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13489 results in Education, history, theory

Page 211 of 675

  • Introduction

  • Dominic Wyse, University College London
  • Book:
    How Writing Works
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    23 November 2017, pp 1-24

  • Summary

    Written language is a supreme achievement that distinguishes humans from animals. For many millions of people across the world, being literate gives access to vital parts of social and cultural life, and being illiterate results in more limited opportunities. For employment as an academic, journalist, and of course writer, writing is central to the work. For professional people, writing is a main vehicle for getting work done. For other jobs, writing is vital to efficient practices including health and safety. And for many people, writing as a source of pleasure, recreation, and reflection is what they value most. One thing all writers have in common is the challenge to write well. The challenge for a tiny minority is to reach ‘immortality’ in their writing, but for most people the challenge is making writing effectively reflect the meanings and messages they want to create and communicate. For children, the challenge is learning to write in the first place, and for teachers the challenge is helping their learners to do this. But in spite of the thousands of years of history of writing, and in spite of its global use today, writing has attracted less attention from researchers, particularly compared to oral language and reading.

    The beginning of my exploration of writing was informed by both seminal and more recent books written by people with different kinds of relevant expertise, for example by classicists (e.g. Eric Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write), philosophers (Aristotle, On Interpretation), anthropologists (Jack Goody, The Interface between the Written and the Oral), cognitive scientists (Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct), psychologists/educationalists (David Olson, The World on Paper), linguists (David Crystal, The Stories of English), literary/media theorists (Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy), journalists (Lynn Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves), and accounts by writers (Stephen King, On Writing). In answer to a question about the origins of his poems the poet Ted Hughes said:

    Well, I have a sort of notion. Just the tail end of an idea, usually just the thread of an idea. If I can feel behind that a sort of waiting momentum, a sense of some charge there to tap, then I just plunge in. What usually happens then – inevitably I would say – is that I go off in some wholly different direction.

  • 4 - Expert Writers

  • Dominic Wyse, University College London
  • Book:
    How Writing Works
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    23 November 2017, pp 122-151

  • Summary

    The writers whose work is the focus for this chapter not only have wide recognition, and for most the winning of major prizes such as the Nobel Prize for Literature, but have also been regarded by other writers, including critics, as some of the finest of their generation. Perhaps another way to describe these particular writers is, ‘writers’ writers’. In any field of human endeavour, we look to the most successful exponents of the art, science, or other domain for their reflections, knowledge, and understanding.

    The primary data that underpinned the analysis for this chapter already existed in The Paris Review Interviews. The Paris Review Interviews are interviews with some of the world's great writers from the 1950s onwards. There are four printed volumes that are a selection of the best of 64 interviews taken from all interviews available prior to each volume. Subsequently, the resource continues to be added to online. As the editor Philip Gourevitch made the selections for the four printed volumes. The revealing insights, in the words of the very writers themselves, are in no small part due to the methodological approach taken by The Paris Review. The interviewers were themselves writers who had read their interviewee's works. The interviews, which were undertaken over one or more visits to the writers’ homes, sometimes over a period of years, were followed by writers being sent an edited transcript of the interview to review. Hence the benefits of the oral interview, with its revealing ‘on the spot’ requirement for answers, was balanced against the opportunity for the writers to reflect carefully on the transcript to ensure their answers were as close to their intended beliefs as possible. A unique feature of the interviews is that they focus on the processes of writing, the writer's craft, much more than the outputs of writing.

    In addition to the formal interviews the Paris Review site also includes a wealth of current and contemporary accounts including its reports in The Daily. For example, an interview outside of the usual Paris Review interviews was with Karl Ove Knausgård whose writing was generating intense interest at the time.

  • 3 - Writing Guidance

  • Dominic Wyse, University College London
  • Book:
    How Writing Works
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    23 November 2017, pp 89-121

  • Summary

    The development of the English language, from its early forms (including Germanic runic inscriptions) towards the beginnings of standardisation of the language as a result of the interactions between professional and other trades-people, reached an important point in the eighteenth century. New attempts were made to prescribe ‘correct’ forms of English, for example, for the benefit of people from other countries who wanted to learn English. These attempts resulted in the first very popular books that took a prescriptive approach to the grammar and other elements of the English language, such as the books by Walker, Louth, and Mulcaster.

    The growth of English has included an increase in the number and range of books and other texts intended as guides to the use of the English language. These texts vary in their priorities, from those that aim to maintain and document the conventions of the language, to those that seek to prescribe, to others whose main purpose is to entertain. These texts provide another source for analysis about how writing works or how it should work, as they reveal authors’, and in some ways societies’, perceptions of language. Hence this chapter is focused on a selection of writing guidance from the twentieth century to the present. I am interested not only in the types of such guides and their specific guidance but also some of the assumptions or fundamental rationales that underpin them.

    The texts selected for analysis in this chapter (including digital sources) were a mixture of ones that I was already familiar with (as a result of research over many years) and texts new to me that I located as a result of a range of searches, and through recommendations from colleagues and friends. The final selection of texts for analysis for this chapter was 23 well-regarded, influential, relatively recently published texts. The selection process took account of aspects such as authors’ background and knowledge; the type of text, including general to more specific language orientation; the apparent approach of the author to language and writing; evidence of impact such as high sales, high citations, and multiple editions; but also my intent to survey a wide variety of guides.

  • 6 - Novice Writers and Education

  • Dominic Wyse, University College London
  • Book:
    How Writing Works
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    23 November 2017, pp 178-207

  • Summary

    So far in this book I have examined writing and its processes from five major perspectives: theoretical; historical; trends in writing conventions and guidance; expert writers’ perspectives; and creativity and writing. However, there remains a global arena where a great deal of writing takes place which I have not addressed in depth so far. This is the world of writing as part of education, where learning begins in the home, and continues in schools (and colleges and universities, which were a focus in Chapter 3), and becomes part of the world of work for many people. The term lifelong learning is one favoured by many who study education: writing is a classic example of something that can require lifelong learning, not least because there is always something more about writing that can be learned no matter how expert the writer is.

    In the chapter on the history of writing, I explored the movement from oral to literate societies. Although there are still a small number of non-literate societies or communities in the world, the issue of literacy has become a global one that is linked with ideas about disadvantage and poverty. A literate society is certainly not one that is intrinsically superior to a non-literate society. However, there are opportunities that open as a result of being literate, and consequently there are opportunities that are not accessible without literacy. In statistics reported by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 2015, it was estimated that worldwide 86% of people age 15 or above were literate, and that 91% of people aged from 15 to 24 years were literate. But this also meant that ‘758 million adults 15 years and older still cannot read or write a simple sentence. Roughly two-thirds of them are female’.

    One of the key places that literacy is learned is in formal education, in early years settings and in schools, so first and foremost it is important that children have access to education. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) report published in 2015 noted progress in increasing children's attendance at schools but also some severe challenges:

  • • Half of the 58 million out-of-school children of primary school age live in conflict-affected areas.

  • 2.1 - Engagement practices: a major issue in contemporary education

  • from Part 2 - Practice
  • Edited by Geoff Woolcott, Southern Cross University, Australia, Robert Whannell, University of New England, Australia
  • Book:
    Teaching Secondary Science
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    16 November 2017, pp 217-235

  • Summary

    LEARNING OBJECTIVES

    After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

  • • describe strategies for signposting the significance and connection of a learning activity

  • • formulate questions that encourage substantive conversation

  • • identify learning design elements that encourage higher order thinking

  • • plan strategies that allow feedback and development of metacognitive skills.

    • Introduction

    This chapter is the ‘mirror’ chapter for Chapter 1.1 and it also introduces ideas that will be explored more fully in the remainder of this book. The chapter begins to connect the more theoretical discussion in the first part of the book to everyday practice in schools. The connection will be made through a discussion of four example lessons, each used to discuss a range of strategies for engaging students in their learning, although the strategies should also be seen as highly interconnected.

    A key idea to keep in mind as you read this chapter is that engagement is something different to entertainment or even attention and is more than good behaviour. When they are engaged, students take on work that is intellectually challenging, involves higher order thinking and is connected to work they do in the real world. Following on from this, another key idea to keep in mind is that engagement in learning is often more about how we go about teaching, rather than what we teach.

    OPENING VIGNETTE

    When do we get to use the Bunsen burners?

    As I started teaching, this was a near constant refrain from my year 7 and year 8 classes, and it left me feeling frustrated. Didn't these kids ‘get’ that science was so much more? This is quite literally the subject of ‘life, the universe and everything’! Sure, the Bunsen burner has its appeal, but weren't they curious about other things, or even just about what was going on when the gas burned in the burner that was such an obsession? And I was teaching in the middle of the Murray-Darling Basin during a massive drought, so why weren't they interested in my carefully planned unit on the water cycle?

    I was reminded of this experience recently when a science communicator was relating how, in her regular spot on the local ABC radio station, the phones ran hot when the topic was medical research, but shows on quantum physics had to be well spaced in the calendar as they quickly exhausted the question bank in the listener community.

Page 211 of 675