Wardle, E. (2012). Creative Repurposing for Expansive Learning: Considering ‘problem-exploring’ and ‘answer-getting’ disposition in individuals and fields. Composition Forum, 26, http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/creative-repurposing.php.
For a few semesters now I’ve taught a Teaching for Transfer theme’d course. This is a combination of the focus on key concepts, scaffolded writing assignments, and discussions of writing as the central topic of the course, with a theme element included. The goal of the theme element (and weeks) is to use the composition learning, to use the key concepts, to work through increasingly complex ideas to model how students work through increasingly complex arguments in other fields. With the specific attention on composition theory, on developing a theory of writing, the goal is to help students understand their own writing processes. Agency in writing, where writing is well understood and complex.
Last week we read Wardle’s discussion of problem-exploring dispositions. This increasingly complex discussion of types of educational models (with a discussion of problem-exploring and answer-getting models within educational systems) helped students expand beyond Koupf’s creative critical tinkering (a method they understood based on their backgrounds) to connect those pedagogical ideas to understandings of systems of education. Then to feel more comfortable writing through these connections.
Toward the end of her article, Wardle discusses Bourdieu’s work with individuals inhabiting dispositions and the potential problem-exploring dispositions offers to “disrupt and bring to conscious awareness” previously beliefs and understandings held by the student. Good course scaffolding then needs to provide productive space for students to react to this double bind where unconscious ideas that won’t help that as writers can be addressed and possibly improved, where students exploring and failing can recognize the disposition they inhabit so they can prepare for difficult writing situations.
As I move forward with my own research on habits of mind, I wonder where the overlap points are with problem-exploring and habits of mind. Would students benefit from a more concrete understanding of the principles of habit of mind as a way to understand their dispositions? Are there places in the semester where students failure won’t result in productive future understanding (due to overall stress, etc.)? Ultimately I’m wondering, how can habits of mind can help prepare students for seeing how writing can help them learn, think, create, and tinker so the connection to problem-exploring, and possible failure points, become expected moments during the writing process the way drafting is an expected moment of the writing process. How will this be valuable to students, and how do I help show them the value?
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