Abstract
How do students learn from creative writing for critical thinking? This chapter shows that writers try out discoursal identities they wish to ascribe to themselves and leave out those that they are uninterested in. What and who the writer becomes through discoursal choices create a dominant perspective through which the writer views the assignment, and this has a decisive impact on what the writer learns. Based on these observations, I have structured the results as three prototypical writers’ positions with a variation in each. The names assigned to the positions, the genre-, the process- and the research-oriented positions, mirror the driving motives and objects that are the main focus in each learning trajectory.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
According to the Socratic idea of how we become wise, man was born in possession of all knowledge. However, it had to be drawn out of him by a midwife (a philosopher like Socrates and his dialectical method) in a process that has been compared to childbirth, maieutics (Bergsten 1993).
References
Berge, Kjell Lars (1988). Skolestilen som genre; Med påtvungen penn. Oslo: Landslaget for Norskundervisning, LNU Cappelens Forlag, pp. 54–76.
Bergsten, Staffan (1993). Preface to Platon, Om kärleken och döden, Gästabudet, Försvarstalet, Faidron. Staffan Bergsten (ed.). Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Biggs, John & Tang, Catherine (2011). Teaching for Quality Learning at University. 4th ed. Maidenhead, England: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press, McGraw-Hill House, pp. 45–57, 99.
Billig, Michael (1996). Arguing and Thinking; A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burgess, Amy & Ivanič, Roz (2010). Writing and Being Written: Issues of Identity Across Timescales. I: Written Communication 27: 228. Available at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0741088310363447. pp. 228–255.
Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály (1992). Flow; den optimala upplevelsens psykologi. Translated into Swedish by Göran Grip. Stockholm: Natur och kultur.
Elbow, Peter (1973). Writing Without Teachers. London/New York: Oxford University Press.
Elbow, Peter (1994). Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing. In: Kerry S. Walters (ed.). Re-thinking Reason: New Perspectives in Critical Thinking. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 1–31.
Elton, L. (2005). Scholarship and the Research and Teaching Nexus. In: R. Barnett (ed.). Reshaping the University: New Relationships Between Research, Scholarship and Teaching. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill/Open University Press, pp. 108-118. Humboldt von, Wilhelm (1810).
Engeström, Yrjö (1987). Learning by Expanding: An Activity-Theoretical Approach to Developmental Research. Helsingfors universitet: Pedagogiska institutionen, Chaps. 2, 3, 4. Downloaded in March 2013 from http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/Engestrom/expanding/ch2.htm
Gee, James Paul (1990). Social Linguistics and Literacies—Ideology in Discourses. Basingstoke: Falmer Press.
Hoel, Torlaug Løkensgard, (2000). Skriva och samtala; Lärande genom responsgrupper. Translated into Swedish by Sten Andersson. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Hoel, Torlaug Løkensgard (2010). Skriva på universitet och högskolor—en bok för lärare och studenter. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Chap. 2, pp. 47–82.
Ivanič, Roz (1998). Writing and identity: The Discoursal Construction of Identity in Academic Writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ivanič, Roz (2004). Discourses of Writing and Learning to Write. Language and Education 18/3: 220–245. Downloaded in March 2010.
Ivanič, Roz (2006). Language, Learning and Identification. In: R. Kiely et al. (eds.). Language. Culture and Identity in Applied Linguistics. University of Bristol: British Association for Applied Linguistics. London: Equinox.
Lave, Jean & Wenger, Etienne (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Linell, Per (2011). Samtalskulturer: Kommunikativa verksamhetstyper i samhället. Studies in Language and Culture 18. Linköping: Department of Culture and Communication.
Luke, Allan & Freebody, Peter (1997). The Social Practices of Reading. In: S. Muspratt, A. Luke & P. Freebody (eds.). Constructing Critical Literacies, Teaching and Learning Textual Practice. Cresskill: Hampton Press, pp. 185–225.
Nussbaum, Martha Craven (1997). Cultivating Humanity; A Classical Defence of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1999 [1934]). Tänkande och språk. Translated into Swedish by Kajsa Öberg Lindsten. Preface by Gunilla Lindqvist. Göteborg: Daidalos.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society; The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner & E. Souberman (eds.). Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
Wenger, Etienne (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Edberg, H. (2018). Writers’ Positions. In: Creative Writing for Critical Thinking. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65491-1_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65491-1_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-65490-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65491-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)