| More process philosophy:
Writing to learn and writing
to present learning
"If students cannot think or write,
perhaps it is because they have been
given too little opportunity to write or think at all."
-Paul Connolly, "Writing and the Ecology
of Learning" 9
Writing to present learning
is common in the academy. The thinking that underlies exams, theses, and
other gateway writing tasks, is of course, "If you can't write it, you
don't know it," a kind of back door admission that writing and learning
are related and that one can measure the other. While writing to present
learning is standard academic fare, writing to learn has had less emphasis,
though writing that captures, records, represents, and explores makes it
possible for students, scholars, and other professionals to develop and
to present knowledge in writing. As mathematician Paul Connolly writes,
There is a profound difference
between the preliminary use of language to
serve thinking and the ultimate display of thought that we call exposition
or argument.
("Writing and the Ecology of
Learning" 6)
Writing intensive programs have embraced
"writing to learn" as part of their interest in the ways in which writing
promotes learning and entails a process. The two main ways writing intensive
programs address writing to learn are, first, through attention to the
writing process, in which the earlier phases more specifically involve
writing to discover, develop, and learn, and, second, through specific
activities that ask students to engage in writing that is informal, exploratory,
tentative, and certainly not graded in the way that a finished piece of
writing would be. Such writing to learn activities may or may not be tied
directly to writing assignments, but they are designed to help students
engage course content meaningfully by writing.
A process relationship
The Writing Intensive Program
emphasizes the process relation between writing to acquire learning and
writing to present learning. Attention to the writing process in a writing
intensive course involves both kinds and purposes of writing. Furthermore,
both kinds and purposes of writing entail different feedback and evaluation
strategies.
Though presumably any college writing
task aims to help students learn (or why would we ask them to do it?),
"writing to learn" has been specifically recognized for its role in helping
students to acquire understanding and in making the writing that demonstrates
learning, presents findings, or argues a point possible. The two general
types and purposes of writing can be plotted this way:
Writing
to learn:
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Writing to present learning:
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writing to capture, to record,
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writing to communicate results,
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to develop, to explore, to represent
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to convince,
to argue,
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to acquire understanding or knowledge
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to share understanding or knowledge,
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to analyze
relations
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to present findings, discoveries
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entails a "contingent repertoire"
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entails more of an "empiricist
repertoire"
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As Paul Connolly observes,
What 'informal' writing to learn,
as opposed to the longer, finished 'research paper,' restores to science
education is the contingent quality of the scientific process (8).
Additional ways to think about
writing to learn and writing to present learning:
Writing to learn:
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Writing to present learning:
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| more informal, not finished |
more formal, complete |
| earlier in writing process |
later in or result of process |
| not "graded" as a finished product |
graded or evaluated by audience |
| "low stakes" in terms of risks,
penaltiesfor error, consequences |
higher stakes in terms of credibility
or grades |
| more private, for individual or
small group to use or consider in a process |
more public, can stand alone |
The more informal language that marks
writing to learn activities and earlier stages of the writing process is
for one mathematician "the most important mediator of concepts we do not
yet fully hold" (Connolly 4). It allows students to consider the questions
they do not have formal language for, a lack that makes learning of any
subject difficult. As Peter Elbow explains, "high stakes" writing or writing
that presents learning more formally helps us to give grades based on how
well a student has done in articulating their learning in writing and how
well he or she has honored the formal conventions for presenting learning
in a discipline ("High Stakes and Low Stakes in Assigning and Responding
to Writing" 5-6).
Benefits of writing to learn
activities:
1) Stimulates interest and curiosity
(involves students in active learning).
2) Builds "confidence" in ability
to reason through and solve problems.
3) Helps students "overcome anxiety
" that occurs when education stresses answers, not options, and product,
not process" (Connolly 6).
Summary: Writing develops writing
In courses in which writing
to present leaning has dominated and in which such writing (perhaps
in the form of formal papers) has not been staged, using more writing
to learn activities and assignments, including staged assignments,
teaches the benefits of engaging in writing in order to develop thinking
and to generate more writing. In considering the relationships between
the two types and purposes of writing, it is important to teach the relation
between the two, for example how the formal paper develops from process
writing. Again, this difference in kind and form means that we respond
differently to the two types and purposes of writing assignments. Finally,
while we acknowledge that there are many ways both to acquire and to demonstrate
learning, we believe that writing offers distinctive benefits.
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