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last.updated 8.5.09

 

Pedagogical Close-Up

Purpose

Like a final, this assignment gives you the opportunity to synthesize everything that you did this semester. The instructor wants to see how the pedagogy that you have designed this semester fits into the larger conversation about composition studies–both in terms of what you see yourself taking away from the conversation and what you see yourself contributing to it (i.e., praxis). As an instructor of writing, in any specialty, you will want to stay current with the pedagogical discussions. And as you become a more experienced instructor, you will not always be asked to articulate your pedagogical reflection; however, you will want to replicate many aspects of this assignment's cognitive exercises.

Instructions

The audience for this document is specifically the instructor who wants to see how well you can talk about your pedagogy in terms of the readings that you did this semester. Where the syllabus rationale was written for a general audience and was meant to discuss the syllabus broadly, the close-up is meant to be a much more specific and detailed discussion. You may use parts of your syllabus rationale that you believe is relevant to this new discussion.

Go back to Berlin's Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges and review his discussion on noetic fields. Using his framework as a model, you will, in this assignment, explain the noetic field that informs your pedagogy. You may choose one of the noetic fields that Berlin has already discussed and apply it to specific details in from pedagogy. Or you can use his framework to develop your own noetic field that explains your pedagogy.

Once you develop your noetic field, think of it as an argument for a good model of writing instruction; thus you will want to support your argument with both details from your pedagogy and by appropriately applying scholarship from the field.

Use the following heuristics to merely gather the content for a strong, cohesive 1500 word, single-spaced discussion:

  • what is your pedagogical goals for the composition course that you developed? (go back to the freewriting that you did at the very beginning of the course and your syllabus rationale)
  • what is your approach to each element of the noetic field? what have composition scholars said about these issues? (use the assigned readings, the readings that you did for WikiComp, and any other relevant scholarship that you read)
  • how does your pedagogy, including what you developed for the Assignment Sheet, reflect your position on these elements? (use the pedagogical documents that you developed to exemplify the points that you are making)
  • how might the practice of the pedagogy you developed contribute to the larger conversation about composition studies? What does it say about noetic fields that have already been established? What does your noetic field say about the future of composition studies? (your response to this will probably draw upon everything above; you may also choose to use your experiences in the classroom to support your point, but not to the exclusion of engaging with the theoretical discussion)
  • sources that you reference, should be cited using a MLA or APA format.


Criteria

Logistics:

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

  • a sense of audience–are you demonstrating an understanding of noetic fields? an understanding of the academic discourse community and an ability to insert yourself into the conversation?
  • an informed understanding of composition theory and your ability to articulate this understanding
  • your ability to support your position with useful examples from your documents and thoughtful analysis from the readings
  • a scholarly persona
  • a cohesive discussion, as opposed to several disjointed answers to the heuristics
  • appropriate use of conventions throughout the portfolio, including APA or MLA citation formatting