Post-Process Theory

Critical Question 1: According to Breuch, “post-process theory does make an important pedagogical contribution through its rejection of mastery” (105). The reality of the classroom is that it is situated in an academic culture where students expect some form of measurable “improvement” that they are paying for. In this system, grades serve as a label that grants the student some level of mastery that they can communicate to future employers. How can we teach with a pedagogy that rejects English as a “masterable subject” while meeting the grading requirement? How can we/should we communicate this reality with our students without looking like complete hypocrites? 

Critical Question 2: James Sosnoski asserts that “postmodern classrooms ‘do not have to follow a single blueprint and should change according to the situation’ (210)” (Breuch 115). What does this mean for our curriculums? Our learning outcomes? Our “lesson plans”? In a dialogic classroom, what do the teacher's materials look like? The readings? The PowerPoints? The assignments?

Discussion Post

Why is it so important to consider the socio-cultural contexts that shape writers and their writing processes and environments?

If we do not consider the socio-cultural contexts that shape writing and writers, we risk upholding biased, false, and oppressive ideals about what merits "good writing." Instead, understanding and accepting that all writing is context situated asks us to question the reader and our own lived experiences in proximity to one another and compare our realities and understandings of the world through language. The concept that all writing is situated and changes from context to context are one of the pillars of post-process theory. While preceding composition theory focused on studying and articulating what good writing looks like, post-process theory instead asserted that writing is not a field that can be mastered through training, drilling, specific steps, or rules. Post-process theory "encourages us to reexamine our definition of writing as an activity rather than a body of knowledge, our methods of teaching as indeterminate activities rather than exercises of mastery, and our communicative interactions with students a dialogic rather than monologic” (Breuch 98-99). Writing as an activity transitions the focus of composition classes from creating better writers to creating a space where dialogues about what writing might look like in different discourses, spheres, and realities while acknowledging that there is no ultimate truth about good writing. Instead, all knowledge is constructed through language. Through dialogue between students and teachers, socio-epistemic pedagogical theory challenges a class of comp students to examine their epistemologies and questions the social, political, and cultural assumptions embedded in the ideologies that inform their preconceptions about writing and language. The instructor is called to do the same with their students.

As an English 101 instructor and a student, I align with socio-epistemic rhetoric and the idea that social, political, and cultural contexts shape all writing. No writing is "objective," and writing is always embedded with ideologies and assumptions that we deem "common knowledge." As a writer and researcher, socio-epistemic rhetoric calls me to consider what pillars I am building my research on and examine how those pillars are embedded in ideologies that inevitably skew the scope of my research. As a reader, socio-epistemic rhetoric calls me to examine the context that the author is writing within to research the rhetor and the way that they create knowledge based on their other discourses, epistemologies, and ways of being. As a teacher, socio-epistemic pedagogy calls me to look at my students as equals, not as novices. If I believe that writing is an activity rather than a skill to be mastered, then I accept that I am not an authoritarian expert that is funneling my knowledge into the minds of my students. Instead, I have just as much to learn from my students as I hold a space where we can have a dialogue about the discourses and ways that language creates our realities. My students have just as much to teach me, if not more. Instead, class time aims to talk about the social and historical elements of human discourse. 

If an instructor believes that all writing exists in a socio-cultural context, it can also be assumed that our pedagogies exist within the same backgrounds. According to Berlin, “Every pedagogy is imbricated in ideology, in a set of tacit assumptions about what is read, what is good, what is possible, and how power ought to be distributed” (492). In Berlin's article, they look at how the cognitive movement, the expressivist movement, and finally, the socio-epistemic movement all exist within a political ideology and agenda. For example, the cognitive movement viewed writing and the writing process as a skill that could be quantified, studied, measured, and taught for maximum effectiveness. The cognitive movement mirrors the ideologies of capitalism and a culture that aims to "improve" skills for economic gain. The hyper fixation on efficiency and pinning down an ultimate process closely reflects the ideologies of consumerism and production efficiency, turning writing into an assembly line process. Although post-process theory aims to assert that all writing is context-based and impossible to pin down, it still exists within the political and cultural context of postmodernist and anti-foundationalist perspectives. All writing, all theory, and all pedagogy are bound to the social, political, cultural, and ideological context of its origin. 

Finally, understanding that all writing is context-based challenges us to reflect on what languages and discourses are privileged in our world. As an instructor and "evaluator" of student work, it is my responsibility to examine my own epistemologies and privileges and be wary about how I am imposing my ideological perspectives on my students and their writing. Kirsch and Ritchie observe how “This new emphasis on the personal, on validating experience as a source of knowledge, raises a number of recurring questions: How do issues of power, gender, race, and class shape a politics of location?” (523). In other words, when standing in front of a classroom full of students, what are the realities of privilege and oppression within the reality of us just existing within the classroom together? Furthermore, how can I, as a teacher with the "power", address these systems to acknowledge how the "content" I am about to "teach" these students is not a body of knowledge to master but instead an activity that we engage with every day, at every moment of our existence?