Revealing the Iceberg: Creative Writing,Process & Deliberate Practice

Historical attitudes to literary creativity often focus on it as a genetic or innate characteristic. Ericsson's notion of ‘deliberate practice’ and Simon & Chase's ‘ten‐year rule’, however, have shown the importance of sustained practice to achieve high‐level performance. The iceberg illusion of elite performance leaves observers marvelling at the end product without an appreciation of the hours of work beneath the surface. This case study considers how attitudes to student creative writing may be altered by emphasising creative process. Students engaged in creative writing which literalised the iceberg metaphor, placing greater focused on the ‘submerged’ planning, drafting and revision alongside the ‘visible’ end product. Utilising the extended mind hypothesis, student responses demonstrate the importance of planning to order and develop their ideas. The benefits of encouraging an approach to creativity that negates innatist explanations in favour of a growth mindset or deliberate practice approach are evidenced.     

Using transformative models of adult literacy in conflict resolution and peacebuilding processes at community level: examples from Guinea,Sierra Leone and Sudan

This paper draws on the experience in Guinea, Sierra Leone and South Sudan, to explore how the methodology and modalities of community based participatory literacy can interrelate and combine with those of conflict resolution and peacebuilding. The paper considers how transformative models of literacy, such as those of Freire, REFLECT, the ActionAid literacy programme, and ‘New Literacy Studies’, along with the self‐expression and creative writing these generate, can contribute to the processes of forgiveness, reconciliation and reconstruction. It argues that adult literacy programmes constitute an important element in post‐conflict reconstruction.     

A halter and a lead rope: shifting pedagogical imaginaries of becoming within a human–horse relationship

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the process of becoming within the relation between a human and a horse, and seeks to reimagine pedagogy as a relational process of ‘becoming-animal’. In order to emphasise the relational space between a horse and a human, I begin with an experimental style of writing that traces specific moments between an actual relation between a horse and myself. Considering the relation as a singularity in this way acts as a method through which the pedagogical relation can be explored and new pedagogical images can be suggested. I then move onto to discuss Rosi Braidotti's post-humanist ideas on becoming and link these to the ideas of the ‘event’ and of ‘beginnings’ within the educational theory of Gert Biesta, drawing out two lines of thought. One line follows Braidotti's work on becoming-animal, and the other Paul Patton's work on the nuances of power relations between humans and horses. In conclusion, I discuss how this figuration of a halter and a lead rope in the human–horse relation helps to think pedagogy as rooted in becoming-animal and how this contributes to the development of new imaginaries of becoming.     

Strong language: the purpose of dialogue in the development of writing

In order to discuss the nature and nurture of authorship in schooled literacy, the author explores what Bakhtin calls ‘responsive understanding’ to text and textual relations (1986). The activity of dialogue is crucial to the condition and form of responsive understanding. This paper considers a renewed interest in dialogical method as a way of strengthening teachers' purposes, particularly in relation to the development of learners' writing.     

Returning to Teaching: the career breaks and returns of married women primary headteachers

The term ‘broken career’ is used to describe the most common work pattern for married women teachers. The break in teaching service involves leaving teaching for a period, usually in order to have and to care for young children, and then returning to teaching when family responsibilities seem to permit. The article considers what were the significant features in the timing, the length and the type of the breaks in teaching service of a sample of married women who were primary and infant headteachers. The manner of the returns, is examined, in particular how the returns came about, and this indicates the importance of personal contacts and informal networks in bringing women back into primary teaching. Finally the article considers the inadequacy of the term ‘broken’ or ‘interrupted’ career to describe or explain the experiences of these women.     

“I think it fits in”: using process drama to promote agentic writing with primary school children

Set against the backdrop of children being ‘alienated’ from their writing, this paper is taken from a United Kingdom Literacy Association sponsored project where primary school teachers were trained to use process drama in order to give children more agency in their writing across the curriculum. Here, we use discourse analysis to think about the children's historical creative writing in relation to the drama lessons which are differently framed by the teachers. Building upon a theoretical model of process drama as involving ‘embodied experience’ and writing as problem‐solving, a case is made that process drama can lead to what we term ‘agentic writing’. Agentic writing, we demonstrate, involves children actively translating their embodied experience of process drama into writing by making a range of intertextual borrowings. These borrowings serve both to capture and transform their embodied experience as the children gain agency by standing outside language to achieve ‘double voicedness’ and in doing so write sophisticated texts. Seeing the relationship between process drama and writing in this light, we argue, provides a means of reconnecting children to the act of writing.     

On the necessary co-existence of special and inclusive education

ABSTRACT

While many distinctions between ‘special’ and ‘inclusive’ education have been made and continue to be forcefully debated, the two concepts remain strongly evident in policy and practice in many countries. This paper discusses the interrelated history of these concepts. It explores how conceptualisations of them have changed since Salamanca and reflects on whether inclusive education has, can or should replace special education. It considers the extent to which ‘special’ and ‘inclusive’ education are understood as the same or different today. The paper argues for a clear a distinction to be made between how special educators can work in support of inclusive education and the task of inclusive education which addresses the barriers to participation faced by members of marginalised groups.     

Why the Computer is not Dominating Schools: a failure of policy or a failure of practice?

Despite the hyperbole that has continually surrounded the area of educational computing, for the last 20 years the computer has noticeably failed to permeate the school setting. This has traditionally been attributed to a failure of educational practice to adapt to, and provide for, the educational ‘IT revolution’. However, this article argues that a wider critique of educational computing should be adopted if‐we are to really understand the apparent failure of computers to be integrated into the compulsory educational setting. By examining how educational computing has been, and continues to be, constructed in both educational policy and discourse, the article considers how this ‘writing’ of educational computing is fundamentally at odds with the structure of the school organisation it is meant to merge with     

Not writing,and giving ‘zero-f**ks’ about it: queer(y)ing doctoral ‘failure’

This article proposes that a queer reading of failure might offer opportunities to re-think the affective-political practice of doctoral writing. It examines data from one case in Aotearoa New Zealand to illustrate how a doctoral student negotiates ‘failure’ in relation to their writing practice and identity. While higher education researchers have tended to interpret failure as something to avoid, or learn from in the pursuit of normative success, queer research offers us new pathways into analysis. In this article, I argue that we can recognize ‘writing failures’ as possible modes of being and becoming doctoral. Despite being frequently associated with affective practices of guilt, shame, and disappointment, failure might also open onto alternative feelings such as relief, joy, and satisfaction. Ultimately, the article contends that queer concepts might assist higher education researchers to interrogate normative framings of failure, and to glimpse alternative possibilities for understanding ‘success’.     

Two Arts. Revision and what it leaves behind

Inspired by an experience of teaching the drafts of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘One Art’, this article rereads the drafts as far more than imperfect precursors to the final poem. The drafts have their own prosodic features and poetic logic, one that values and enacts a vertiginous dilation of thought, expression and memory. The final version of ‘One Art’ records an anxiety about moving away from the openness of drafting to the stability of the finished poem. It is an anxiety that writers and especially writing teachers should consider adopting.     

Resistance and invention: becoming academic,remaining other

In this paper, we take an unsanctioned academic network, a writing group, as a site of inquiry into both the broad given-ness of the norms of the neoliberal academy and our simultaneous compliance with and resistance to these norms. We choose to comply because we are invested in becoming academics; we continue to research and write for conferences and publication and to frame our scholarly work in terms of how it can be used on our CVs. We choose to resist by working collaboratively and towards remaining intelligible (both to ourselves and to those outside the academy) while becoming scholars. Here we put several concepts to work to think about the role of the writing group in our experiences as becoming-scholars, in particular ‘becoming-minoritarian,’ ‘schizoid subjectivities,’ ‘agential assemblage,’ and ‘institutional passing.’ Then, to think about how we (might) live through the process of becoming academic, we turn to the concept of survivance.     

Education's Love Triangle

It has been acknowledged that education includes ‘a love of what one teaches and a love of those whom one teaches’ (Hogan 2010: 81), but two traditions of writing in philosophy of education—concerning love for student and love for subject—have rarely been brought together. This paper considers the extent to which the ‘triangular’ relationship of teacher, student and subject matter runs the risk of the rivalry, jealousy and strife that are characteristic of ‘tragic’ love triangles, or entails undesirable consequences such as transference from one intended object of love to another. It argues that this faultline in the literature of educational love corresponds to education's ‘divided heart’. The implication of this exploration of education's triangular relationship is that we cannot ignore the ‘dark of love’, nor can we address it simply by asserting that educational love must be of a more honourable sort than romantic love. These tensions can be reconciled through the loving recourse of ‘ceasing to strive’ and the possibility of sublimating the two originary loves into a higher ‘love of truth’.     

Why School English Needs a ‘Good Enough’ Grammatics (and Not More Grammar)

At the dawn of a national curriculum for English in Australia, grammar has appeared without any serious interrogation of the terms of its re-entry and against ambiguous evidence about its value for teaching writing. What kinds of knowledge about language do teachers need in rhetorically productive teaching? This article investigates the potential of Halliday’s notion of grammatics for understanding students’ writing as acts of meaning in context. Drawing on systemic-functional linguistics, I show how teachers can assess writing achievement using ‘big picture’ tools like genre, register and ‘small picture’ tools like Expansion. I apply these tools to two student texts that call for attention to creative uses of language and to excursions and to difficulties with logic and coherence. The paper concludes that a ‘good enough’ grammatics will enable teachers to recognize playful developments in students’ texts and also to foster their control of literate discourse.     

Counter narratives in ‘naughty’ students' accounts: challenges for the discourse of behaviour management

The paper is based on a research project that sought to understand schools' behaviour management strategies from the perspective of students who had the most experience of them. It focuses on the contrasting ways in which teacher and student subjectivities are framed and positioned within the discourse. It considers how student accounts were constructed within the framework of the project by engaging with Butler's ideas of how one gives an account of oneself in response to another's call. Also heeding Foucault's call to pay attention to the conditions of truth-telling, the paper looks at how student accounts can be read and put to use. Pupil accounts reveal other selves that encourage a re-thinking of the prior recognition of pupils as (primarily) ‘naughty’ pupils and pose the question of whether they exhibit an aesthetics of the self that maintains a critical relation to existing norms. By destabilising recognition, they expose the limits of the dominant discourse of behaviour management and encourage a deconstructive stance of ‘persistent critique’ towards it. Along the way, the paper also touches upon the methodological dilemmas in researching behaviour management.     

Male and female teachers’ evaluative responses to gender and the implications of these for the learning environments of primary age pupils

This paper adopts a social constructionist position on assessment, specifically that it can never be free of the social conditions in which it is practiced. As such, we explore two aspects of classroom interactions which contribute to and shape the learning environments in which assessment takes place. By drawing on interviews carried out with 51 teachers and 307 Year 3 (7–8‐year‐old) pupils the paper demonstrates where and how beliefs and attitudes about gender influence what they perceived as ‘good’ or ‘appropriate’ working relationships. It also considers the ways in which teachers utilize perceptions of gender to plan the curriculum and manage their classrooms. Whilst the pupils believed their teachers treated them in a fair and just manner, three quarters of the teachers interviewed believed they did or should respond differently to pupils according to gender. We argue that the emphasis given to boys’ underachievement has contributed to this scenario.     

On Flying,Writing Poetry and Doing Educational Research

This article is written in a personal capacity; it is based on a presentation entitled ‘If the child is father to the man, can the researcher be mother to the poet?’ given as part of the ECER symposium, ‘Telling stories: truth and fiction in educational research’ hosted by David Bridges, at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Edinburgh, 23 September 2000. It is meant as a stimulus to discussion about the relationship between poetry as a species of ‘creative’ writing, and research writing—how and why they might be complementarities as well as opposites. Rather than attempting a theoretical paper, the author uses excerpts from her own poetry—and those of the prize‐winning poet, Jane Draycott, with whom she recently co‐authored a book, and whose ideas have contributed to this article—to explore these ideas.     

Slowness as a Virtue

This essay explores three practices commonly discussed in relation to each other: slow writing, slow reading and slow philosophy. These have close connections, and all of these are joined by practices of philosophical teaching and dialogue, which can also be carried out in a ‘slow’ manner. ‘Slow’ here means careful, deliberate and perspicacious—which might be said to be the prime virtues of philosophy. In this essay I want to explore what slowness means in the context of our intellectual work, concluding that slowness can be seen as a kind of virtue. Like other virtues (for example, honesty), more and more of a good thing is not always for the better. One can be too slow, just as one can be too fast, and part of the enactment of this quality entails discernment in judging what kind of slowness, and how much slowness, is suited to a particular task. Context matters, and our choices about slowness need to be viewed in relation to specific circumstances.     

Phantom traces: exploring a hermeneutical approach to autobiography in curriculum studies

Autobiography presently occupies a beleaguered place in education, not unlike teachers, whose lives have been diminished through the current emphasis on testing outcomes. This paper uses WG Sebald’s writings as a place from which to relook at the relationship between writing and a life lived. Sebald was a German writer born in the shadow of WWII who wrestled with his difficult inheritance. The paper considers the ‘phantom traces’ of the author in Sebald’s creative writing, using the example of the story he tells of Paul Bereyter, Sebald’s elementary teacher. Paul committed suicide by laying himself on the railroad tracks of the town that first denied him the opportunity to teach during WWII yet accepted him back to the classroom after the war. Apparent in the telling of Paul’s story is Sebald’s interest in an ‘invisible subject’—the prolonged effect of the past, especially traumatic events, on thinking, feeling human beings. The paper draws on Sebald’s particular way of writing about his subject ‘at a slant’ so as to argue for a hermeneutical approach to currere, or autobiography in education.     

The power of positional competition and market mechanism: a case study of recent parental choice development in China

This article draws on data collected during a pilot study conducted in two west London schools exploring young people’s understandings of success. It considers ways in which ‘discourses of success’, as part of New Labour’s project of re‐inventing schooling, may shape young people’s subjectivity. The article examines articulations between New Labour policy and aspects of social difference and how these structure new identifications with success. In particular, the article explores how class, gender and ethnicity shape discourses of success and how they are implicated in their distribution. In conclusion, the article indicates how current education policy (particularly in relation to educational success) articulates the ‘public’ domain with dimensions of the ‘private’ self and suggests that understanding this is vital in the pursuit of social justice.