Making Things

I have commented on several occasions about the influence genre studies have on student composition practices. This week's articles on multimodality and student composition highlight once again the value of purposeful, authentic literacy practices in school.

In Smagorinsky, Zoss, and Reed, the authors look inside one home economics classroom to observe the complex thinking students used to solve interior design problems. The authors argue that even though courses similar to the one in the study are often times marginalized in academia, the practices students engage in while participating in meeting course goals reveal a deep level of creative thinking and motivation. One particularly poignant notion presented by the authors was the concept of "flow." This notion of flow suggests that when one is totally immersed in an activity he/she loses track of time. I wonder how often students in our classrooms become so completely engrossed in their coursework they forget to stare at the wall clock willing the minute hand to move faster. I believe in my own academic history the times I truly felt flow were in classrooms where I was making something. There's something to be said about tending to tasks which have a meaningful social and/or personal purpose.

Similarly, in both the Shipka (2006) and the Burn & Parker articles, students make things. The students in these studies engage in complex thinking in order to achieve defined end goals. These tasks encouraged students to think on multiple levels, revise, tweak, experiment before presenting to their peers and teachers. Again, motive and goal play a significant role in the composition process.

These articles highlight how current schooling practices continue to be in conflict between "in here" and "out there." Classroom instruction influenced by lack of resources, teaching knowledge, and emphasis on standardized testing, continues to be reduced to a set of skills to be learned instead of instruction that engages students to use their personal and culturally resources to make things for themselves and others. These articles also highlight the need for teachers to rethink what composition really means and to reconceptionalize the composing process.