Nawal Alhodithi
Citations of: Creative Writing as a site of Pedagogical Identity and Pedagogic Learning
Annotation by Nawal Alhodithi (2015)
O’Rourke, R. (2007) Creative Writing as a site of Pedagogical Identity and Pedagogic Learning. Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. 7 (3), 501-512.
Article Summary:
This article explains the experience of the author with teaching creative writing to university students. The author mainly critique the tacit pedagogy in the teaching of creative writing. She focuses on issue regarding tutors and the support they have. Her aim is to examine creative writing teaching as socially situated practice. Also, by discussing the practices of creative writing teachers, O’Rourke contributes to the existing debates about creative writing pedagogy. To achieve this, her argument divides the pedagogical route into three main historical phases with detailed discussion of each. She concludes by stating that pedagogy is a process that can’t be fixed and pedagogical identity is a useful tool to explain what goes inside a creative writing classroom.
Article Assessment:
This article discusses a personal experience of the author who is also a teacher of creative writing. The author notices a gap in the literature that explores the pedagogical practices of creative writing teachers and thus, she started with her experience as one of the first steps to understand this somehow underrepresented field. This article invites all teachers of creative writing, as well as writing in general, to write about and reflect on their teaching experiences. It also invites researchers to empirically scrutinize the field of creative writing pedagogy and fix its existing issues or problems.
Key Quotation:
“Finally, as creative writing begins to settle itself into the academy as an emerged rather than emergent discipline, the question of how we share and remake our pedagogic practices with and for new practitioners in the field becomes pressing.” (p.512)
Citation of: The Writing Community: A New Model for the Creative Writing Classroom
Annotation by: Nawal Alhodithi (2015)
Blythe, H. and Sweet, C. (2008). The Writing Community: A New Model for the Creative Writing Classroom. Duke University Press. 8 (2), 305-325.
Article Summary:
This article starts with stating the lack of clear “well- defined pedagogy” for creative writing. The authors argue that up until the year 2000, teachers of creative writing were just teaching with no clear plan or theories. The word pedagogy did not even exist in their vocabulary. Thus, they decided to teach and research creative writing pedagogy. They collected all the existing approaches that were used by teachers and examined them. They ended up by creating a seventh new approach of teaching creating writing, “The Writing Community”. Accordingly, they conclude that this new approach has more strengths and less weaknesses than the older ones.
Article Assessment:
This article is an important reference for any creative writing teacher and/ or researcher. It has a collection of teaching methods along with their pros and cons. It also presents an innovative method of teaching creative writing with reasonable justifications for implementing it in the classroom. This article has historical documentation of creative writing teaching methods and pedagogy. Overall, it’s a well-written, useful resource.
Key Quotations:
“Truthfully, until seven years ago, we’d never even thought about the question of how we teach creative writing — we had been, as Nike advises, just doing it.” (p.305)
“We learned long ago that the best way to force ourselves to research a subject is to agree to teach it. After all, if only to avoid being shown up, a teacher has to be at least a few minutes ahead of his or her brightest student (fear of embarrassment might be the true parent of invention).” (p.306)
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