a writer's intentions and the genre's social motives—where agency resides” (79).

“Every time a writer writes within a genre, he or she in effect acquires, interprets, and to some extent transforms the desires that motivate it. As such, every articulation necessarily involves an interpretation” (91).

This quote about says it all:

“invention does not involve an introspective turn so much as it involves the process by which individuals locate themselves within and devise ways of rhetorically acting in various situations. In this way, invention is a process that is inseparable from genre since genre coordinates both how individuals recognize a situation as requiring certain actions and how they rhetorically act within it. Genres, thus, are localized, textured sites of invention, the situated topoi in which communicants locate themselves conceptually before and rhetorically as they communicate” (114).

“The primary goal of such a FYW course would be to teach students how to locate themselves and their activities meaningfully and critically within these genred positions of articulation. ...It is in the ability to teach students how to locate and invent themselves rhetorically within various sites of action (a rhetorical, metacognitive literacy)--an ability to heighten awareness of disciplinarity and rhetoric—that the future of FYW is most promising and justified” (154).

Judging the Quality of Development

Boxer, Philip. “Judging the Quality of Development.” Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning. eds. David Boud, Rosemary Keogh, and David Walker. London: Kogan Page, 1985. 117-127.

Boxer is a scholar and teacher in the field of Business Management from England who has worked on helping managers develop the quality of judgment. He mentions an interesting evolution in his work. Originally, he was after helping managers become strategic in their choices within situations. He shifted, though, to define strategic in relation to the manager's self—meaning, as he explains, “judging the quality of development is something for the manager to do and not me” (117). I can't say I fully understand this “inversion” as he describes it, but part of it is empowering the manager to achieve a new framework or sense of self from which to make decisions and judgments.

Boxer describes “reflective analysis” as falling within a number of teaching paradigms. In particular, it is part of the conjectural paradigm.
--instructional paradigm: traditional classroom situations
--revelatory paradigm: presents a picture about which certain things are known but encourages the manager to make sense of the picture themselves
--emancipatory paradigm: provides the manager with a particular tool to be applied to a range of problems
--conjectural paradigm: differs from the other paradigms in that it seeks to leave the manager free both to choose how he makes sense of things and also what he makes sense of

He goes on to define what reflective analysis broadly as a “process for enabling personal revelation” ... and as a “technique through which the manager can examine the way in which he frames his experience” (119). The technique appears to have two main approaches. The first is “past reflection” which engages the manager in reviewing past situations similar to the present one. The second part of the technique is “option analysis” which involves reflecting on the present choices available to the manager. He sums up the technique: “[it] enables the manager to examine the ways in which he frames his own experience... [and] presents the manager with a new issue: on what basis is he to choose how to frame his experience?” (121). The article goes on to detail some of the difficulties managers have in engaging with this process, as well as some of his evolution in applying it instructionally.

Assessment
I don't think the author did the best job doing justice to the work he has done with managers. This article represents an example of how reflection is used in different disciplines to promote the “reflective practitioner.” However, his technique seems almost like psychoanalysis. The other interesting thing is that it contains two of the three moves that Yancey says reflection contains: looking back, looking at, looking forward. Boxer's technique misses the “looking at” part, but his “past reflection” and “option analysis” are definitely the Janus-like backward and forward nature of reflection. Interestingly, also, his reflective analysis doesn't have the element of tapping in to emotions in the process.

Reflection and the Self-Organized Learner: A Model of Learning Conversations

Candy, Philip, Sheila Harri-Augstein, and Laurie Thomas. “Reflection and the Self-Organized Learner: A Model of Learning Conversations.” Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning. eds. David Boud, Rosemary Keogh, and David Walker. London: Kogan Page, 1985. 100-116.

This article discusses work undertaken by the Centre for the Study of Human Learning at Brunel University started in 1968 on “developing a model of 'learning to learn' using a range of approaches which help people to become reflective self-organized learners” (101). Using as an analogy the growth in sports of using video tape to help athletes improve their performance, the authors' main point is that getting students to examine and reflect upon some record of their behavior or performance is important: “In each case, the learner has access to a behavior record—a sort of reflected image—on which to base future improvement. The idea in each situation is the same: if people are aware of what they are presently doing, and can be encouraged to reflect on it and to consider alternatives, they are in an excellent position to change and to try out new ways of behaving” (100). The authors stress that the learner should be independent and given the responsibility to learn.

The article describes various techniques and devices to help learners examine and review their learning (which they acknowledge is not an easy activity to capture). One such technique is “Learning Conversations” which sounds very similar to Knights ideas about listening and “free attention” as well as “thinking aloud.” This conversing, they believe, will help the learner internalize what they have talked about so they are able to review and reflect on these experiences themselves. They point to studies that show how difficult it is to change patterns of behavior. After training there is often a drop in competence, and, unless there is the right support or persistence, the performance will return to the old level. Hence, the importance of internalizing the new skills to reach a higher new level of skill. The authors believe in “the need for different types of dialogue at different points along the learning curve” (104).

The authors also describe other techniques for providing a learning record: The Brunel Reading Recorder, The Flow Diagram Technique, The Structure of Meaning Technique, and The Repertory Grid. The authors provide a good summary at the end of their position and their technique, so I will quote it in full:
“Our experience leads us to believe that much potentially valuable learning is 'lost' because learners have not developed the skills of recreating or reliving learning episodes which they experience. For most people, their responses to learning events tend to be habitual and unquestioned, and practice (even repeated practice) does not allow them to make explicit the connection between what Argyris and Schon (1974) call their 'theory in use' and their actions. What is required, it seems to us, is the opportunity for learners to reflect on their performance, but reflection is not facilitated simply by allowing time for it, or even by offering questions to encourage thinking and critical self-awareness. No, in the first instance, reflection is facilitated by providing some sort of behavioural record (such as a video tape, an observation sheet or a computer analysis) of the learner in the learning situation” (114-115).

Assessment
This article is significant for two reasons. First, it advocates verbal discussion as a valid form of “articulation” (a la Eisner) to promotes reflection. Here we have the possible conflict between verbal vs written reflection, but the key for each one is self-expression in language. The second interesting thing about this article is its belief that reflection only really happens when the reflector has some objective representation of themselves to reflect upon (like watching the video tape of themselves). These author's approach seems right in line with Dr. John Tenny and his 7/29/08 comment to one of my blog posts. As the head of the Education Program at Willimette University, he developed what he calls the Data-Based Classroom Observation Method. Here is one comment from his blog post: “I found that when I shifted from feedback in the form of anecdotal notes to providing objective data on what was happening in the classroom, the students/student teachers shifted from a defensive/deflective or accommodative response to one of independent reflection (definition above), problem solving, and change.” He goes on to contend, “I believe that 'reflection' is shallow and surface when the person does not have the factual basis for understanding what occurred.” (http://thespeculum.blogspot.com/2008/06/pre-dissertation-proposal.html) Tenny and the authors of this article agree that learners to engage in what we might call productive reflection or deep reflection need that objective, factual record or representation to reflect upon. The challenge is how to generate such records/representations.

Reflection and the Development of Learning Skills

Main, Alex. “Reflection and the Development of Learning Skills.” Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning. eds. David Boud, Rosemary Keogh, and David Walker. London: Kogan Page, 1985. 91-99.

This article is about the role reflection can play in helping students learn to learn. The author is a counselor who helps students with their study skills and learning habits. Many times advice from text books or teachers on how to study or learn have no affect and are not taken by the student. The author implies that deeper techniques need to be employed to affect change. Graham Gibbs (1981) believes students struggle because they “lack any proper reflection on their learning” (92). Engaging students in reflective activities help students generate their own knowledge: “he [Gibbs] is advocating that reflective techniques allow individual development, individual choice and a matching of learning methods and study techniques to individual needs and perceptions” (93). Here is a summary of one such learning exercise detailed in the article:

Exercise on “How do we learn best?”
1. 3 min. write on bad learning experience; 3 min. on good learning experience
2. 10 min. in pairs relating experiences—id main similarities and differences
3. 24 min. in fours id themes
4. 20 min. + plenary share themes, discuss

The author goes on to discuss how counseling techniques of reflective listening (different kind of reflection) help individuals to reflect. The overall goal is to generate a more reflective learner able to make individual choices that fit and are productive for them. There are three key issues in counseling learning: opening up, creating self-concepts, and developing trust in reflection (96-97). The first two of these techniques or issues align with Bouds elements of the reflective process—attending to feelings and re-evaluating experience.

The third element—developing trust in reflection—had an interesting section on student resistance to reflection: “If reflection come slowly to some people because they have little sense of involvement in their own learning, it comes unwillingly to others because they have little belief in its value for them” (97). The author explores some possible causes: introspection is unpleasant, examining learning processes empty and unproductive, or reflection has been done for them (c.f. Interpretive dependence Sheridan Blau). The author offers no ideal way to deal with this common problem. He believes, however, that for these reluctant reflectors providing lots of opportunities to reflect may lead to a chance breakthrough: “By offering students number of opportunities to reflect... I have usually found something that has triggered a rewarding experience. Simply persevering in the setting up of opportunities for reflection has worked” (98). The author closes the article by pointing out that most evaluation activities are opportunities for reflection, especially the use of open-ended questions.

Assessment
I fit this article within the category of “reflective practice.” Instead of developing the reflective practitioner in say business or in writing, we here have discussion of developing the reflective student/learner. The other significant thing about this article is its frank discussion of reluctant reflectors—students who resist or can't reflect. Often this gets blamed on developmental or learning style/personality factors. This author posits other possible reasons that are interesting more from a psychological position, and he holds out the hope that persistent opportunities to reflect often lead to this kind of reluctant reflector to engage in the activity.