This course introduces students to the various approaches that guide the study and teaching of writing. In it, we will explore the different methods of teaching writing that have emerged in the last sixty years, ranging from methods for teaching students how to produce texts to methods for assessing these texts. We will also examine the research and theories that inform these methods, starting with the emergence of the process movement in the 1960s and then inquiring into its various manifestations (and their critiques) in the years since, including the impact of new media. Along the way, I hope we can begin to think critically about the various approaches that inform the teaching of writing, in particular, what values and assumptions guide these approaches, whose interests they serve, and their relation to power and difference, so that we all can become more self-reflective, ethical, and responsible readers, writers, and teachers. Most of all, I would like this course to give us all a chance to think about what it means to teach writing, to develop and share our own goals for teaching writing, and to generate and articulate practices that will help us achieve these goals.
Course Goals:
- To familiarize you with the various theories and approaches that inform writing instruction.
- To help you develop the critical ability to examine the values and assumptions behind the various approaches (whose interests they serve, what they enable and what they prevent).
- To provide an opportunity for you to conduct writing-related research.
- To introduce you to a theoretical vocabulary that will allow you to articulate your goals as a writing teacher.
- To give you a chance to develop a range of teaching materials that will help you achieve your goals in the context of grade-level and state and national standards.
Course Texts:
Susan Miller, The Norton Book of Composition Studies (W.W Norton 2009)
Additional readings on Canvas