Reinventing Curriculum: A Complex Perspective on Literacy and Writing

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reinventing curriculum a complex perspective on literacy and writing

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reinventing curriculum a complex perspective on literacy and writing

Linda Laidlaw University of Alberta

LEA 2005

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS Mahwah, New Jersey London

The camera-ready copy for the text of this book was provided by the author. Copyright © 2005 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microfilm, retrieval system, or any other means, without prior written permission of the publisher. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc, Publishers 10 Industrial Avenue Mahwah, NJ 07430 Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey. Cover image by Michael Emme.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Laidlaw, Linda Reinventing curriculum : a complex perspective on literacy and writing / Linda Laidlaw. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8058-5042-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8058-5043-0 (pbk : alk. paper) 1. Language arts (Elementary) 2. English language—Composition and exercises—Study and teaching (Elementary) I. Title.

LB1576.L243 2005 372.6—dc22 2004061423 Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability. Printed in the United States of America 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

to my parents and mentors


Contents

Preface Acknowledgments

xi xxi

Chapter 1. Terra Incognita: Unmapping Literacy Curriculum

1

Chapter 2. New Maps: Complexity, Learning and Writing

23

Chapter 3. Rereading Maps of Literacy and Language: A Tangled History

59

Chapter 4. Entering the Woods: Writing, Interpretation, Identity

93

Chapter 5. Uncovering the Bones of a Complex Pedagogy for Writing and Literacy

123

Afterword

163

Endnotes

167

References

193

Index

206

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The closest we come to knowng the location of what's unknown is when it melts through the map like a watermark, a stain transparent as a drop of rain. Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces


preface

xi


Preface

"One time," they write, "There was a little girl . . . ," or, "Once there was a boy who . . . ," and so begin the stories which travel into the realm of the imaginary. It always interests the teacher, the capacity young children have for creating fictional worlds and experiences through their stories or writing. There is a power in these narratives—the children invent new possibilities, other selves, at the same time that these stories tell tales of the children who have invented them. To enter into such stories, the teacher discovers, is to arrive into a new sort of place. . . . +++

Like many of the children I taught in my days as a primary teacher, I too have been drawn into imaginary spaces made alive within a text, other realms of the less familiar which invited exploration through reading and writing. Places of fiction, imagination, inquiry, and interpretation evoke an interesting kind of travel by text. Canadian fiction writer, Jane Urquhart, in the preface to her collection of short stories Storm Glass, suggests that writing fiction provides "the most satisfying form of armchair travel,"1 where one is able to leap across time, geographies, and identities. Through such writing, according to Urquhart, it is possible to gain a deeper understanding of one's own homelands, and become further acquainted with different versions of one's identity. Sometimes, however, in school settings it can be difficult to create or support the sorts of spaces and practices required for generative, interpretive work in writing and reading. Over the past few years, my wonderings about the difficulties of engaging in interpretive writing in schools, combined with observations of my own and my students' experiences, has led me to investigate the nature of writing and literacy and to consider what happens when children begin to write. In recent years, there has been considerable interest in children's development and success in literacy, particularly within political and educational arenas. Numerous books and resources addressing the subject of literacy acquisition have emerged, analyzing topics such as how children develop literacy skills and how these may be assessed, methods for teaching phonemic awareness and other decoding processes, and the influence of children's social and cultural ex-

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Reinventing Curriculum

periences, to list a few examples from diverse areas of research. These resources play important roles in increasing understanding and knowledge of how children become literate. I have also been interested in attempting to understand how children's literacy learning and writing experiences are embedded in larger contexts, histories, and relations, and what these might signify for learners and teachers. Relatively few resources examine children's literacy from the perspective of writing; the majority of texts and materials in the area of early literacy emphasize children's reading development. This book attempts to address this gap, by examining children's writing and its relation to the historical development of alphabetic literacy, as well as other contexts in which literacy is intertwined. My argument, throughout this text, is that the writing development and literacy of young children must not be disconnected or compartmentalized from the larger literate world, and that, in fact, knowledge about the history of literacy has a significant contribution to make in understanding how young children invent again, the ability to write and to read, and the ability to create meaning from literacy experiences. This book suggests that writing, as a learned technology embedded in a living system of interactions, has the capacity for transforming and translating thought, language, relations and subjectivities. This book also proposes that, though writing tends to be conceptualized as being primarily an individual matter within settings of schooling, when writing is understood as a collective and transformative representation system, pedagogy can provide alternative structures and possibilities for 'knowing' and 'being' in the classroom. Recent developments in the complexity sciences, a growing field of inquiry developing across diverse domains, offer a number of ways to reconsider how literacy pedagogy might be described and organized. Current work in complexity science is concerned with adaptive systems, also known as learning systems or self-organizing systems. Such systems (including those found in classrooms and schools) are difficult to explain using reductive methods of traditional science. What complexity science offers to the study of complex organisms (such as learners, collective groups of children, or

xiv

schools) is a focus on the patterns and dynamic relationships across such phenomena. Mathematicians, biologists, social scientists, and theorists in the humanities have taken up frames and concepts from complexity science to study phenomena in their own fields. Increasingly, educators are using complexity science to understand and analyze their experiences of teaching, learning, and schooling.2 This book examines some of the contributions complexity science can offer to literacy teaching and learning. THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

As I began working on this book, I puzzled over how to best represent the complexity of engagements with literacy and how to weave together the various threads I wanted to include in this text. I wanted to provide descriptions of teaching and learning; histories and research on writing and literacy; narratives of teaching, learning, and writing; and some suggestions for practice. However, one of the inherent difficulties with print texts is their linear physical structure. "When you write, you lay out a line of words," as writer Annie Dillard describes.3 Most of the time, the external shape of books and the blocks of text within them are linear and square, though the ideas or stories that are revealed are not necessarily so. Within literary writing, forms such as poetry, fiction, and picture books invite a more recursive reading experience, where metaphor and imagery may capture interconnected layers of meaning. Interpretations and experiences of such texts are fluid, evolving over time and repeated reading. Ideas from one text may 'speak' to another. In this book I have attempted to use forms that encourage intertextuality. Many of the ideas addressed here represent structures that are different from the geometries of lines and squares. Instead, they are reflected in the structures of a spider's web, the fronds of a fern, or the patterns of branches entangled with branches. In writing a text aimed at university audiences, I am aware of general expectations for texts to follow a fairly predictable chronology. However, I also want to invite a nonlinear reading (and writing) experience in this text and have attempted to make this book illustrate, in a concrete way, the ideas explored within.

XV


I use a number of strategies to aim for a more complex and recursive structure. Two types of inset boxes are developed as 'subtexts' that can be read alongside or separately from the main text. The insets labeled Writing Practice are intended to be read as both writing practice and Writing practice (as a noun phrase or 'object' and a verb phrase or 'action'). These are narrative and autobiographical accounts of literacy teaching and learning and provide examples and descriptions from classroom life. The second category of insets, Extending Ideas, highlight or elaborate ideas presented in the text, offering additional links to history, theory, or further detail. In a book about children and writing it is important that children and their teachers exist somewhere within the text. Initially I struggled with how to honor and highlight children's and teachers' complex experiences of literacy within the main body of the book. The description of primary writing at the beginning of the Preface provides an example of the form I have chosen to use. Though the examples I present are fictionalized, they are based on actual experiences and classroom observations I experienced either directly, or through anecdotes shared by other teachers. I label such excerpts narrative tableaux (or simply tableaux). A tableau is a structure commonly used within theatre and drama education and describes a sort of 'frozen statue' created by the bodies of a group of participants for the purpose of being viewed by an audience. The technique of tableau is also known as still picture or freeze frame. The structure of a tableau presents a contained yet complex image that can be viewed and interpreted in multiple ways. Viewers can move around a tableau and observe it from different angles or perspectives and when several tableaux are presented at the same time they can be interpreted in relation to one another, layered to provide additional perspectives and interconnections. This form, in both writing and in drama, presents multiple possibilities for presentation and interpretation. In some instances, I directly discuss the example presented in the tableau, while in others, I provide a tableau for the reader's interpretation, as a way of re-symbolizing ideas addressed in the section or chapter. My use of epigraphs and quotations at the beginning of sections or chapters, is also intended

xvi

Preface

to function as offering literary or nonfiction tableau representations, intended to be read against the other layers of text. The tableaux are intended to offer the reader an opportunity to experience the larger text as one that invites multiple engagements, and where her or his own interpretations can develop alongside the explicit interpretations I present. Because this is a book about writing, it was important for me to be consistent, in my own writing processes, with the practices I am presenting. One important tool and method has been my use of the commonplace book for gathering research, collecting stories, and developing interpretations.4 The commonplace book, a structure described in more detail in chapter 5, is an unusual, multilayered and evolving text. The commonplace book I used to develop this book was something like an expanded journal; it included my thoughts and interpretations, research notes, and descriptions of anecdotes that were interconnected with my inquiries. I gathered and juxtaposed texts, artifacts, and interpretations, and responded over time with further interpretations, narratives, and notes on the readings and rereadings of the evolving texts of this work. I have used this gathered and interconnected collection as the 'backbone' of my text, although part of the process of making a commonplace text into a book has also meant discarding and adding details when necessary. It has been interesting to notice how this commonplace text has changed over time, growing with added reflections and interpretations of texts, responses to fictions, journal entries, historical documents of teaching and learning, and descriptions of conversations and activities. Readers of earlier manuscript drafts have added further layers to my commonplace text; their responses, although not included in their original forms, have also influenced the final version of the book. However, if this text is to be a true commonplace book, my readers will complete the process—responding to it with their own interpretations and 'liner notes' or other methods for making it their own. I provide a brief synopsis for those who prefer to know where this "line of words" will lead, before entering the path. Chapter 1 examines the relation between literacy instruction and curriculum

xvii


studies. In this chapter, I outline how curriculum operates as a complex system, influenced by the models, metaphors, and commonly held assumptions which frame perceptions, understandings, and educational structures. I present the notion of terra incognita as signifying the areas of curriculum which often remain ignored by modern schooling and literacy instruction practices but which might be addressed when reconsidering the ways in which literacy teaching and learning are framed and examined. Chapter 2 explores developments within the complexity sciences and their significance for literacy learning, writing, and curriculum. Models provided by the complexity sciences present alternatives to modernist 'maps' of curriculum, and, instead, indicate that teaching and learning occur within an intricate and evolving web of interrelationships. Through understandings offered by complexity science, events of literacy teaching and learning can be regarded as continuous with their background; cultural, biological, social, and environmental contexts must be considered in shaping explanations of cognition. Chapter 3 examines the development of alphabetic literacy, considering writing as a learned 'technology' and as a system with the capacity for transforming thought and language. Using examples from the history of the development of writing as well as primary classroom illustrations, this chapter suggests that acquiring literacy has personal and societal effects and implications, and that benefits and costs of literacy exist. As teachers, an awareness of what literacy can and what it cannot do is needed for optimal development of writing in learning and teaching contexts. Chapter 4 considers the complex relations among writing, reading, interpretation, and self-identity. Continuing from chapter 3, writing is conceptualized as being more than a simple representation or transcription of speech, as it is often conceptualized. Instead, writing is proposed as a process of translation and transformation. Writing systems, by their nature, leave particular gaps, the spaces between texts and their interpretations. The concern with interpretations of texts has lead to the development of hermeneutic methods and interpretive approaches to text. Informed by the observation

xviii

Preface

that reading and writing have different implications for interpretation and identity and the idea that interpretation is always an act of translation, I suggest that, in writing, not only are thoughts and language transformed, but also personal identity becomes translated in new ways. Through writing and other literacy experiences, children are able to travel between interpretive worlds as well as between the different selves that may emerge on the page. In chapter 5, the notion of writing as a location for collective stories and narratives is explored, drawing from a complex understanding of writing as a living system for representing experience. This chapter surveys historical trends in writing research and pedagogy and addresses common metaphors, maps, and images that have guided and structured the teaching of writing in schools. This chapter also presents practices and structures that invite shared connections and generate interpretive locations for literacy learning. In the writing of this book, one of the metaphors I develop is that of literacy curriculum as terra incognita, at times existing as an unfamiliar place into which learners and teachers travel. I stumbled upon the phrase during my reading of Fugitive Pieces, a novel by Anne Michaels,5 and the notion of terra incognita resonated for me, connecting to events that occurred one year when I was teaching kindergarten. That year, a tragedy disrupted the classroom—a child died. In the difficult times that followed, my students and I existed in a place that seemed invisible on the usual curricular maps, but through our writing and stories (both theirs, and my own), we discovered more about this unfamiliar territory, in our unusual location of loss in the life of a primary classroom. Although most teachers will, fortunately, not have to experience such a loss in their own classrooms, other life events often create similar spaces, the terra incognita where navigation may be difficult as students and teachers travel into the texts of their own classrooms. The work of the inquiry for this book has taught me that, although it is helpful to prepare for one's travels, into curricula, texts, or other geographies, it is also important not to expect too much from one's maps, for reliance on such navigational tools to 'show the way' can obscure perceptions of soon-to-be-encountered land-

xix


scapes. And so, I intend this brief introduction as a beginning orientation to the text. I hope this book will take my readers into unexpected places and provide a glimpse of the 'terrain' beyond the maps.

XX

acknowledgments

xxi


Acknowledgments

Some journeys are unexpected ones. I may never have ventured into the terra incognita of this text if it weren't for the influences (both the subtle and the not-so-subtle) of those who have helped me to find my way into this work. I would never have set out on this travel by text if it weren't for Dennis Sumara. I often think of the profound impact of one phone call that I made a few years ago, when a colleague suggested I might be interested in meeting Dennis. A chance encounter that has made all the difference to my learning, writing, and my life over the past few years. There is not enough space here to provide adequate thanks for one who has continued to enlarge the space of the possible for my work and writing. Dennis has provided ongoing mentorship, support, challenges, and friendship throughout this work and I know this text would not have come about in the way it has, or perhaps at all, if he had not been involved from the very beginning. His gift of imagining a new narrative for my research, writing, and life, and his enduring belief in my abilities have helped me to risk exploring the terra incognita of my work and to set out on the mysterious and uncertain path of doctoral studies and work in the academy. I am also grateful to Brent Davis for helping me to gain a deeper understanding of complexity and curriculum. His responses to my ideas and writing have been generous and insightful, and his many reading suggestions and careful explanations and illustrations of fractals, chaos, and complexity have helped me to craft a stronger text. His efforts and suggestions for formatting have also helped to produce a more visually appealing text. I would also like to thank Karen Bromley of Binghamton University, who provided helpful suggestions to strengthen this book and noted important areas for clarification, in addition to suggesting the final title. Several years ago I met Naomi Silverman at a conference where we had an initial conversation about the book, in addition to confessions of our shared vice of watching "The Sopranos." Naomi's editorial guidance has helped to make the process of producing and publishing this manuscript an uncomplicated one. When my adoption referral for my daughter, Caroline Qing Xian, arrived several

xxiii


months sooner than expected, Naomi's efforts smoothed the way for final revisions to occur before the journey to China. Finally, I must acknowledge the students and colleagues, both past and present, who became the 'characters' within this text, and who have also influenced many of the thoughts and wonderings about teaching and writing which I have addressed.

xxiv

chapter one

terra incognita: unmapping literary curriculum

1


Terra Incognita

On other maps, unknown northern and southern regions were included as places of myth, of monsters, anthropophay, and sea serpents. But the truth-seeking, fact-faithful Catalan Atlas instead left unknown parts of the earth blank. This blankness was labelled simply and frighteningly Terra Incognita, challenging every mariner who unfurled the chart. Maps of history have always been less honest. Terra cognita and terra incognita inhabit exactly the same coordinates of time and space. . . . Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces1 The parts of the world that are not spoken do not disappear. They are still there in the streets, on TV, and at home when school is over, and things both said and unsaid whisper in our minds even when the school has been boarded up and sold for condominiums and we can name hardly anyone in the faded class picture. Madeleine R. Grumet, Foreword to Sex, Death and the Education of Childrer2

Terra cognita, the charted land of the Catalan Atlas to which fiction writer Anne Michaels refers, seems an appropriate description of the way literacy curriculum is often understood. In current educational contexts, within North America as well as in English speaking countries elsewhere, literacy curriculum is sometimes conceived of as if helping children learn to write and read in schools is a matter of following the proper maps. Often children's literacy abilities, products, and experiences are also measured, charted, and 'mapped.' The metaphor of maps and mapping seems, at first glance, to be a logical one for matters related to literacy teaching. The 'terrain' of literacy learning in schools is a well studied and familiar location, frequently traced and charted through 'scientific research,' the development of measurable standards, and 'tested' teaching methods.3 As well, most educators have experienced learning about writing and reading from the inside, through childhood school experiences in addition to later classroom practice. This place of literacy learning exists in a world familiar to most adults. We have traversed the freshly waxed hallways and experienced the dusty smell of black-

3


boards, remembering words we have viewed there. We have lived with our daily rhythms punctuated by the bells that tell us when it is time to begin learning (or teaching) and when it is time to stop. Most teachers have also read an ongoing parade of language and literacy curriculum guides and the numerous instructional texts that clearly demarcate educational territory. But that which is uncharted and less explored, the terra incognita of curriculum, exists in a shadowy periphery. Teachers and students may sometimes reflect upon the uncharted territory when "it melts through the map" as Anne Michaels describes.4 This is the part of curriculum which exists somewhere in the tangled underbrush of the undiscovered, in spite of all the clear maps, manuals, and documents that exist. It is hard to talk about or even recognize what isn't named, what isn't much acknowledged, although we may still sense that something is occurring, in the moment it happens. Schooling has tended to pay attention to what can be easily and visibly charted, and space and time are often mapped into concrete allotments and increments. I remember the simplified representations I encountered as a beginning teacher: classroom diagrams for placing tables, desks, learning centers; clear instructions for organizing space, time, and materials; diagrams for 'traffic' patterns (leading me to suspect I might be managing an intersection, a parade, or an airport in addition to a group of children learning!). The reading center should go here, the morning agenda should look like this (and remember, every minute must be filled and accounted for!), writers workshop must include these steps. . . . Early in my teaching career, I learned that the neat and tidy black line drawings of classroom configurations and the weekly (or daily, or hourly) agendas often neglected something vital, even if they were helpful at times. What was missing was the acknowledgment that classrooms filled with young children are richly complex living spaces, and that children themselves create another layer of curriculum that must be addressed. In the end, the poorly placed table or the missing five minutes usually does not matter very much. The important places in classrooms rarely appear on any map; neither are the rhythms of human beings accurately traced by the timekeeping of schoolroom clocks.

4

Terra Incognita

WRITING PRACTICE • Terra Incognita During most of my years of teaching, I worked in older schools, where the classrooms still had cloakrooms—those small, partially hidden spaces that belonged to the world of children, like the time of recess did. Many schools built in the 1950s and 1960s included tiny alcoves with wraparound benches, coat hooks, and cubbies where the children could store their lunches and other belongings. It was always a little darker in those spaces, protected from view of the classroom, and full of the mysterious smells accompanying groups of young children. The sharp, rubbery scent of new rain boots and running shoes, a hint of forgotten fruit and stale sandwiches, a lingering overtone of damp hair and clothing in winter, or a note of sunscreen and perspiration in warmer months. The cloakroom was the place for sharing secrets, for hiding, passing along primary grade contraband. The crying child was always to be found there, hiding under the comfort of a familiar jacket or enveloped by a small crowd of consoling friends. This was the favorite spot for reading books with a buddy. But, the books read aloud here would be voiced in a whispered hush. Even the youngest children knew that the cloakroom was a sacred space, the location for exchanging secret drawings and notes, phone numbers, birthday party invitations. Sometimes, too, there were confessions of cloakroom events or naughtiness. ("Remember the time when . . . ?" a child would smile furtively at the others, revealing some small transgression. Always it was a story of some other year, some other teacher.) The cloakroom existed in the times and spaces between the official landscapes, on the threshold, along the edges of our usual classroom existence. Now, I wonder about the stories I never heard, the confessions revealed to some other teacher, of moments hidden in spaces out of view, in the terra incognita of the classroom.

5


Unlike the sorts of 'maps' created for schooling, early map makers who wished to put the world on paper understood the need to include the margins and borders of the unknown—to place terra incognita so it might be recognized if encountered by those venturing into worlds yet untraveled. Modern maps have also recognized the need to include such gaps and ambiguities. For example, until 1973 navigational maps of the Canadian north included reference to unmapped territory, known as "relief data incomplete" in aeronomical charting.5 Yet within the geographies of schooling, that which is not outlined on curricular maps tends to be ignored, pushed into the background of pedagogical concern. When teachers or learners are faced with terra incognita, we may not know what to make of it, losing opportunities for learning that might occur, the learning that cannot be charted, scheduled, or predicted. My own experience as a teacher, student, and researcher has often been punctuated by such 'unmappable' learning occasions, unforeseen moments when something unexpected emerged or intervened in classroom life. These were events involving sudden breakthroughs in understanding, vivid emotion (my students' or my own), occasions where a sense of unity emerged within a group, or times when it seemed as though something sacred had occurred, such as in the focused hush after the telling of a powerful story or the sharing of student writing. The terra incognita in the life of classroom may involve more sustained and complex situations such as in the following tableau. ++ +

There has been an accident. Anna won't be coming back to Kindergarten, ever. The children are puzzled; they want an explanation. What happened to Anna? Why couldn't anyone make her better? Where is she now? Now what do we do? Jennifer, an 'old soul' in the group who has a serious health condition, says thoughtfully, "You know . . . , Anna's the first person I ever knew that died." Most of the others nod. So this is what it is like, to have someone you know die. Everywhere there are reminders of Anna in the classroom. The children read what remains. Certain objects tell a story of absence, the rubber-soled gym shoes lined up in Anna's cubby remind us of the girl

6

Terra Incognita

who won't be coming back. Her mother cries when she sees them, the day she comes to collect Anna's belongings. The children find other objects that belonged to Anna, too, hidden in secret places. They trace her name on the class lists on the wall, on her drawings and her 'mailbox.' They write her name again and again, as if the magic of writing will help them understand why she has gone. Aisha finds Anna's magnetic nametag—the children place their names on the wall every morning when they arrive—and says, realizing, "Anna is going to be 'away' every day now.. .." ++ +

Locations such as that described in the tableau of the loss of Anna are rarely found on any curricular or instructional map. In situations like this, teachers use whatever navigational tools they have available to help the children in their classrooms (and themselves) find their way through such experiences. In the terra incognita following Anna's death, the children's stories, drawings, texts, and Anna's own artifacts of writing and drawing helped us navigate a path through a mysterious place of loss. Although Anna's 'story' is a difficult example, it vividly highlights how maps of curriculum are not the territory they seek to represent.6 Maps such as curriculum guides and teachers' instruction manuals, created to help educators know 'where they are' and where they need to go, are by necessity incomplete, leaving territory unmapped, unexplained, 'incognita.' At a deeper level, the language, images, and metaphors commonly used for describing literacy curriculum and practices are influential in framing perception. As Vygotsky reminds us, "Words enter into the structure of things. . . ."7 Language and other representations leave their own traces, so that these 'maps,' too, may overshadow actual events or situations. The territory beneath may be forgotten, its landscape and landmarks made invisible by the models or texts that attempt to portray it. In attempting to address and present aspects of terra cognita and incognita and their relation to literacy and writing instruction, it is important to situate this work within the larger landscape of curriculum. Teaching children to write and to read within the context of schools is to enter into a location intersected by particular histo-

7


EXTENDING IDEAS • Maps as Fictions Real maps present partial worlds, which are, in a sense, fictions—interpretations developed for particular purposes. For example, route maps or road atlases do not usually show residences or convey topographical details. Instead, the map shows how to get from here to there rather than representing detailed destinations. Selectivity of information and the absence of certain types of details are important characteristics of any kind of map,8 so that necessary information can be quickly and efficiently accessed. Residential mapmakers have been known to include streets that do not actually exist, in their maps. Though a person discovering such an 'imaginary' street may assume they have found an unintended error, in fact, this is a strategy used by mapmakers to prevent and track copyright infringement, should someone illegally reproduce their work. ries and practices. Though work in language and literacy education is also informed by work in other domains (e.g., linguistics, literary studies), and the work of practicing writers—work in all curriculum areas is framed by images, metaphors, and language bound to emergence from a particular history and context, intertwined with particular practices. The next part of the chapter examines some maps and landscapes of curriculum, looking at what has been previously 'charted' as well as exploring possibilities and alternatives for representing educational terrain in literacy education. THE CURRICULUM LANDSCAPE What is curriculum? Earliest definitions found in records of the first universities describe curriculum as a course of study to be followed. Currently, many related terms exist—curriculum specialist, curriculum development and implementation, curriculum foundations, curriculum studies, to provide a few examples.9 Since the 1970s, definitions that reconceptualize curriculum as a transformative and reflexive cycle10 also reflect evolving and multifaceted understandings within the field of education.

8

Terra Incognita

My own understandings of curriculum have changed significantly since my early days as a teacher. As a student teacher, I believed that the language arts curriculum consisted of the mandated documents describing the goals and practices I was required to follow, as well as the other resources and materials needed to implement them. As I continued in my teaching career, working in a number of school districts (twice changing provinces) and experiencing several political leadership changes, I noticed how curriculum changed over time, geography, and as required by new political agendas. Some changes were positive ones. Others did not seem quite so wonderful. Eventually, I had opportunities to work on committees to develop new English language arts curriculum guidelines. In those situations I learned how real people (and not the faceless, nameless authorities I had imagined) create curriculum guidelines and documents in response to new research and shifts in educational trends, but also in reaction to political and sociocultural demands. Most committee members had good intentions and we all hoped to create materials that would meet the needs of children and their teachers. But often we were limited by restrictions placed on what we were asked to do, by the structures we were required to use, and by abbreviated timelines for producing final documents. Through such experiences my definition of curriculum has evolved. I now understand curriculum as a part of a dynamic system and field of practice that is interconnected with multiple aspects and structures of education, as well as reaching beyond the worlds of schooling. Curriculum does not exist in isolation from the world. Rather, it is embedded in a context of historical, cultural, and economic conditions and is influenced by traditions in science, philosophy, and world-view.11 One example of a particularly influential world-view is the frame of modernism, which posits the universe as rationally ordered and systemic. This frame has influenced education in understanding the acquisition of knowledge and skills as compartmentalized, linear, sequential, and quantifiable, and viewing beginnings and endings as predetermined and measurable.12

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EXTENDING IDEAS • The Modern Landscape The beginnings of modernism, arriving with the period of the Enlightenment from the late 16th century to the 18th century, brought a perspective of certainty and a common orientation to science, literature, religion, and art. The Modern Age was the time of the Scientific Revolution, where the work of Newton and Galileo in mathematics, physics, and astronomy provided the possibility that the universe could be broken down, analyzed and understood, and nature could be controlled by human action. Empirical observation became the pathway to knowledge, and a distinction between knower and the known, and a separation between word and idea provided the foundation for the philosophical work of Descartes, Locke, Hobbes, and Hume. Through the work of Descartes, the universe was conceptualized as a giant clockwork machine, and the solving of any problem was understood to be possible through breaking down phenomena into smaller components.13 Through such frames for understanding, a thing becomes the sum of its parts and 'scientific discovery' a matter of correct observation and measurement. A concern with objectivity and overcoming subjective influences also began to take precedence. Modernity exemplifies and is concerned with the need for certainty and control, predictability and measurement, clearly demarcated categories and well-defined borders. More formal versions of schooling also emerged just prior to the modern age. By the 15th century, most scholars suggested that boys be educated in Latin, reading, and writing along with other boys, rather than being instructed privately at home, as had been the practice for wealthier families. (Unfortunately, for girls, formal education was generally out of reach unless they happened to be born into a wealthy household and were destined for the convent.)14 In the Modern Age maps started being used in scientific voyages of discovery, linked to opportunities for trade or conquest. To be 'without a map,' in terms of modern metaphor, is to be truly lost, unable to discern one's location without empirical proof. In modern times, the map dominates, while territory is something to be measured, charted, and conquered.15

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Terra Incognita

The impact of the modern era continues to be clearly present in many contemporary institutions, including schools. The very existence of schools relies, in part, upon modern sensibilities where knowledge can be conceived of as something tangible which might be broken down into pieces and transmitted from one who knows to one who does not. A MODERNIST MAP OF CURRICULUM

Within North America, the study of teaching and learning, or curriculum, came into being as a distinct area of focus and inquiry in the early 1900s. Franklin Bobbitt's publication The Curriculum represents modern developments in schooling occurring since the mid 19th century, as school attendance became more consistent and teachers gained professional training.16 Bobbitt's work, as well as that of other emerging curriculum 'experts' who followed him, present a modern and 'scientistic' frame for curriculum. Early curriculum texts were deeply influenced by two key developments. With the advent of increased efforts toward industrial production, the 'production model' emerged as a force within the social sciences, viewing conditions for creating goods or products as controllable. Such models are constructed without considering any links into larger contexts, as "externalities" are viewed as irrelevant.17 Second, the work of Edward Thorndike in experimental psychology became a powerful influence in education at the end of the first decade of the 20th century. Thorndike, and later John B. Watson, developed beginning principles of behavioral psychology, where learning was distilled into stimulus-response relationships, the mind was conceptualized as a behavioral instrument, and social efficiency was understood as the goal of schooling.18 It was in this context that Franklin Bobbitt, and later Ralph Tyler, announced intentions to reform curriculum through scientific methods and increased efficiency. Both educators were clearly affected by the developments in behavioral psychology and the factory production model, as evident in the concepts and language used in their publications. Bobbitt's The Curriculum refers to "scientific method in curriculum making," "efficiency," and "specific objectives,"19 whereas

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Tyler's Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction focuses on the "steps to be taken" in "curriculum building," the development of clear goals and objectives, and "the manipulation of the environment in such a way as to set up stimulating situations—situations that will evoke the kind of behavior desired."20 The continued influence of the work of Bobbitt and Tyler is present in the language and structuring of many curriculum documents still used today in literacy education. Here are two examples, taken from language arts curricula used in two Canadian provinces. Note how each stresses the importance of dissecting literacy learning into specific behavioral objectives: Learning outcomes are clearly stated and expressed in measurable terms.21 Where previous policy documents identified general outcomes for Grades 3, 6, and 9 only, The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1-8: Language, 1997 gives precise and detailed descriptions of the knowledge and skills required for each grade. The provision of detail.. . will ensure consistency in curriculum across the province, and will facilitate province-wide testing.22

Although it is true that within curriculum in general, and language arts education more specifically, there have been repeated efforts to develop ideas and approaches that run counter to scientistic models (e.g., Dewey's experiential philosophy, the Whole Language movement, the Language Experience Approach), approaches driven by 'modern science,' efficiency and measurable behavioral standards return repeatedly. (In the Writing Practice text box on pp. 13-14, several of the practices described link to scientistic ideas from the past.) In current educational climates, developments such as the No Child Left Behind U.S. legislation23 return to similar obsessions. High stakes testing, a need to create new and improved measurable standards, and an emphasis on positivist scientific research drive literacy curriculum and funding, although the research upon which such skillsemphasis learning is based is not beyond critique.24 In both Canada and other English speaking countries such as Australia, literacy education has faced similar trends, emphasizing the development and assessment of measurable skills. Within these initiatives, literacy instruction is broken into discrete, measurable, and testable components and complex literacy experiences are often

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Terra Incognita

WRITING PRACTICE • A Modern School After working in alternative education programs for several years, I moved to a position in a school located in a remote northern, coastal village. My job interview should have alerted me to what was to follow. The tour of the school buildings reveals desks in measured rows and stacks of ancient textbooks; the novels on the shelves are familiar from my own childhood elementary school days. The school building looks as though little has changed since its construction, 30 years earlier—the floors sag and squeak, mildew perfumes the air. During the interview, the vice-principal asks me if I am married (a forbidden question for job interviews, even then!). I ask why it matters. Young, single, female teachers are viewed as problematic in this mill town, I discover. In spite of my gender and marital status, I'm offered a job teaching several language arts classes, Grade 5 social studies, and strangely enough, two junior high home economics classes—one for the boys and one for the girls. I have neither sewing skills nor adequate culinary experience, so I find this responsibility curious and amusing (and mildly terrifying). This place of mountains, forest, and sea has a dark and mysterious beauty. When I look at my surroundings, I know I've been transported into an unfamiliar geography. Although the climate is one of mild temperatures, rain, and constant fog, I'm eligible for a Northern Allowance on my income tax. At school, however, I have the sense I've been transported back in time, into an era where nature and anything resembling life must be conquered and controlled. Constant bells and announcements punctuate and interrupt the day; my teaching schedule is rigidly organized into 40-minute blocks. Usually I rush off to teach a different group at the end of each block, and home economics classes take place in the junior high school building, located a block away. I race across the marshy playing fields braving ankle deep muck in winter and swarms of ravenous black flies in spring, arriving breathless and perspiring, and sometimes late for class if the vice-principal, who is supposed to supervise my previous group of students, is delayed.

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Surprisingly, in home economics class, my students and I enjoy ourselves and we learn a lot. We play around at following recipes and making items of clothing; there is a certain excitement and suspense in not knowing how they'll turn out. The disasters make for good stories that are repeated with great enthusiasm by my students. Later in the year a boy asks me where I went to cooking school. I think it's intended to be a compliment... ? In the classroom where I teach language arts, I discover a list of page numbers on my desk, marking where the students should continue in their fill-in-the-blank workbooks accompanying the disintegrating 20-year-old basal readers. I'm provided with software for the school grading program and told to include the graphs and statistics option when reporting to parents. "No one argues with statistics," I am told. It is the practice, at this school, to publicly post student grades and results for 'motivation.' It seems more like bullying, to me. I'm asked to follow the school's system for tallying points toward earning class rewards, and for keeping track of individual detentions. I notice that these systems don't seem to be working particularly well, but it is difficult to change things here, especially as a newcomer. Young, female teachers who come from 'away' are regarded with suspicion and change arrives slowly in this place.... "left behind." Curious, too, is the tendency for such pedagogical moves to emerge in times of significant sociopolitical change, alongside attempts to control and manage uncertainties in the larger world. Though teachers and schools may resist following such modernist 'maps,' their structures, metaphors, and language are deeply embedded within the context of North American education. Becoming aware of how these influences shape school and classroom experience can provide openings for both envisioning and enacting alternative conditions. The problem for education, stated simply, is a problem of perception. People tend to see what they are expecting to see. This process occurs beyond the level of conscious awareness and control. At a very basic level, everything human beings perceive is embedded in a backdrop of context, expectations, and available metaphors.25

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Terra Incognita

TO SEE AND NOT SEE CURRICULUM

People are not neutral receivers of sensory information. Rather, we are actively and selectively involved in perceiving our environment. Numerous studies and experiments underscore how perception is more a matter of "bring[ing] forth a world" than perceiving a world that exists 'out there.'26 EXTENDING IDEAS • Learning to See A case examined by famous neurologist Oliver Sacks demonstrates clearly how perception is a matter of being able to interpret information in order to 'create' the world we experience. His patient, Virgil, an individual who has been blind since he was a young child, receives surgery that restores his ability to see. Instead of being able to use his new vision, however, Virgil is unable to adapt to a visual world. He is bewildered by shapes and colors and remains unable to interpret what they mean. Though he has the physical capacity for sight, Virgil remains as if he were mentally blind, incapable of deciphering what is present in his perception of visual stimuli.27 Sacks believes that Virgil's experience shows that people must construct and adapt to their visual world, creating a complex frame for interpretation. Virgil lacks a visual paradigm and he is unable to integrate his new sensory perceptions into his existing nonvisual frames for making sense of the world. His restored vision occurs outside of memory, relation, and existing contexts. Because he has not created the visual associations and metaphors necessary for sight, he is unable to 'see.' Even for those of us who have normal vision, there are occasions when we may not see what is 'actually' occurring. Researchers in visual cognition have studied the phenomenon of inattention blindness. In one well-known example, featured on "Dateline NBC" (January 16, 2004) and in the March 2004 issue of Scientific American, subjects are asked to view a video clip and count the number of passes made by team players wearing white shirts. Subjects engaged in this counting exercise do not notice a man in a gorilla suit walking in the midst of the players!28 This example is particularly relevant for teachers, who must learn to see more globally in a classroom or risk missing the unexpected events that often occur while other activities are taking place.

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Research in the area of cognition and language underscores how our particular context for language influences how we construct our experiences and what we are able to notice. Researcher David Olson examines how aspects of language not represented through a person's own written language model are very difficult to bring into awareness. For example, persons who write using an alphabetic model are able to easily identify individual phonemes (letter sounds), whereas people who are not familiar with an alphabet generally do not 'hear' phonemes and have great difficulty in understanding such a concept.29 Vygotsky's work in language also suggests that it is necessary to have a complex system of meanings into which new knowledge can be integrated. In studying the learning of young children, he notes the difficulty of relaying a concept from teacher to student without knowledge of the child's framework of understanding.30 Studies in perception demonstrate that having expectations and experience, as developed through one's perceptual frames, is central to making sense of the world. What is unexpected, 'strange,' or beyond the scope of existing metaphors may be ignored, or present us with a feeling of disequilibrium. Terra incognita. As educators, our perceptions of curriculum and school experiences, like other kinds of awareness, are also influenced by expectation, context, and prior experience. Ways of understanding curriculum, like ways of seeing, are constructed in relation with larger cultural contexts, alongside existing knowledge and practices. In addition, our expectations and prior knowledge influence how we understand and interpret the children who enter our own classrooms, as is evident in the following tableau example. +++ Kieran is a puzzle child. When he arrives in her classroom, the teacher is told that his family has refused to give the school access to his medical and preschool records and denied consent for evaluation by the district psychologist. Kieran seems to live in the margins, a child marked by difference and disorder, even though no official labels accompany him. There's no instruction manual for this boy, no map to follow The teacher wonders how she can best help Kieran learn, and how she might uncover what he is capable of doing. She watches carefully, listens closely to his words, observing this changeling child who moves from calm to fury in the blink of an eye.

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Terra Incognita

She watches and listens. She learns about him. Kieran likes to recount lengthy episodes of his favorite television shows: Thomas the Tank Engine and Mr. Bean. Mr. Bean, the funny man who does not speak and courts disaster at every turn. Kieran, the boy who struggles to say what he means, and trips into trouble most days at school. Kindred spirits, of a sort. Eventually, there are more good days than difficult ones. Kieran learns to write, in his own way. The tangle of his stories reveals a little boy who is frightened by a dangerous, unpredictable world. In the end, diagnoses and labels come. Kieran has a category; his mysteries are unfurled. She wonders, later, if she would have dismissed him, had she known, instead of observing, encouraging, challenging— making him 'one of us' instead of one of those 'Others'? How would she have responded differently? Now that there is a 'name' for who Kieran is, it is difficult to erase this knowledge. Like an unwanted tattoo, the traces will remain. . . . ++ +

For children like Kieran, noticeably different from his classmates, labels can be a curse at the same time that they may help his teachers to better understand him and his needs. The label (Down's syndrome, autism, fetal alcohol syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or many of the range of others available to medical or educational specialists) may become such an overwhelming presence that it is impossible to simply observe the actual child, unfettered by altered expectations and perceptual blindness. In Western society, we rely on particular categories to help us make sense of our experiences, to tell us what we need to do. Changing perceptual frameworks is difficult work. Reactions to or denial of change often represent a resistance to experiencing something outside of existing expectations. The 'standards' movement and current political obsessions with increased testing are a few examples of this phenomenon. 'Sensitive periods' of pronounced insecurity or even crisis tend to precede significant shifts in scientific or cultural frameworks, as science historian Thomas Kuhn has observed.31 Following from Kuhn, current evidence, through standards movements and developments such as "No Child Left Behind" suggests that significant change is bubbling up in contemporary education.

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EXTENDING IDEAS • Reconceptualizing Curriculum In the 1970s, the 'Reconceptualist' curriculum movement presented a position of opposition to modernist curriculum perspectives. This group of educators and academics, known as the Reconceptualists, had little in common with one another except for an agreement to challenge the modernist Tylerian stance and to question the existing notion of the curriculum specialist as an education scientist at a remove from schooling. Those associated with this movement referred to what they were doing as reconceptualizing the field of curriculum and redefining the role of the curriculum specialist. William F. Pinar, central to 'inventing' the reconceptualization of the field of curriculum, gathered together the diverse group of Reconceptualists through publications and conferences.32 The Reconceptualists were a broadly eclectic group, presenting nontraditional perspectives for interpreting curriculum, such as critical theory, phenomenology, feminist theory, and aesthetic practice. In contrast to the tone of scientific empiricism in existing curriculum perspectives, the Reconceptualists addressed matters such as the importance of lived experiences and relations among students, teachers, texts, and experiences, or notions of curriculum as an art form.33 Through a variety of approaches, reconceptualized curriculum theory recognizes the complexities of educational experience and provides opportunities for scholars and educators to examine the particularities and uniqueness of educational contexts and experiences. SHIFTING MAPS Efforts to move away from modernist perspectives in curriculum requires both an 'unmapping' of existing models, regarding them as no longer adequate for conditions, as well as finding new ways of perceiving, interpreting, and enacting curriculum. It is not enough to simply paste new methods onto existing maps. Real changes require new images, metaphors, symbols, and language to help structure new ways of thinking about educational experience. The choice of one metaphor (e.g., education as transmission of knowledge into an empty vessel) and not another (education as a process of con-

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Terra Incognita

tinuing adaptation, like the life-cycle of an organism) influences the kinds of language, conversations, and structures that emerge. As philosopher Richard Rorty states, "to change how we talk is to change what. . . we are."34 WRITING PRACTICE • Difficult Change "It's so hard!" one of my graduate students, Norah, says, when we meet at the end of the school year. "I feel like I know too much and I don't know anything, all at the same time, since I returned to school from my study leave. It used to be that teaching primary language arts was about, you know, finding the best recipe, and everything would magically come together. I know how simplistic that framework is and now I think differently about what I do in the classroom. I have so many new ideas and I want to change things, but so much seems to work against doing things differently. I guess I didn't expect it would be so difficult to change the way I organize my classroom, it's kind of like I'm speaking a language that other people don't understand. I'm not giving up, but now I know it's going to take a lot longer, and that I really need to have conversations with people who understand what I'm talking about and who are also trying to work in new ways." Developing new vocabularies, models, and metaphors, and changing practices can be particularly challenging within education, where many structures, objects, and routines are aligned with modern sensibilities. Teachers who attempt to shift the language, practices, and structures in their classrooms often find themselves bumping up against the 'ghosts' of Tyler and Bobbitt in various aspects and objects of curriculum. One particularly well-known modernist artifact is the basal reader—or, the "generic, vocabulary-controlled instructional reading text."35 Basal readers are representative of the Modern on at least two levels: the use of scientific methods to create reading texts, and the portrayals of family life that have been presented within them—middle class, White, nuclear families participating within strict gender categories.36 In addition, the guides to

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these reading series have often included examples of step-by-step teacher-proof blueprints. Here is one example, taken from a basal series guidebook from the 1970s: 1. Following techniques A, B, and C on the foldout, guide the class, groups and individuals to ask, "Is that Nat the Rat?" and to answer, "Yes, it is. It's Nat the Rat". .. . 4. Write Nat on the chalkboard, naming each letter as you write it. Read the word and have the pupils read it. .. 37 Though most contemporary literacy resources have moved away from such extremely reductionist models as well as attempting to include more diversity, it is certainly true that Tylerian approaches within curriculum documents and schooling practices are still in existence. When language, materials, and practices do change, previous ideas often remain below the surface, or, for a time, conflicting ideas may co-exist. For example, the 1996 British Columbia English language arts K-7: Integrated resource package attempts to reflect a valuing of diversity, avoid gender bias, and include strategies that emphasize a social-constructionist perspective on learning, but at the same time is organized, along Tylerian lines, in a scope and sequence model that stresses the importance of standards. Peeling away the modernist maps that guide literacy education sometimes seems to be a monumental task. However, in the right circumstances, small initial shifts can create the transformation of an entire system. Conceptions and practices in curriculum can change with small, continuing efforts by educators, and the creation of alternate metaphors, structures, and frames. The following chapters explore some new kinds of maps, and some new ways of thinking about maps—possibilities for addressing the terra incognita of the classroom, in the particular landscapes and 'geography' of literacy and writing pedagogy.

In the time after Anna died, the teacher was not sure what to do. There was no map, no curriculum document to guide them. Her classroom had suddenly become an unfamiliar place, a 'somewhere else' neither she nor the children had visited before. There was no path, and no one

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Terra Incognita

had come to lead them through this new territory. They would have to find their own way into an unexpected geography.. . .

EXTENDING IDEAS • Of Pandas and Keyboards One theory of change explored by complexity theorists suggests that if a niche is already occupied by one structure it can be very difficult to create a shift or change to another structure. This theory has been called the Panda Principle,38 referring to the panda's inadequate thumb—present because its other digits were already committed to other uses. There are several contemporary examples of less than optimal but dominant structures. VHS tapes, often acknowledged as inferior to Beta recordings, captured the video market niche more rapidly and the QWERTY keyboard arrangement for word processing is a development originally intended to make typists slow down in the days when manual typewriter keys would jam with speedy keystrokes. (The QWERTY arrangement forces the left hand to type the most frequently used letters and thus restricts typing speed.) Reprogramming computer keyboard layouts is a simple matter, but as long as most typists are trained using the QWERTY layout this system continues to be reinforced, so that changing it requires monumental efforts. The survival of inadequate models and paradigms can often be explained by the great difficulty in overcoming the inertia of the system in place. For a new paradigm to displace a preexisting one, it must provide significant improvements in order to make the change worthwhile.39 However, it is interesting to note that, although QWERTY layout remains as the model for word processing, new developments are emerging alongside of this arrangement: numeric keypads that can be programmed into most laptop computers, 'hot key' short cuts, the use of a computer mouse or track pad, pictorial icons, text messaging abbreviations, and voice recognition. Though QWERTY remains at the center of most typing experiences, adaptations and new layers of technology create alternatives for manipulating text and offer additional possibilities for word processing.

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chapter two

new maps: complexity, learning and writing

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New Maps

She's been teaching poetry workshops at a school where a friend is the principal. It's a place where there are few extra resources for teachers or students, and many of the children's lives are filled with challenges. She's reminded, every time she visits, that so much more is knitted in with the writing lesson. It's never about 'just teaching something.' There are always other things to consider: traces of histories, relationships, past experiences of teaching and learning. Theirs. And hers, too. The surrounding environment intersects these pedagogical moments. In the unexpected warm February day the children vibrate with spring energy; there's the buzz of florescent lights and the sounds they hear from the room next door. The absence of a pencil sharpener in the room means repeated shuffling though pencil cases. She and the children are immersed in a world in miniature. The work of teaching is a complex engagement—trying to read and respond to the 'signs' in this place, the group energy and personality, the needs of particular students. There's the shy boy, reluctant to speak, unwilling to risk words on the page. And others, who need to tell particular stories again and again. Helping to ensure that the right sort of ecology emerges, the careful tension between challenge and safety, constraint and freedom in the work—it's a dynamic balancing act, even after years of teaching. No moment is ever the same as another, even if there are links to other moments. Even now, she feels like a partially informed guide who's been provided with good maps and survival gear, who has been to many other places, though never taken the same route twice. The particular destination of the teaching moment is always a new one. She and the children never know in advance exactly where they'll travel or exactly how they'll get there. This time, they find a place of poetry, traveling through the words and forms of other poets, making their way through the 'woods' where she asks the children to leave all their rhymes behind. "Trust me," she says, and they do, entering the curious landscape of sounds and words. She's learned that sometimes it's best to put the maps aside, and simply venture in.

As the preceding tableau illustrates, teaching and learning in language arts classrooms involves entry into a world of complex, multilayered, and fluid experience. Beginning teachers, in their first teaching at-

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tempts, are often surprised at the challenges they discover within the world of the classroom. I remember in my first practicum experience a new awareness emerged that what looked fairly easy from an outsider's perspective was infinitely more complex and challenging. I wondered how I would ever be able to manage all that was required. How could I observe what the children were doing and still keep track of what I needed to do in the lesson? How would I be able to meet children's diverse needs in the space of the classroom? And, how would I be able to sustain my energy and attention until the end of the day, or week, or term?

WRITING PRACTICE • Learning To Teach One of my students reports back to me toward the end of her first extended classroom teaching experience: Things are going very well, but I feel as though I need some vitamins or something! There aren't enough hours in the day, but I don't have energy for any more, either. I just love my time in the classroom, but the problem is that I have this vision about what should be happening there. Needing to have everything 'just so' makes it harder, I guess. Norah, a mature student with richly diverse life experiences, also remarks that what seems to occupy much of her energy is the level of 'noticing' that is required, that she needs to be able to think about her own lessons and teaching strategies at the same time that she must be aware of what is happening around her. The experience of 'learning to teach' has similarities to learning other complex skills and processes. Much learning involves developing new ways of perceiving in order to assess what requires foregrounding in attention and what can remain, at least temporarily, in the background. I'm reminded of my experiences of learning to drive a car with standard transmission. I needed to see the world differently when driving—paying attention to traffic, signs, lights, the signals of other drivers. Before I was a driver, I didn't really notice such details. As

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New Maps

a driver, I also needed to remember the configuration of the equipment in the car, the location of signals, windshield wiper controls, lights, gauges, and indicators. All of these are important, as anyone who has driven an unfamiliar car can attest. One added challenge was figuring out how to operate the clutch properly, using the correct physical actions and listening for the engine sounds that would reveal the need to shift gears. My beginning attempts were disastrous, involving repeated engine stalls, grinding of gears, an occasional trip into a country ditch, and forward movement that would not have been out of place at a rodeo. Now when I drive, many of my efforts are an automatic and coordinated pattern of driving; I don't need to concentrate nearly as much on the details. Driving is a complex and integrated experience rather than a series of separate efforts. Of course, being in a state of heightened awareness while driving and being able to respond to particular events and actions also contributes to being a good driver. (Automaticity can be a problem if something unexpected happens!) For teaching, the learning process is similar, although the requirements are certainly more complex than those of driving an automobile. With experience and practice, some actions become more automatic and gathered into meaningful patterns or structures. The feeling of sensory overload decreases. And, remaining aware of immediate circumstances and being able to respond to what arises 'in the moment' is as essential for good teaching as it is for good driving.

Classrooms that appear to function almost on their own, from the perspective of an outside observer, are experienced differently from within. Most teachers soon develop familiarity with the multiple demands of the classroom and eventually develop skills and strategies for responding to the complexities of teaching. However, these complexities have been largely unacknowledged by the dominant modernist paradigm and the metaphors that have continued to structure much of educational experience. Many curriculum guides and instructional materials incorporate linear structures, or simple geometric models (e.g., columns, tables) reducing teaching to fol-

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lowing a series of steps. It is no wonder, then, that beginning teachers are often surprised to discover that such frames do not translate so easily into successful events and experiences of teaching. In this chapter, I present some ideas and structures that offer alternate ways of interpreting, representing, and organizing educational experiences in literacy and writing. These ideas come from relatively new developments in science, but at the same time are linked to very old ideas about the world. ENTERING THE WOODS1 Nature's patterns, at once familiar and unexpected, inspire us, satisfy us, sometimes terrify us. Poets, mystics, and everyday travelers on Earth turn to these patterns for solace, for a sense of continuity, for a glimpse of divine mystery. John Briggs and David Peat, Seven Lessons of Chaos2

In recent years, a new field of inquiry has begun to emerge across diverse domains, coming from developments in science and mathematics. Complexity science, as it is now called, describes a collection of ideas, theories, models, and sensibilities that offer an alternative to modernist perspectives. Some believe that complexity science has the potential to become an influential 'scientific revolution' and is in the process of becoming an increasingly significant social and cultural movement.3 Work in complexity science has shifted from a small clutch of theories 'on the margins' to include a progressively larger range of inquiry and applications within the domains of economics, medicine, biology, business management, philosophy, evolutionary theory, and the arts, in addition to other areas. One interesting development, especially in light of the prior influence of the factory production model within education, is how the corporate world has begun to consider ideas from complexity- science and to incorporate them in structures of management and organization.4 Although complexity science finds its origins in contemporary mathematics and science, many of the sensibilities and understandings offered by complexity suggest ways of thinking previously de-

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New Maps

scribed by various wisdom traditions, for example, insights of Aboriginal cultures, Buddhist teachings and other non-Western knowledge frameworks, and pre-modern world views. In one illustration, Canadian First Nations writer Thomas King elaborates a discursive ceremonial phrase, "all my relations": "All my relations" is at first a reminder of who we are and of our relationship with both our family and other relatives. It also reminds us of the extended relationship we share with all human beings. But the relationships that Native people see go further, the web of kinship extending to the animals, to the birds, to the fish, to the planets, to all the animate and inanimate forms that can be seen or imagined.5 Perspectives presented through complexity science acknowledge the webs of relation and interconnection that for centuries have been ignored and devalued by the modernist perspective. Recently, researchers in the field of education have begun to explore possibilities offered by complexity sciences for research and classroom practice.6 Within science and mathematics education, as concepts from complexity science are increasingly addressed within the content of curriculum, educators and researchers have begun to recognize the value of many of these ideas for structuring the learning setting.7 Links between the world-renowned Italian Reggio Emilia early childhood programs and ideas from complexity science have also begun to emerge. Reggio programs use metaphors and keywords to describe their practices and philosophy, relating to a number of ideas from complexity.8 Reggio schools emphasize relationality, emergent curriculum, and attending carefully to learning contexts and ecologies. Their operational structures can be framed as a complex system, and, as one early childhood educator, Stephen Wright, suggests, "There is no discrete, inherently existing 'Reggio' object. Reggio Emilia may be defined as a network of interdependent relationships."9 Within literacy education, complexity science invites possibilities for interpreting phenomena and helping to organize practice.10 As I have become more familiar with developments in complexity, I have come to understand this collection of ideas, theories, and metaphors as having important practical value for language arts class-

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rooms, and offering structures that move beyond modernist maps to explore and help describe what has often been the terra incognita of pedagogy. Because much of the vocabulary, principles, and metaphors in complexity science are not yet familiar within literacy education (though these are increasingly known in science and mathematics), it is necessary to address a number of the key ideas and developments before examining some of the possibilities for language arts instruction emerging from these frames.

EXTENDING IDEAS • What is Complexity? The word complex derives from the Latin complexus, meaning "surrounding," "encompassing," "embracing." Another analysis suggests the word may descend from "com" + "plecture," a verb meaning "to braid," "to twine," or "to weave." The adjective form meaning "not easily analyzed" was added in the 1700s.11 Theories of complexity provide examples and interpretations that attend to interconnections and flexible, fluid structures, offering images and metaphors which stand in contrast to the mechanical, dichotomous images of modernism. Tarts' are not considered as separate from larger entities or 'wholes,' but are 'embraced' or 'encircled' within the surrounding system. In fact, part and whole are understood as interwoven, with the whole often exceeding a mere sum of its parts. Complexity science offers consistent questions and approaches which "defy all the conventional categories,"12 exploring subtleties, ambiguities, and uncertainties. The boundaries between what might have previously been described as discrete, separate domains may be perceived, through a more complex lens, as more permeable and shifting. In binary research in the 1950s, scientists observed in computer models they created that ordered patterns would appear after an initial period of random action, and this "spontaneous emergence of order" was described by the term self-organization.13 Common traits of self-organized, or emergent systems are

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New Maps

that they are decentralized, they consist of a network of agents or elements, and their organization occurs from the bottom up, rather than in a hierarchical manner.14 There are many examples of emergent systems: ant colonies, the development of cities, the Internet, the emergence of civilizations, patterns of trade, groups of children at play, and so on. In the early days of complexity science, self-organization and emergence were used to describe two slightly different features of systems. Current usage sees both as quite interchangeable, with emergence becoming the more broadly employed term. Complexity science tends to be defined differently from analytic science, not in terms of methods, but in terms of the category of phenomena being studied. While analytic science is capable of examining complicated systems—those consisting of multiple components that can be independently described, complexity science is more interested in the sorts of systems where the interactions of various aspects cannot be fully comprehended by analysis of the components. The distinction between simple and complex can also be rather tricky. Some systems appear simple but reveal themselves to be highly complex, while the reverse is also true. A leaf is a complex system, but a combustion engine is complicated rather than complex. Paul Cilliers provides another example: mayonnaise is complex, while a jumbo jet is merely complicated.15 Because complexity science is a relatively new area of inquiry, a number of different terms have been used in attempts to name this field or describe particular focus areas. For example, terms used include: complexity theory or complexity theories, ecological postmodernism, complex systems, emergent systems, enactivism, chaos dynamics, dynamical systems theories, as well as a variety of other labels that are found in related work. Defining 'what is complexity?' has become a difficult endeavor, because the area of interest is a quickly evolving field, and also, the clear terra cognita maps provided by reductionist science and Newtonian paradigms are incapable of adequate description for dynamic systems where the 'bounded object' does not truly exist.16

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COMPLEX SYSTEMS, EMERGENCE, AND SELF-ORGANIZATION It is curious how the children begin to write the Coyote stories. For the half hour before lunch, while the teacher is occupied with dismissing the kindergarten students, the Grade 1 'seniors' are supposed to be working on their journals. The teacher can see them, of course, from the distance of the doorway. But, the kindergarten 'send off holds much of her attention, as she must be certain every junior child leaves with the proper caregiver, and that all of the 'bus kids' find their way to the proper location in time for the bus. Usually, too, there's a question, an exchange of information, or a quick conversation with a parent or two at the door. During this time, the first graders suffer benign neglect, left to their own devices as long as they continue to write. In April, as she reviews their journals, the teacher notices that, in high trickster spirit, Coyote has moved into their stories. Oddly enough, all of the children have written stories about the character Coyote, from Aboriginal trickster legends. These are good stories, engaging, spirited, craftily composed. Better than many of the stories she has asked them to write during more carefully supervised writing times. The coyote stories are a web of interconnected tales. Coyote is up to mischief and adventures, sneaking into the girls' change room, playing tricks, reaping the consequences of his own foibles. The children have been listening to trickster tales in class, in a recent literature study. But their Coyote stories are no mere retellings. The Coyote of their stories has become a character with a life of his own. Each story tells us more about him (or her) and at the same time circles back to reveal more about this group of 6-year-old children. +++

The creation of the Coyote stories provides an illustrative example of a complex system. The group of Grade 1 children and the products of their learning are aspects of a complex system in action. In analyses offered by complexity sciences, systems are important. Systems thinking and theories adhere to the notion that within living systems, the whole arises from the interrelations among the parts, and that, in fact, there are no true parts at all. All aspects of a system, including its products, are patterns in an "inseparable web of

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relationships."17 And, the whole of a system exceeds the mere sum of its parts. Although the terminology may be unfamiliar, the phenomenon of the emergence of organized complex systems is something most teachers experience every year as they begin the school term with a new group of students. The emergence of a new system is particularly apparent if the children are not familiar with one another. The group of children begins in a state resembling a kind of disorder, sorting out relationships with one another and with the teacher, developing new patterns of response and learning to follow newly introduced routines or patterns of interaction. At some point the group gels, becomes a whole group rather than a collection of discrete individuals. An identifiable class 'personality' emerges and the teacher can make judgments about the nature of the group (e.g., an easy group, an active one, a class with a strong sense of humor). Together the children and their teacher become a complex, self-organized system. Living systems such as ecosystems, human beings, brains, and writing classrooms are 'open' systems, open to a flow of energy and materials that moves through the system. For example, in a human being matter passes through the system in the processes of excretion, respiration, reproduction, etc.18 In a classroom, this flow might include other less tangible processes. However, energy, ideas, events, participants, and various products and artifacts of learning enter and leave the classroom system. One important quality of any system is referred to as feedback. Feedback is a term describing arrangements of circular effects, where particular aspects of a system may 'feed in' and contribute to continuing changes within the system.19 One environmental example of feedback is the speculated effect of greenhouse gases on global warming. Over time, greenhouse gases feed in to global weather systems and amplify temperature change, so that the biosphere is warmer than usual, oceans heat slightly, and so on. Further feedback through the melting of polar ice caps and glaciers might then contribute to a change in the opposite direction, triggering a mini ice age and other chains of response.

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In the creation of the Coyote stories, the stories themselves provide evidence of how the Grade 1 students operated as an evolving system. It is likely that one or two children independently initiated their writing about Coyote, beginning the cycle of stories. During the writing time, other children were exposed to these stories, by witnessing their tablemates write, or listening to the stories read aloud. This feedback elicits further Coyote story writing, until all the children in the group eventually participate. (Or, perhaps one child suggested writing such stories one day, but this too would be another kind of feedback within the system.) Because the teacher was not readily available to suggest topics, help students, or otherwise direct the writing process, the group developed their own patterns of selforganization,20 helping one another with writing, spelling, and presumably also sharing ideas within those conditions. Now, I wouldn't generally suggest that literacy teachers completely abandon their students to their own devices. But, if particular conditions are in place—such as, students know expectations for managing themselves and their work; the teacher can observe unobtrusively; children have a rich background to draw upon (literature or nonfiction experiences and knowledge); and students have had a variety of prior common experiences—then, interesting collective ideas can often emerge.21 The idea of self-organization, such as the children demonstrated through their stories, is an area of great interest to complexity scientists. Early concepts of self-organization were developed when the availability of faster computers led to advancements in the domains of physics and nonlinear mathematics as the possibility of computer simulations created new opportunities for experimentation.22 One important distinction in emergent complex systems is the difference between systems that are adaptive and those that are not. An example of a nonadaptive emergent system is a snowflake. Though a beautiful pattern is developed, its complexity goes no further. Adaptive complex systems grow smarter over time and respond to specific, evolving needs imposed by their environment.23 Adaptive complex systems, in effect, are learning systems.

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New Maps

EXTENDING IDEAS • Systems and Cybernetics

Systems thinking has been influential in a variety of areas, including work with computers, ideas of artificial intelligence, and conceptions of the brain. In the late 1940s, the emergence of systems thinking and systems theories led to a number of new methodologies, including systems analysis and systems dynamics, and the formation of an influential intellectual movement known as cybernetics. A diverse interdisciplinary group of thinkers came together, including mathematicians, neuroscientists, engineers, and social scientists such as Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, in addition to the information scientists who were arguably the most influential members of the cybernetics movement. The cyberneticists were particularly interested in patterns of organization, especially those addressing aspects of communication. In fact, contemporary cognitive science traces its origins to the work that took place in cybernetics.24 Cyberneticists understand that even with 'hard' scientific description, the subjectivity of the observer must also be considered. Gregory Bateson's contribution to family systems therapy is one example of the work typical of this group.25 With the advent of computers, some cyberneticists took up this electronic technology as providing a useful metaphor for understanding the brain, much in the same way that Descartes used the clock as a model for the body and the universe. An information-processing perspective came to dominate neurobiology and cognitive science.26 Just as the mechanistic models of behaviorism dominated education during this period, the machine-based information-processing approach became the 'dogma' of cognitive science, leaving behind the earlier, more exploratory and generative model of cybernetics.27 However, important offshoots of the original cybernetics movement still exist today, though these groups seem to be in the process of merging themselves within the domain of complexity science.28

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EMERGENCE AND LEARNING

Chilean neuroscientists Humberto Maturana and his colleague, Francisco Varela, have suggested that the process of self-organization is also a process of cognition. They understand all living systems to be cognitive, in that they are interconnected, adaptive, and constantly changing in response to fluctuations within and among the system. For Maturana and Varela, the shifts and changes in systems or structures become evidence of learning through adaptation because these changes occur not in isolation, but in relation with other elements of the system. They use the term, structural coupling to describe this notion of coevolution, where reciprocal perturbations trigger congruent changes within the structure of an organism or ecosystem.29 Maturana and Varela propose that cognition be understood "not as a representation of the world 'out there,' but instead, as an ongoing bringing forth of a world through the process of living itself."30 In interpreting the anecdote of the Coyote stories, Maturana and Varela might suggest that the learning, or cognition, and even the decision to write such stories, was something that occurred between and among the children in the group, rather than being a phenomenon which occurred separately within individuals. Such events might be understood as a constant process of adaptation to fluctuations (perturbations), in contrast to more linear models of thinking. In a sense, the children brought forth a new world of fiction in the Coyote stories, as the stories emerged in response to changes within the complex system of the classroom. Interpreting learning within the frame of complex emergent systems has broad implications for understanding the nature of learning communities, and the individuals who comprise them. Varela presents the microworld as the immediacy of the lived situation, and suggests that we have what he calls a "readiness for action" appropriate to specific situations.31 And, "[t]hus 'who we are' at any moment cannot be divorced from what other things and who other people are to us."32 In a sense, our boundaries as individuals are deeply enmeshed with our situations. The microworld of the classroom becomes one of constant adaptation and response.

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New Maps

Varela also notes that "the sense of a personal 'I"' comes about "as an ongoing interpretive narrative of some aspects of the parallel activities in our daily life. .. ,"33 A child may respond and 'be' differently in the microworlds of her classroom, her soccer team, with her family, or when playing with the children in her neighborhood. In the classroom, both the teacher and the children have opportunities to shape and create the microworlds that exist there, but notions of emergence also suggest that what evolves 'in between' is significant.

WRITING PRACTICE • Never Stepping into the Same Classroom Twice The year I taught five different sections of the same drama course I experienced how very distinct communities can be created within nearly identical learning contexts. From my previous experience as a primary teacher, I knew that the combination of children who arrive in the classroom in September plays an important role in how the year unfolds. My preference for keeping the same group of children together over several years was based on the knowledge that this continuity is often beneficial, particularly in the second year together, when less effort is required to establish a sense of community, to organize learning structures, and to gain a sense of children's abilities. In a sense, the complex learning 'system' remains partially in place from the previous year. The university course I taught had a well-designed plan for instruction, developed together with a number of other instructors, and the course had been required of all students in the program for a number of years. I soon discovered, contrary to my expectations, that I was not really teaching the same course five times. Although the course material and assignments were the same and the students were from very similar backgrounds, each teaching experience was very different. As the year progressed, I began to see clearly how groups of students also contribute to the learning environment as well as influencing the sort of teacher who is present. In one class, the students were highly engaged with the content, they worked well with one another and responded positively to the ways in

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which the course was structured. With this class, I was a talented instructor, confident and able to experiment effectively with new ideas 'in the moment.' Students frequently responded with interesting and generative comments, in conversations that would bubble up immediately following most course activities and readings. At the other extreme, in one of the other classes things didn't go nearly so well. In fact, it was often difficult to get anything going at all. Few students would share ideas or ask questions and a heavy silence would often pervade the room. Even my best planned strategies for organizing group conversations were minimally successful. I struggled to deal with underlying tensions and conflicts within this group and with unexpected problems that regularly appeared. After a while, I did not look forward to working with this group, and I was certainly not the same instructor I was with the other class. I was a more serious instructor, more rigid and less likely to take risks. Other sections of the course were in between the two extremes, each having their own group personality. For example, an early morning section was the sleepy one, where the students and I began class slowly, but became energized as we engaged in activities. A late afternoon group followed a physical education class—this group arrived perspiring and out of breath, though energized. Interestingly, both the 'difficult' class and the 'easy' one were offered at exactly the same time, a day apart, in the same format, and in the same room. Yet, the intricate details and conditions were not the same. This experience emphasizes the importance for teachers of making a concentrated effort to influence the kind of learning community that forms at the very beginning. Once negative patterns and dynamics (or positive ones) begin to emerge, it is more difficult to change the 'organization.' Once a class or other social group has self-organized into a collective structure, these patterns of organization are likely to persist. With my difficult drama class, there were signs that I might have heeded within the first few classes. By addressing some beginning issues at the start (e.g., asking particular students to let

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New Maps

me know privately what would help them to fully participate and emphasizing my expectations, engaging in further community-building activities), I may have been able to shift some of the emerging patterns of this group. However, as teachers or instructors, although we can have a significant influence on the kind of communities that develop in our classrooms, individual students and the relationships that form between groups of students also have significant influence, and so, some aspects may remain beyond our control.

NEW MAPS: CHAOS, SUBTLE INFLUENCE, FRACTALS The clown, trickster, or shape changer becomes the personification of chaos for cultures all over the world. Though he is the "epitome of the principle of disorder," the trickster is also identified as the bringer of culture, the creator of order, a shaman. . . . John Briggs and F. David Peat, Seven Lessons of Chaos34

Chaos Chaos theory, an important development within complexity science, provides a radically different way of representing the world and is qualitatively different from the sorts of fragmenting moves that are necessary for conventional analytic methods of linear mathematics. Chaos theory provides tools for describing and representing forms that had been previously too unruly for science and mathematics: the shape of a fern or a coastline, the path of a storm. Developments within chaos theory, as a science of systems, brought together thinkers from diverse fields. Chaos researcher James Gleick reflects that, "Chaos poses problems that defy accepted ways of working in science."35 Using computers to compress what would have otherwise been many hours of repetitive calculations, researchers working with chaos theory have demonstrated that particular kinds of equations driven by simple feedback over a number of cycles36 would create complex structures and intricate graphics with a startling resemblance to forms occurring in nature.

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For researchers, discoveries in chaos theory have presented a significant breakthrough, with the 'hidden' order of the natural world revealed through calculation. Phenomena that had previously been 'unchartable' from a mathematical perspective began to appear when calculations were applied to themselves in a reiterative feedback cycle. But chaos theory could not only produce elaborate forms, it also became a method of exploring change and fluctuations via modeling. Although conventional definitions of the word chaos relate to disorder, chaos theory examines phenomena that are highly ordered, but have been previously difficult to replicate or quantify. Chaos theory and work with dynamical systems provide mathematical models that contrast to the squares, rectangles, and circles of the Euclidean37 mathematics that have often been used to shape pedagogy. The 'new' mathematics of chaos and complexity provides alternative ways of mapping phenomena. It is important to underscore some distinctions between chaos and complexity. Chaos theory provides determinate representations— events or processes that can be replicated via nonlinear mathematics and are fully determined by specific conditions and parameters. As such, chaos theory is useful for modeling and presenting new kinds of 'maps' of natural phenomena. Complexity, on the other hand, is focused on the actual phenomena. Chaos theory, for our purposes, centers on providing useful descriptions. Most complexity theorists would agree that these representations are not identical to the territory being examined, but rather, they help us with such examinations. One significant notion developed through chaos theory, known as subtle influence, has particular usefulness for interpreting teaching and learning experiences. Subtle Influence A characteristic feature of chaotic dynamical systems is known as subtle influence, 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions,' or, in more popular accounts, the butterfly effect. This effect demonstrates how chaotic systems amplify very small differences within themselves, often producing profound results.

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New Maps

EXTENDING IDEAS • The Butterfly Effect In a rather curious example of the very effect discovered, one small decision to save time resulted in remarkable implications for mathematics and for complexity science. The phenomenon of subtle influence was stumbled upon accidentally when meteorologist Edward Lorenz decided to take a coffee break one day. He was testing a computer model for weather prediction and, to save time in replicating his initial run, he rounded off the calculation to three decimal places instead of the original six. After returning from his break, he was shocked to notice that this second set of calculations produced results that were completely different from the first weather prediction calculation. After studying how the two nearly identical runs of calculation diverged, he realized that the very tiny initial difference between the two calculations quickly become a large difference when they were magnified by each iteration (or feedback loop) as data for the next sequence.38 The 'butterfly effect' has captured popular imagination. The notion of how one small difference might alter everything that follows it has been incorporated in movies and in other popular media, and is summarized in the metaphorical phrase, "If a butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo, then a month later it could cause a hurricane in Brazil."39 There are a number of online simulations that provide opportunities to play with demonstrations of this effect. One such site can be found at , or through various search engines using the terms 'butterfly effect simulation.'

The butterfly effect poses immense difficulties for reductionist science, because even small-scale chaos creates an inability to predict exact outcomes. As a number of theorists suggest, there is an immense creative power in such chaotic processes—subtle influences can result in enormous transformation. Small differences produce ever-increasing levels of larger change. Chaos demonstrates that what might seem to be random (or chaotic in the traditional sense of the

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term), in fact follows a kind of creative, unpredictable order. Though the chaotic qualities might be described, particular outcomes cannot be predetermined. In social systems (such as classrooms) continued subtle influence and chaotic effects create an inability to predict exact outcomes. For example, we cannot predict the precise moment when a particular child will learn to read, or how a group of young children will respond to a request to write about an event from their lives, although we may be able to make some guesses based on our knowledge of those children. But chaos also provides opportunities, through the creative and productive nature of subtle influence. In a classroom, subtle influence means that little details of organization or pedagogy, or those children bring to the classroom, can result in profound transformations.40 A teacher who wishes to effect changes should be aware that small efforts (interrupting entrenched ways of working or interacting) may often be more effective than large-scale attempts at transformation that tend to ignore subtle but pervasive patterns of behavior. Frequently, when literacy education responds to new initiatives or policies, the opposite happens—teachers are bombarded with new materials, professional development sessions, and required to make large and intensive efforts toward implementing change. Australian literacy educator Mem Fox bemoans this practice of responding to what she calls "new orthodoxies" in language arts, suggesting that, often, the practice of 'throwing out the old' to 'welcome in the new' causes teachers to get lost along the way.41 Chaos studies offer an alternative 'way,' as they demonstrate how profound changes can occur with smaller alterations in any system. Small, critical decisions can have compounding eventual effects. Of course, the observations and responses of the teacher are crucial to making use of chaos. Within complex living adaptive systems, such as human beings and classrooms of children, chaotic results can be harnessed, fine-tuned, and reshaped. Though nonliving structures such as weather patterns, shorelines, or riverbeds are shaped by chaos, these lack the ability to respond and self-organize as living systems are able to do.42 Because complex living systems can self-organize,

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New Maps

WRITING PRACTICE • Little Details In one school, initial decisions about 'little details' provoked important changes. At the beginning of the school year, a decision is made to turn off all the electronic bells and to allow the children to come into the building for the half hour before the start of the school day, to read books, write stories, talk, and play games together quietly. Instead of the day beginning with the jarring BRRRRRRIIIIINNNNGGG!!! of the bell and the usual scuffles in line-ups at the door, the children enter peacefully, sharing in quiet activities. Family members often accompany the children and it is not unusual to see a grandmother, aunt, or father reading picture books to children in the school foyer. With many children and families gathered together, several weeks into the school year one teacher eventually decides to lead a sing-along. After this, the mornings begin with quiet activity followed by a round of singing, signaling that it soon will be time to move toward individual classrooms. For the children, the day begins gently, with a sense of comfort, togetherness, a favorite story. For the teachers, the children who enter the classrooms are calm and happy. A decision to turn off the bells and allow children to read stories and participate in other activities in the hallways has larger implications for the rest of the day, and sets a different tone for the school.

chaotic effects invite counter response, potentially giving rise to powerful and self-maintaining feedback loops. In a classroom, the teacher and students are able to respond to events or situations, further shaping subtle influences. In the example of the Coyote stories, what the teacher chooses to do next in response to the stories that have emerged will also influence later possibilities (e.g., encouraging the students to seek out information about trickster characters, finding interesting Coyote stories to share with the class, or requesting that the children experiment with new topics).

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Fractal Forms Metaphors are generative; they help us see what we don't see. William E. Doll, Jr., A post-modern perspective on curriculum43

An additional area of inquiry within complexity science is a new form of geometry, known as fractal geometry. Fractal geometry presents an additional breakthrough in terms of its ability to represent irregular geometric forms such as those from natural phenomena. Fractal geometry provides a system for describing, analyzing and producing these forms.44 A fractal shape is one where similar patterns are found repeatedly in smaller (or larger) scales throughout the shape. Many examples of fractals can be found in nature: a small branch of a cauliflower is like a whole cauliflower in miniature, and in lightning and the pathways of streams and tributaries the smaller scale branches are similar to their larger scale structures. Fractal patterns are also found within myriad structures of the human body—blood vessels, nerves and neurons, the branching of bronchi in the lungs, and the fibers of bones provide just a few examples. Human DNA presents another more complex fractal form, where a person's biological 'text' may be read and interpreted at the level of the individual cell.45 Within some fractal forms, the quality of what is called self-similarity is evident—the mirroring of forms at different scales. It is also important to note that 'self-similarity' does not mean an identical 'sameness,' but rather, a particular pattern may be identifiable throughout the organism or form. For example, the various pathways of the branching tributaries of a stream will reflect diversity, but all of them can be recognized by their pattern as part of the same larger, complex body. Within a fractal form, the smaller parts do not become simpler, or reduced, but instead, each tiny branch of a fractal form reveals a high degree of complexity. Computer-generated fractal graphics, such as the well-publicized images of the Mandelbrot set,46 are often remarkably beautiful and complex at every level of scale. Yet, such intricate images are produced through techniques where the same geometric operation is repeated thousands of times with the help of computers.47

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EXTENDING IDEAS • Maps not Territory It is important to mention that, although frames such as fractals provide complex and detailed models for representing natural forms, shapes that appear in nature include a further level of subtle diversity which is not present in computer generated forms. Though fractals do provide another map of natural phenomena, the reminder that "the map is not the territory" presents a caution.48 Rather, the fractal provides an alternative metaphor and 'system' for perceiving, representing and communicating ideas about complex phenomena.49 The complex forms or maps provided by fractals and chaotic phenomena such as the butterfly effect offer possibilities for thinking about curriculum in general and literacy teaching in particular, and for addressing concerns about the relations among teaching, learning, and knowledge. But, like other the other 'shapes' that have structured learning in the past, though forms such as fractals can provide new and perhaps better metaphors, they still differ from actual lived phenomena.

The form of the fractal provides an intriguing metaphor for thinking about literacy teaching and learning, and can be used to provoke new ideas about both curriculum and products of learning. For example, when I taught writing to primary children, they and I gathered a variety of their writing samples (stories, journals, poems, books, responses to texts etc.) in writing portfolios. These portfolios could be interpreted as a large fractal 'branch,' with the individual student artifacts presenting smaller 'twigs' of the branch. The portfolios of the class, when considered together as a whole, present a larger perspective (the fractal 'tree'). This image presents an alternative way to consider such samples—different from the linear sequential frame I previously used for thinking about writing portfolios (e.g., chronologically, ordering by level of ability, or by progress over a period of time). Examining student work through the frame of the fractal goes beyond simply organizing it into a more interesting image. In a fractal image, all pieces are interconnected, branching from one another, moving from smaller scale branches to larger scale wholes. The in-

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terrelationships among the parts become important (e.g., the child's different pieces of writing examined against each other), as well as the larger patterns which emerge within the bigger structure (e.g., the connections the teacher might notice within the class as a whole: patterns of interest, areas where there seems to be a need for additional focus or instruction). In assessing student writing, examining several small-scale examples in detail (looking carefully at one aspect of the fractal tree) can be helpful in recognizing some of the patterns present within a child's abilities as a whole. Existing assessment practices that involve carefully observing and documenting children's efforts in a small-scale experience such as examining a writing sample or doing a miscue analysis, in a sense, present other fractal structures for interpreting patterns of ability. Using the form of a fractal rather than a grid or a linear chart for planning inquiry or study provides generative possibilities, as this form compels us to consider layers of possible interconnections, and to think about teaching events and curricula as emergent structures. As an illustration, using the strategy of role drama in a language arts lesson a group of children explored a fictional text through taking on roles. The interactions through the role activities co-determined the direction of the lesson as well as the sorts of writing products that were developed. After listening to several versions of the story of Little Red Riding Hood, half the class, 'in role' as reporters, interview 'the wolves' (the remaining half of the class) to find out more about problems that have been occurring in the woods. After the issue of 'little girls trespassing' is uncovered, the children then write letters to Red Riding Hood, in role as the Big Bad Wolf. Another class may uncover a very different problem in the interviews with the wolves, and subsequently, their drama work will unfold along another pathway, guided by their teacher. The shape of a fractal more accurately represents complex processes of teaching than do linear models."50 As a metaphor for literacy and writing instruction, the fractal presents a model of interrelation, where systems are layered within systems, learners are collectively connected, and products, artifacts and events are not considered separately from their larger ecology.

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Developments in complexity science such as fractal geometry, chaos theory and systems thinking suggest numerous implications for understanding the social learning systems of the classroom. The remaining chapters of the book examine particular aspects of literacy and writing development informed by a complex perspective. Before moving to address these areas—different branches of the literacy fractal—I address some general implications for teaching and learning. LEARNING CONTEXTS

Studies in complexity science have led to a number of shifts in understandings within the research on cognition, or studies of 'how we know.' One fundamental change has been the shift away from the reductionism exhibited in computationalist models of the brain, with its metaphors of 'mind as computer.' Reductionist approaches treat the brain as if it is an elaborate machine, examining the various parts or modules.51 The change toward more holistic perspectives means that what has been previously considered to be separate from consciousness, the category of background or context, must now be included in cognitive research. Cultural, biological, and social contexts need to be considered in the shaping of explanations of thinking and learning. Studies of what has been called 'mind' now reach beyond what happens only inside of the skull.52 Understandings of how we know are changing radically. Models of research based on complexity are reexamining concepts such as intelligence, previously understood through modern models to be measurable through devices such as IQ tests, as genetically determined, and as residing in the brain. Perspectives from complexity science suggest that intelligence emerges in the development of an individual through a process of self-organization and adaptation, a fluid dynamic which cannot be neatly summarized in a test score.53 Unfortunately, however, entrenched assumptions and North American political trends in education create a context where the inadequacy of test scores in conveying detailed information about intelligence and ability is seldom challenged or critiqued at the level of provincial, federal, or state implementation.

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Complexity research and contemporary discoveries in neuroscience show that much of what humans perceive through vision, hearing, and our other senses occurs in the background of conscious awareness, with the brain operating as a complex emergent system. Sensation, thought, and action exist together in a fluid state with much of what we perceive remaining outside of conscious awareness. The complex system that is the brain operates largely at a level of awareness that remains subconscious, so that focal awareness is available to deal with new or difficult tasks. When focal consciousness works harder as we are learning new skills (e.g., learning to write, learning a new language, learning to teach) we often find ourselves feeling tired or overwhelmed. Every year, the families of my Grade 1 students would report that their children seemed to be more tired and crankier than usual in the first few months of school when there was a concentrated focus on reading and writing instruction. This observation is consistent with what cognitive research suggests: Anyone learning a complex set of new skills where automatic reaction and nonconscious knowledge cannot yet be used or relied upon must exert a great deal of energy. In learning new skills, awareness remains in a state of heightened consciousness. This is different from our typical existence, where we constantly move between habitual, unconscious actions and focused awareness. Knowledge about the cognitive effort required in learning new skills has a number of implications for teaching. When my primary students were focusing on learning to write and read and spending more of their time engaged in these activities, it was important to provide time away from such tasks—short trips to the playground, 10-minute breaks to work with free-choice activities, a few moments to get up from their chairs and move around. After a short respite, the children could return to their writing and other work with renewed energy and ability to concentrate. There are wider implications, too, for acknowledging the 'mostly subconscious' nature of human thought. Western education has emphasized the narrow tip of focused awareness, or what can be conveyed directly, and largely ignored the wider, submerged aspects

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New Maps

EXTENDING IDEAS • Creating Consciousness Consciousness is an illusion, everything we 'experience' lags behind actual perception.

The foregoing statement is hard to believe for most of us. After all, everything we experience happens as we experience it, doesn't it? In fact, the work of neuroscientist Benjamin Libet in the 1960s indicated that awareness does not occur instantaneously. Working with neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein, who operated on the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease, Libet performed a series of tests stimulating areas of the brain through electrical pulses. Through these experiments, he discovered that it generally took about half a second for a patient to sense a stimulus, and if the pulse was stopped before the half-second mark, the patient did not notice anything at all. It seemed that for consciousness to register, stimulation had to persist for a certain length of time. Libet added to his experiments by including additional stimulation to the back of patients' hands and found evidence that an initial surge of response from specific areas of the brain eventually "gave way to a feedback-tuned, whole-brain state of focussed attention."54 The brains of patients showed a first, early surge of response and then a burst of activity occurring around a half second later. What Libet's work seemed to indicate was that consciousness appears about a half second late, and that the experience of instantaneous consciousness is actually an illusion. The brain requires time to interpret perception consciously and creates a coherent story by working backwards in time.55 Though a general nonconscious56 response occurs almost immediately, conscious awareness lags behind. This process of recreating reality is much like what we do in response to blind spots in our vision—we do not see gaping holes in our vision, but instead, we 'fill in the blanks.' (It is only when a car in the lane beside us suddenly appears out of nowhere that we recognize such gaps!) As N0rretranders writes, There may be flaws in the way we sense the world, but we do not experience them. Our consciousness lags behind and does what it can to hide the fact—from itself.57

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of perception, not recognizing the importance of surrounding contexts and peripheries of learning. Cognitive science insists that the unconscious background of learning environments, the complex interweaving of what learners may be sensing, feeling, or peripherally noticing within a particular learning situation is equally important. Of course, as most classroom teachers implicitly recognize, context matters. The immediate physical environment of the classroom, the geographic location of the school, whether it has been a stormy night or the room is too warm, or several children have not eaten breakfast—all of these complex and subtle factors make a difference in teaching and learning. In a school where I once taught, the kindergarten and Grade 1 classrooms were located in an annex that had been originally constructed as a temporary building. It was poorly insulated and smelled of mildew. Additionally, the music and band classes were located in this annex. The background sounds, smells, the chilliness of winter and mugginess of late spring all filtered into our classroom experiences there. Children had difficulty paying attention or focusing on the tasks at hand when the band class was in session, especially during the first months of the year, before they learned strategies for tuning out the noise (and before the band classes became more pleasing to the ear!). In the primary classes in those rooms there was always higher than usual incidence of behavioral and learning problems. Children and teachers were more often absent, developing frequent colds and viruses. After some investigation, the conditions in the annex were deemed not to be quantifiably hazardous, though air quality tests confirmed that there were traces of molds present. But the teachers, parents, and children all knew that conditions were more difficult for the classes located in this building, and that the subtle ongoing effects were problematic, whether or not they could cause immediate medical harm. The 'background' filtered in to experiences of learning. In the example of the Coyote stories, the broader experiential background was also significant. The narratives emerged out of the specificity of a particular context—a certain group of children and the specificity of events they experienced collectively and individu-

50

New Maps

ally. The students' understandings were situated within the intricate particularity of their context, and their knowledge and the products and artifacts of this knowledge also combined to become a part of their context. It is also likely that the synchronicity of these stories was due in part to unconscious perception. The backdrop of the classroom encompassed conversations, the children's vivid trickster character paintings placed on the surrounding walls, prominently displayed books on the 'sharing' table, and the low mumblings of Grade 1 writers, in addition to other less visible or audible complex layers. The spread of ideas through the group was probably encouraged by background talk as well as the immediate visual context of the room. Here are two similar examples of this type of phenomenon, where ideas travel without overt conscious effort.

A child is recounting his story to the teacher. He mentions, in an aside, that one of his characters speaks French, "That word, there, means 'needles' in French." Within seconds, at a table across the room, a group of students spontaneously begins counting in French. Then, the children at the table beside them begin singing "Frere Jacques." Like a virus, ideas about 'French' have rapidly traversed the classroom. Drama education students are working in four groups, engaging in a mime improvisation game where one object (a chopstick) is transformed into another sort of object (e.g., a comb, a twirling baton, a mirror) and then passed along quickly to the next person in the circle who must then transform it into yet another object. Some ideas seem to be contagious between the different groups, although students must attend carefully to what is happening in their own group because of the fast pace of the game and the need to respond quickly with a novel idea. A student in one group mimes the use of the chopstick as a microphone, and almost simultaneously, a similar gesture appears in the two neighboring groups.

Though these examples might be explained away as strange synchronicities, or it could be argued that conscious listening was in

51


fact taking place, I believe they provide evidence for how nonconscious awareness takes in far more information than we acknowledge. Such phenomena also occur with our bodies—we often physically mirror those with whom we are interacting but we generally do not notice such actions as they are occurring. One person yawns in a classroom, and it spreads.58 Insights within classrooms may also spread, with understandings emerging 'all at once' in a network of collective response.59 Curricula often do not recognize the significance of background contexts or wider ecologies for learning. Yet, these things matter deeply. Human perception, language, and all learning are co-specified by context.60 Complexity science points to the subtle influences, contexts, and effects of teaching as co-evolving with a rich interweaving of other aspects of the learning context, including the learners' collective and individual intentions, responses, interactions, and the specifics of the classroom situation. The influences of contexts and what occurs within them are hugely significant. Although teachers are also a part of the context, how learning is structured, and the environment of learning that develops are equally as important as the role of the teacher as an individual, 'personal' influence. The teacher is still vitally important for her role in structuring the learning context, creating focal events and 'commonplaces' for learning, helping to shape the classroom environment, and her relationships with children, but these influences should be conceived as less direct than traditional modernist descriptions of pedagogical relationships, where the teacher and her methods of instruction are all that really matter. (And, of course, the teacher, too, is shaped and influenced by the learning context!) Within a primary writing classroom, the backdrop for learning becomes critical. Developing an environment where 'listening in' is encouraged, and the sharing of ideas is valued rather than discouraged can help to develop a robust system. Emphasizing and strengthening the learning collective through group play outside of designated class time is also important. In fact, from a complex systems perspective, 'outside of classroom space and time' cannot be truly separated from what might emerge within the more official realms of the classroom. Attention to the larger systems and histories chil-

52

New Maps

dren bring with them to school also matters—as the First Nations phrase "all my relations" emphasizes, children's relationships, knowledge, and learning extend far beyond the classroom. As teachers, we can choose to invite aspects of this 'world' to the contexts of school, by welcoming parent contributions, stories from home, and acknowledging and valuing the discursive practices children bring to school. We must attend to the background, the landscapes in which learning becomes embedded, and notice the tiny details that tend to be ignored by modern curriculum. Many classrooms where I have taught or studied are aesthetically unappealing windowless 'box' structures, as well as being physically uncomfortable: too warm, too cold, dusty, smelly, etc. My first task as a teacher in a new classroom is to attempt to make the room more sensorially appealing and comfortable, to attend to the terrain and not just the maps of the learning that is planned. The work of the renowned Reggio Emilia Schools illustrates how a model of relational space has been used within a project to develop environments for young children. Through this project, a multidisciplinary team of experts (e.g., architects, educational leaders, psychologist Jerome Bruner) and those having a more direct interest, such as teachers and parents, explore the pedagogical implications of the sorts of spaces which might reflect an ecosystem designed for children. This work examines the influence of different configurations of space and qualities such as light, color, smell, sound, microclimate, and attempts to represent metaphors for creating learning environments, such as relation, multisensoriality, community, and narration among other notions.61 If we recognize the significance of context for learning, we must also consider a particularly influential aspect of the context for knowing—that of surrounding relationships. Of what importance are collective relationships for learning? LEARNING AS COLLECTIVE As Sumara observes, "the classroom is a site of complex, interwoven relationships."62 It is a place where social relationships, events of students' and teachers' lives, events of the classroom and the stories told there intermingle and evolve together. Classrooms merge

53


a group of individuals into a larger collective. The products and events of writing or narrative, such as the example of the Coyote Tales, are communal acts, processes, and products. However, inasmuch as collaboration and cooperative learning have been contemporary catch phrases in education, learning is still primarily conceptualized as an individual matter, occurring separately and discretely as knowledge is transmitted from teacher to learner, or from learner to learner. But, as Madeleine Grumet writes, "No one knows alone"63: Knowing and learning are collective endeavors, processes that occur within the context of relationships with others. EXTENDING IDEAS • Related Social Learning Perspectives Prominent psychologist Jerome Bruner believes that understandings of the collective nature of the human mind have been changing in fundamental ways over the past few decades. The approach he names "culturalism" maintains that learning and thinking are always located in cultural settings and are continually dependent upon cultural resources.64 Learning involves interactions within a community and relies on human intersubjectivity, the ability of human minds to understand the minds of other human beings through diverse means, including language, art, gesture, etc. Both the human mind and all learning are understood to be shaped by collective forces. Bruner's recent work has sometimes been labeled as enactivist, a category aligned with the complexity sciences and used by Bateson, Maturana and Varela, and other complexivists to describe their theories. Enactivism is concerned with the relationship between entities and their surroundings, and has been further developed as a theory of mind. Vygotsky also examined the relational nature of cognition, theorizing learning as socially constructed, and interwoven with the child's shared experiences. His well-publicized notion of the zone of proximal development proposes that, with the assistance and involvement of an adult or peer, a child may be capable of extending his cognitive development beyond what he might be able to do alone.65

54

New Maps

Perspectives from complexity science are not the first to acknowledge the importance of relation and collective action for learning. Sociocultural and social constructionist perspectives attend to the realm of experiences occurring between and among people, and share certain sensibilities and commonalities. Davis and Sumara suggest that such discourses can be understood as related in a fractal sense to those of complexity, but on a smaller scale, as complexity science attends to the more-than-social ecology.66 In work that seems to be aligned with perspectives from complexity science, cognitive researchers Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger relate that participation in what they term a community of practice, is essential to any learning curricula, both within and outside of schooling. A community of practice comprises the network of relations among persons, activity, and environment, in relation with or overlapping other such communities of practice.67 Knowing thus occurs in a social world, and is located within the complex relations and interconnections among participants, their practice, the products or artifacts that result, as well as existing in the larger interrelations of the community of practice with the world.68 From this perspective, learning becomes a process of participation that may begin peripherally and gradually increases in complexity and engagement. Learning does not occur with the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student, but resides within the structure and relations of the community of practice, of which the teacher is one part. Lave and Wenger also point to the influence of relations of learning on the development of personal identities. Within a particular community of practice, not only do learners gain understanding in relation with their community, they also gain a sense of personal identity and contribute to the identities of other learners. "Learning thus implies becoming a different person with respect to the possibilities enabled by these systems of relations."69 The notion of identity as emerging from particular contexts, though contrary to modernist interpretations of a centered 'self,' is often observed by teachers, parents, and experienced by children themselves. From their beginning days in kindergarten, children establish a range of identities, enacting different possible selves in re-

55


sponse and adaptation to different contexts and situations. Within the same classroom, children shift and adjust their expression of self-identity in response to the evolving system that is present. Most teachers are familiar with the differences that occur when a particularly influential child is absent (a strong leader, or a child who is a spirited group catalyst). Sometimes another child will take up the vacant role, or the tone and energy of the group may change. Of course, as linguistic and literacy research has acknowledged, language is also customized to specific contexts in what have been called registers70 or social languages.71 Children soon learn how to adapt their conversations to the requirements of different linguistic situations, so that a playground conversation with peers sounds rather different from one with the school principal, or with a parent. Such phenomena find explanation in Maturana and Varela's complex perspectives on learning. Within their expanded model of learning, which regards all living systems as cognitive, or as 'learning systems,' the elements of a system evolve in relation to one another.72 A learner, then, becomes part of a larger collective, reacting and adapting, intermingling with everything else in the larger whole. Small changes in one aspect of a system—one child's oral telling of a story, the presence or absence of an articulate leader, the first snowfall of the year—may evoke reciprocal changes within the larger system. This enactive perspective acknowledges the significance of the sociocultural set of relations, but, in addition, recognizes a wider range of influences for learning, including those of the sensory and environmental realm, and considers all aspects of a particular classroom ecology as important to the collective cognitive system. Viewing learning as a collective endeavor rather than an individual one has profound implications for how curriculum might be structured. The fact that the Coyote stories emerged spontaneously, outside of more official curriculum events, is likely no accident. Many conventional structures and approaches to curriculum inhibit or work in opposition to creating a context for collective understanding and shared knowledge among group members. (A few common examples: separate desks, an insistence that students must 'work on your own,' ranking and sorting structures in assessment and evaluation, rigid 'teacher-proof mandated literacy approaches.)

56

New Maps

The creation of collective focal points or commonplaces for inquiry and interpretation offer a number of possibilities for experiences of shared learning. Aesthetic practices and models of more relationally structured learning, such as those offered within Reggio Emilia schools, might also suggest alternatives for framing and organizing experience. Additionally, examining learning practices that occur outside the boundaries of institutionalized schooling might also present further insights for restructuring learning with a collective, complex emphasis. NEW MAPS, NEW POSSIBILITIES

Moving away from linear, modernist frames for literacy instruction presents numerous challenges. Pervasive structures, familiar ways of talking about teaching and learning, and entrenched social and political contexts are not easily or quickly altered. As science philosopher Thomas Kuhn has observed, shifts in paradigms and worldviews often begin with uncertainty, with a few individuals making new and unfamiliar observations and presenting what seem initially to be 'crazy' ideas.73 Often a period of crisis precipitates such change. Eventually, and this can happen suddenly, ideas and practices shift. Of course, prior ideas and practices do not entirely disappear, they may continue to be embedded within the histories of particular practices and beliefs, or held within the language or traditions of particular fields. Ideas, understandings, and metaphors from complexity science are gradually finding their way into the realm of education. As teachers and literacy researchers find them useful—either for description or for stimulating new approaches to their work in classrooms—further complexity based frames will emerge, altering the systems in which we work. However, as I was reminded recently, one of the most valuable aspects of complexity science for teachers is validation for much of what we already know about children, learning, environments, and relationships. For me, complex perspectives do not necessarily provide a range of new strategies, or any magical answers, but instead, they offer better descriptions and explanations for all the events,

57


practices, rituals, and processes that simply would not be mapped, charted, or plotted within my classroom—the intricate layers of writing and text, talk, and interaction that make up the ever-changing tissue of learning, teaching, and relation.

58

chapter three

rereading maps of literacy and language: a tangled history

59


Rereading Maps

It is a dark, wet winter day on Vancouver Island in the Pacific Northwest, where the colder weather brings weeks of endless rain. A group of first-year education students gather together in the unremarkable classroom. After the usual shuffling, a dimming of the harsh fluorescent lights, a shifting of chairs, they enter the space of the lesson. Their instructor hands them copies of a form, labeled Record of Observations: Literacy Assessment. This will be an "as if" experience—a playing at being people other than themselves. They know to expect this by now in the course. But the instructor's intention is to trick them a little, to nudge their perceptions of the world of teaching and learning. She hopes to provoke the group of student teachers to think about who their future students might be as well as who they, themselves, might become. The "double space"1 of the theatre, even in a brief drama experience—a playing at being teachers—provides a fluid geography, a place of boundary crossing where they can all become someone else at the same time and in the same space that they also remain education students, working together in an ordinary classroom. The student teachers are instructed to imagine that they are teachers who are literacy specialists and that a meeting has been called so they may learn about a new student, Josepha. They should take notes on the information that will soon be provided, in preparation for making some decisions regarding this child. The instructor opens a picture book and reads the first few pages aloud. The text reveals that Josepha lives in a farming community, that he is an active boy who wears rough clothing (he's barefoot, has twine suspenders), and that he has a younger friend: Rap rap tap. Josepha's slate oftimes slipped onto the pine plank floor. Our schoolhouse floor. The floor way over in primary row. Rap rap tap. Red-faced Josepha. Past fourteen and trying to learn in primary row. . . .2 In their imagined roles as teachers, the group takes diligent notes. Several participants murmur to each other in teacherly tones. In the discussion that follows, still 'in role,' they play around with the words of ranking, sorting, labeling. This boy, they concur, must have some sort of learning disability. Quite likely testing is required. . . . He should be placed in a special education classroom or given regular time with the resource teacher. He seems to have indications of behavioral problems. . . . Or, maybe he has LD, FAS, SBD?3 What about hyperactivity? Some teacher-students also notice that the fictional Josepha has a friend and a sense of hu-

61


mor. And it's fun, this playing around at being teachers, using some of the new terms they've read in textbooks or overheard in their visits to schools. These unfamiliar codes and labels seem to exude a sense of authority and expertise. Eventually, everyone returns from the space of the drama and the instructor reads the remaining pages of the picture book. Josepha is a new immigrant from the Old Country. He speaks "Eaton catalog English"4 and exists in an era when able boys who cannot read leave school early to make their living during threshing time.5 This story traces a history of earlier generations—captured within it are the stories of the ancestors of many students in this present classroom. The instructor thinks of her own relatives: a grandfather who left school by the end of Grade 3, a mother who needed to contribute to family earnings instead of completing high school. The story of Josepha is a fiction, but the teacher and her students all recognize a particular truthfulness. The 'trick' of the drama lesson, revealed in the reading aloud, evokes energetic conversation. The distance provided by the work in role makes it safe for the student teachers to examine their fictional interpretations. They talk of their surprise. How easy it is to jump to conclusions, to make assumptions based on little information. How easy it is to misread the complexities of children's lives, when observed through a limited frame such as the scant information contained in a file. For some, however, the surprise is not at the immediate urge to label, to set this boy into a box, but the realization that they'd got the labels wrong. "Oh .. . he's not autistic [or learning disabled or hyperactive]—he's ESL!!6" And immediately poor Josepha is neatly slapped with the nearest label once more. Their instructor remembers well those children from her own teaching history, who, like Josepha, seemed to reside in a hidden terrain within the classroom. Those little ones who did not follow the usual maps for literacy learning or find themselves located on the charts of schooling. These children had different methods of navigation. And she, their teacher, sometimes misread them, lost those students beneath the curricular maps she had followed. Such students forever remained with her, below her skin. Even now she wonders where they have found themselves and how they have navigated their way. She remembers, too, her days as a teacher in the complex geography of kindergarten, the vibrant place in between the borderlands of home and school, play and literacy. A location where children began to read themselves onto new maps, where the significance of the strange

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Rereading Maps

configurations of black and white would break to the surface, changing the topography of their lives.

As the preceding tableau indicates, reading literacy, like reading students, is a complex and difficult endeavor. Complicating matters is the nature of human embeddedness in a literate world. Take for example, you and I, as writer and reader. We are both engaged in an intricate web of events and processes of literacy, including the present acts of reading/writing. As literate persons, we perceive both our reading and nonreading experiences through the influences of existence in a literate culture. The world of print in which we are immersed is by now so transparent and automatically experienced that we do not take much notice of it unless some disruption or misreading experience occurs.7 For most of us, the development of literacy becomes a "subtle influence" with profound consequences, forever altering our participation in and perception of the world. We change our pronunciation of particular words and add new ones to our vocabularies as we see them in texts we encounter. The previously mysterious squiggles on cereal boxes, milk cartons, and other environmental print begin to speak to us. The spelled out words that adults sometimes use for communicating secrets in front of children are no longer indecipherable codes. For some, entering the literate world opens pathways that forever alter the direction of their lives. For me, learning to read and write meant developing many enduring practices and relationships around texts. The fictional characters in the books I read were sometimes as important as the humans who inhabited my life, and these fictions also provided hinges for many of my relationships with friends and family members. Such interactions have included both the positive and the less joyous—sharing the pleasure of a well-loved book, or experiencing disappointment at having a story ending revealed. The power of the pen, or pencil, also opened worlds of possibility. My sister and I extended our arguments with notes passed beneath our closed bedroom doors, tempting the other to laugh at an exaggerated portrayal of the conflict. We discovered our grandmother's

63


EXTENDING IDEAS • Literacy and Perception It has been argued that, with the acquisition of literacy, certain kinds of thought come clearly into focus while other aspects are relegated to the background of perception. What is not represented through one's own written language model becomes difficult to bring into awareness. For example, individuals who write using an alphabetic system are able to identify individual phonemes, or letter sounds, while people who are not familiar with an alphabet generally do not actively perceive phonemes and have great difficulty attending to and understanding such concepts.8 Alphabetic literacy has perceptual and cognitive implications. In speech, the ability to perceive phonemes is unconscious, occurring without instruction. However, the development of such awareness in writing is a different matter. As an abstract system of symbolic representation, alphabetic writing requires that some aspects of spoken sound are recognized and symbolized, while others are not.9 The beginning writing attempts of young children in invented spelling reveals the abstract and selective nature of alphabetic representation. Children's errors are often 'true' spellings more closely aligned with pronunciation. Linguist Charles Read's research shows that young writers often represent spoken affrication in their spelling, although conventional English orthography ignores it. Typical examples from early writing would be CHRIE written for try or JRAGIN for dragon.10 I recall my own 6-year-old astonishment when I discovered that there was an R in the beginning syllable of the word surprise. The experience of learning to write made me newly aware of differences in pronunciation and the existence of individual sounds in my spoken language. (My own childish articulation was suh-prise).

diaries hidden away in the basement—who was this young farm woman who existed on the yellowed pages? In our own journals we learned to write metaphorically and cryptically, for we knew there was always the chance of discovery by a curious sister, or our mother.

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Rereading Maps

And still. Those early engagements with written words have also led me here. (My sister has followed a writing path, as well). Dangerous work, that of writing, and reading. As Canadian novelist Aritha van Herk writes, "Reading persists as the most dangerous activity any character can engage in."11 One can never tell where literacy might lead. The ability to engage with texts has profound implications for children, and for their surrounding cultures and societies. Though 'traditional' models of reading and writing sometimes portray literacy as a matter of acquiring a basic skill, and for teachers, finding the 'one best' instructional method,12 the events, processes, and artifacts of reading and writing are always a part of a complex web of interactions, part of a dynamic, complex system.13 As an example, my own present reading/writing moment, and the "literate artifact"14 of this text are entangled with other moments, objects, texts, histories, beings, selves. At this moment of writing, it is a cold and sunny winter day—typical weather for Edmonton, Alberta in November. I've shoveled new snow off the porch. My dogs remind me when I've been working at writing too long with a nudge from a wet nose, or an exaggerated sigh. A new litter of puppies provides background noise—squeals, murmurs, the sounds of their nursing—interesting distractions in between hours spent at the kitchen table with my laptop computer. Yesterday, I finished reading The Way the Crow Flies,15 a book by Ann-Marie MacDonald. I've had a hard time setting it aside and returning to work, reading late into the night. This text evokes memories of my own childhood, set in the same era as this fiction. Fall term is coming to a close and I am looking forward to uninterrupted hours of writing and a short winter holiday. The telephone rings and a friend shares a story about her 7-year-old daughter. A book, a reading, a writing are not separate from everything else in the world, but have their own influences and interrelationships. Literacy is always embedded in a context and alters the worlds of both 'literates' and those who cannot read or write. Literacy has widely permeated the contemporary world, like some out-of-control virus. A pop bottle with a brightly colored logo and a

65


brand name text washes up on a remote beach. In places where English is rarely heard, people wear t-shirts emblazoned with North American slogans. I can send email messages to and from nearly anywhere in the world and find information about those places on the Internet. In modern and postmodern times literacy rates are important statistics; to be literate means to have power, access to resources, opportunities. To be illiterate in contemporary Western society and increasingly, elsewhere, is to be denied these, to be considered disadvantaged or disabled.16 The remainder of this chapter examines the development of literacy through the frame of complexity and asks how literacy might be considered a complex and fluid system that transforms thought and language. How has literacy changed the world? What are the relationships between literacy and oral language? And finally, what are some implications of becoming literate for young children? WHAT IS LITERACY? WRITING AS TECHNOLOGY FOR THINKING The Greek myth about the alphabet was that Cadmus, reputedly the king who introduced the phonetic letters into Greece, saved the dragon's teeth and they sprang up armed men. Like any other myth, this one encapsulates a prolonged process into a flashing insight. The alphabet meant power and authority and control. . . . Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media1

In current times, technology is commonly understood to be synonymous with electronic or digital technological tools such as computers, the Internet, or satellite communications systems, to name only a few examples. Those of us who happen to wander into unfamiliar terrain might also locate ourselves through electronic technology such as a personal GPS (global positioning system), which can now be purchased in most camping equipment stores. But it is true that other sorts of navigational tools such as the compass, the map, and writing are equally 'technological.' The history of early maps provides some indication of their high-tech status. In ancient times, maps were subject to secrecy and control in the way that digital com-

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Rereading Maps

munication secrets are sometimes protected today.18 Alphabetic literacy has been similarly guarded and restricted in particular historical and cultural periods. When the imagination is enchanted with possibilities of the new, in an era of quickly evolving electronic media, it is easy to overlook ancient technologies. These tools have become so familiar that we often forget that they are also inventions, remarkable developments that have continuing profound effects and significant societal and cultural influences.19 The origins of the word technology provide some insight to earlier uses of the term. Though technology is commonly associated with science in contemporary times, the ancient Greek root tekhne pertains to art or craft. Technology was understood to be a scientific study of the arts. This relation is still apparent in words like technique.20 Technology, then, might be considered as a blend of art and science, a definition that makes sense when one considers early technologies such as maps or the alphabet.

The alphabet. Writing. Yes, in her early primary classes the children seem to know that writing is an invention, an amazing discovery. There are always those children who act as if they've invented it themselves. And maybe they have, in a sense. Radha yells "I CAN WRITE MY NAME!!!" at the top of her lungs, as if she is the first one ever to form that sequence of shaky letters. And perhaps Radha has discovered a small truth about literacy, that learning to read and write means inventing it again, for ourselves, as people who will forever read and write our worlds in new ways.

The development of technologies, including those of writing and the alphabet, generally occurs in a complex manner. The interplay of events, processes, culture, and paradigmatic context create conditions where new inventions and discoveries might flourish. Cause and effect models on a linear timeline are inadequate for describing what takes place in most breakthroughs or inventions. Often, there are multiple influences, and particular technologies may co-evolve together with other inventions. What fiction writer Anne

67


Michaels refers to as "the gradual instant"21 aptly describes many technological developments: subtle influences rub along in the background until the sudden appearance of something new and different gains attention. The development of alphabetic writing and print seems to have emerged as such gradual instants—where, over centuries many representational practices, tools, influences, and histories have layered and intermingled, with writing and print technologies appearing as sudden knowledge and change. Although the ability to use language is innate in humans and typically develops spontaneously in young children exposed to other language users, writing can be considered as "an optional accessory."22 People do not automatically begin to read and write in the same way they acquire oral language. Usually, they require some instruction, as when learning how to use many other technologies. Technologies develop as aspects of complex systems; they "are developed and used within a particular social, economic, and political context."23 Ursula Franklin, experimental physicist and community activist, suggests that we examine technologies from a wider perspective, not only reflecting upon what they can do or promise to do, but also exploring what they may prevent, and the ways in which their use may have certain disadvantages. Because literacy has become a dominant communication technology since the beginning of the modern era, it is largely understood to have overwhelmingly positive consequences; literacy's disadvantages are rarely considered. The pejorative nature of the term illiterate in Western society provides evidence of the high value placed on knowing how to read and write.24 Through understanding the limitations or losses experienced through the use of writing, we may be able to envision new possibilities for complementing or enhancing practices used for teaching and learning.

WRITING PRACTICE • Reading and Writing Ability "I can't read," 5-year-old Jessie tells me glumly, a few weeks after her kindergarten year has ended. Jessie's mother has men-

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Rereading Maps

tioned to me how her daughter has suddenly begun to feel anxious about her ability to read and write, and her usual 'spark' for such activities has diminished. After spending a few days with Jessie I can see that she has considerable beginning skills in reading and writing. She recognizes most letters and knows many of the sounds they represent. She can write her name and several other familiar words. She's able to read several predictable texts, using her memory along with letter and picture cues. I'm puzzled. But, I also know that Jessie's favorite bedtime stories are books with much text and few pictures—her current passion is for stories about Greek mythology. And no, she cannot yet read these books independently! Before Jessie started kindergarten she was confident about her abilities as a learner. She knew she could 'write' and frequently sent her grandparents 'instant messages' using the computer, texts she spelled in her own invented way. But Jessie no longer enjoys sending such messages. Her mother reports that Jessie needs each word to be spelled exactly and have its accuracy confirmed or she's unhappy with her writing. Jessie's entry into the literacies of school has provoked a shift in her awareness. She knows what a fluent and 'successful' reader looks and sounds like, and her growing awareness of literacy has sparked a further awareness of what she cannot yet perform. She's been introduced to practices and processes to evaluate her own abilities and has begun to assess herself with a critical eye. Along with literacy lessons provided in school, sometimes other less intended instruction occurs—lessons about measuring up (or not) to a particular sequence and timeline for learning particular skills. Early in the following school year Jessie becomes an independent reader and writer and regains her previous enthusiasm and confidence. Other children are not so fortunate. In the classroom, our systems of evaluation, processes of ranking and sorting, ask us to read and write students' literate identities in particular ways, with lingering and profound consequences for some of our students.

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WRITING HISTORY: THE INVENTION

OF

ALPHABET

Then an idea occurred to him. "I could write the names for you, Kira," he suggested. "It would make the remembering easier." Lois Lowry, Gathering Blur25

As Thomas, a character in Lois Lowry's novel for young readers reflects, writing is a tool for evoking and containing memory. Lowry's futuristic fiction about a society returned to a repressive dark age where only chosen male individuals may learn to read and write, hearkens back to earlier history in the development of literacy. The first forms of writing systems were developed for mnemonic purposes, as memory tools. Literacy, as it has developed, has been sometimes used to demonstrate power or control and limited to the use of select groups of individuals, those who had authority or status, or who had access to the special required tools. Although contemporary electronic writing technologies such as computers, hand held communication devices, fax machines, and text-capable cell phones are clearly viewed as technologies, the tools and specialized equipment required for alphabetic writing in the past also provide evidence of a technological nature. There are the specially prepared writing surfaces (paper, papyrus, animal skins), the inks and paints used, and implements such as pens, styli, and brushes.26 Some researchers observe that because of the challenges and the time needed to acquire or prepare the necessary equipment (importing papyrus from Egypt or washing, scraping, and other preparations required for leather writing surfaces) literacy, in its early days, offered little advantage except to those who were employed in tasks of recording or reading.27 This is not unlike the beginnings of computer use, when access, cost, and the need for specialized knowledge meant that few people were able to use them. The origins of the verb to write also recognize the necessity of the use of tools in writing, with roots closely aligned with to scratch, to engrave, to score.28 In the time of Plato, writing was considered to be an "external, alien technology" that would destroy memory, causing those who used it to become forgetful.29 Current criticisms of digi-

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tal media, television, and the Internet and their effects on young minds merely replicate human tendencies to be suspicious of 'new' technologies.

This little one, not quite five, does not know much what to do with a pencil or crayon. His teacher observes that the thick red primary pencil and the hexagon crayons are slippery to his touch, jumping out of his grasp and bouncing onto the floor. He cannot decide which hand to use, and the paper in front of him is already torn and crumpled. And mostly blank, except for a feeble, shapeless scribble and a few smudges written in fingerprint and playground dust. Writing his name, Casey, is to enter into a terra incognita, an unknown land marked by the strange and unfamiliar. This place of paper and crayon is a place apart from the world of home and play. The small boy sighs, grasps the peeled blue crayon tightly in his fist, and begins to mark his place on the map of school.

Beginning writers like Casey, in the brief time before the world of literacy becomes familiar and transparent to them, often discover what linguists, historians, and other theorists of language know to be true about alphabetic writing. That is, early writers seem to know that the alphabet is an abstract, artificial system that uses meaningless symbols (letters) to correspond with sounds, or phonemes, which, on their own, are also semantically meaningless.30 The English alphabet as it exists today brings together both surface simplicity and linguistic complexity. A myriad of complex sounds are represented by relatively few symbols. These symbols and sounds only hint at the profound complexity of language: The alphabet is simple as the street map of Manhattan is simple: not much use as a guide to the soul of the city.31 The very earliest forms of what might be loosely categorized as reading and writing were practices linked to observation and communication in the natural environment. In early human history, survival relied upon the ability to find traces of animals, to 'read' and interpret the signs and tracks left by other creatures.32 Other early

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EXTENDING IDEAS • Enlarging Notions of Writing

Although alphabetic writing is based on a sound-symbol relationship, it is not merely a device for recording or transcribing speech. Writing creates something more. However, the notion of writing as a simple transcription tool has been a common misconception from the time of Aristotle to the more recent work of Saussure. Aristotle understood written words as 'signs of words spoken,' whereas Saussure also interpreted writing as representing speech. In Saussure's theory, all words are seen to be signifiers of the concepts, or the 'signified' they represent, with no particular distinction made between the spoken word and the written word.33 Writing, here, is viewed as an encoding device, secondary to speech. The idea of writing as transcribed speech, the notion that alphabetic writing developed along a simple linear evolutionary trail toward more accurate reflections of the spoken word, and the understanding that alphabetic scripts are the pinnacle of all writing systems present a neatly modernist interpretation of the development of writing. More recently, a growing body of research has offered challenges to such conceptions. Theorists such as Walter Ong, David Olson, John Man, and Terrence Deacon explore the idea that writing systems have co-evolved with speech and thought. These researchers suggest that writing provides models, categories, and concepts for thinking about spoken language, as well as offering possibilities for extending cognition.34 Writing is understood to enlarge possibilities for language and to alter the ways that people are able to think. Ong believes that writing transforms human consciousness by changing speech into an object for reflection. Sound, which exists in time, is shifted into spatial representation. Writing, in offering a technology for storing information, frees the mind for new ways of thinking.35 When we teach young children to write we should remember that, in addition to providing instruction in translating sounds into texts, we are also asking them to change the ways they think about language, and the ways they perceive and interact with their worlds.

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human representations such as petroglyphs and cave drawings emerged at about the same time as the use of tallies such as notched sticks or rows of pebbles. These tallies were tools for keeping track of number, and time (early calendars). Although no one knows specifically what such early graphics represented, it is likely that in these oldest forms of writing, no relation between spoken word and image existed, and thus, these early forms tend not to be recognized as true writing systems.36 True writing, or script must represent more than pictures do; it represents utterance, or what someone might say.37 What is known as pictographic writing includes a variety of types of picture writing, from prehistoric cave paintings to the more sophisticated forms of Chinese character writing. Pictorial writing such as Chinese characters are viewed historically as containing a further level of abstraction because in such systems symbols can represent something other than the object pictured, communicating complex ideas. However, all writing systems, whether alphabetic, pictographic, or ideographic are systems for restructuring and transforming speech and thought. Writing has its own power and influence, apart from that of spoken language. Early writing systems often represented objects or ideas iconically, forming a kind of picture code for conveying meaning. Chinese character writing presents one contemporary example, though its images have been stylized and codified in complex ways as this system has evolved over time. In the ideograms or ideographs that are a part of pictographic systems such as Chinese character writing and Egyptian hieroglyphics, the meaning of the pictorial character refers to a concept indirectly related to the picture (e.g., a Chinese character of two trees means woods).38 No phonemic (sound) relationship is present. Because pictographic writing systems require many symbols in order to communicate accurately, such systems have usually been limited to specialized practitioners, often highly trained scribes who had to devote many hours to learning the numerous signs required. Contemporary ideographic systems, similarly, require an extensive education to reach a high level of literacy (Ong estimates that it takes 20 years of study to gain familiarity and mastery of the entire

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Chinese script39). One major advantage of ideographic systems lies in their lack of phonetic relationships; people who speak diverse dialects can still read the same texts, something not the case for most alphabetic scripts.40 Certain pictographic writing systems, such as some developed by Aboriginal cultures in North America, are considered to be emblematic (e.g., hieroglyphs, or representations in totem poles or sacred objects). That is, there is no distinction between the name and the thing named, and thus, separate notions of words or linguistic units are not identified. The name is seen to enter in relation to the thing itself. This form of symbolism is linked to 'word magic' and

WRITING PRACTICE • Dangerous Books Echoes of the phenomenon of word magic appear in contemporary attempts to ban controversial books in schools. For example, in court cases involving the Surrey School Board in British Columbia, Canada, attempts have been made to ban a number of picture books representing families that feature samesex parents. Such books are viewed by some individuals in the community as problematic and 'dangerous' to young minds. However, oral discussions about children's own families frequently take place in classrooms, and children who live in samesex or other non-nuclear family structures will share their 'news from home' in any classroom where conversation is encouraged and facilitated. But it is particular books that are suspect, understood to be introducing new ideas rather than describing the lives of some children and families. In my own classrooms, young children often talked about many intimate details of their lives at home (some that would have made their parents cringe with embarrassment, had they known what was revealed at school!). My young students continually sought answers to questions that were important to them. The questions and issues that matter to children will continue to surface, with or without books or materials to support conversation. It is curious, however, that 'word magic' persists in books that become symbols for controversial issues or ideas.

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sacred practices surrounding the giving of names. Traces of emblematic practices can still be observed today in the treatment of sacred texts, or in the banning or censorship of particular books or reading materials. The object itself is considered to be revered (or conversely, dangerous) and symbolic. Young children, before they learn to read, generally interpret logos such as the 'Golden Arches,' familiar trademarks, or environmental print graphics in an emblematic approach: as standing in for the things themselves rather than as representations of actual words. When children begin to read they often use alphabetic writing emblematically, as well.41 For example, the word little might be misidentified as the word big because it has more letters.

"That is NOT my name!" insists the child, verging on tearful hysterics. "Your name is Tara, isn't it?" asks the teacher, puzzled. She glances at the nametag, which reads, T-a-r-a. "Yes. But that writing doesn't say it," Tara sniffles. "THIS is how it's sposed to be, like my mommy writes it." She points to the label on her lunch kit, "see, T-A-R-A! You only did the 'T' right, the other letters are not my name!" The teacher can see now. Tara needs to be an uppercase girl, a TARA, for a little while longer... .

Tara, the kindergarten child in the preceding narrative, writes her name in a particular way, using uppercase letters exclusively. She takes an emblematic approach, where the specific arrangement and formation of letters represents Tara herself, not just the word that is her first name. The way in which those letters appear on the page is deeply important to her, connected to a particular set of relations, to Tara's memories and history. TARA is the way her mother taught her to print her name, and this experience, learning to write her name, has been a part of her initiation into the world of writing, enacted in the familiar spaces of home. To Tara, the shift in how those letters are written—the teacher's alternate formation, using lowercase letters—creates a disruption, a break from the TARA she

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has been at home. Tara is a word that she does not identify, or read as herself, in spite of what the teacher says. This event of writing/reading, mis-writing/mis-reading is embedded in a complex web of history and relations. Tara brings her own world of experience to the classroom, where another world of literacy is offered as well as a different way to 'write herself.' Tara does not wish to merge the two, just yet. The challenge for the teacher is to bring together these multiple worlds—those of the children who arrive with their own complex histories, and the 'world' presented by school. Lessons of 'who children must be' in a classroom begin early, with the writing of names, and the subtle (or not so subtle) messages about the sorts of literacies that will be accepted in the classroom. When children are still interpreting writing emblematically, as Tara did, it is important to value the contributions of the world of home in addition to that of school. In subsequent years when I taught kindergarten, rather than using teacher-made labels and nametags, I asked the children to make their own nametags and labels. These activities averted the sorts of difficulties that Tara encountered and gave me an opportunity to observe children engaging in an important writing activity. I soon dis-

EXTENDING IDEAS • 2 Bee or Nut 2 Bee? One form of early pictographic writing that should be familiar to most primary teachers is what is known as a rebus, where a pictographic symbol represents a sound. Contemporary examples may be found in picture books for young children, where a graphic of an eye may represent the word I, or the image of a bumblebee might be used to represent be. Rebuses were used by scribes in ancient China, Mesopotamia, and the Middle East, and mark the beginnings of the use of written signs as devices for conveying spoken sound.42 The development of rebus symbols has been acknowledged as leading to the emergence of phonetically based writing systems, and is a significant technological development moving to further abstraction in writing.

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covered which children had never held a pencil, who might need some support in learning to print. And, sometimes, I learned that the name I had on my class register was rather different from the child's preferred name. Many of the developments that led to alphabetic writing have appeared in a widespread manner, not unlike the passing on of a form of linguistic virus. Man describes it as something "rather like an infection."43 Alphabetic writing, like many other technological and cultural phenomena, developed in gradual ways across diverse geographies. Prior to the development of the Greek alphabet, many attempts were made to develop sound based writing systems. Within these systems were syllabaries such as the Phoenician system and the North Semitic alphabet, from which current day Hebrew and Arabic (as well as most world alphabets) are derived.44 Such systems stress the use of the human voice over pictographic referents, although elements of both sound and picture representation are present. Within the original Semitic aleph-beth, the idea for signs representing consonant sounds was introduced. Semitic language systems do not have separate letters for vowels but include what would be recognized as consonant forms, and this is the case even today in the example of Arabic and Hebrew. The aleph-beth (where aleph and beth were the first two letters of the script),45 originally developed for Semitic language, was borrowed and adapted for the language of ancient Greek. This transition broke all ties with the natural world. Although these letters had iconic significance for Semitic language, with letter shapes still representing pictographic connections, the use of the aleph-beth to represent Greek language was a complete abstraction, using shapes and forms connected only to sound.46 In what is generally recognized as the final transition from consonantal based syllabary writing to alphabetic writing, many syllable signs from the Semitic script were applied directly to Greek, since there was a relatively close fit in terms of consonant sounds. However, in Greek, as in English, vowel differences create significant changes in meaning, but this was not always the case in Semitic language (e.g., in an English example, hit and hat have no semantic rela

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tion). To solve this problem, six Semitic signs that represented sounds not known in Greek language were used to represent vowel sounds. Once these signs were used by the Greeks, people were in a position to become more aware of vowel and consonant differences, much as speech awareness changes for contemporary children who are learning to write.47 The invention of the alphabet did not reflect a preexisting phonological theory or demonstrate that the Greeks already had ideas of phonemic differences between vowels and consonants and simply transcribed this knowledge. Instead, the new technology of the alphabet presented a model for hearing speech differently and also for revising it. Learning to read and write, for the Greeks and for preliterate children, becomes "learning to hear speech in a new way."48 Thus, literacy has cognitive implications, providing a set of categories for perceiving, articulating, and thinking about language. The development of the alphabet also transformed speech into an object for reflection, changing sound into spatial representations. Where sound exists briefly, as it is going out of existence, the alphabet represents language as a thing rather than an event, something that may be analyzed in its entirety and dissected into parts.49 This new permanence of language has contributed to modernist sensibilities, where written text can be examined as a separate entity that can be broken down into its constituent parts. The use of EXTENDING IDEAS • Text and Subtext As actors know, the same written phrase can have very different meanings depending on how it is uttered; the 'subtext' emerges in how a line or script is interpreted by performers. In theatre exercises using what are known as minimal scripts, the infinite variety of interpretations of a brief text can be explored, using different emphases and intonations.50 A phrase such as, "Would you like an apple?" might be used to convey various meanings: It may communicate desire, reveal an evil queen's murderous intentions, provide medical advice, indicate the beginnings of marital discord, or signify entry into a biblical tale. The text of one play, interpreted by different directors and actors, can tell many different stories.

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alphabetic scripts also leads to particular shifts in perception: Because alphabets can be used to transcribe speech, it has often been wrongly assumed that written text can represent utterance completely, when in fact there are many aspects of language which writing cannot represent. The problem of reading too literally, the miscommunications fostered in e-mail exchanges and children's attempts to represent affrication all point to aspects of speech that are not fully represented by writing. The conceptual map provided by the alphabet can shift focus away from aspects of communication such as tone, emotional expression, context, and intention. Some language theorists suggest that the use of alphabetic scripts influence and structure thinking in ways that are very different from the influences of ideographic scripts such as Chinese. In Chinese writing, perception remains more inclusive, holistic, and intuitive. The technology of the alphabet has created a linear structuring of thought and a preference for linear/sequential forms of logic.51 The sorts of writing scripts people use (alphabetic or ideographic) may be understood as having complex implications for perception, thought, and culture, opening some possibilities and making others less likely. Written language frames human experience and memory in very particular ways. Beyond these frames, however, other practices exist within what is, for 'literates,' a less familiar terrain. Some of the critical differences between oral and alphabetic practices and the implications of transitions between oral and literate systems are explored in the following section. WHAT IS LOST AND GAINED IN TRANSLATION: IMPLICATIONS OF WRITING AND PRINT The history of literacy ... is the struggle to recover what was lost in simple transcription. David Olson, The World on Paper52

Although writing offers a system for storing knowledge and information, nonliterate cultures such as those that existed before the development of writing systems, or cultures which rely more heavily on oral practices use alternate strategies for holding information.53 An

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examination of oral systems and practices is important for several reasons. First, all children enter into literacy from an oral environment. And, although most, in Western societies, now exist in a highly literate milieu, oral experiences are still powerful in helping to develop unity within groups of people (such as classrooms) and in practices for tracing and sharing collective and individual histories. Oral systems for storing knowledge are equally as complex as written systems. Within oral knowledge traditions, information is often stored systematically. In a culture that is predominantly oral, knowledge is memory. Thus, particular strategies to make recollection easier must come into play.54 Knowledge survives only if it is remembered and passed on. Because there are no written texts, other forms of aidesmemoire or formulaic practices are required for collecting and saving information. Strategies such as rhythm, repetition, pattern, the use of music to 'fix' memory, the inclusion of heroic characters and memorable exaggerations, and the association of story with particular locations, objects,55 or drawings are some examples of ways that stories and information may be captured and conveyed. Such historical methods for remembering are also supported by contemporary research in the area of cognition and memory. People find it exceedingly difficult to recall large amounts of unorganized information (memory experiments show the limit to be six or seven unrelated items). Whereas humans are able to sense and perceive huge amounts of information, the capacity for recollection, and for conscious awareness, is much smaller.56 In order for something to be memorable, selection and organization of the material must occur. Information must be organized along particular patterns or associations—in essence, the creation of particular memory 'habits' or strategies help recollection to become more automatic and to require less conscious effort. Oral memory is somatic, strongly connected to the body. Gestures, position, movement, and stillness become part of the recollection of knowledge or story. Spoken words always involve bodily engagement, emerging along with breath, voice, facial expression, and movement. Oral language requires other listeners, the creation of a web of reciprocal connection among speakers and listeners. A

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EXTENDING IDEAS • Shaping Language Current work in neuroscience suggests that the language and literacy practices in which humans engage have a shaping effect on the brain. Studies indicate it is likely that the brains of people who learn to read and write organize information quite differently from those who have learned oral strategies. The brain, as a living, self-organizing structure, "provides a landscape for processing the moment and is, in turn, shaped by the flow of that activity."57 Infancy and early childhood comprise a critical period when language and literacy experiences have particular influence on brain development. Once specific types of neural connections occur, the brain becomes less capable of perceiving and interpreting the world in ways contrary to such representations.58 One interesting example of this takes place with children's early language development. All babies are born with the capacity to become a speaker of any language. Babies are born as universal linguists or "citizens of the world," as Patricia Kuhl describes them.59 When they are tested at the age of 6 months, babies are able to discriminate speech sounds from many different languages. But when researchers test them again at 12 months of age, babies prefer and discriminate the sounds of their own language milieu. They lose the ability to 'hear' the distinctions of other languages. By the age of one year, babies have developed new neural structures for organization of language sounds—those that are not being used disappear. If you want to learn a new language, the best time to do it is when you are a baby!

unity between speaker and listener/audience is formed.60 Speech takes place in relation with others, in public, in contrast to reading or writing, which tend to be more private enterprises. In writing and reading the audience is usually an imagined one. Orality is also linked with sacred practice or experience. In many religious or ceremonial occasions the spoken word, even if it is read aloud, or occurs in song, creates a sense of unity among participants and presents an opportunity to transform events out of the realm of

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ordinary experience. Mary Aswell Doll writes about including an aspect of speech in her work with students taking her college English course, creating "oral-aural rituals."61 She suggests that oral practices, even the simple reading aloud from a novel, are able to bring together a group of learners in shared experiences linked to the sacred. The experiences of young children prior to literacy provide a contemporary link to oral culture. Though they are immersed in a literate world, very young children exist largely within the oral practices of childhood. Rhymes, games, stories, and songs are passed on predominantly through speech. Iona and Peter Opie's playground studies provide many examples of how knowledge such as games, chants, and skipping rhymes are passed on orally by generations of children through their play.62 Such studies also show how children's rhymes and other oral structures evolve and shift across time and geography, responding to local conditions and nuances of language and culture. Of course, most teachers also witness such processes in their class-

WRITING PRACTICE • Reading/Writing Aloud One practice I always establish when I teach groups of children or adults is to develop weekly opportunities for oral sharing of each person's writing. For both younger school-aged students, as well as adult university students, these practices seem to contain an almost magical ability to help a collective group sensibility emerge within a group of separate individuals. When working with primary-aged students, we usually sit in a circle and I ask each child to find a page, a story, a piece of writing to share with the class. They can read this aloud themselves, or for children who are less confident or shy, one of the adults (me, a classroom assistant, a student teacher) will read aloud the selected work. Over the course of a week, every child has the chance to share something. After the uninterrupted oral readings—we listen to several students during this time—we talk about what was presented and share the ideas that were evoked during the listening time. These responses are never evaluative, but sometimes offer suggestions for future work.

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With adults in my graduate classes, students engage in a similar practice—reading aloud a page or so of their weekly responses, summaries of readings, or a variety of their products of prior 'writing practices.' With my older students, all usually share within the duration of a class. In these oral readings, the space of the classroom changes. The oral environment is always one of heightened attention. Readers carefully articulate their words, for reading aloud is akin to theatre, a kind of performance. The listeners, too, are focused. They become close listeners. Without a text to rely on, they must attend to sound, words, small gestures. In these spaces, ideas bump along beside one another, coming together in strange synchronicities. We begin to feel as though we share parts of the same mind, and it is probably true that we do. We learn a great deal about the contents of one another's minds, something that does not happen when classroom work remains as a series of parallel conversations between teacher and student. As the course (or school year) continues, student writing improves dramatically—the reading aloud events create a need for particular thoughtfulness and attention to careful crafting. It is writing for the we, not just for me ... or for the teacher. The writings become a conversation with one another. Through listening to a variety of styles, structures, rants, obsessions, and threads of possibility, students influence one another's work. The classroom provides a context where nonconscious learning is embraced—ideas spread. We always begin to notice how this happens after the first few classes. Although my young elementary school students generally enjoy the sharing of their work—after all, it is not far removed from the familiar world of oral storytelling or show-and-tell— my older university students are initially more reluctant. They are not used to this way of working. But then they start to experience the magic of it. How, suddenly, they have formed into a community. They start to care about the stories and responses of the others. By the end of a course, they have witnessed their own ideas and relationships transformed within the sacred space of the spoken word.

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rooms. When I moved to a new school district, I was curious to notice that a common school yard taunt, "Nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah, nyahnyah!" was transformed to "Nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah, boo-boo!" Written texts aimed for an audience of young children often use strategies that make them as much oral texts as they are literate ones, appealing to the listener as well as the reader. Every kindergarten teacher knows that the best-loved books are usually those young children can easily learn by heart, memorable texts that use pattern, repetition, rhythm, call and response, or rhyme. For adults, the use of proverbs (e.g., A stitch in time saves nine. A watched pot never boils.) retains a historical connection with orality. Such statements rely on rhythm, visual image, and metaphor to embed them in memory. The popularity of rap music and oral poetry movements such as slam poetry show how oral forms of expression remain important today. Such oral forms are effective for creating a feeling of community, for expression of complex emotion, and as a sometimes subversive means for expressing resistance. Although it is possible to differentiate primarily oral and primarily literate practices, these boundaries are not discrete or well defined. For example, words we read in books may be incorporated in our spoken vocabulary, while pronunciation tends to be influenced by how a word is written. We may also write texts to be spoken, such as speeches or scripts, or turn spoken language into text when creating research transcripts. Historically, before the invention of writing, abstract and symbolic representation practices also existed through art and other symbolizing systems such as pictographic methods. The visual arts, theatre, music, and other symbol systems, such as mathematics, provide a wide range of possibilities for other forms of representation. Presently however, in a world increasingly interconnected and represented by literacy technologies, practices and artifacts, even those who do not become literate cannot entirely escape literacy's systemic influences and effects.63 The shifting of speech or other sorts of information into a written form becomes an act of translation, a traveling from one form of communication into another. Similar to shifts from one spoken

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language into a different one—from English to French, for example—subtle differences in meanings, practices, and organizational forms can never be communicated exactly in the second language. Translation does not mean a simple exchanging of one thing for another. As I discovered in my own second language experiences, translation is always an approximation. Languages develop within a cultural milieu, co-evolving with particular sensibilities, histories of embedded meaning, and cultural assumptions about the world. Translators do not merely put one word in the place of another; they must also convey the subtleties of culture and the particularities of linguistic relationships.64 This is why word-by-word attempts to translate are often rather humorous; they miss the complexities and interrelationships of words, nuance and meaning. When we express ourselves in a second language, different aspects of individual subjectivity emerge. As a French speaker, I experience a different sense of self than I do in my mother tongue of English. In French, I have access to some words and phrases that do not have English equivalents. I am a little less sure of myself, and feel more distinctly aware of my English—Canadian-ness when I communicate in French. Similarly, I do not experience the same identity as a writer compared to when I speak. Different layers of meaning, memory, and history become available, while others are inaccessible. The technology of writing presents a different medium and system for expression with its own possibilities and constraints. The sorts of materials and tools of literacy likewise present different opportunities for representational practice; particular practices and ways of thinking may become more (or less) likely depending on the materials and equipment used. For example, I am not able to do the same kind of thinking while working on a computer that I can accomplish effectively with pen and paper. I use the two systems of writing for different purposes and use them in different ways, and often in different locations and contexts. For children, the immersion into print may also shift the kind of thinking and even the self that is represented. ++ +

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In her second year with the same class, the teacher notices how her students have changed. Olivia, a quiet girl who was often lonely in Grade 1, has come to be an articulate writer. Her stories express a keen sense of humor. The other children now drift toward her during writing time, interested in the ongoing chapter book she is writing. For Olivia, writing has provided a kind of scaffolding, a bridge to new friendships, a way for others to enter into her world. And there's Benjamin, dealing with his parents' divorce. He says little about his family life during daily activities, but his stories express a yearning for the way things used to be, when his father was still at home. His writing is a place of memory and comfort in his shifting world. The teacher worries a little about Jesse, a gifted artist, a wise old soul. He struggles with text, can't seem to get the words down easily although he can always draw a picture to tell the stories that matter to him. Drawing is still important in Grade 2, and Jesse's abilities are much admired. But his teacher notices that he's not quite as exuberant as he was last year, and he shields his notebook from curious eyes. Where will the pathway to literacy lead him, and who will he be at the end of it?

Historically, the invention of alphabetic writing has co-emerged with practices and tools that have influenced the effects of literacy upon particular societies. Before the Gutenberg era and the development of the printing press, the technological equipment used for writing encouraged a craft (scribal) culture linked with the practice of writing. Early writers used materials such as wet clay, parchment made from animal skin, and waxed tablets. As the etymology of the word writing indicates, the process for creating written text often involved carving or scratching. Writing surfaces were often reused. The original writing was erased, sometimes incompletely, by scraping off or smoothing over the original surface. Such recycled texts were known as palimpsests, and quite frequently, the trace of prior writing remained below the surface of more recent text. Even when papyrus became available in the first half of the 6th century BC, it was a limited resource in comparison to contemporary access to inexpensive paper.65

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The use of these sorts of writing materials and the more timeconsuming nature of such methods for writing meant that written text was, by necessity and circumstance, more compressed. The limitations of the materials and practices used favored concise writing.66 Greek literature was influenced by such material pressures to incorporate careful, economic language. The constraints of early written text also meant that the world of literature was restricted to an elite community during the period of classical Greece. Reading was also constrained by such conditions. Until the development of printing press technology, reading tended to occur orally and in public. This was partly because the variation of calligraphic scripts and orthography made reading a slow and halting process.67 The development of print technology was highly dependent on the invention of paper and its subsequent improvements, occurring in China over several centuries. Rag paper had been created in China by AD 105; this technology was passed on to Arab captors in the 8th century, and the craft of papermaking revealed to Europeans in the 12th and 13th centuries. Johannes Gutenberg combined features of a number of existing technologies in developing his printing press, including influences from textile production, papermaking, and wine presses. Additionally, he added and incorporated the innovation of moveable type.68 The development of the printing press was dependent on a confluence of technologies and conditions, and subsequently had numerous, systemic and even paradigmatic influences. FINDING THEMSELVES IN THE WORLD ON PAPER: CHILDREN AND LITERACY

Many literacy-related developments that have taken place in the modern era have continued to gain powerful influence and authority in the world. In Western literate societies, we interpret our surroundings and experiences using the deeply embedded frames and maps provided by writing and print. Literacy affects what we know, how we know it, and aspects of 'who we are.' In the course of human existence, processes of learning to read and write and the development of efficient and effective ways to do so have occurred gradually, over many centuries. However, it is a common expecta-

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EXTENDING IDEAS • A World of Print

Many social and cultural implications resulted from the development of the printing press and moveable type. It was not so much the invention of writing, but the developments brought about by the printing press that were fundamental to the creation of the modern world and the move toward increased Western literacy. Larger implications emerged from the possibility that a person could read a book privately and from the linear precision and uniformity characteristic of printed texts. Print had effects upon industrialism, nationalism, education and universal literacy.69 The presence of printed texts continued to add to the detachment and reduction in person-to-person involvement that had begun with the emergence of alphabetic writing. The practice of silent reading became common with the availability of smaller, more portable printed books. With the reduction of orality and the notion that knowledge could be completely severed from the knower and contained in books, writing was further abstracted from the more-than-human world, and increasingly distanced from the context of human relations. It was now possible to read texts individually, in isolation, and to read texts written by persons who existed outside of one's historical, sociocultural, or religious community. Pressure toward standardization and uniformity for forms of syntax and spelling, and further development and standardization of genres also arose with the changes fostered by the printing press.70 Print technologies, along with technologies for mass production and distribution of books, further intensified the impact of the invention of alphabetic and other writing systems. These technologies contributed to the Scientific Revolution during the 16th and 17th centuries, where texts might now be compared, procedures could be published. Through writing and print, the world could be broken down into components to be analyzed.71 The technologies of alphabetic writing and print production are inextricably linked with many of the changes characteristic of the modern era.

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tion for young children at the age of six, or earlier, to learn to read and write quickly and easily. Early literacy instruction is often addressed with 'quick-fix' agendas, as if literacy were a simple, uncomplicated matter that the right amount of phonetic instruction, whole language teaching, or particular 'balanced' program might neatly address. School districts and government agencies continue to seek the perfect instructional program and look for ways in which new technologies (e.g., computers, new software) will transform teaching and learning. The complex aspects of literacy development are often set aside when contemporary initiatives such as the No Child Left Behind U.S. legislation72 or other 'standards' movements influence both literacy curricula and aspects of literacy research. Within North America, pressure toward reading instruction at ever-younger ages and grade levels has intensified. High-stakes testing and increasing accountability requirements mean that many young children have their abilities measured even before they have opportunities to explore the worlds of reading and writing. Their place in these worlds is immediately mapped, before they have opportunities to explore the terrain. Early literacy has become a new domain within research and publication in the language arts, focusing on literacy acquisition and teaching for the very young. Kindergarten used to be a place where children played, made new friends, and became familiar with some of the practices, routines, and matters of school. Now it is unusual to find kindergarten classrooms where literacy instruction is not an integral part of the school day, and where there is not administrative or political pressure to monitor and increase children's abilities at younger ages. Now, I do not believe that it is necessarily a bad thing for kindergarten children to learn about reading and writing and to begin to experiment with text. But as this chapter has outlined, literacy involves many intersecting complex practices; it is about more than simply getting the right letters and words down. As literate adults, it can be hard to remember the time before print began to shape the ways in which we interpret the world, and how profoundly it changed us. But it is important, nevertheless, to

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acknowledge the huge task we ask children to undertake, and to recognize that in asking them to learn to read and write, we are also insisting that they enter into a new world, to become different kinds of people than they were before. Regardless of their success as literate individuals, all children begin to gather a new, complex, multilayered identity through text as they enter into school settings. The literate artifacts they collect throughout their school years will try to tell children who and what they are, locating them in the "world on paper," in outlines traced by print. Children will encounter comments that may be similar to the following: She is very neat and particular in her written work ... a very satisfactory pupil. Improvement needed in applying spelling skills in written work .. . her marks in her written work have dropped. Her handwriting needs improvement . . . Linda must be careful not to let her writing become spoiled by silly statements.

These are excerpts gathered from my old elementary school report cards, each one the comments of a different teacher. These and other documents I have collected over the years—papers from school, responses from teachers, notes, cards, and messages from friends and family—are artifacts that tell something about the person they describe, or were written to. In the first years of schooling, children gather many such artifacts, documents that begin to map them onto a particular location in the literate world. Children may also collect the mysterious codes, assessment numbers and labels that will remain with them, often long past their usefulness. "How do you read this?" a friend asks for advice, wondering about several ambiguous statements on her daughter's kindergarten report card. She senses a gap between the vivacious, articulate child she knows at home and the child who appears on paper in circled comments, check marks, and sporadic anecdotal phrases. Such documents can be difficult to read, and for teachers to write. But even the best, most carefully detailed texts can never tell the whole story:

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It takes a special effort to see that the written version is not a complete representation of the speaker's or writer's intention . . . most readers are afflicted by the notion that texts mean just what they say.73 There are gaps, spaces, fields of play present within all written texts. Even seemingly objective writings like report cards require interpretation. As fiction author Anne Michaels reminds us, referring to "maps of history," Terra cognita and terra incognita inhabit exactly the same coordinates of time and space. The closest we come to knowing the location of what's unknown is when it melts through the map like a watermark, a stain transparent as a drop of rain.74 That location of the unknown, the place in the middle of translation and interpretation may also be a rich space for possibility. While this present chapter examined the terra cognita of writing and print, and the ways in which literacy technologies have created a kind of map of the terrain of language and thought, the following chapter travels into places which, like the terra incognita Anne Michaels recalls, have a closer relation to the imaginary.

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chapter four

entering the woods:

writing, interpretation, identity

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No one worries. Sooner or later, another story, more powerful than the last, will free them; free them into other selves or back into their own. Some stories go farther than others. Some take the traveller as far as the line of mountains bordering a vast forest. . . . Jeanette Winterson, "Turn of the World"1

In the previous chapter, I examined writing as a complex technological system that transforms language and thought, and I suggested that written texts are never able to fully represent speech. Instead, writing provides a different medium for translating thought, where the features of text ensure that particular gaps or absences remain. These gaps can be generative interpretive spaces for both readers and writers. This chapter explores the nature of interpretation, the navigation of such spaces. How can writing as a "technology of the self,"2 to borrow Foucault's words, transform a sense of personal identity or subjectivity? What are some implications for children who are learning to write in school? What do children produce beyond their texts? And, finally, what are some considerations for teachers, when having students engage in writing within a classroom context? In looking through an old journal I kept a few years ago, I find some entries I wrote when I was in the midst of a transition from my life as an elementary school teacher into further academic studies. The following tableau presents a brief excerpt.

She's dreaming of travel. In the cafe where she is writing, she overhears a conversation about exotic places and wonders about buying a ticket to somewhere, packing her suitcase, bringing an empty notebook. . . . It's possible now, if she wants. Now that she's begun to peel away the bits of her life that have prevented her from moving, kept her rooted in one place for longer than her restless self is used to. She's shedding an old skin, the skin of chalk dust, attendance lists, hot dog money and book order forms. (She doesn't know yet that later she'll miss that old life, find comfort in these memories.) She thinks that a journey would clear her mind, provide a new way to locate herself, in the widening distance between that teacher self and who-

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ever it is she might still be, underneath. She knows that there is a time for staying and a time for leaving. This is leaving time, she can feel it in her bones. That old restlessness, the itch, the need to find a new corner to look around, another edge to peer over. Time to go, she thinks. Time to go.

In rereading this text I am reconnected with memories of past experience, remembering a life full of the rhythms of the classroom as well as my struggles to maintain an identity beyond that of my teacher self. But as I read this narrative, written several years ago, I recognize many changes since those writings. The self contained on that page is distanced and abstracted, framed by the text, although the person who wrote them continues to resemble me in the same way I recognize myself in old photographs. As researcher Laurel Richardson states, "We are always present in our texts,"3 traces of the writer are evident even in the 'neutral' texts of scientific or traditional forms of academic writing. It is also true that the self I wrote onto those pages becomes a kind of fiction when translated into the form of a text. One moment of writing captures particular aspects of who I was when I wrote it and leaves out others. Traces of the self who could not quite make it to the page exist between the lines. One small piece of text provides a world of complexity—historical memory, my present rereading and reinterpreting, and the thoughts of the future evoked by this writing. Multiple possibilities exist in the tiny space of a text. And of course, these are only my readings of it. Other readers may travel to different places, making connections to other past/present/ future moments. There is an interesting kind of travel involved in writing, although the travel via print usually traverses an imaginary space rather than a geographical one. Art forms, including writing and literary work, create Virtual' forms of consciousness, shifting or suspending ordinary time and space. Writing, literature, poetry enact a virtual memory, presenting "the closed form that in actuality only memories have."4 Writing may not always be linked to a real memory (rather, it may create an imagined one), but it holds a virtual past.5 Time travel—in the space of a novel, a picture book, a child's written text.

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Literary experiences through writing or reading permit a special kind of doubling in time and space. The closed moment of the written text, which resides in a virtual past of history and memory, is combined with the fictional 'as if' experiential space required for such engagements. As literary theorist Umberto Eco points out, in dealing with a work of fiction readers and writers must engage in a tacit fictional agreement. Though both know that what is being narrated is imaginary, the writer must pretend to tell the truth and the reader must pretend that what is written is true.6 This entry into "the fictional wood," is a complex process.7 The boundaries between the EXTENDING IDEAS • Every Moment is Two Moments8 Among other functions, narrative, storytelling, and writing help us to make sense of our experiences and to search for meaning. Our own personal stories—those we tell to ourselves and to others—frame our personal histories and situate 'who we are.'9 Literary theorist Wolfgang Iser understands such "explanatory fictions" as moving beyond the range of literary texts, although he suggests such texts are interesting to us for what they might disclose about human dispositions.10 Much of human experience merges fiction and reality to some degree, as expressed through our narratives and our texts. Iser provides the example of a lie as one kind of narrative in which we are in two worlds simultaneously—that of reality and the fiction of the lie. Jerome Bruner writes, "Narrative is the shape of being human, fragile though it may be."11 He notes that young children already have extraordinary knowledge about narrative. At preschool ages children are often able to have 'close reading' discussions about narratives of their own or others' making. Bruner suggests that what needs to be cultivated before reading and writing is a process of narrative scaffolding, or learning how to create oral texts through storytelling, retelling familiar rhymes, songs, and conversations about texts. Children need to exist in a milieu of written language, learn about narrative structure and experience the worlds of fiction and 'reality' that are present in texts before beginning to read and write.

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fictional and the actual can be ambiguous, and for writers and readers, the worlds of the actual and the fictional intersect. The space between a text and its interpretation is an interesting and generative location. These interstices have been described as liminal space, a kind of opening between the text and its interpretation. Iser notes that, "The space is to a certain extent independent of what is translated and what the subject matter is transposed into."12 Although this interpretive space is often a focus for the work of literary criticism, it is also important to the processes and acts of writing. Writer Carolyn Heilbrun suggests that the liminality within experiences of writing is like "leaving one condition of country or self and entering upon another."13 It is a place of transition, unsteadiness. Heilbrun relates the condition of liminality to the work of women's memoir and biography, believing that women writers must negotiate themselves within texts in which they are always to some degree an 'Other.' Historically, most narratives and plots are modeled along linear, and typically, male patterns.14 But the liminal state also provides an opportunity to invent new forms, to discover and re-create the self in the negotiation of the unfamiliar. The notion of liminal space also relates to the phenomena of phase transitions in chaos theory. Studies of phase transitions look at how matter changes from one state into another: liquid to solid, unmagnetized to magnetized, for example. Scientists have been particularly intrigued by the particular transitional space (phase) where one form of matter turns into another, and where interesting, nonlinear interactions occur at the molecular level.15 In writing, one form shifts into another—unarticulated thoughts and ideas become a written text, finding form on the page. Written text is transformed by the interpretations of a reader. Curious interactions may occur here, too.

Six-year-old Jennifer enjoys writing stories together with a group of her friends. When it is time for 'free writing,' they all draw pictures of beautiful girls and princesses dressed in elaborate gowns and write or scribe stories about these characters. In Jennifer's stories, the beautiful princesses have adventures, escape evil queens, and perform good deeds. Jennifer seems to use these stories—her drawings and written

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texts—as a way to be included in this group of popular girls. Writing provides her with an entry point to other worlds—the classroom world of her new friends and the fantasy places of her own fictions, which are places quite different from her own life. Jennifer's family works hard to earn a living and her own clothes are practical rather than princess-like. Her teacher notices something curious about Jennifer's stories. Jennifer has mixed Asian/Caucasian heritage—but in the illustrations accompanying her stories all of the beautiful girls and princesses have long flowing blond tresses. None of these characters have Jennifer's shiny black hair or her dark brown eyes. Her teacher wonders about this. Is Jennifer simply mirroring the drawings and stories of her neighbors? Using her stories as a way to fit in with her White, upper-middle class friends? Or, are Jennifer's fictions a more intentional attempt to transform herself? The teacher will never know for certain, although she does know that Jennifer's stories provide a way for her to find her own way in the classroom, to say something about what she observes in the world. The teacher decides that there is something she can do for Jennifer and the other children in the class. She's suddenly aware that she's shared few books this term where the princesses do not have blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin. It is time to attend more to the diversity of her classroom, not only for Jennifer, but for every child who might imagine a fairy tale princess.

Children's written texts, as demonstrated through Jennifer's story, become a fluid location for self-interpretation and self-understanding, a space where possibilities for interpretation may open and the self may be translated in new ways. However, such interpretations and translations are not uncomplicated, as Jennifer's writings reveal. The structures of schooling present additional complexities for children, in their experiences of writing. If women writers struggle within the conditions of language forms and systems based on the dominant discourse of "the father tongue,"16 children's writing often exists within a realm of even less cultural or social validation. Children's writing, stories, and words are often viewed with patronizing adult indulgence. Such texts may be regarded with amusement

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WRITING PRACTICE • Taboo Topics Molly and Yasmin, experienced teachers who have their Grade 2 students participate in daily writing, have both been dealing with a similar issue. Molly reports, "There's one child in my class—his stories are always violent. Bad characters kill people, evil robbers steal things, and his illustrations are violent and bloody. I'm not sure what I should do. If I tell Dustin he can't write those stories, what message does that give him? Or the rest of the class, for that matter? And, what will he write if his usual topics are no longer an option?" Yasmin shares her approach. "Well, obviously if there's something in the writing that I believe the school counselor needs to see, that's a different problem. Sometimes I've had to respond to work that was a cry for help. But, I've also noticed in my class how some kids write about those 'dangerous' topics as a way of sorting things out—dealing with something they've seen on television, heard about on the news. Sometimes writing about taboo topics seems to be a way of testing me, too—like, 'Can I really write about what I need to, in this class?' Usually when those kinds of topics arise in my classroom, I have conversations with particular children about audience, how some people like scary movies and scary stories and some people don't. So we try to work it out that way, especially when students want to share their stories with others. Another thing I tell them is that it's okay for some writing to be private, like a personal diary, and for other writing to be public, like letters to the editor in the newspaper. So, they will need to make some choices about particular kinds of writing, too—whether it's writing meant just for themselves, or for an audience. Whatever my students write I try to take it seriously and treat their work and their abilities with respect, regardless of what I am offered. I nudge them all to work at their writing seriously. Even a scary topic can be well written and include interesting ideas. Who am I to judge what's going on in a child's mind? The point is to help them go deeper with their work, and help them to find a way to communicate the things they want or need to say."

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and delight, valued for their 'cuteness' rather than the meanings they attempt to convey. Certain topics may be deemed inappropriate, be censored or forbidden in the classroom. As a teacher, I often observed children who were confronted, challenged, or reprimanded when topics such as violence, death, or sex emerged in their writing. Safe, sanitized topics were presented as alternatives. I must admit, too, that in my own teaching I sometimes questioned such work and diverted students with topics I considered less 'dangerous' in a classroom context. Writing, when it occurs in school, may invite responses regarding content and interpretation, and confront teachers and students with issues of power and control. AN ENCHANTED FOREST: SOME HISTORIES (AND HAZARDS) OF INTERPRETATION

In her essay "Bodyreading," Madeleine Grumet writes: Attention to the moments of composition has revealed the contingencies, elisions, contradictions, and explosions that constitute the text. Think of the repugnance one often feels for a text that is recently completed. There, clinging to all the lines, are shreds of the ideas that never quite made it to expression, fragments of the negative example, the other possibility that the sentence, the chapter, the ideology, the deadline, the habit, the defense mechanism just could not admit.17

Grumet reminds us of the incompleteness of written composition. Her words resonate for me each time I attempt to "fill in the gaps" of this present writing. The manuscript I see before me includes notes between lines and margins, sections of crossed out text, sticky notes. This task of attempting to express what I mean could be never-ending. Although the copy you are reading may appear deceptively 'complete,' I know that I will continue to think of ideas that did not or could not find their way into the text. Although some writing difficulties can be attributed to the individual writer, the written text has its own limitations, inherent difficulties that exist whether the writer is a best-selling author or a child just beginning to navigate her way into the written word. The history of reading reveals a pattern of attempts to uncover and remedy

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what writing systems are unable to represent.18 Although, in speech, questions of intention and interpretation still remain, spoken language and oral 'texts' offer additional characteristics not present in writing. Features and qualities such as intonation, volume, and vocal expression provide further layers of nuance that assist in the determination of meaning.19 Oral language usually occurs between people over a short span of time, so that meaning is negotiated in multiple ways.20 A listener can ask questions for clarification, may have prior knowledge of the speaker or situation and notice body language and

EXTENDING IDEAS • Early Reading Since the invention of writing, the interpretation of texts has been addressed in a variety of ways. Early Greek and Medieval texts presented considerable challenges to their readers in a time before standardized texts and orthography. Greek texts did not include spaces or punctuation, but rather, strings of letters were used in an interesting parallel to the emergent writing of contemporary children. Texts from the manuscript cultures of the Middle Ages also varied considerably in terms of spelling, punctuation, and spatial arrangements. Decoding such texts often required a collective oral process and tended to take place within particular textual communities such as religious orders. Early texts were viewed less as objects and more related to utterance, as focal points for a listening process linked to the cues provided by the text.21 Interpretation of texts was more likely to take place through a group process of determining meaning. Reading did not so much emphasize the precise wording of a text, but rather, the 'spirit' of the text was its significance, likely because religious texts such as the Bible were the predominant reading materials. What was perceived to be 'between the lines' was valued as much as the actual text itself. The texts of earlier times were regarded as an instrument of spiritual or magical power. Traces of this attitude are present in the word etymology for the Middle English "grammarye" (grammar)—the word originally meant book-learning, but came to represent occult lore or magic.22

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facial expression. Because speech is fluid and transitory—coming into awareness as it is passing out of existence—focusing on precision of meaning or intention is difficult. Written text, more permanently 'fixed' on the page, can be more carefully scrutinized. As readers, we negotiate the meanings of texts after they are written, sometimes after the original writer is long gone. When organizing my office files I've sometimes encountered my former students' writing samples and discovered new meaning in particular texts, meanings that my role as teacher would not let me see in the moment they were written. (Or, perhaps the busy-ness and ongoing activity of classroom life did not allow me very many 'close reading' opportunities!) For example, one child's fictional story about animal characters reveals another story—a description of how another child is ridiculed by the child-author, who writes sympathetically (and expresses regret) about her Victim.' Considering the writing of young children as an interpretive, meaning-making activity challenges a number of commonsense assumptions. It has been popularly held, in various approaches to literacy instruction, that learning to read and write is the main focus of the literacy efforts of primary aged children, while the use of reading and writing for meaning-making and understanding (reading and writing to learn) is the domain of older students. Young students do need to learn to be competent language and literacy practitioners, but this should not prevent them from using their emergent texts (both those of reading as well as their own written texts) in meaningful ways, for purposes that matter to them. However, opening possibilities for interpretive writing means opening ourselves, as teachers and as human beings, to some risks, exposing us to what I call 'dangerous writing,'23 a topic of much discussion for professional writers. As writer Anne Lamott says, in describing some of the motivations for writers: We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must.24 And Madeleine Grumet describes, "with words I am disrobed and articulated."25 The interpretive gaps of writing are also generative creative spaces, and these contain a certain unruliness that writers may

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experience as risky. When I returned to my own writing after entering graduate courses, I was often surprised by what bubbled up on the page. I wrote the following in a journal I kept for one of my courses: Words on a page reveal what was hidden, what you never knew, before. And there it is ... dangerous writing. Any 'real' writing is dangerous because it points to new truths, it might change the fabric of the future, of our relationships, reveal who I am. My own re-entry into the processes of writing became a kind of butterfly effect, altering the course of my future. Dangerous stuff, that. But we often play it safe in the classroom, providing our students with writing topics that prevent any accidental wanderings into the woods where real questions or awareness might lurk. A number of years ago, when I asked a group of 5-year-old children what they knew about stories, and what they would like to write, their words were full of curiosity, imagination, desire. Their ideas and their words had not yet been tamed, conquered, or squashed into sentence frames. They knew it was the story inside that counted; the check marks, red ink, evaluative numbers and letters had not yet entered into their writing and storying lives. They used stories, as they wrote or told them, as a way of interpreting and making sense of the things that interested or mattered to them. And, in the stories they listened to or read, they made connections to their own lives and experiences. Hermeneutics: The Art of Interpretation Although hermemutics is a word that can intimidate (at least, in graduate courses!), hermeneutic inquiry occurs whenever we participate in interpreting the world around us or interpreting our own lives.26 Although we may not necessarily choose to use this multisyllabic and rather uncommon word with the children in our classrooms (though, we might, too), activities such as telling and writing stories and interpretive discussions of picture books or other texts are all hermeneutic engagements. Hermeneutic approaches have been influential in literary studies, providing an orientation and a variety of methods for "wondering about texts" and for examining the relation between texts and the identities of writers and readers.27 Within the field of education,

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EXTENDING IDEAS • Hermeneutics: A History

A concern for the interpretation of texts emerged soon after the development of alphabetic writing. This art and methodology of interpretation was called hermeneutics, the name derived from Hermes, the Greek pantheon who was the messenger between the gods and from the gods to mortals.28 We might also be mindful that, in addition to Hermes' reputation as a winged messenger, he is also known for his impudence and tricks.29 Hermes' complex and duplicitous nature is fitting for the work of interpretation, fluid and difficult to fix in place. Hermeneutic methods and forms of analysis became prominent during the Protestant Reformation as a method used for determining the 'original meaning' of texts, beginning with the Bible and legal documents, and eventually being used for the interpretation of humanistic literature.30 The issue at the heart of hermeneutic religious study was the location of authority for meaning. Was this authority contained within the Churchbased interpretive community? Or, did meaning reside within the individual text?31 Martin Luther's positivist approach to the interpretation of religious texts introduced the idea that meaning literally resided in the text and that such meanings were determinable through study. Only one correct reading could exist.32 The power and authority which texts attained in this period can partly be attributed to the convergence of the multiple influences of the hermeneutics of the Protestant Reformation, the development of the printing press, the rise of empiricism through science, and an increasing modern emphasis on 'the individual' person. The contemporary reemergence of hermeneutics has been largely due to the development of Philosophical Hermeneutics, informed by the work of philosophers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, Schleiermacher, and Ricoeur. Philosophical Hermeneutics finds possibilities for knowing and understanding through language, texts, and art. As maintained by Friedrich Schleiermacher, the space between a text and its reader or recipient becomes a focus for study. Hermeneutics cannot appeal to authoritative understanding, but instead, must be a part

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of the practice of art.33 Texts and works of art are inherently creative, and in order to gain understanding the interpreter must engage in a similarly creative endeavor. Important to philosophical hermeneutics is the understanding that a complex, reciprocal relationship exists between part and whole. The development of understanding through a text or an art form involves a reciprocal participation, an engagement very similar to play. Thus, an individual cannot be entirely separate from a text or aesthetic work, the relation is one which goes back and forth, changing both the person and the work (through its interpretation). Both the individual and the text work together as an interpretive 'system.'

inquiry influenced by hermeneutics has emerged in numerous areas of study and research, including research methodology, action research, curriculum theory, reading pedagogy, and autobiographical writing.34 These projects—the hermeneutics of literary studies and educational inquiry—offer important and useful insights for thinking about writing practice and literacy teaching and learning. Hermes, the 'border crosser' can be helpful in pointing attention to the complex and often contradictory nature of interpretation, within texts and other aspects of lived experience. Hermeneutic work in the classroom is not so far-fetched, and in fact is described by Patricia Clifford, Sharon Friesen, and David Jardine as taking place in a Calgary, Alberta primary classroom through student writing and its interpretive readings where, "The boundary between text and world gave way."35 The worlds of the fictional and the 'real' came together in student interpretations of stories and events. A student, Sinead, writes a fictive tale that merges the diverse worlds of the Christmas concert, Coyote stories studied previously in class, and a student, Manuel, who brings his own 'troubles' and difference into the classroom: Like almost every child in the class, Sinead decided to write Coyote stories.... Through one of Sinead's stories (and, we suggest, also through the feral agency of Coyote, herself), Manuel the monster child is welcomed in from the margins and given a home. A close reading of Sinead's

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story will show something of ... the generous, generative work that was so difficult for many adults in Manuel's life to accomplish.36 Sinead's story and the authors' descriptions demonstrate how classroom writing can involve a complex interweaving of multiple worlds, selves, and experiences—the actual, the fictive/imaginary—presenting a unity of all of these.37 The contemporary project of hermeneutics offers an approach that challenges modernist assumptions about knowledge and is consistent with understandings of complexity. Interpretative writing comprises a complex convergence of histories, understandings, memories, and personal experiences. Such work also assumes that consciousness is collective rather than individual38 and proposes that interpretation involves reciprocity within an intricate web of relation. Within a hermeneutic perspective all interpretation becomes enmeshed in (and is a part of) its own context. Literary theorist, Wolfgang Iser, makes a further connection to the work of complexity science, suggesting the boundaries of hermeneutic study have now opened and that matters of interpretation now exist in the realm of complexity.39

WRITING PRACTICE • Some "Ways In" to Interpretive Writing How can teachers encourage their students to engage in meaningful interpretive classroom writing? There is no easy quick fix solution or 'kit' with step-by-step instructions that will ensure this kind of writing. (However, you may find other books that profess to offer such things!) Interpretive work is not predictable or even 'assignable/ but there are some general conditions that can help to increase the likelihood that interpretive, interesting writing will emerge in a classroom. Such work is more likely to come about in a collective interpretive context, where children have multiple opportunities to share, talk about, and interrogate a variety of texts, to listen to stories being told, and to develop sustained inquiry into topics that are deeply interesting to them. (Vivian Gussin Paley describes such practices in The Girl with the Brown Crayon—her kindergarten students engaged in a deep study

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of Leo Lionni's picture books for an entire school year.40) Structures for daily writing (and drawing) are necessary, and these should offer some degree of freedom for children to develop ideas that are engaging to them. Participating in a variety of writing practices and forms provide further pathways for exploring ideas. In my own classrooms and in writing workshops I offer to children in schools, I use ideas and forms from books that are usually written for supporting adult writing groups or workshops. These offer multiple 'openings' for engaging and interesting work and tend to be less focused on step-by-step skill acquisition than are some of the books intended for children.41 For example, I may ask students to incorporate or respond to words or phrases from large print newspaper headlines, or to write in response to a photograph. The particular structures I use are varied—but what connects them is that they provide a frame that limits or bounds the activity, but also invites diverse responses. It is important to regularly invite students to listen to one another's texts—and it is equally important for us, as teachers, to become close listeners, so that we can learn about our students and see emerging possibilities in their work. This sharing is different from the 'author's chair' strategies, where children read their work and respond to a barrage of questions. (These structures remind me of quiz shows or congratulatory award ceremonies. And, I confess that even I don't know the answer to the most commonly asked question, "Where do you get your ideas from?" I don't know—they're just there.) Instead, the children and I sit in a circle and someone begins by sharing 'an interesting bit,' in 'popcorn' style, where a child shares as she feels ready. At other times, the group listens to the writing of one or two students and is asked to make their response to what they've heard through drawing or writing, on slips of paper that are collected and offered to the writer/reader. Developing an interpretive writing community takes time and repeated practices, but eventually, like most complex engagements, all of a sudden it is present, in a "gradual instant,"42 and the generative, creative forms of each child's writing help to establish increasingly more powerful work in the context of the collective.

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Transactions and Translations Interpretation is an act of translation, the execution of which depends on the subject matter to be interpreted as well as the context within which the activity takes place. Wolfgang Iser, The Range of Interpretation

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The Reader Response movement provides additional approaches to interpretation that can be aligned to both hermeneutics and complexity. These approaches have been influential in language arts teaching and literary studies in contemporary schools. What brings together such approaches is a belief that the reader is actively involved in creating meaning, and a concern with the complex relation between readers and texts. Reader response theorists regard interpretation as embedded in contexts of relation—between reader/writer and text, readers and writers and one another, and all of these things and the surrounding environment. No reading (or writing) event can take place outside of this complex weave. Although the focus of reader response work has centered in the area of reading, there are considerable implications for writers. Literary theorist Louise Rosenblatt began describing the transaction between the reader and the text in 1938, although her work was relegated to the background of literary theory until it was later taken up in the 1970s and 1980s.44 Foregrounding later work in complexity science and cognition, Rosenblatt's theory was heavily influenced by transactional psychology, based on the Ames-Cantril experiments on perception. These studies found perception to be highly dependent on past experiences and expectations. Rosenblatt's transactional literary theory understands the reader's relationship to a text as a complex engagement, where past experiences and the reader's present state of being, interests, and preoccupations all intermingle in the process of reading. Reading thus becomes a reciprocal relation between reader and text, one where the reading context influences both the identity of the reader and the identity of the text, and both are understood to have flexible boundaries.45 Various readers will interpret different texts in different ways, and, the identities of readers will also be slightly altered in the reading of particular texts.

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Whether a reading event will be literary (aesthetic) or nonliterary (efferent) will depend on "what the reader does, the stance he adopts, and the activities he carries out in relation to the text."46 The same text may be read using both approaches: efferently when attention is focused on analyzing and abstracting knowledge of the text, or aesthetically, when the focus is on the reader's lived experience in relation to the text and the ideas and responses evoked during the reading transaction. Of course, these notions are also applicable to writing. Writers engage in both efferent and aesthetic forms of consciousness: . . . the writer may plan, analyze, revise his work, but this is not to be confused with its actual creation, with the activities carried on under the guidance of the "shaping spirit of the imagination."47 According to Rosenblatt's theory, both readers and writers are engaged in a process of creation that occurs mainly outside of awareness.48 Writing involves a continued navigation between two moments: the aesthetic, evocative experience of writing, which requires a special kind of dream-like consciousness, and the mindful, efferent analysis involved in the planning, examination, and revision of the writer's work. From this perspective, the boundaries between writing and reading are blurred. Efferent analysis in writing is primarily a reading activity, while the aesthetic stance in reading provides a way for the reader to interpretively 'compose' the text.49 Reading and writing are interconnected aspects of a person's transactions with their immediate environment.50 However, writing and reading should not be viewed as simple mirror images of each other, as some response theorists have suggested. (Since reading is understood to be a composing activity, and the act of writing involves reading, they are sometimes described as the same processes in reverse of each other.) Both processes have significant differences, although there are areas of overlap. While reading and writing both involve a fluid transaction with a text, draw on personal experience and require a particular focus of attention, it is necessary to attend to the differing contexts and requirements of each process. Readers approach a text that already exists, while writers face a blank page. Such activities are "both complementary and different,"51 although they both involve reading and composing.

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A transactional perspective suggests that reading and writing also have different implications for self-interpretation. For example, using the first tableau I included at the beginning of this chapter, on pages 95—96, which begins "She's dreaming of travel . . ." and explores possibilities of leaving the classroom, in my original act of composition I did not know what I was going to write before I put words on the page. I did not have an already completed text, waiting to be transcribed, in my head. The page was literally blank and my writing initiated after I overheard a conversation about travel, as two people seated near me in a cafe shared photographs from a trip. As I wrote I became aware of particular thoughts, and ideas that had been outside of my awareness found their way into the text. As Grumet reminds us, "Writing does not record preaccomplished thought; the act of writing constitutes thought."52 Through this writing, I discovered something about myself, something submerged below the surface of my attention, a growing awareness of my readiness to make a transition from one kind of existence to another. In my experiences of rereading this excerpt of writing, I read the text differently each time I return to it—and the composition of my 'self' in relation to this text is different, too. The first time I reencountered this narrative I was in the middle of many changes in my life and had been living in a series of temporary residences in different parts of the country while I was engaged in studies and research. My earlier desire for travel and adventure stood out in stark contrast to what had become a wish for more predictability in my life. When I read the excerpt a few years later, I made further new connections. I was reminded of conversations with teachers who were taking my courses; many expressing a similar restlessness. In recent rereadings I feel an emerging sense of connection with that self on the page—is it simply a wish for a far away vacation, or a restlessness that foreshadows larger changes? Who knows what the next rereading will bring? I also know, in retrospect, that the experiences of change that followed this writing resulted in a complex series of events and new understandings about myself. There are many other stories spiraling from my small narrative, and the person who reads, now, has changed a great deal from the person who wrote, then.

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Reading old journals and writings from the past (whether memoir, fiction, or more 'factual' writing) provides a tracing of history, memory, and experience—providing opportunities to reinterpret and engage in a transaction with a text, a hermeneutic experience. Creating new texts involves a similar, but different, kind of self-discovery. Sometimes a completely new idea will spark, seemingly from nowhere. The thought emerging on a blank page. . . . WRITING PRACTICE • "I Remember When . . . " Toward the end of every school year, my young students and I used to create a memory book documenting their year together in the classroom. The children would carefully go through their old notebooks from the beginning of the year and we would talk about the events, activities, and new understandings that had marked the year. We also included several pages for recording their hopes, dreams, and wishes for next year. My students would usually be surprised to notice how they had changed since September. "Remember that I didn't have any friends yet when I came to school and then Sandeep asked me to play?" "Remember when I didn't know how to do any writing yet, only my name?" "It was so long ago, that picture I drew in my journal. I didn't even know how to do eyelashes!" One year, my class had to deal with the loss of a classmate who was killed in an accident. That year, the memory book was poignant and haunting. In addition to tracing their own changes and the usual classroom events, the book became a space for remembering their friend, yet again, recreating 'Anna' so that the children could take her with them at the end of the year, in the artifact of the memory book. A remembrance of a year, a remembrance of a child. In all of the years that my students created such books, these texts always represented the children's experiences and memories, providing a location for interpreting and rereading the events of the year, as well as reinterpreting themselves.

Rosenblatt suggests that in educational settings it is necessary to create opportunities for "cross-fertilization" of reading and writing,

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involving collective sharing of writing, literature, and spoken language in the classroom and the group's developing insights about language, literacy, and self-identity.53 Engaging in practices and activities which bridge writing and reading offers further possibilities for literacy and literary understanding than does working solely in either area. It is not enough to teach reading and assume students will develop as writers—or vice versa. The interpretations and transactions involved in writing and reading texts are acts of translation, "Each interpretation transposes something into something else."54 Interpretation creates a difference, a kind of gap, in the shift from the text and the reader's interpretation of it, and between the endless possibilities for the writer and EXTENDING IDEAS • Translating Identity Writer Eva Hoffman provides examples of the acts and processes of interpretive translation in a memoir of her "self-translation" during her experiences of learning English, after her family emigrated from Cracow, Poland to Vancouver, Canada. As the Cracow Ewa, who speaks Polish, a language linked to layers of memory and associations, Hoffman experiences her own subjectivity differently than who she is as Eva, the North American English speaker whose words have no connotation or embedded meaning, no connection to memories or her own history. Hoffman suggests that writing, as another kind of languaging system, produces a different form of self-translation. She reflects about her English diary: Refracted through the double distance of English and writing, this self—my English self—becomes oddly objective; more than anything, it perceives. . . . When I write, I have a real existence that is proper to the activity of writing—an existence that takes place midway between me and the sphere of artifice, art, pure language. This language is beginning to invent another me.55 Our language, the texts we read and those we write, helps to "invent" who we are and translate us into their own diverse forms.

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the text that, actually emerges on the page. This liminal space is a space of 'untranslatability'—the force that fuels interpretation. The possibilities evoked by this terra incognita create the need for different kinds of interpretation. Iser suggests that modes of interpretation continue to evolve, so that: . . . interpretation [is] a process of mapping the open-ended world, and such mapping is dependent on the here and now, which means new maps may be developed, or old ones reactivated according to requirements."56

Our interpretations of our texts and ourselves continue to shift, adapting to and incorporating new experiences, memories and contexts. Writing Identity Critic and writer Jeanette Winterson wonders, in her text Art Objects: Are real people fictions? We mostly understand ourselves through an endless series of stories told to ourselves by ourselves and others. The so-called facts of our individual worlds are highly coloured and arbitrary, facts that fit whatever fiction we have chosen to believe in.5-

What is the relation between identity and narrative? Between identity and writing? How do experiences of writing, in school or at home, help children to translate themselves in new ways? As Winterson suggests, the stories people tell (or are told), and those that we write (or read) create a sense of "who we are." Philosopher Anthony Kerby maintains that a human sense of subjectivity, or 'self,' exists and experiences unity "in and through its own narratives."58 Kerby insists that a "substantial self" can be only a fiction, but one's memories or memorable images provide opportunities for narration and interpretation. To develop a clearer sense of personal identity, it is necessary to think about ourselves "in the manner of a plot, or a history."59 Through such distancing, by way of the narrative frame offered by reading or writing, people may be able to better perceive aspects of continually shifting selves. Identity, or subjectivity, is not something that "is somehow knowable in itself if only one could find the right way to it."60 Although humans experience a sense of 'self' as something 'whole,' it is a whole not unlike a classroom of children,

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or the 'whole' of the body, which is itself a collection of organ systems, cells, and so on. James Gee links what he refers to as our "identity kits" to the language and literacy practices we engage in—the various genres of social and cultural Discourses we use in different contexts. We may use different identity kits in different contexts—for example, 'emergent writer from a middle class family,' or 'member of a neighborhood baseball game.' These Discourses, he suggests, provide different ways of being and doing in the world. The ways in which children use the

WRITING PRACTICE • What's in a Name? One of the ways I help my students to get to know one another at the beginning of the year is by using an activity I call 'name stories.' At the end of the first day (or class), I ask them to prepare a short description or story connected to their name. This may be a tale of how they received their name, a story about a unique spelling, something they like about their name (or not!), a memory connected to school or home, a nickname, and so forth. For younger students, I provide instructions so that their parents or caregivers can help them create a 'name story,' while older students do independent research.61 The occasion when these are shared is always memorable. Listening to the name stories is an important way to develop interpersonal connections to gain an awareness of the complex history and identity each child brings to the classroom. Often when older students share stories, unfortunate school 'name' experiences are revealed: misspellings, mispronunciations, names from non-English languages converted into something the teacher provides, unfortunate nicknames given by peers. It is always important to debrief these stories as well as ensuring that earlier difficulties are not relived in the present classroom. However, beginning with name stories also offers a reminder about honoring classmates' names, too. Part of an individual's personal identity is etched into something as simple as the written artifact of one's name. The story of one's name becomes a part of the collection of narratives (and fictions) that create a sense of human subjectivity.

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tools in their various identity kits may also conflict with the common patterns and Discourses valued at school.62 Identities in school are informed by the weave of stories told about and to children, the social negotiations that take place among children and teachers, children and one another, and by children's own experiences, artifacts, and collective histories. As teachers we must also recognize our own complicity and be aware of how our actions and agendas (whether related to curriculum or not) tell children 'who they are' in the classroom. What children produce in the classroom can help to inform identity, and further, student writing can also provide a location for children to explore their experiences, relationships, and lives. But how we, as teachers, organize structures for writing also influences whether we open up possibilities or shut them down. From my own schooling, I have a collection of artifacts, sorted by each grade. For some grades, these items reveal little of the child who produced them. The scant information of checkmarks or gold stars on spelling lists, scores on tests, a sparse teacher comment or two show that I was relatively successful at participating in such structures, but little else. Conversely, in other years, the samples reveal a great deal more: The collection of Hallowe'en stories my classmates and I wrote in Grade 3 provide information about my social context (and indeed, in reading these stories I remember my classmates vividly, though I have not thought about most of them for years), and tell something about me—an emerging sense of humor, a trace of my former interests (favorite scary stories upon which I'd modeled my own story). In the student writing in my own classroom, I could flip open any little yellow notebook or writing portfolio and immediately know who it belonged to. The personality, 'Voice,' and style of the child always spoke loudly through the text. With a variety of different student writing artifacts, my students' interests and obsessions were visible, so that I had a better understanding of who they were as people. These samples also provided informative documentation of students' developing literacy skills when I used them as data for examining areas of strength, areas of need, and, used collectively, they helped me adapt the focus of future instruction.

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Over the years, I observed how the process of learning to write had a subtle influence on aspects of children's self-identity. This observation reminds me of how Iser, in his theory of literary anthropology, describes how, at the same time literary texts 'do something' to their readers, they also disclose and reveal information about these readers.63 That is, literary texts have anthropological consequences. Learning to write also has such anthropological consequences, both revealing something about the writer and having the capacity to transform her. To be able to write, children must first disengage "from the sensory aspect of speech and replace words by images of words."64 But, writing translates more than language or thought; it also involves a form of self-translation for children when they place 'themselves' on paper. The writer must first invent her text, which, though it may be influenced by a myriad of experiences, histories, and memories, emerges from somewhere within the self, however complex and fluid identity may be. Once this 'self on paper' is revealed, it may subtly alter other aspects of a child's experiences. Most young children have some sense of the significance of their texts, viewing their products of writing (and drawing) as extensions of themselves—which explains why my kindergarten students wanted to take home every artifact they created. Children who are happy with what they see reflected back on the page tend to take more risks with their work, and with some encouragement will view themselves as capable writers. But those children who are dissatisfied with what they are able to do, or negatively compare their writing to that of others also interpret their work as saying something about themselves, something connected to deficiency or lack. The requirement, to 'put oneself on paper' can be part of an explanation why writing often evokes resistance. There are other reasons as well: the focused efforts required for matching sounds to represent words, the precision of fine-motor skills, lacking an interesting topic or experience to write about. In writing, children are confronted with the difficulty of translating what they intend to say into an imperfect trail of letters and words. For children beginning to write, an awareness of the difference between what they wish to

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communicate on paper and what they are capable of doing can present itself in visible and audible frustration.

Each year she teaches primary grades there are always a few children who regard print with suspicion. She can never predict who will resist or respond in sorrow or fury at being asked to take a thick red primary pencil and write. One September there are two of them, gentle blondheaded boys who are usually eager to participate in all other classroom activities. They had loved making intricate drawings in their notebooks the previous year in kindergarten and having the teacher scribe their stories. They are able to copy words; they recognize many letters and sounds. She knows these boys have the necessary skills; they are not children she has worried about. But that doesn't seem to be enough, somehow. This time she asks the class to write, before they draw the pictures that usually fill the top part of their 'half-and-half notebooks. She tells them they can invent their own spellings, use the sounds they know, copy some of the words they can see around the room. When they finish the writing, then they can draw their pictures. She notices, first, the quiet. An absence of the usual movement and bustle at the table where the two boys are sitting. Matthew and Jeremy are crying, marking their pages with silent tears. Neither can explain exactly why, except that it is about the writing, that they can't do it. Not without drawing the pictures first. To simply write is to enter a forbidding territory, a place apart from the familiar world of home, the place where their drawings come from. Writing is different; being asked to locate themselves in an abstract line on the page, without the bridge of a picture to ease them in, makes them worried and distraught. Several weeks pass before Matthew and Jeremy are able to comfortably translate themselves onto the page, and to let go, just a little, of the world of crayons, drawing, and home. To enter into the world of lines and spaces, the world of schooled literacy. Later, she thinks that they had every right to cry.

When I tell the story of Matthew and Jeremy to the teachers in a graduate course, there are nods of recognition. "Why is it some children need to draw the picture first?" someone asks. For young children, the picture is often the place where story emerges. "Tell

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me about your drawing," I used to ask, and my kindergarten students would set off on a journey into imaginary worlds, descriptions of something that happened at home, a dream they once had, a secret wish. Children rarely erase what they have drawn; they simply color over, add more details or a few scribbles, or turn to the next page. It's no big matter. Even the child who has never held a crayon will soon explore the texture of colored wax on the page, the blend of colors, the squeak of a new marker. Drawing is fluid, flexible. The two shaky blue circles on a page can signify any number of things: "my mommy and me," "two monsters going for a walk," "it's just two circles I drawed." But writing, especially when it takes place in school, is more precise and it leaves out important details more easily imagined when interpreting a drawing. Although students may explore with invented spelling, or play at their own interpreted writing forms, they run the risk of hearing how they got it wrong. Or, the print on the page may tell a different story than the one that they had wanted to write. I encounter the same hazards in my own writing. Consider my tableau of Matthew and Jeremy. I worry that my readers may not really understand. They cannot see the little notebooks belonging to the two boys, the writing skills they'd demonstrated the day before, when they drew the pictures, first. They don't know that Jeremy and Matthew happily worked at a math activity only moments before, one that had involved them recording numbers, and they had not needed to make a drawing first. "Oh ho!" says my imagined misunderstanding reader, "I'll bet those two boys have some kind of reading or writing difficulty, and the teacher simply missed it." If I struggle with the risk of misinterpretation, not communicating precisely what it was I mean to portray, it is not difficult to understand that children can feel apprehensive about putting themselves and their ideas on the page. As writers, as children or as adults, we not only travel between interpretive worlds, we must also travel between different selves, negotiating the unpredictable path of who might emerge on the page. Writing might take us into dangerous, uncharted territory, to places found only on mappae mundi,65 or the dark woods where it seems all

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the maps have been lost. Dennis Sumara writes, in his essay "Fictionalizing Acts: Reading and the Making of Identity": . . . the narrating of self, whether it is done by oneself or by others, is always a kind of traveling. One is never in the same place at the end of the story as one was at the beginning.66 Through writing (as well as reading), we can go to a 'new place' and also begin to invent the boundaries of a continually emerging 'new' self. Sometimes this experience may be a little frightening, true of any sort of travel into unknown places, as Matthew and Jeremy discovered. Reading (and learning to read) may present certain difficulties for some children. But because writing requires that learners uncover or discover something ambiguous and fluid—coming from the mind, the depths of memory and perception, rather than an already inscribed text—such acts are often more risky and dangerous. And, writing is hard, active work. Avoidance or struggle becomes strikingly evident. Writing reveals a child's endeavors, or lack thereof, in black and white (or just white . . . ). To Matthew and Jeremy, the dangers of writing were apparent; they had worries of "entering the woods"67 of their own fictions or reflections, an anxiety about locating themselves on a page, being translated or narrated by their own text. Writing can also be more prone to 'injury by schooling' than many other sorts of interpretive acts. Reading, in its transient and less visible nature may escape some degree of school-inflicted damage. Once a student begins to read silently, it is only his communicated interpretations that tend to be examined and evaluated, and these generally appear in writing. Writing creates a more permanent self on the page—one whose gaps, errors, and transgressions can remain like bones for the picking. And often as teachers, pick we do—creating the dread of red ink, the anxieties about revealing the selves that might emerge between the lines and spaces. In the courses I teach now—my students are all university students at various levels—I often encounter students who say they experience difficulty with writing, but rarely do I

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receive the same comments about reading. (In fact, most would consider themselves as good readers.) My students share stories from their long ago schooling experiences. Their identities as writers have often been formed by what happened then, an off-handed comment, a poor mark, the requirement that their writing fit narrow criteria or it would not be valued. Because writing can be perceived abstractly from the person who writes it, it can be easy to forget that children's written texts are embedded in a complex tissue of history, identity, relation, and meaning. The technology of writing makes it all the easier to dissect, label the parts, point to the missing pieces, uncap the red pen. But as hermeneutics and complex interpretive understandings and practices inform us, the processes and artifacts of writing are always linked to personal, collective, and historical contexts. The limits of writing provide spaces of possibility, opportunities for transformation, the chance, as Hoffman writes, "to invent another me."68

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chapter five

uncovering the bones of a complex pedagogy for writing and literacy

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Uncovering the Bones

The group of children is gathered around a large sheet of paper, using pencils and colorful markers to put their memories on the page. There is a buzz of excited conversation as this mixed age 'family grouping' of elementary students record their experiences from the beginning of the year. Several of the younger children lie on their bellies and draw, while an older boy prepares an elaborate title using 'bubble letters' at the top of the page. Another student writes, "I ramembr when. . . ." "Come see what we're doing, Ms. D.!" Braden calls to the principal as she walks beside the group.

It is a rainy, black night, typical weather for the evening classes that take place during a west coast winter semester. They arrive, damp and hurried, leaving behind the busy lives they lead as teachers and administrators to become students for a few hours. Everyone prepares to read a paragraph or two from their commonplace books; there's the soft rustle of shuffling paper and a scraping of chairs as everyone settles in to listen. Then comes the focused quiet, like the hush in a theatre. Sometimes they almost forget to breathe, as they listen to the narratives of educational experience, the traces of memories, texts, histories, linked to a theory or two. Their words seem to rise up from somewhere below the surface, from a place of depth they didn't know existed between them. Later, they all wonder about their experience, an almost magical moment of connection, the kind that is too rarely experienced in university settings.

The teacher sits on the carpet, leaning up against the old travel trunk where the dress-up clothes are stored. She scribes the words of the 5year-old child who leans in close to tell a story about the drawing she's made in her little yellow notebook. "One time," the child says, with slow importance, "there was a little girl." Several other children begin to gather near, wanting to listen in and observe. "Shhh, you guys, Tara's starting to tell her story!" says Lalya in a loud whisper. The story continues. . . .

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The three excerpts: a description of a collaborative multi-aged writing activity, an event where student texts are read aloud in a graduate course, and an early writing experience in a kindergarten classroom all present different examples of shared literacy experiences. In each one, there is a complex weave of interactions—even those who participate peripherally become a part of a collective narrative. Integral to these experiences are the material objects of the texts, or "literate artifacts"1—the writings, autobiographical texts, pictorial representations and scribed words that most educators would recognize as central to events and processes of literacy. These are the 'bones' of the work, the evidence that remains long after the moment of teaching and learning has passed. Such artifacts do not exist separately from the contexts, practices, and processes in which they are embedded, though modern notions of literacy have tended to perpetuate a compartmentalization of the products of writing. Commonsense understandings and practices in literacy education have suggested that writing can be isolated and contained, that it is static and inert, and that it provides information only about the individual writer. Such attitudes toward writing can be linked to a number of developments emerging in the modern era, including the invention of printing technologies, and other technological changes that have led to a further distancing of written texts from contexts of social relations. Today, however, the idea that writing may represent complex relations, shared knowledge, and interpretive locations for educational communities is something that invites further reflection. In this chapter, I elaborate on the notion of writing as a location for collective stories or narratives, drawing from a complex understanding of writing as a living system for representing human experience. READING THE BONES OF WRITTEN TEXTS

To begin, I move to thoughts of bones and texts. To sift through the terrain as an archeologist, or another kind of bone keeper, traveling below the surfaces of maps and landscapes, going deeper, in between the lines and spaces of writing. In my commonplace book, in an excerpt written a few years ago, I began to consider the 'bony' nature

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of writing. A commonplace book, a structure described in Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient, is a text that includes multiple layers and evolves over the time it is used.2 Within The English Patient, one of the main characters has a copy of Herotodus' The Histories3 he has kept with him during his travels, continually rereading sections and adding his own commentaries and artifacts to the text: She picks up the notebook that lies on the small table beside his bed. It is the book he brought with him through the fire—a copy of The Histories by Herotodus that he has added to, cutting and gluing in pages from other books or writing in his own observations—so they all are cradled within the text of Herotodus.4 Although a literary fiction, a work of children's literature, or a film may be used as the 'commonplace' for written reflections and interpretations, I have tended to create commonplace books that use a particular theme or focus of inquiry for my collection of notes, artifacts, responses, and other kinds of writing. The following excerpt comes from such a commonplace book used to explore the idea of writing as a living form: The artifact of my first commonplace book leaves only the evidence of what occurred, the remains of a set of practices and relations, lingering like the bones of some creature who has moved into history. It becomes something other than it was before, a site of memory, a tracing of time and space. And yet, these are not only the bones of my own story—the voices of others linger in the spaces between the lines, as a kind of invisible flesh. I touch the folder that contains this collection of writings, it exists as a material presence—but the softened corners of the pages, the scribbled additions and Palatino font represent more than what appears in a superficial inspection. This text marks a specific location in time and space, reaching into memories, recording particular sets of relations. This commonplace writing continues to be a site of ongoing interpretation—the text comes to life in new ways each time I return to it. Anne Michaels writes in a poem, "The past is a long bone."5 These texts are the bones of a recent past, but also linked to the bones of other texts, both my own and those belong-

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ing to others. I am reminded of the picture book The Bone Keeper,6 the story of a Bone Woman who collects scattered pieces of "lonely bone," piecing them together to form a creature of mystery, breathing life into what she has uncovered in her digging. Some say she has three heads, past, present, and future. Some say she carries the snake, walks with the wild hare. Some say Bone Woman brings the dead back to life.7 This fictional text suggests that there are objects, like the bones in the story, that hold a kind of history, a memory of past patterns and relations, and invent a different kind of life when collected and shaped into something new. Perhaps, as writer Natalie Goldberg notes, it is possible to "write down the bones" in the texts one creates.8 Our own bones may also be compared to a kind of text, telling tales of our personal histories and experiences. Patterns of movement, habits, diet, and even our occupations may be traced within these deep structures of the body. Events we may not recall in the present, a fall as a child or a long forgotten accident, may be 'written' and remembered in our bones—secrets only revealed in 'bone readings' such as x-rays or CT scans. Human cultures, too, learn more about distant ancestors when their unburied bones release tales of long ago. Through such discoveries it is possible to reinterpret human anthropological history and reframe our present understandings of what it is to be human. Over past years, a personal experience has pointed my attention to the complex intricacy of bones. After enduring several months of back pain, a number of medical 'readings of the bones' determined that my discomfort resulted from a tiny bit of extra bone that had developed between two vertebrae. According to the "medical narrative"9 I was offered, in a kind of feedback cycle the extra piece of bone had irritated nerves, which in turn, caused muscles to react and resulted in a complex branching of response and involvement of other body systems. In response to these reactions, my patterns of movement, daily habits and routines also changed—a tiny alteration

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in my bones created multiple reverberations and reciprocal responses. It is also very likely that this change in my bones occurred as a reaction to a complex intertwining of events—a previous injury combined with particular habits of my life. Carrying heavy book bags over one shoulder, spending hours hunched over a laptop computer, and even the forms of exercise I engaged in (swimming and running) had contributed to the problem. My bones responded to events and experiences, and subsequently, have influenced my own living system in complex ways. There may be an additional explanation that further underscores the complex relations among bones, body, and mind. Medical practitioners and researchers are beginning to support the idea that the mind may be more central to such pain experiences than previously thought, particularly in the case of back pain. Physician and researcher John Sarno has investigated the possibility that such symptoms are often a strategy used by the mind (through the autonomic nervous system, below the level of consciousness) to divert attention away from stress or emotions. Instead, a distracting pain or discomfort appears in areas that often correspond with minor structural degeneration (which Sarno suggests would generally be discovered in most people over 30, though not everyone experiences pain).10 As I discovered, bones are not inert and unchanging 'parts' of the body, unrelated to everything else; they influence and may be influenced by one's entire experience. The separation of body from mind in modern medicine, and the understanding of one's bones and other organs as parts of the 'body machine' that might be 'repaired' stems from the Cartesian thinking that is often evident in education. Knowledge is artificially separated from knower, and texts from their contexts, readers, and writers. In the same ways that written texts provide a 'translation of the self,' and influence the experience of self, an individual's bones and other body systems both 'write' and are 'written upon' by their experience. Bones, like texts, may become material artifacts, unique within the body in their permanency, able to remain long after a living being is gone. Bones offer themselves to interpretation by multiple worlds; history, archeology, anthropology and biology may come

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together in examining the bony texts of the body. And, bones offer an interesting metaphor for writing, as well as for teaching and learning. Bones provide an image of an intricate and multidimensional structure—connective tissue made of layers of cells, existing within a system of reciprocal interactions. Unlike the linear metaphors often used in describing literacy curriculum (e.g., one common metaphor falls under the category of building/edifice, including such terms as foundations, building blocks of knowledge, steps to learning, the basics11) the image of bones suggests a more detailed representation of the complex structures and interactions of learning and teaching (which involve, after all, living processes . . .). In events of teaching, learning, and writing, objects, structures and processes become a part of a living tissue of interaction and relation, where seemingly small acts, decisions, and changes in structure can create complex shifts and patterns of response. Yet, in writing (and teaching) permanent traces or structures also result. Long after the pedagogical moment has passed, it is possible to examine the objects, records, and memories of such events, to interpret or reinterpret experiences of teaching and learning. Something remains in the bones of the work.

She examines the box where she's kept some artifacts from her life as a primary teacher. She has collected many samples of children's writing over the years—some offered as a part of the ongoing stream of teacher 'love letters' one receives when working with young children, others are part of collections she's gathered for research projects, or kept simply because they were curious, interesting, or touching, in some way. Some items she cannot seem to discard because they offer a memorial to the children who wrote or drew them. The vivid drawings by a child who died in a tragic mishap, the humorous, 'naughty' stories written by a 6 year old from a time before the car accident that claimed her speech and mobility, the tattered notebook belonging to the little one who left for a series of foster homes and behavior programs. The drawings, stories, emergent texts, for these children and for the others, mark an eternal time and space of childhood, like a photograph might do. She's reminded of this when she encounters a former student, as she does occasionally. It is always a surprise to meet up with the barely

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recognizable teenager or young adult—in her mind they stay forever five or six or seven, as they remain in their texts and drawings. Her research collection now seems as much a site of memory as it is a location for inquiry. But it is interesting, too, to notice that, as time passes and she is no longer the teacher of these children—their texts change, they 'mean' differently. Her interpretations continue to shift. For example. There's the set of poems she collected, written by her students the first year she taught Grade 1. She kept them, at first, because she thought they were 'the good example,' five-step poems the children created as a part of an integrated animal study. Each poem had five lines and included the name of the animal, the color or physical description, the number of legs, what it eats, and again, the name of the animal. Not a bad structure, for students more experienced with writing. But now she uses this collection to provoke discussions when she works with beginning teachers. With the clarity that distance brings, she is able to acknowledge how difficult those poems were for most of the children, in what was a long afternoon of frustration. They kept at it to please her, but the multiple constraints made this an onerous Grade 1 task—the structured poem with a sequence and a particular form to follow, the challenge of getting the words down, an assumed knowledge of animals, and an attention to 'proper' spelling because they were going to display their finished products! Now she is able to see the traces, clearly marked on the interlined paper, in the deep eraser smudges, the scratched out words, the heavy pencil tracks, and the poems which all resemble one another. (The engaging ones were those where the child had not followed the 'rules'—and these she had set aside, initially.) She can see, now, what she was unable to acknowledge or even perceive, then.

WRITING PEDAGOGY The danger is that a metaphor begins to be taken as the terrain itself, rather than as a way of talking about, understanding, or representing that geography. Phil Smith, "Drawing new maps"12 In playing with alternative descriptions for mapping and organizing experience in literacy education, it is helpful to examine, briefly, the

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history of writing pedagogy within the English language arts in North America. To read (and write) the old bones of writing education, as it were. James Moffett reflects on the historical predominance of reading instruction over writing: Though invented, we are told, about 3000 BC, writing was discovered only about 1975—in American schools.13 Historically, both writing instruction and educational research on writing have been neglected at both elementary and secondary levels when compared to traditional emphases on reading processes and instruction. Textbooks that address writing at the elementary level did not come into being until early in the 20th century, and the focus for the teaching of writing, at that time, was, typically, penmanship, grammar, usage, orthography, and manuscript form.14 Word-for-word copying was often considered as an appropriate method of writing instruction within many elementary school settings until as recently as the late 1970s and early 1980s.15 For many years, writing in schools was regarded as an artifact used to confirm reading skills and could even be viewed as a kind of punishment for reading, when classroom writing mainly consisted of structures such as written responses to demonstrate reading comprehension.16 Even 'progressive' methods such as the Language Experience Approach, developed in the 1960s—where a child's own language was dictated into texts for classroom use—focused upon the creation of such materials for the purpose of reading instruction17 rather than exploring the possibilities of this method for teaching writing. According to Geraldine Clifford, "The craze of the 1970s for behavioral objectives" often reduced writing activities to "underlining, circling, and supplying one-word responses" in workbooks, in approaches driven by basal readers and reductionistic instructional manuals.18 This neglect of writing in elementary schools can be partly attributed to both ignorance and a lack of research concerning how children develop literacy abilities, and a belief that well-developed handwriting skills were necessary for a child to be able to write.19 Research that began to examine how young children learn to read and write sparked changes in the understanding of children's capaci-

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ties as writers. Marie Clay's longitudinal research projects studied how young children 'get the words down' and identified strategies frequently used by emergent writers. Although Clay's work did promote the idea that literacy can be learned by engagements with writing as well as reading, the primary focus of her research has always been what she labels "reading behavior."20 However, her developmental research, in addition to the composition studies of researchers such as Janet Emig and an increased focus on children's literacy development demonstrated the need for teaching practices that would better support children's capabilities. Nevertheless, changes were slow to appear in classrooms.21

EXTENDING IDEAS • De-Composing High School The neglect of writing in schools has not been restricted to the elementary grades. Until the late 1920s, secondary school English classes emphasized the study of literary works at the expense of composition and limited writing instruction to a narrow range of experience. In later years, such courses were considered to be preparation for college entrance, an attitude which persisted into and even beyond the 1960s, in some schools: From interpretation of college requirements have come the theme-a-week, ultimately ossified into "the five-paragraph essay," with its stress on expository writing.... 22 James Squire remarks that such an approach to composition has been unique to American English teaching, but I remember participating in such courses within my high school experience in Canada. This sort of work has also been labeled anticomposing because hermeneutic issues and the students' own meaning-making experiences are set aside, remaining unexamined in such writing. This approach to instruction also shows a lack of any coherent theory of composition informing pedagogical practice.23 Others have reflected that writing composition can tend to be marginalized at both secondary and college levels of instruction because it " . . . has no institutional 'home,'" but instead, is attached to English departments which generally favor literary studies.24

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More recent research in language arts has still tended to favor study of early reading development, with studies of early writing development remaining relatively few.25 Though 'literacy' is intended to embrace reading and writing, the term is often used in ways that often translate into mostly reading. In many journals and research collections with a literacy focus, articles that specifically address writing are far less common than the overwhelming number of publications which stress reading research and pedagogy.26 Writing often tends to be perceived as a device for illuminating children's reading abilities, or as a method for assisting in reading acquisition, with some exceptions. However, political and institutional forces seem, at least in part, responsible for the continued predominance of reading over writing research and instruction. Standardized testing has been used traditionally to assess and examine reading comprehension, while writing is comparatively more difficult to test, rank, and sort if one moves beyond circling, checking, filling in blanks, and producing formula expository essays.27 In an era marked by a North American trend toward standardization and increased focus on measurement of 'skills,' many school districts are overly concerned with "computing their league standings on standardized tests."28 In such times, areas such as writing and other forms of aesthetic representation, not surprisingly, often end up with less curricular emphasis and specific funding support. In spite of years of being generally ignored as a subject area, writing began to emerge more prominently in elementary classrooms in the late 1970s and 1980s with the advent of what have come to be known as process writing and writers workshop approaches.29 Writer Donald Murray and writing teachers such as Donald Graves, Nancie Atwell, and Lucy McCormick Calkins began to popularize these approaches within language arts classrooms. Process writing and workshop approaches are based on the assumption that most children want to write and become more able to do so when writing is approached as a craft, similar to the work of professional writers. To meet this end, during writing time, classroom space is transformed into 'writers workshop,' where children are encouraged to develop their interests and skills as writers. Al-

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though each of the process writing proponents provide their own distinct descriptions and instructions for teachers, their approaches have in common a number of basic beliefs, such as: Children need regular time to write, they need to make choices about their own topics, to receive responses to early drafts and opportunities to initially 'play around' with less formal products, as well as time to view adults modeling these writing processes. Children need to read quality literature to fuel their own writing and are capable of learning further skills and mechanics in the context of their own work. In process writing approaches, students receive feedback for further revision of drafts during 'writing conferences' with the teacher or a group of peers, and the teacher presents mini-lessons addressing particular skills or writing issues to the whole class or to groups of students who have the same need. Like 'real' writers, children engaging in writers workshop publish their work in a variety of informal and formal structures and the 'author's chair' is a place for the student writer to share aloud her published writing. Another belief of process writing approaches is that teachers themselves need to engage in experiences of writing in order to teach it well. The work and research of Donald Graves, in the writing classroom, has been a significant impetus to changing the way that writing is taught in elementary grades and in gaining recognition of writing as an area for research. His 1978 National Institute of Education study of children's writing, conducted with Lucy McCormick Calkins and Susan Sowers, led to the development of Writing: Teachers and Children at Work, an influential text for North American teachers.30 The arrival of process writing approaches brought heady times for teachers (and students) who wanted to see writing occupy a larger place within the language arts classroom, but these approaches were also accompanied by some difficulties. My attempts to implement writer's workshop as others had instructed me in courses, district workshops, or through the models of their own classroom workshops, led me to be skeptical of the ways in which such structures are typically used. I wrote this reflection after a number of years teaching writing in primary classrooms:

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EXTENDING IDEAS • Writers Workshop Critiques Though the workshop approaches must be acknowledged for creating a place for writing in daily classroom practice, they have not been immune from critique. Timothy Lensmire suggests that the "writing workshop advocates" share romanticized notions of the writing workshop and generally tell success stories where "everything, in the end is for the best."31 Lensmire found, in a year-long classroom study, that what was presumed to be the freedom to write, within such models, was not always quite so liberating for many students, in practice. The social realities of the classroom and the hierarchy of relations sometimes created difficulties, challenging the 'romantic' vision of the writers workshop, which had ignored such problems. For many of the workshop proponents, the assumption has been that by participating in a 'real' writers workshop, modeled after those of professional writers, children will naturally blossom in their abilities. But, even adult writing workshops are not immune to struggles or problems; for practicing, 'successful' writers, developing a well-functioning writers group can be challenging.32 So, too, the most open of writers workshops can become oppressive for some students, when peer relationships and social hierarchies may create another subtext within the setting of the classroom, where subtle interactions may occur undetected by the classroom teacher. Another problem is that the fluid ideas of the workshop are sometimes restructured into rigid frames. A number of the workshop proponents themselves have voiced questions regarding how their ideas have been translated into practice. Mem Fox states, Donald Graves himself is concerned that his ideas have become an inflexible orthodoxy handed down from on high, on tablets of stone.33 Atwell, too, has worried that her text In the middle might be "read as a cookbook."34 The validity of such concerns is underscored by my own experiences as a beginning teacher, when I attended professional development sessions that provided writing workshop 'recipes' and where teachers had little opportunity to explore writing themselves, contributing to the problems in implementation.

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I felt I never could get it quite right when I attempted to recreate the structures of the writers workshop; always it seemed that too many rules were required. The emphasis was placed on the procedures and I often felt like an enforcer. "No, the draft copies go here. Stamp them, first." "Underline all the words you're not certain about." I felt guilty but changed the strategies, then finally resigned myself to the fact that the procedures of writers workshop simply were not working for me and my students.35

What seemed to be problematic in how such approaches were translated into classroom practice was that writing was presented as 'steps to follow,' (e.g., 'draft-revise-publish') and required objects (the author's chair, the writing folder), and these forms often began to dictate how writing unfolded in the classroom. Focusing closely on following the right set of directions often seemed to prevent good writing from developing. Such difficulties appear as evidence of problems with transposing new methods onto the same old curricular maps, in addition to teachers' own lack of experience and knowledge of writing. However, process writing approaches did demonstrate that writing could be prominent in elementary language arts classrooms and should be valued for this contribution.36 MAPS OF KNOWING IN LITERACY EDUCATION Because metaphors bring with them certain well-defined expectations as to possible features of target concepts, the choice of a metaphor is a highly consequential decision. Anna Sfard, "On two metaphors. . . ."37

A complex perspective on literacy education suggests that some of the difficulties experienced within both 'traditional' perspectives and process writing approaches result from similar conceptions (or misconceptions) of language and writing. Ann Berthoff writes, A positivist conception of language as a "communication medium," as a set of muffin tins into which the batter of thought is poured, leads to question-begging representations and models of the composing process.38

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WRITING PRACTICE • Attending to Writing How can teachers create the spaces for writing in primary classrooms? The answer is both simple and complex. After I tossed away my rigid adherence to the step-by-step procedures for creating a 'proper' writers workshop, I wondered how I should proceed. I still wanted my young students to experience deep engagements with writing. I attended carefully to what was happening in my own classroom context. What could these children do? What did they know? What were they interested in? Together, the children and I created regular writing rituals and practices that seemed to work best for each particular group of children in each class. Each year, I adapted the methods used—discarding practices that were no longer effective and incorporating new ideas based on what I'd read or observed in other writing contexts or those which emerged from the children's suggestions. I did follow a number of suggestions from the work of writing 'experts'—but I became more flexible in how I used these ideas with my students. We engaged in daily writing, but we often chose different 'tools'—some years the children had notebooks for gathering their writing, and other years we collected their materials in a three-ring notebook, a folder, or a portfolio. Some children in every group would have many ideas and experiences they wanted to write about, but others would not, so it was important to plan collective 'focal' experiences for each class. These experiences varied. Sometimes we visited locations in the community, other times we invited the community into our room. Some years, the class, collectively, had topics they needed or wanted to write about: a year of 'trickster tales,' or another year when many children chose to write, again and again, about the loss of their friend and classmate. As I gained confidence in my own abilities in framing occasions for writing, I realize that it was important to have some 'good enough' structures for beginning writing at the start of the year to provide me with an opportunity to listen to and observe my students. But then, once I knew what was important to each particular group and what their strengths, needs, and requirements were, we traveled together into less predictable places, on paths that had not been laid out from the beginning but were chosen along the way.

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In many instances, a similar "set of muffin tins" has been used to frame pedagogy, in spite of appearances. As I have outlined earlier, traditional instruction and research in writing has tended to regard writing as a transparent medium for transmitting words or ideas, proposing that effective writing instruction is a matter of gaining skill in using this 'neutral' code. Traditional approaches to pedagogy have been concerned with 'transcription' skills in early literacy education, also described as learning to 'crack the code.' Older learners have focused upon expository writing, learning the proper form for 'transmitting' one's ideas and arguments. In early and later levels of instruction, methods and research address how students acquire or improve their abilities to get the words down and share the assumption that learning involves discovering how to put the parts (the letter sound, the word, the period, the thesis statement) into the whole (the word, the sentence, the expository essay). As process or workshop approaches have emerged, critical inquiries such as those of Lensmire and Anne Haas Dyson39 have provided informative examinations of the social dynamics and relations surrounding classroom writing and process approaches. Such work has provided insights into issues of gender, race, class, and power relations within the writing classroom. However, though most contemporary perspectives on writing (traditional transcription/transmission models, process approaches, and critical examinations of writing processes) offer what seem to be diverse theoretical orientations and methods, they appear to share some similar underlying assumptions about writing, primarily, the notion that writing is simply 'talk written down.'40 The written word is not particularly distinguished from the spoken word—all language is understood similarly to be "signifiers" of the concepts they represent, a common misunderstanding of language and writing that I have outlined earlier in chapter 3. Writing itself is generally assumed to be a neutral medium, and many critical inquiries which examine the writing classroom, though providing useful analysis and critique of the social relations and dynamics of the learning context (and often the learning content), disregard the specific nature of writing, and the practices used. Instead, what occurs around events of writing in school is the main concern.

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Remaining unexamined is the notion that the use of the particular technology of writing might itself alter thought, language, relations, and identities. The idea that the use of written representations has the capacity to alter pedagogical practice has been explored very little. In a sense, the variety of approaches to which I have been referring share a 'writing as transmission' perspective, although process and critical approaches may elaborate or question what it is that is being transmitted. Writing is thus considered as a primary channel through which pedagogy and practices are delivered; the metaphor of language and/or writing as a 'conduit' provides the basis for this conception. Also problematic in the teaching of writing in schools are the dominant images underlying theory, practice, and expectations of learners and teachers. As Lakoff and Johnson inform us, metaphor is fundamental to thought and experience: . . . conceptual metaphors are mappings across conceptual domains that structure our reasoning, our experience, and our everyday language.41

Yet it is often difficult to identify the deeply ingrained metaphors that frame language and understanding—they can remain quite invisible to us, until we begin to attend to the surrounding language and structures framing teaching and learning. Within literacy education a number of structuring metaphors have been highly influential. Curiously, variations on the same metaphors can be uncovered within both 'traditional' and 'progressive' approaches.42 "In Her Eyes You See Nothing" Lack. Deficiency. Empty vessel. Blank slate. Tabula rasa.

In the heading above I borrow words from Marguerite Helmers' Writing Students, a text that examines a number of ways in which teachers represent their composition students.43 This statement, and the italicized words that follow, exemplify a familiar metaphor in literacy education, based on the idea that 'the mind is a container.' Within this metaphor, knowledge is understood to be an object that fills the 'container-mind'—as something to be gained, owned, gath-

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ered, 'banked,' or manufactured.44 Students are understood to begin their education as empty containers needing to be filled by the products and processes of pedagogy. Central to this representation is: .. . the establishment of students as characters whose essential quality is lack . . .45

From this perspective, teaching and learning involve making students "more perceptive beings" through new instructional strategies, with the teacher cast as "hero."46 Examples of this metaphor can be uncovered within both traditional writing instruction and in process approaches. For example, Helmer describes one classroom situation where the use of journal writing is presented as the ingredient needed to change a "lackluster" classroom of passive students into an engaged and promising group. Mathematics educator Anna Sfard labels situations such as this as framed by the acquisition metaphor, because of the focus on acquiring knowledge.47 The acquisition metaphor can be easily found by examining language used to describe learning. Research articles and instructional texts reveal their acquisition bias through typical phrases like knowledge acquisition and concept development which reveal underlying assumptions about learners, who are portrayed as lacking knowledge or being otherwise undeveloped in some way. The acquisition metaphor is evident within traditional models of writing instruction, where skills and knowledge are commonly described as being acquired part by part, and students are assumed to arrive at school in a condition of 'lack' to be provided with knowledge and 'improved' through teaching. But this metaphor is also present in process approaches to writing. The 'procedurization' of the writing process as 'steps-to-be-followed' so students may develop into 'real' writers, as well as the romanticized vision of the child writer constructing her own abilities as an author (knowledge acquired as one's private possession) provide several examples of underlying acquisition assumptions. In my own participation in teachers' workshops promoting 'new and improved' approaches to writing, I remember being informed that the new technique (conferencing, minilessons), object (the writing folder, the dialogue journal) or emphasis (using memoir, the notebook approach) were all approaches

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or things I could acquire to be the new and improved teacher who could now inspire 'new and improved' students. The assumptions of lack and acquisition are not only embedded in classroom curriculum and the language of student description, they are also deeply ingrained in teacher education and approaches to professional development.

WRITING PRACTICE • Lacking Ability A friend tells me of some recent trouble her family is having with school. Her 6-year-old son is struggling with literacy and they live in a district where high stakes testing begins in kindergarten. He's already been labeled for what he can't do. His mother is discouraged. "I was a late bloomer, myself and I expect he might be following the same path as I did. His father struggled with reading, as child, too. Now though, there's far more pressure. He has to improve his skills so he doesn't get too far behind. And, the test scores really matter to the school, for their funding. That means a lot of pressure on me, too. I'm beginning to feel like I'm an inadequate parent, that the reason he's struggling is because he's lacking something at home. But his older sister never had trouble the way he does. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great for him to receive some additional support and we'll do what we can. But I question how my child has been 'summed up' as someone not very capable, who they tell me is 'at risk'— at risk for what? It's clear that he's simply not going to follow the same road map as every other child in his class!"

Shaping Knowledge A slightly different, but related, framing of learning, teaching, and knowledge is provided by the images and shapes provided by Euclidean geometry. Classical Euclidean geometry is the geometry commonly experienced, by most of us, in traditional high school mathematics courses, and is based on working with forms such as lines, circles, triangles, and squares. Brent Davis and Dennis Sumara demonstrate how maps of teaching and learning have been shaped into

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the "orderly, sequential, grid-like structures" of Euclidean forms, commonly found in curriculum planning and documents.48 Such forms provide an influential backdrop which structures much of Western thought. Within schools, such forms shape most aspects of curriculum, assessment, and school organization: So dominant is this geometry that the unruly and organic are often surprising and even unwelcome.49

It is not difficult to notice the deep impact of Euclidean forms within structures and curricula in the language arts. In language arts curriculum documents from the provinces of Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta, in Canada, overviews for learning outcomes are organized into rectangular columns—a neatly structured grid shows the 'scope and sequence' of expectations or 'standards' for student knowledge, skills, and abilities in writing, reading, and other areas of the language arts.50 (You can often view such structures on state, provincial, or district curriculum websites.) However, attempting to shape the complex, messy web of activities, processes, and events that comprise the work of writing into boxes, scales, and grids evokes a number of difficulties. To make writing fit into such maps requires that complex details and interactions must be ignored. Like the strange contortions and convolutions which behaviorist models must force in order to translate complex interactions into clearly defined and measurable behaviors or behavioral outcomes, models based on Euclidean organization reduce what are often unruly and diverse learning situations into sterile and artificial forms. Davis and Sumara remark on their own experiences in attempting to fit learning and teaching experiences into these tidy maps: As we each learned more about working with different groups of students, in different schools and communities ... it became obvious that learning outcomes could not be contained by orderly boxes, and teaching intentions refused to be bounded by the tidy grids we had been asked to create.51

It has been my observation, in work with preservice teachers, that it is difficult to begin working from a Euclidean geometric model of curriculum and subsequently develop lessons and structures that

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invite complexity. Once writing is framed in a scope and sequence grid, or presented as a criterion-referenced scale (even those inviting student participation) these maps of learning deeply influence perception of the 'territory' for teaching writing.52 More complex maps and metaphors are required, so that writing is not translated into a step-by-step activity of schooling, but instead offers children possibilities for creating meaning for themselves. SHIFTING MAPS

If we return briefly to the three narrative tableaux from the beginning of this chapter—three different examples of writing and teaching experiences—it would be possible to attempt to map them into typical Euclidean linear or grid-like structures. Within such structures, however it is likely that the language of acquisition (or lack) would appear, since the two frames are highly compatible. As a teacher, I often had to translate the complex landscapes of writing in the primary classroom into such descriptions when it came time for student assessment and reporting and the preparation of curriculum overviews. One thing became another, similar to the following 'translations' of the collaborative writing activity and early writing example on page 125: Braden is meeting the criteria for collaboration during literacy activities. Please view the enclosed criterion scale for the expectations at his grade level. As we come to the end of the second kindergarten reporting period, the children are being encouraged to explore writing more independently. The following list outlines the typical stages for beginning writers. . . . Tara demonstrates a growing ability to create narratives that have a logical beginning, middle and end.

In using such translations, however, something is lost that was present in the original events. The intricate details, the complex interconnections and interrelations, the layering of experiences, events, histories and memories are erased. There are empty spaces in between the lines of the curricular grids, columns, and bullets, but unlike the vibrant, productive gaps of writing's liminal spaces or the spaces

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between bones that enable movement and interconnection, these spaces are sterile, places of absence. The lesson stops breathing, and sometimes it seems that the child at the center does, too. Similar to the creation of linear curriculum documents and teacher instruction 'recipe books,' in developing something simple to follow, the 'sum of the parts' becomes less than the whole. The next tableau provides one teacher's analysis.

The teacher writes, "Report cards are looming large once again. The deeply sad irony about all of the changes we have had to incorporate into them, these last few years, is that the information they convey is utterly lifeless. . . . When you look at the infinite complexity of young children—their limitless capacity to think, conjure, create—and then you try to communicate this by way of a line such as 'can pattern with a variety of materials,' it is no wonder that teachers often feel so guilty all the time. ..."

But what frames and metaphors offer alternate kinds of maps and descriptions? EXTENDING IDEAS • Learning as Participating Anna Sfard observes that, within studies of curriculum, what she labels the participation metaphor has begun to emerge. A participatory framework "makes salient the dialectic nature of the learning interaction: The whole and the parts affect and inform each other."53 The focus shifts from having to doing, and learning is understood as participation within a community of practice. Sfard finds the language and images of participation within sociocultural and social constructionist theory, as well as present in the work of researchers Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, and that of Barbara Rogoff, in their examinations of situated, peripheral, and apprenticeship learning.54 Language that includes 'community' aspects of activity, discourse, or practice, an emphasis on belonging and a focus on membership may also indicate the frame of participation.

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An alternative to Euclidean geometric maps of knowing is offered by the metaphor of the fractal (introduced in chapter 2). The complex forms of fractals offer new ways of thinking about teaching, learning and knowledge and provide opportunities for extending and framing participatory curriculum engagements. Fractal Forms To recap, a fractal shape is one where "characteristic patterns are found repeatedly at descending scales so that their parts, at any scale, are similar in shape to the whole."55 A more fractal geometry offers models of reflexive and recursive embeddedness. These can counter both problems of reductiveness (those found in traditional writing approaches) and problems posed by the romantic perspectives of child-centered learning (aligned with many writers workshop approaches) where, though the learner is treated as a 'whole' (and such perspectives understood to be 'holistic'), she remains "a fundamental particle of sorts," so that "such maps displace rather than replace a reductionist habit."56 A fractal model presents challenges to the separations of learners from their environment, the individual from the collective, and the products or artifacts of learning from their context. Within a fractal metaphor, writing becomes part of a shared, multilayered literacy experience, part of a web of histories, relations, and pedagogy—even where writers or learners appear to be working separately or alone. The products and artifacts of writing, as well as the sorts of representation technologies that are used (including alphabetic writing) are also enmeshed within this complex system. Similar to the way in which the tiny bit of bone in my bone story had an influence on my entire experience, such things or artifacts also participate in pedagogy, even though they may also remain as historical objects long after the events and activities of writing, learning, and teaching have passed.

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The Bones of a Writing Pedagogy For whom am I writing this? . . . Perhaps for the same person children are writing for, when they scrawl their names in the snow.... At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down. 57

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

As the quotation from Iris, a fictional character in Margaret Atwood's novel The Blind Assassin suggests—writing is always embedded in a complex web of relations and collective experience. The act of writing is a call for witness—an attempt to translate private meanings into a more public representation. Even when writing seems entirely private or solitary (as in a personal diary), an imagined audience or 'witness' exists for the writer. "All presentation," Gadamer writes, "is potentially a representation for someone."58 Aesthetic representation, such as writing, cannot be isolated from the context in which it takes place or appears, "It itself belongs to the world to which it represents itself."59 Writing, then, becomes a collective event rather than an individual one, even prior to occurring in a context of schooling, or when shared as a publication. Like the branching of a fractal form, the act or product of writing is interconnected with a larger structure of events and persons. Within classrooms, written texts are enmeshed in particular interpretive communities of writers and readers, where specific conventions and practices co-determine the kinds of texts, writing or textual activities that will emerge. The ways in which ideas are perceived and represented become intimately related to participation and membership in such groups or "textual communities."60 From a complex perspective, an individual's writing can be understood as a fractal-like aspect of a larger unity: It is created and co-specified through involvements in the larger interpretive community. And in the realm of a smaller fractal branch—the minute details of a particular written text will reflect, in microcosm, aspects of the particular history and web of relations of the learner within his or her context.

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All stories become collective ones, in a sense. A number of writers have remarked upon this notion, describing the different kinds of collective spaces involved in, or created by writing. In Madeleine Grumet's examination of autobiographical accounts of educational experience, she points out that it is through studying "the forms of our own experience," We work to remember, imagine, and realize ways of knowing and being that can span the chasm presently separating our public and private worlds.61

Ruth Behar, an anthropologist who uses memoir and narrative methods, suggests that one person's story is often "embedded within the web of stories that emerge" in autobiographical or narrative writing.62 Our stories speak to the stories of others, and as we 'write ourselves' we may also write into others' stories, casting threads of connection, creating a web of small stories existing in relation to one another. On a global level, another layer of the writing fractal, written language also collects history within its forms and technology. In the same way that DNA reveals information about an individual person and tells an evolutionary story of the interconnections between humans and other forms of life, individual writers become part of the very large collective of all who have learned to write. In writing, the technology of alphabetic script provides an engagement with and a tracing of the past, whether or not we are aware of it. As children become literate, they enter into a wide-ranging collective bringing together the historical past, the present literate world, their immediate literacy context, and future encounters with literacy technologies. In considering writing more fractally, a person's writing, story, or narrative can thus be understood as an artifact or tracing of the learning or relations within a particular group, emerging from, or connected to, his or her particular history and abilities, and reaching into the "long bone" of the past to which poet and writer Anne Michaels refers. Written representations can become a generative location. Through engagements with writing practices within a group context, and through mutual sharing of such work, it is possible to create a stronger web of stories, bridging the realms of private and

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public experience. Within the three excerpts included at the beginning of this chapter—the collective writing activity, the graduate course example, the kindergarten story that gathers a peripheral audience—the written narrative of an individual becomes part of a larger web of experience and interpretation. Such experiences are qualitatively different from approaches to writing pedagogy that keep children and their work separate from that of everyone else in a classroom, except for the evaluative relation with the teacher. I do not mean to say, however, that instruction which aims to improve skills in phonemic awareness, grammar, spelling, and other elements of writing is not important to literacy education, and I certainly do not advocate that teachers stop providing instruction in those areas. But it would seem that curriculum which takes into account and encourages the creation of a larger 'web' of possibilities for writing offers something that is equally as important to learners, in providing a place where multiple worlds can come together— individual, collective, textual, aesthetic, historical. But how might writing accomplish such things? I am not about to present the step-by-step guide, an approach I have previously critiqued. However, I believe that in many classrooms, teachers and learners already engage in structures and practices that offer such opportunities, though they are not always identified or recognized, since they do not tend to fit into the usual maps framing much of curriculum planning and assessment. In reexamining my own practices as a teacher, my experiences as a learner, and my conversations with other teachers, writers, and learners, I recognize many such examples, though they have often been difficult to represent in the typical language and frames of schooling. Such events and practices may be regarded as the quirky anomaly, or 'that time' when something interesting happened, but we cannot explain exactly why, when we do not have the frames or metaphors to articulate them. The frames I have presented earlier—the shape of a fractal, the notion of a self-organizing complex system, adaption and emergence— provide alternative structures and language. The 'difficult to describe' situation or terra incognita in the classroom suddenly becomes clearer, even in retrospect. Such as, the following 'trickster' example:

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She examines them once more, the collection of trickster and Coyote stories that her 6- and 7-year-old students have written. The sudden passion evoked by these tales is evident in the details of the curious stories. It is funny how they have come about, especially since most of the children in this group of Grade 1 students had been unimpressed by structures like journal writing. Late in the year she reads aloud Aunt Nancy and Old Man Trouble,63 a trickster tale that she and the class explore through a role drama. Exciting work, looking for clues that Old Man Trouble has passed their way. (And then, of course, deciding what they should do when they find him!) The children gather more stories, Coyote, Raven, Rabbit—delighting in these troublemakers. And then, the stories begin, the trickster tales they write for one another and are eager to share and enact during lunchtime and recess. The stories spread like chickenpox, and soon all the children are writing about the foibles of Coyote, Raven, Old Man Trouble, creating myths of their own invention. But she has not provided the usual teacherly instruction demanding they "Write a trickster tale or legend," a lesson that may well have extinguished their fervor. Instead, their writing emerges from a layering of experiences, sparked by their engagement in the drama. The trickster stories grow as a collective interest and conspiracy, where the children, themselves, in their own tricky ways, follow where these characters have led them.

Powerful or transformative learning experiences are often difficult to articulate or represent, especially when attempting to employ the Euclidean frames that organize much of curriculum. It can also be difficult to use the seemingly stable forms of representation provided by writing to describe something shifting, multilayered, and interconnected, even with the help of more complex, nonlinear metaphors. There's always a translation from one thing into another. In the spaces of both the written text (the technology, the alphabet, the genre) and the story (the fiction, the poem, the narrative, the autobiography, the curriculum) the possibility exists for the 'sum of the parts' or the sketchy map which is offered, to become something more when it is interpreted by another, and when it is interpreted together, with another. The space of interpretation becomes

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a space of possibility, a space where interconnections may bridge the gap between private and public worlds. In a fractal form, the patterns created by the spaces and interconnections are integral to its structure. And, as quantum physics informs us, most solid objects, including human beings, consist mainly of empty space. At the subatomic level, all 'things,' "dissolve ... into wavelike patterns of probabilities."64 Such patterns, rather than consisting of objects, represent "probabilities of interconnections."65 The play of spaces and interconnections is necessary at the deepest level of all matter and phenomena. Rather than parts determining the whole, The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole.66

Teaching and learning writing can be considered, similarly, as an ongoing interplay of spaces and interconnections, an attempt to weave such patterns of probabilities. When attempting to establish interpretive communities and a context where texts and literate artifacts will 'speak to one another,' it is necessary to attend to practices that will encourage and support the likelihood (or probability) that such experiences will occur. The following will address some notions for playing with and creating the connections and spaces of a more fractally shaped writing pedagogy. Focal Practices In developing notions of curriculum that are less linear, Albert Borgmann, a philosopher who was one of Gadamer's students, provides some help in locating and identifying practices that offer possibilities for multiple engagements. He names these practices, which bring individuals together into collectiveparticipation,focal.practices Borgmann understands focal practices and "focal things" as engagements, relations and artifacts that invite "communal celebration" and the intersection of multiple interpretations and experiences. Focal practices provide a "centering power," where mind and body come together in a deep engagement.67 Focal practices were common in

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the premodern reality of the artisan, but modernism has resulted in the demise of many such practices. Borgmann insists that the decline of what he calls "focal reality" creates a collective disorientation and destructiveness. In the classroom, focal practices can be identified as events and structures that are often regarded as existing outside the typical boundaries of pedagogy: events or practices which provide a living connection, a gathering 'location' for the community. The following offer several examples of focal events: participating in class camp experiences, school retreats or sleepovers; excursions or field trips beyond the boundaries of the classroom; engaging in an event of theatre, music, art; daily rituals which are valued by students and teachers rather than being obligatory or institutional routines—these might include singing, special shared stories, or texts read aloud. Focal practices are occasions that are remembered, later, as being significant for creating a sense of 'groupness,' belonging, individual contribution, and collective participation. The sorts of experiences themselves are not so important, but aspects of engagement and celebration are key. Such events, even those with no overt literacy connection, provide a shared context for later writing and reading experiences, where individual and collective experiences can be represented and described. Of course, literacy (and literary) events can also involve focal practices—special occasions68 or rituals of storytelling and reading aloud, or opportunities for shared interpretations and responses to text, media, or the writing of other students. When I was a kindergarten teacher, such focal engagements, events, and practices were integral and expected within the curriculum, but such experiences become less common as children continue along the grades—and by middle or high school, such moments tend to be rare. +++

They are all gathered, in a circle near the old dress-up trunk. The children came in from lunch full of energy and noise, now replaced with the focused hush that accompanies engagement with a good book. The teacher reads, pausing to show the pictures that accompany the text. They've all heard this story before, thumbed through the softened pages of this 'old favorite' with a reading buddy, or taken

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it into the cloakroom for quiet reading. They return from the time of the text when the teacher asks them to get their yellow notebooks and draw. . . .

An attention to the creation of focal events, practices, and rituals may address one of the ongoing problems that can arise in writers workshop situations. It is often the case that children who come from stimulating and 'advantaged' home lives have much to write about, while the child who cannot tell stories of home (for any reason) is unable to participate fully, or may be reluctant to write. When writing is evoked in response to participation in collective events occurring in the context of school, such difficulties can be diminished, and at the very least, social inequities are not further enhanced by the pedagogical structure. One of my own difficulties with structures such as some journal or open-ended writing workshop formats, where students determine their own topics, is that it quickly becomes apparent who is receiving new toys and going on family trips and excursions, and who is not. However, when students participate in collective, focal events in the classroom, and are encouraged to share their responses and interpretations in relation to those occasions, the focus becomes one of shared understandings and experiences. Ursula Franklin refers to such practices as "holistic practices"—where there is opportunity for participants to have input and control. She understands such practices as contrasting to the "prescriptive practices" often seen in the classroom where "the making or doing of something is broken down into clearly identifiable steps."69 Commonplaces: Books and Practices Another connective 'node' or fractal junction may be offered through practices and structures that provide commonplaces for writing. Like focal events and practices, commonplace structures function to provide both a 'closed' space for collective and individual engagement, and yet provide numerous 'openings' for diverse responses. As outlined earlier in the chapter, I have used a commonplace book as a

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frame for inquiry, as well as incorporating this structure in other ways in my teaching and writing. The notion of the commonplace book (or other 'commonplace' practices) can also be easily translated into forms for literacy teaching.70 Commonplace books and the practices associated with them can provide a nonlinear, fractal framework for writing and reading, interpretation and inquiry, and as a number of colleagues and I have discovered, they provide a tangible frame for teaching, learning, and researching while defying the prescriptive tendencies of more commonly used structures for writing in school.71 In order to provide a detailed and discrete description, I will specifically discuss the commonplace book, but acknowledge that there are numerous other ways to shape commonplaces within curriculum. The commonplace book is a structure that locates multiple layers of interpretation, history, memory, artifacts of experience, and rituals of writing, reading, and response. But the commonplace book is different from a journal (or at least, the sort that compiles day-byday descriptions of events) or a simple scrapbook. In providing the 'bones' of a complex pedagogy, the commonplace book joins and gathers "the complex relations that collect because of its material presence."72 A commonplace book might be likened to what one collector of rare maps says about his collection, that such collections are not a mere "assembly of items," or are concerned with any one particular aspect or object, but instead: It's whether there's potential of relating it to other items. That's what builds a collection: The sum is of greater interest than each of the individual pieces.73

Miles Harvey suggests that a good collection is similar to a narrative form, where the goal in the interrelations among the objects is to tell some sort of "comprehensive story," to create something larger than the sum of its parts. It is a moving form rather than a static one, an evolving collection in which writing, narrative, and other representations are gathered and juxtaposed. The relationships among such representations become an integral part of the interpretations and reinterpretations that occur. The commonplace book becomes a site for ongoing interpretation, continuing conversations, and a

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place where the writer might reflect on past, current, and projected experiences in new ways. It provides a fractal structure, where the parts are interrelated with the whole. Though each individual may create his or her own commonplace book, and will experience commonplace practices in a unique manner, the structures belonging to the individual are also influenced by (as well as providing an influence for) the collective structures and experiences. Although here I am primarily concerned with commonplace book practices and structures as something of interest to writing pedagogy, this structure may also be used for focusing, collecting, and interpreting engagements with literary texts (including picture books and children's novels),74 or as a way of thinking about other areas of inquiry (exploring a science topic, for example). The material structure of the commonplace book may be embodied in a number of different forms—its appearance doesn't much matter. It may be contained in the form of a notebook, consist of a collection of items organized within a folder, gathered in a 'memory box,' or organized as a set of files on a computer. In using a commonplace book for interpretation of texts, it may consist of 'sticky notes' attached to pages, writing within margin spaces, or duplicated pages and booklets for recording responses. It may also include collected objects, photographs, artifacts, and other memory objects— there are infinite possibilities for adaptation, according to the purposes and aims of the writer, learner, and teacher. Most significant, however, is that the commonplace book provides a 'backbone' of juxtaposed texts (and objects) and provides a space for interrelated resymbolizations, interpretations, and reinterpretations. Some kinds of journal structures may function similarly to commonplace books. However, because some journal formats used in primary language arts classrooms can exist as prescriptive writing structures rather than offering generative locations for writing, I consider the two structures as separate. (For example, in journals where children are required to only write about actual events from their lives using narrow sentence frames such as, "Today is . Yesterday I ," possibilities for extending thinking and making collective interconnections are limited.) In my personal com-

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monplace books I usually include some sort of journaling aspect— but also combine and juxtapose those reflections with factual information and notes, images, Internet links, and other threads that recursively feed into my area of interest and investigation. The writing and reading (and rewriting and rereading) of particular or specified texts is important in creating a site for shared interpretation. Although individuals will usually experience their own interpretations as unique, participating in a variety of shared writing and literary experiences, particularly those that offer focal engagements, is key. Providing practices and experiences that offer enabling constraints is helpful in provoking new thoughts, or for exploring further relationships among ideas and texts. The term enabling constraints refers to a creation of a balance between enough organization to orient students' actions and sufficient openness to allow for the varieties of experience, ability, and interest that are represented in any classroom.75 Finding the careful balance between adequate openness and structure is not something that can be determined in advance, or charted in a definitive way without knowledge of a particular group of learners and their capacities. In the narrative tableau of the five-step animal poem, depicted earlier in the chapter on page 131, this writing structure might have provided enabling constraints for a group of children who already knew how to write, but it was simply 'constraining' for the 6-year-old children I described. For this particular group of children, a more suitable enabling constraint would be to provide an open-ended option for response (for example, writing about a memory of an animal, or a list of what he or she knows about a particular animal), and where the children can respond in a variety of ways such as drawing, having their story scribed, using invented spelling, etc. What appears on the surface to be an enabling structure (such as a writing workshop where children determine all of their own topics) is often so open-ended that students experience this, too, as 'constraining,' for a variety of reasons. As well, enabling constraints, used or developed to generate diverse, interpretive responses, should

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not be confused with the sorts of constraints created mainly as tools for ranking, sorting, and evaluating (e.g., criterion-reference lists or rubrics), since these tend to restrict, rather than generate, diversity of responses. In addition to asking students to engage in writing practices involving enabling constraints—which can include narrative structures, poetry or fiction strategies, among other strategies—learners may also use their commonplace book to gather their responses to texts, record experiences, and engage in personal or autobiographical writing. When students are required to provide more formal kinds of writing or representations (e.g., reports, class presentations, interpretations through drama, presentation portfolios), they can draw upon the commonplace book as a resource, uncovering the 'bones' that can appear in new configurations.76 The texts students are asked to read are significant in relation to the commonplace book. Texts that invite interpretive response and conversation offer interesting possibilities for learning and teaching when read alongside commonplace book writing practices. Aesthetic texts that cause readers to linger "in the fictional woods," are used in juxtaposition with texts that require students to engage in more efferent readings, where attention is focused upon analysis and interpretation of ideas, providing generative opportunities for writing.77 Literary texts, including picture books, are especially important in helping students to attend differently to both their reading and their reflective writing, providing the necessary spaces and interconnections essential to complex juxtapositions and interpretations. Such fictions can invite the "boundary-crossings" which modify consciousness, where "... the fictive simultaneously disrupts and doubles the referential world."78 For children in the early grades, there are numerous examples of books that can be generative commonplace texts. Often, books based on legends or traditional tales lend themselves to new interpretations or analyses—from kindergarten and beyond. Books that provide links to children's own memories and histories can also be generative, and those with endings or structures inviting readers to make their own interpretations are particularly useful.

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WRITING PRACTICE • Writerly Texts Roland Barthes labels fictions that ask readers to engage in active interpretation to create meaning as writerly texts.79 That is, such texts require readers to use their imaginations to 'write' or fill in the gaps of the story. Although Barthes' notion has been often used to describe literary fictions for adults, many picture books can be considered as writerly texts. Authors and illustrators may use allegory, subtle detail in illustration, or poetic language to create a web of possible interpretations. John Marsden and Shaun Tan's Australian picture book, The Rabbits, provides one example.80 "The rabbits came many grandparents ago," the text begins, presenting a strange world that has been invaded by unusual creatures who "chopped down our trees and scared away our friends . . . and stole our children."81 When I read this book to young children, they have varied interpretations: a tale of a fantasy land, a story of aliens, or sometimes connections to being a newcomer in an unfamiliar land. They think this is a book that is both funny and a little sad. I have also shared The Rabbits with Aboriginal teacher candidates. "This is a book about what happened to the Australian Aborigines." "This is like what happened in my grandmother's life, when they sent her children to residential school." "This is a story of colonization." Other adult groups notice other nuances. "It's a story of the destruction of the environment." "A book about conquest and war." One picture book, many interpretations.

Central to creating focal collective locations in using commonplace books is the reading aloud or oral sharing of learners' texts. This is one of the ways the 'thing between' invents itself, becoming the living, shared text which gathers and connects individual student narratives, responses, and histories into a collective one. Such reading-aloud events become "oral-aural" rituals reaching back to ancient and profound origins.82 These are locations where listeners and speakers might find the bones of their own histories, and the con-

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necting joints of shared relation. In preparing for such presentations, learners are asked to rehearse the reading aloud of the selection to be shared. Together the group will enter into a different, more 'sacred' space of learning.83 This is the place where fragments of time are uncovered, moments linking back to the ancient world of the storyteller and the buried history of oral memory, from earliest childhood or something even more cellular, from time before memory. Reading aloud both performs and transforms. Such oral readings link learners in a unity normally disrupted by the ways in which writing and print are used in modern schooling, where individuals often read and write privately, or engage in separate, parallel conversations with a teacher or instructor. Such oral readings provide a way to bridge the gaps and absences of the written text. The reading aloud creates what often feels like a sacred dimension—listening to classmates read or share their stories is an out-of-the-ordinary experience, a focal event. All become joined in a new collective, linked together by these small oral texts, building the slow bones of an interpretive community, where memories of others' texts will forever intersect present and future writings and readings. Providing other forms and structures for sharing commonplace book interpretations may also help to create a concrete and intricate 'collective text.' Giving students copies of each other's writing to include in their commonplace collections, translating ideas and interpretations into other aesthetic forms of representation (creating a dramatic tableau, working with pastels to design a symbol, making a clay sculpture), incorporating practices where students can respond to one another in nonevaluative ways, and sharing the group's collective learning publicly (a presentation to another class, a dramatic performance, a mural) are only a few ways to further develop interconnections among individuals. Such focal events and practices provide shifting, liminal spaces for interpretation. As anthropologist and performance theorist Victor Turner points out, such ritual and aesthetic resymbolizing practices provide ways for people to

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. . . "play" with the elements of the familiar and defamiliarize them. Novelty emerges from unprecedented combinations of familiar events.84 Time, space, and day-to-day identities may be altered in such focal moments, suspended within the space of collective interpretation and resymbolization. Using curriculum experiences and structures such as focal events and practices, and flexible and evolving forms such as the commonplace book, literacy curriculum and the teaching of writing develop a shape that is nonlinear, fractal. Something similar to a living form begins to emerge, developing an energy and momentum within the spaces and interconnections of teaching and learning. A kind of life is breathed into the long lines of words, the bits of paper. Like the Bone Woman's creature, who comes to life from the bony pieces gathered, these also stretch and spring into life, no longer a mere assembly of items and experiences. A complex living system of texts and collective learning comes forth within the landscape of schooling. Of course, bones, written texts, and pedagogy have more elaborate structures than even the complex model of the fractal or other representations from complexity science. Within the structure of bones, tree-like branchings of fibers tangle together, forming a kind of multiply dimensioned form, a fractal structure applied to another fractal structure, the image of trees entangled with trees.85 This arrangement is what gives bones their strength and ability to heal and grow. The ecologies and systems of writing pedagogy are similarly dimensioned, where each cellular aspect: Practices, texts, learning identities, relationships, contain an equally complex structure, far more complex than any of the images we might attempt to use for representation. Within primary classrooms, terra incognita will still continue to exist. A degree of mystery is always a condition of the vibrant living spaces where children live. But, rethinking the frames for teaching, learning, and writing holds possibilities for making literacy matter in ways that reach beyond test scores and political or institutional agendas. I'm reminded of this every time I touch the pages gathered in my 'memory box' of student writing, each time I witness a group of

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children come together to write about something they care about, and every time I uncap my own pen.

After the worst of the sad days had passed, the children write and tell stories that are different from the ones that had helped them understand the accident, and what had happened to Anna—when over and over again, the dolls all died, and the drawings were dark and full of tears. The new stories are about dreams of meeting Anna on the new playground, or tales of Anna Angel flying in the clouds. The children know that Anna—as she was—will not return, but in their stories, she lives on as an angel girl. A girl, who, in spite of everything, is happy, and watches over them. Anna lost, and Anna found again, in the shaky pencil text, the vivid crayon drawings. Anna would have liked that,' the teacher reflects.

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afterword

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Asterword

It is a breathtakingly cold Edmonton morning—forty below, as they say here. Brilliant sun, blue sky, biting cold. At this temperature, a layer of ice forms along the inside edges of windows, sliding doors freeze in place, and my dogs remain curled tight near the heat registers, A day when venturing out means risking frostbite, requires plugging in the car's block heater, and results in dead batteries if vehicles are left outdoors for more than an hour or two. It is a good day for staying inside and writing; perhaps a safer journey, though maybe not. I write in my commonplace book, "Almost finished . . . now what?" It feels as if a long relationship is coming to an end, or, at least, shifting into something else. What I have written in this book, about text and writing as transforming thinking, identity, and relationships also applies to me, though this writing is only one tangled fractal piece. It is interesting to consider this piece, and the paths traveled. When I began the commonplace book that evolved into this text, although I had an idea of what it would be about, I did not know exactly where it would lead me, what I would learn, or if it would be something that others might find interesting and useful. One cannot know exactly what a book is about, really, until the end. The process of writing becomes the process of thinking, gathering insights and awareness, making sense of the 'terrain.' I've had to set off, trust the processes and my own obsessions, and see where the lines of words would take me. Along the way, in the duration of my writing, I traveled geographically, moving from East to West, and finally to my current home in Alberta. Perhaps this also explains why metaphors of mapping/unmapping and unfamiliar terrain are tightly woven into this book. My own journeys have been real as well as metaphorical. This book has also gathered up threads of memory and history—reconnecting me to stories and lives of the classroom and my own history as a literacy learner. A kind of time travel. Because this text has focused upon the collective nature of writing, it seems something of a lie (or a fiction) to present myself as a single author. Although much of the writing happened without anyone else present and my fingers were on the keyboard or holding the pen, many significant collective focal events and relationships were

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essential to the development of this book. Writing as meaning making never happens alone. Not for our students, nor for any writer. I've addressed the importance of writing for real purposes, about things that matter. That's something I've considered quite a lot along my own journey into this text. Some of the reasons I chose to write this book have been outlined in the Preface, but there are more personal reasons, too, for writing, probably even layers that I'm not yet aware of. But I can think of two. Both reach back to my time as a classroom teacher. When I was teaching primary grades I often wished for some descriptions that might explain more about what was going on in my classroom, and that I could use to support what I was doing there. So, in part, this book has been written for those, like me (and many of my post-degree students, now) who need some support along the way for what are less familiar ideas in education. The other reason connects to one of my former students, the girl who died near the end of our kindergarten year together. Although the times and events surrounding her death were difficult and tragic, the extensive collection of her notebooks and classroom artifacts made a difference to her family—writing that expressed her ideas, worries and passions, her voice living on forever in those pages. In witnessing her classmates deal with the 'difficult times' through their own writing and stories, I saw, again, the power of text. Since then, I've never viewed classroom literacy and writing projects in quite the same way. Children's texts can have significance and purposes we might never imagine. My hope, then, is that this book will help other teachers to imagine possibilities for their students, through writing and literacy experiences.

'And so ends the story,' thinks the teacher, though she knows there are still other stories to unravel. But that can be for another day. She's found her way through these long lines of words—some dangerous, some less so, but all revealing more than she knew before. A story has changed her. Now it is time for the story to set off on its own journey, to other people, other places. And so other stories begin. . . .

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endnotes

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Notes to pages xiii-8

Preface 1. Jane Urquhart, Storm glass (Erin, ON: The Porcupine's Quill, 1987), 7. 2. For a good description of complexity science, important vocabulary and a bibliography of influential texts, a useful resource is the website Complexity and Education located at (retrieved May 17, 2004). University of Alberta Secondary Education doctoral student Angus McMurtry, together with Brent Davis, are the primary authors of the site. Additionally, the journal Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education and the proceedings of the annual Complexity Science and Educational Research (CSER) Conference are both linked through this site. 3. Annie Dillard, The writing life (New York: HarperPerennial, 1989), 3. 4. For further descriptions of commonplace books and practices, see Dennis J. Sumara, "Using commonplace books in curriculum studies,"JCT Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 12, 1 (1996): 45-48; and Linda Laidlaw and Dennis Sumara, "Transforming pedagogical time," JCT Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 16, no. 1 (2000): 9-22. 5. Anne Michaels, Fugitive pieces (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1996).

Chapter 1 • Terra incognita: Unmapping literacy curriculum 1. Anne Michaels, Fugitivepieces (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1996), 136. 2. Madeleine R. Grumet, "Foreword," in Jonathan G. Silin, Sex, death, and the education of children: Our passion for ignorance in the time of AIDS, (New York: Teachers College Press, 1995), ix. 3. I refer here to the U.S. "No Child Left Behind" legislation, with an emphasis on measurable standards, school accountability, skills-based learning, and 'scientific research' methods. See (retrieved May, 20 2004). 4. Michaels, Fugitive pieces, 137. 5. Norman L. Nicholson and L.M. Sebert, The maps of Canada: A guide to official Canadian maps, charts, atlases and gazetteers (Kent, UK: Wm Dawson and Sons, 1981). 6. As Gregory Bateson states, "The map is not the territory, and the name is not the thing named," referring to how representations tend to transform human perceptions. In Mind and nature: A necessary unity (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979), 30. 7. Lev Vygotsky, Thought and language, trans. Alex Kozulin (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997), 215. 8. Denis Wood, The power of maps (New York: The Guilford Press, 1992).

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Notes to pages 8-14

9. Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery and Taubman list well over two hundred terms associated with curriculum and its categories in their index to Understanding curriculum. See William F. Pinar, William M. Reynolds, Patrick Slattery, and Peter M. Taubman, eds. Understanding curriculum (New York: Peter Lang, 1995). 10. William Pinar and Madeleine Grumet, Toward a poor curriculum (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1976) presents the notion of currere, one such perspective. 11. Language Arts curriculum materials present significant artifacts, often articulating and documenting various aspects of such information. 12. William E. Doll, Jr. A post-modern perspective on curriculum (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993). 13. Morris Berman, The reenchantment of the world (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981); see also Brent Davis, Dennis Sumara, and Rebecca Luce-Kapler, Engaging minds: Learning and teaching in a complex world (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000). 14. Alberto Manguel, A history of reading (Toronto, Canada: Vintage Canada, 1998). 15. David R. Olson, The world on paper: The conceptual and cognitive implications of writing and reading (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 16. Pinar et al., Understanding curriculum; Philip W. Jackson, Handbook of research on curriculum, Philip W. Jackson ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1992). 17. Ursula Franklin, The real world of technology (Concord, ON: Anansi, 1990). 18. Pinar et al., Understanding curriculum. 19. Franklin Bobbitt, The curriculum (Chicago: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918). 20. Ralph W. Tyler, Basic principles of curriculum and instruction (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1949), 64. 21. English language arts K to 7: Integrated resource package (British Columbia Ministry of Education, Skills and Training: The Queen's Printer, 1996), iii. Emphasis mine. 22. The Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8: Language (Ministry of Education and Training: Queen's Printer for Ontario, 1997), 3. Emphasis mine. 23. This Act can be found at (retrieved May 19, 2004). 24. See, for example, Gerald Coles, Misreading reading: The bad science that hurts children (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2000). 25. John McCrone, Going inside: A tour round a single moment of consciousness (London: Faber and Faber, 1999); James Gleick, Chaos: Making a new science (New York: Penguin, 1987).

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Notes to pages 15-19

26. See Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press), 29. For reference to additional studies on color, see also Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding, rev. ed. (Boston: Shambhala, 1987). Jerome Bruner's early work in experimental psychology also examines perception and cognition, for example, Jerome S. Bruner, Leo Postman, and John Rodrigues, "Expectations and the perception of color," American journal of Psychology LXIV (1951): 216-227, and Jerome S. Bruner and Leo J. Postman, "On the perception of incongruity: A paradigm," in beyond the information given, ed. J. Anglin (1949; reprint, New York: W.W. Norton, 1973). 27. Oliver Sacks, "To see and not see," mAn anthropologist on Mars (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1995). 28. For a detailed description of this experiment see Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F. Chabris, "Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events," Perception 28 (1999): 1059-1074. Further information about the University of Illinois Visual Cognition Lab and video demos of this and other experiments can be found at (retrieved May 19, 2004). 29. Olson, The world on paper. 30. Vygotsky, Thought and language. 31. Thomas S. Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996). 32. Pinar was instrumental in initiating edited collections such as Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists, as well as a "reconceptualist" journal: JCT: The Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, and spear-heading conferences such as the 1973 Rochester conference, and the annual JCT conference known as Bergamo which began in Dayton, Ohio. 33. William F. Pinar, ed., Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists (Berkley, CA: McCutchan, 1975). Janet Miller's study, Creating spaces and finding voices: Teachers collaborating for empowerment (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990), provides one example of reconceptualist work which focuses upon subjective experience and collaborative practices; the work of Madeleine Grumet, Elizabeth Vallance, Maxine Greene, and Elliot Eisner provide examples of contributions in the area of curriculum as aesthetic practice. 34. Richard Rorty, Contingency, irony, and solidarity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 20.

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35. Victoria Carrington, New times: New families (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer, 2002), 74. 36. I am referring particularly to the basal readers of the 1960s-l 970s. Contemporary reading series generally make better attempts to reflect different family models and racial diversity, as well as including 'authentic' excerpts of text from trade books, although here, too, teachers can sometimes still find links to modernist forms of organization. 37. Nat the rat, Level two: Teacher's manual (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1970), 1. 38. Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, The collapse of chaos: Discovering simplicity in a complex world (New York: Penguin, 1994). 39. For a more detailed description of the panda principle see Cohen and Stewart, The collapse of chaos.

Chapter 2 • New maps: Complexity, learning and writing 1. Umberto Eco's first chapter in Six walks in thefictional woods (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994) is the inspiration for this heading. 2. John Briggs and F. David Peat, Seven lessons of chaos: Timeless wisdom from the science of change (New York: HarperCollins, 1999): 99-100. 3. See Ibid.; Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, The collapse of chaos: Discovering simplicity in a complex world (New York: Penguin, 1994); William E. Doll Jr., A post-modern perspective on curriculum (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993). 4. See, for example, Gareth Morgan, Images of organization (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1986); Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the and the new science: Discovering order in a chaotic world(San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 1999). 5. Thomas King, "Introduction," in All my relations: An anthology of contemporary Canadian Nativefiction,ed. Thomas King (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1988): ix-xvi. 6. See, for example, Brent Davis, Dennis J. Sumara and Rebecca LuceKapler, Engaging minds: learning and teaching in a complex world (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000); Brent Davis and Dennis J. Sumara, "Cognition, complexity, and teacher education," Harvard Educational Review 67, no. 1 (spring 1997): 105-125; Brent Hocking, Johanna Haskell and Warren Linds, eds., Unfolding bodymind: Possibility through education (Burlington, VT: Foundation for Educational Renewal, 2001); Renata Phelps and Stewart Hase, "Complexity and action research: Exploring the theoretical and methodological connections," Educational

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Action Research 10, no. 3 (2002): 507-523. David B. Yaden, Jr. "Parentchild storybook reading as a complex adaptive system: Or "An igloo is a house for bears," in Anne van Kleeck, Steven A. Stahl and Eurydice Bauer, eds., On reading books to children: Parents and teachers (Mahwah, N.J. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003). 7. See, for example, Brent Davis and Elaine Simmt, "Understanding learning systems: Mathematics education and complexity science," Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 34, no. 2 (2003): 137-167. 8. Giulio Ceppi and Michele Zini, eds., Children, spaces, relations: Metaproject for an environment for young children (Milan: Reggio Children Domus Academy Research Centre, 1998); Carolyn Edwards, Leila Gandini, and George Forman, eds., The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia approach—Advanced reflections, 2nd ed. (Greenwich, CT: Ablex, 1998). 9. Stephen Wright, "Why Reggio Emilia doesn't exist: A response to Richard Johnson," Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 1, no. 2 (2000), 225. 10. George G. Hruby, "The socionaturalist narrative: An approach to the bio-ecological dynamics of reading and literacy development" (Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, 2002); Linda Laidlaw, "Translated by text: A complex perspective on writing instruction," English Quarterly 35, no. 1 (2003): 9-13; Dennis J. Sumara, "Researching complexity," Journal of Literacy Research 32, no. 2 (2000): 267-281. 11. The concise Oxford dictionary of English etymology, T.F. Hoad, ed. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986) and Etymology Online (retrieved August 13, 2003 ), s.v. "complex". 12. M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 9. 13. Fritjof Capra, The web of life (New York: Anchor Books, 1996), 84. 14. Steven Johnson, Emergence: The connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software (New York: Scribner, 2001). 15. Paul Cilliers, Complexity and postmodernism: Understanding complex systems (New York: Routledge, 1998). 16. John McCrone, Going inside: A tour round a single moment of consciousness (London: Faber and Faber, 1999). Discussions at The Complexity Science and Educational Research Conference, held in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, October, 2003 indicate that debates about labels and definitions are likely to continue as education increasingly accepts ideas from the complexity sciences. 17. Capra, The web of life, 37. Contributing to systems theories, which emerged primarily from work in biology, psychology and ecology, was the devel-

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opment of quantum theory within the traditionally reductionist field of physics. Quantum theory revealed subatomic particles not to be 'things,' but rather 'interconnections among things.' Following quantum theory, the world could no longer be decomposed into isolated components, but instead was understood by physicists as a complex, interconnected tissue of events and probabilities. 18. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, What is sex? (New York: Simon and Schuster Editions, 1997). 19. Capra, The web of life. 20. Children often demonstrate 'self-organization' in daily activity such as playground play. 21. Davis and Simmt draw similar conclusions in "Understanding learning systems," suggesting that mathematics instruction can promote more systemically intelligent learning structures by ensuring common collective knowledge and mathematical language, 'decentralized control,' 'organized randomness'—opportunities for experimentation within some parameters, and opportunities for 'neighbor interactions.' 22. Waldrop, Complexity. 23. Johnson, Emergence. 24. Capra, The web of life; Francisco J.Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991). 25. See Gregory Bateson, Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Bateson's Mind and nature: A necessary unity (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979) presents his description of an ecology of mind and mental systems, relevant to complex perspectives of cognition. 26. McCrone, Going inside. 27. Capra, The web of life. 28. "Principia Cybernetica Web" presents one of the largest websites on cybernetics and general systems theory, containing bibliographies, articles, introductory overviews and helpful discussions. It can be accessed at (retrieved May 20, 2004). 29. Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J.Varela, The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding, rev. ed. (Boston: Shambhala, 1987).

30. Ibid., 11. 31. Francisco J. Varela, Ethical know-how: Action, wisdom, and cognition (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). 32. Ibid., 6. 33. Ibid., 61.

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34. Briggs and Peat, Seven lessons of chaos, 10. 35. James Gleick, Chaos: Making a new science (New York: Penguin, 1987), 5. 36. A calculation would be applied to the result, and the next calculation to that one, and the next one to that, and so on. 37. Euclidean geometry is the geometry most of us studied in high school— it focuses on the nature of squares, rectangles, circles, triangles etc. 38. Briggs and Peat, Seven lessons of chaos; Gleick, Chaos. 39. Cohen and Stewart, The collapse of chaos, 191. In a "Betty" cartoon strip, Betty says, "A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon rainforest and, as a result the sweater you bought yesterday for full price goes on sale today?" 40. For another description, see Linda Laidlaw, "On the importance of little details: Complexity, emergence and pedagogy," Educational Insights (in press). This will be available on-line at . 41. Mem Fox, "Have we lost our way?" Language Arts 79, no. 2 (November 2001), 105. 42. McCrone, Going inside. 43. Doll, A post-modern perspective, 169. 44. Cohen and Stewart, The collapse of chaos; Gleick, Chaos, Capra, The web of life. 45. However, as Davis and Sumara report about DNA: "there is a complex, mutually affective dynamic that is constantly occurring." Brent Davis and Dennis J. Sumara. "Curriculum forms: On the assumed shapes of knowing and knowledge," Journal of Curriculum Studies 32, no. 6 (2000), 837. Science is uncovering more and more complexity in the relation between an organism and its DNA—current analysis finds it to be similar to a kind of interpretation where genetic differences at the level of DNA become co-specified by a number of factors such as context, environment, and the biological processes and actions of the organism itself. 46. Such images may be found on numerous sites on the Internet, and have also appeared on popular graphics and posters. One interesting site is located at (retrieved May 10, 2004), but hundreds of others can be found by typing "Mandelbrot Set" into any good search engine. 47. See also Briggs and Peat, Seven lessons of chaos, Gleick, Chaos, Cohen and Stewart, The collapse of chaos; Capra, The web of life; Davis and Sumara, "Curriculum forms" for further, and more technical, descriptions of fractals.

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48. Bateson, Mind and nature, 30. 49. Briggs and Peat, in their chapter "Seeing the art of the world," in Seven lessons of chaos, include an interesting discussion of the differences among 'natural' fractals, 'aesthetic' fractals, and those which are mathematically generated. 50. Methods in drama education developed by master teachers such as Dorothy Heathcote, Gavin Bolton, Cecily O'Neill and Jonothan Neelands provide an excellent example of how educational approaches have often been 'ahead of the models used to represent them. I remember when taking drama education methods courses as an undergraduate student that, though we were always able to write up our lessons using the frames and terminology of the behavioral objectives popular at the time, we could only do so after we had completed the lesson. A fractal structure provides a frame that enables representation of preplanning, ongoing drama processes, and the interconnections among the various aspects of the work. 51. McCrone, John. How the brain works: A beginner's guide to mind and consciousness (New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2002). 52. McCrone, Going inside. 53. Ken Richardson, The making of intelligence (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999). 54. McCrone, Going inside, 128. See also Tor Norretranders, The user illusion: Gutting consciousness down to size, trans. Jonathan Sydenham (New York: Viking, 1998). 55. However, it is possible to catch oneself in the act of 'building' consciousness in situations involving sudden reflex actions. In an experience of burning my hand on a hot pan, curiously, I discovered I had already moved my hand away from the stove before I was consciously aware of the pain. For the reflexive action of pulling away to have occurred, at some level of awareness I had reacted to the hot pan. 56. Within current work in cognitive science 'subconscious,' 'nonconscious,' and 'unconscious' are all used to signify perception outside of the focus of conscious awareness. 57. Norretranders, The user illusion, 240. 58. This is an interesting example to test. Try yawning in a meeting or a classroom and observe what happens. 59. See Davis and Sumara, "Cognition, complexity, and teacher education," for further discussion of collective insights and their spread. 60. See Cohen and Stewart, The collapse of chaos, and Capra, The web of life for typical discussions of ecologies and learning.

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61. Ceppi and Zini, Children, spaces, relations. 62. Dennis J. Sumara, Private readings in public (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), 5. 63. Madeleine R. Grumet, "The play of meanings in the art of teaching," Theory into Practice 32, no. 4 (1993), 207. 64. Jerome S. Bruner, The culture of education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). 65. Lev Vygotsky, Thought and language, trans. Alex Kozulin (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997). 66. Davis and Sumara, Curriculum forms. 67. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated learning. Legitimate peripheral participation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 68. Ibid.

69. Ibid, 53. 70. Michael A. K. Halliday, An introduction to functional grammar (London: Edward Arnold, 1994). 71. James P. Gee, An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method (London: Routledge, 1999). 72. Maturana and Varela, The tree of knowledge. 73. Thomas S. Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996).

Chapter 3 • Rereading maps of literacy and language: A

tangled history 1. Augusto Boal, "The cop in the head: Three hypotheses," The Drama Review 34, no. 3 (1990), 38. 2. Jim McGugan, Josepha, illustrated by Murray Kimber (Red Deer, AB: Red Deer College Press, 1994), np. 3. Acronyms for 'learning disabilities,' 'fetal alcohol syndrome,' and 'severe behavior disorder.' 4. The catalog from the Batons department store, in byegone times, was one of few options for mail order of goods in rural Canada. 5. McGugan, Josepha. 6. English as a Second Language. 7. Because literacy has become so automatic for most of us, there is a tendency to 'fix' misreadings before they enter the level of conscious awareness. For example, we tend to unconsiously 'correct' typographical errors as we reread our own writing, so that it is difficult to be aware of small 'typos' in our own assignments and manuscripts.

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8. David R. Olson, The world on paper: The conceptual and cognitive implications of writing and reading (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 9. See Donald J. Richgels, "Invented spelling, phonemic awareness, and reading and writing instruction," in Susan B. Neuman and David K. Dickinson, eds., Handbook of early literacy research (New York: The Guilford Press, 2001). 10. Richgels, "Invented spelling..." Richgels provides a description of affrication: A sound is affricated when it involves a harsh burst of air such as is especially evident in the English phonemes usually spelled with C-H and J. When you pay close attention to your pronunciation of "tr" and "dr," you will hear such affrication. (145) That this explanation of this phonemic difference is required underscores the argument that alphabetic literacy influences conscious perception of spoken sounds. 11. Aritha van Herk, Placesfar from Ellesmere (Red Deer, AB: Red Deer College Press, 1990), 135. 12. Of course, current literacy research presents numerous challenges to such perspectives, especially when these are used to create educational policy. See, for example, Barbara M. Taylor, Richard C. Anderson, Kathryn H. Au, and Taffy E. Raphael's "Discretion in the translation of research to policy: A case from beginning reading," Educational Researcher 29, no. 6 (August-September 2000): 16-26. This article questions the validity of research studies that do not recognize the complexities of literacy learning and teaching. 13. Dennis J. Sumara, "Researching complexity," Journal of Literacy Research 32, no. 2 (June 2000): 267-281. 14. Olson, The world on paper. 15. Ann-Marie MacDonald, The way the crow flies (Toronto: Alfred Knopf, 2003). 16. In a recent Canadian Federal court case, a judge ruled that illiteracy could be considered a mental disability, in response to a landed immigrant's attempts to become a citizen after repeatedly failing the written citizenship test. See Janice Tibbetts, "Illiteracy can be a disability; Judge," National Post, \ August 2002, A5. 17. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding media: The extensions of man (1964; reprint, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996), 82. 18. Miles Harvey, The island of lost maps: A. true story of cartographic crime (New York: Random House, 2000). 19. In a Vancouver Sun article examining "Inventions that changed the world,"

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Nobel Laureates and other intellectuals were asked to list the most important technological inventions and suggested computers, the Internet, paper, clocks, and the printing press. However, alphabets and other forms of writing are oddly absent from this list. Petti Fong, "Inventions that changed the world," The Vancouver Sun, 12 January 2001, All. 20. The concise Oxford dictionary of English etymology, T.F. Hoad, ed. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986), s.v. "technic". 21. Anne Michaels, Fugitive pieces (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1996). 22. Steven Pinker, The language instinct: How the mind creates language (New York: HarperPerennial, 1994), 16; see also, Terrence W. Deacon, The symbolic species: The co-evolution of language and the brain (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997). 23. Ursula Franklin, The real world of technology (Concord, ON: Anansi, 1990), 57. 24. For a discussion of the development of notions of illiteracy see Eric A. Havelock, The origins of Western literacy (Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1976), 3. It is interesting, as well, to note that the inability to use the technology of writing has been pathologized to the point of being viewed as a medical condition or disability. There are few other technologies where the individuals unable to use them are designated with special language—for example, people who cannot drive automobiles or operate video recorders do not have particular designations, and do not become the focus of remedial efforts (as much as these might be helpfull). 25. Lois Lowry, Gathering blue (New York: Walter Lorraine Books, 2000), 88. 26. Walter J. Ong, Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the world (London: Routledge, 1982). 27. John Man, Alpha beta: How our alphabet shaped the Western world (London, UK: Headline, 2000). 28. The concise Oxford dictionary of English etymology, and Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (Toronto, ON: Thomas Allen & Son, 1979), s.v. "write". 29. Ong, Orality and literacy, citing Plato's Socrates in the Phaedrus, 79-81. 30. Ong, Orality and literacy; McLuhan, Understanding media. 3l. Man, A/pha beta, 9l 32. David Abram, The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a morethan-human world (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996). 33. From Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in general linguistics (1916; reprint, London, UK: Duckworth, 1983), also cited in Olson, The world on paper, 66. 34. Deacon, The symbolic species; Man, Alpha beta; Olson, The world on paper, Ong, Orality and literacy.

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35. Ong, Orality and literacy. 36. Abram, The spell of the sensuous; Ong, Orality and literacy. 37. Ong, Orality and literacy, 84. 38. Ibid.; Abram, The spell of the sensuous. 39. In recent years, simplified forms have also begun to gain in popular usage. 40. Ong, Orality and literacy. 41. Olson, The world on paper. 42. Abram, The spell of the sensuous. 43. Man, Alpha beta, 185. 44. Havelock, The origins of Western literacy; see also Abram, The spell of the sensuous. 45. In ancient Semitic, aleph also signified ox, and beth represented house, but their Greek variations alpha and beta had no such significance. See Abram, The spell of the sensuous for further discussion of original Semitic meanings. 46. Abram, The spell of the sensuous; see also Ong, Orality and literacy, Havelock, The origins of Western literacy; and Olson, The world on paper. 47. Olson, The world on paper. 48. Ibid., 85. 49. Ong, Orality and literacy. 50. Juliana Saxton and her theatre education classes at the University of Victoria introduced me to these drama strategies. 51. McLuhan, Understanding media. 52. Olson, The world on paper, 111. 53. However, 'writing culture' has a pervasive global influence in current times, so that truly nonliterate societies are increasingly rare. 54. Ong, Orality and literacy. 55. In a Royal British Columbia Museum exhibit, "Out of the Mist: Treasures of the Nuu-chah-nulth Chiefs," which took place several years ago in Victoria, British Columbia, there was a display of what are known as Family Curtains, sheets of fabric covered in images and pictures. The exhibit label described their use: The curtain contains all the teachings and knowledge of our people. It tells where they came from, where their grandfathers were from, where their teachings came from. It is the way our people keep their history. 56. Tor Norretranders, The user illusion: Cutting consciousness down to size, trans. Jonathan Sydenham (New York: Viking, 1998). 57. John McCrone, Going inside: A tour round a single moment of consciousness (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), 217. See also Norretranders, The user illusion. 58. Alison Gopnick, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Patricia K. Kuhl, The scientist

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in the crib (New York: Perennial, 1999). 59. Ibid. 60. Ong, Orality and literacy. 61. Mary Aswell Doll, "Winging it," in Action research as a living practice, ed. Terrance R. Carson and Dennis Sumara (New York: Peter Lang, 1997), 1. 62. lona and Peter Opie, Children's games in street and playground (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1969). 63. See also Brent Davis, Dennis J. Sumara and Rebecca Luce-Kapler, Engaging minds: Learning and teaching in a complex world (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000), "Chapter five: Learning and teaching lives," for further discussion of the complex entanglement of oral and literate practices. 64. Translators must also address the differences in grammatical structure and internal linguistic patterns that vary according to the linguistic family from which a language originates (e.g., Indo-European, Germanic). 65. Havelock, The origins of Western literacy. 66. However, what were originally constraints have also resulted in advantages for providing historical artifacts—such materials have tended to be more permanent than today's writing materials will be. Many suggest that the impermanence of contemporary artifacts of literacy (acid based papers, computer disks, and the even more transient electronic print of the Internet) will, in the long term, result in the modern and postmodern eras leaving few traces of their existence. 67. Havelock, The origins of Western literacy; Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg galaxy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969). 68. Geoffrey Rubinstein, "History of printing," in Jones telecommunications and multimedia encyclopedia (on-line, available: Retrieved June 3, 2003). Recently, American scholars have begun to question whether Gutenberg actually invented the form of casting type for which he has been credited for, and have suggested that he may have used sand casting methods to create his type. See Jim McCue, "Hot type, hot debate," The Vancouver Sun, (reprinted from The Times of London) 21 March, 2001, A17. 69. McLuhan, Understanding media. 70. Ibid.; Ong, Orality and literacy. 71. McLuhan, Understanding media; Olson, The world on paper. 72. This act can be found on-line at (retrieved June 3, 2004). 73. Olson, The world on paper, 88. 74. Michaels, Fugitive pieces, 137.

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Chapter 4 • Entering the woods: Writing, interpretation, identity 1. Jeanette Winterson, "Turn of the world," in The world and other places (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1998), 159. 2. Michel Foucault, "Technologies of the self," in Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton (Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1988). 3. Laurel Richardson, Fields of play: Constructing an academic life (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 2. 4. Suzanne K. Langer, Feeling and form: A theory of art (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), 264. 5. In current times, 'Virtual' forms of reality are often understood as the domain of electronic communication technologies. However, all communication media, both old and new, have in common some altering of the sense of time and space. New communication media may blur some of these boundaries. For example, when I read someone's Blog (a kind of on-line diary) I am not always certain what may be fiction and what may be attempts to tell the truth, what may be occurring in 'real time' and what may be fabricated. 6. Umberto Eco, Six walks in the fictional woods (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). 7. Ibid, 77. 8. This heading borrows a quotation from Anne Michaels, Fugitive pieces (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1996), 138. 9. For insightful discussion about narrative see Robert Fulford, The triumph of narrative: Storytelling in the age of mass culture (Toronto: Anansi, 1999). 10. Wolfgang Iser, "The use of fiction in literary and generative anthropology: An interview with Wolfgang Iser," interview by Richard van Oort, AnthropoeticsIII.no. 2 (fall 1997/winter 1998 [on-line], available: (retrieved June 8, 2004). 11. Jerome Bruner, "Reading for possible worlds," in Timothy Shanahan and Flora Rodriguez-Brown, eds, 49th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference, 2000), 33. 12. Wolfgang Iser, The range of interpretation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 146. 13. Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Women's lives: The view from the threshold (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 3. 14. Heilbrun, Women's lives. Specifically, she links these to "the linear pattern

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of male sexuality"(33). 15. James Gleick, Chaos: Making a new science (New York: Penguin, 1987). 16. See Ursula Le Guin, "Bryn Mawr commencement address," in Dancing at the edge of the world, ed. Ursula Le Guin (New York: Grove Press), 151, for further elaboration of this phrase. 17. Madeleine R. Grumet, "Bodyreading," Bitter milk: Women and teaching (Amherst, MA: University of Massachussetts Press, 1988), 145. 18. David R. Olson, The world on paper: The conceptual and cognitive implications of writing and reading (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 19. Michael A. K. Halliday, Spoken and written language (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1985). 20. Written texts also occur between people and in the context of relation, but the time lag which occurs between the writing of texts and the receiving of them, and writing's more abstract form, generally means that clarification requires very specific efforts. For example, in instant messaging or Internet chat situations, users tend to develop particular codes and word usages which convey added layers of meaning (e.g., 'emoticons' which can convey sarcasm or humorous intentions, such as the sideways smiley face with a wink, ;-)). In Internet discussion groups or bulletin boards the possibilities for misunderstanding, misreading, misinterpretation, and conflict are often enhanced, rather than diminished. 21. Walter J. Ong, Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the world (London: Routledge, 1982). 22. Ibid.; Olson, The world on paper. 23. See Linda Laidlaw, "Dangerous writing: The necessary risks of writing for 'real,'" Master's thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1996. 24. Anne Lamott, Bird by bird: Some instructions on writing and life (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 198. 25. Madeleine R. Grumet, "Scholae personae: Masks for meaning," in Jane Gallop (ed.) Pedagogy: The question of impersonation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995), 44. 26. David G. Smith, "The hermeneutic imagination and the pedagogic text," in Pedagon: Interdisciplinary studies in the human sciences, pedagogy, and culture (New York: Peter Lang, 1999). 27. Jonathan Culler, Literary theory: A very short introduction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997). 28. Smith, Pedagon. For further description of the origins and philosophical developments of hermeneutics, see also Stuart Brown, Diane Collinson and Robert Wilkinson, eds., One hundred twentieth-century philosophers (New York: Routledge, 1998).

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29. Smith, "The hermeneutic imagination," Pedagon. 30. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and method, 2nd rev. ed., trans, rev. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1999). 31. Smith, "The hermeneutic imagination," Pedagon, 29. 32. Olson, The world on paper. 33. In Iser, The range of interpretation. 34. See, e.g., Max van Manen, Researching lived experience (London, ON: The Althouse Press, 1990); Hans Smits, "Living within the space of practice: Action research inspired by hermeneutics," in Action research as a livingpractice, Terrance R. Carson and Dennis J. Sumara, eds., (New York: Peter Lang, 1997); Smith, Pedagon; Dennis J. Sumara, Private readings in public (New York: Peter Lang, 1996); Madeleine R. Grumet, Bitter milk. 35. Patricia Clifford, Sharon Friesen and David W Jardine, "Whatever happens to him happens to us: Reading Coyote reading the world"Journal of Educational Thought 35, no. 1 (2001), 18. For additional examples of their work, see David W. Jardine, Patricia Clifford and Sharon Friesen, Back to the basics of teaching and learning: Thinking the mr/d together (Mahvsah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003). It is important to acknowledge, also, that Pat Clifford and Sharon Friesen do include the word hermeneutics in their vocabulary of their young students. 36. Clifford, Friesen and Jardine, "Whatever happens...," 15. 37. A term used by Dennis J. Sumara, in Private readings in public to describe such unities is: "us/not us." Clifford Geertz also explores the notion of "us/not-us" from an anthropological perspective in Works and lives: The anthropologist as author (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988). 38. Smits "Living within the space...". 39. Iser, The range of interpretation. 40. Vivian Gussin Paley, The girl with the brown crayon: How children use stories to shape their lives (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 41. Several of the resources I've found to be helpful are: Steve Kowit, In the palm of your hand: The poet'sportable workshop (Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House, 1995); Edna Kovacs, Writing across cultures (Hillsboro, OR: Blue Heron, 1994): and Susan G. Wooldridge, Poemcrasy (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1996). 42. Michaels, Fugitive pieces. 43. Iser, The Range of Interpretation, 145. 44. Louise M. Rosenblatt, Literature as exploration (New York: AppletonCentury, 1938). Her later work, The reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the literary work, 1978 (Reprint, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University7 Press, 1994) was more widely accepted. For further

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description of Rosenblatt's role in the Reader Response movement see also Joseph A. Appleyard, Becoming a reader: The experience of fiction from childhood to adulthood (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 45. Louise M. Rosenblatt, "Literary theory," in James Flood, Julie M. Jensen, Diane Lapp, and James R. Squire, eds., Handbook of research on teaching the English Language Arts (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1991); see also The reader, the text.... 46. Rosenblatt, The reader, the text..., 27. 47. Ibid., 52. 48. Ibid. 49. See Louise M. Rosenblatt, "Writing and reading: The transactional theory," in Reading and writing connections, ed. Jana M. Mason (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1989), for one such example. 50. Rosenblatt, The reader, the text.... 51. Ibid., 186. 52. Grumet, "Bodyreading," Bitter milk, 144. 53. Rosenblatt, The reader, the text.... 54. Iser, The range of interpretation, 5. 55. Eva Hoffman, Lost in translation (Toronto: Penguin Books, 1989), 121. 56. Iser, The range of interpretation, 9. 57. Jeanette Winterson, Art objects: Essays on ecstasy and effrontery (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1995), 59. 58. Anthony P. Kerby, Narrative and the self (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991), 41. 59. Ibid, 37. 60. David G. Smith, "Identity, self and other in the conduct of pedagogical action: A West/East inquiry," in Action research as a living practice, ed. Terrance R. Carson and Dennis J. Sumara (New York: Peter Lang, 1997), 266. 61. In this activity, it is important to create broad possibilities for response. Children who are in foster care or who do not have contact with the birth parent or person who named them need to have options that won't cause them difficulty in responding. 62. James P. Gee, "A sociocultural perspective on early literacy development," in Susan B. Neuman and David K. Dickinson, eds., Handbook of early literacy (New York: Guilford Press, 2001). Gee uses what he calls big 'D' Discourses to distinguish this term from the term meaning "language in use" (35). Discourses, to Gee, are sociocultural language systems. 63. Wolfgang Iser, The fictive and the imaginary: Charting literary anthropology (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1993) and Prospecting:

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From reader response to literary anthropology (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). 64. Lev Vygotsky, Thought and language, trans. Alex Kozulin (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997), 181. 65. Mappae mundi were, quite literally, "maps of the world" such as the Catalan Atlas of the late 14th century. In addition to locating terra incognita on a map, this atlas also contains locations that were obvious fictions. (E.g., a place where birds grow on trees.) 66. Dennis J. Sumara, "Fictionalizing acts: Reading and the making of identity," Theory into Practice 37, no. 3 (1998): 20. 67. Acknowledging Eco's "fictional woods" of literary texts, I recognize a similar space for one's own written texts. However, in writing one must create the woods. 68. Hoffman, Lost in translation, 121.

Chapter 5 • Uncovering the bones of a complex pedagogy for writing and literacy

1. David R. Olson, The world on paper: The conceptual and cognitive implications of writing and reading (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 2. Michael Ondaatje, The English patient (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992). For further descriptions of commonplace books and practices, see Dennis J. Sumara, "Using commonplace books in curriculum studies," JCT Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 12, 1 (1996): 45-48; and Linda Laidlaw and Dennis Sumara, "Transforming pedagogical time," JCT Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 16, no. 1 (2000): 9-22. 3. Herodotus, Histories (Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 1954). 4. Ondaatje, The English patient, 16. 5. Anne Michaels, "Last night's moon," in Skin divers (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1999), 18. 6. Megan McDonald, The bone keeper, illustrated by G.B. Karas (New York: DK Publishing, 1999). 7. Ibid., np. 8. Natalie Goldberg, Writing down the bones: Freeing the writer within (Boston: Shambhala, 1986). 9. See Julia Epstein's, Altered conditions for an insightful description of what she calls "medical storytelling" as a method of explaining disease. 10. John Sarno, Healing back pain: The mind-body connection (New York: Warner Books, 1991). I have observed that the frequency of assorted ailments, aches, and pains seems to increase for many graduate students (myself

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included) for the duration of their studies—perhaps not entirely surprising when considering the ongoing stresses and anxiety-producing institutional events that are part of such work, and the hours spent hunched over computer keyboards. 11. This is not to imply that the perfect metaphor exists, or that the edifice metaphor may not have some sort of utility. I will address further considerations of metaphor and their use in literacy education later in this chapter. See also Brent Davis, Dennis J. Sumara and Rebecca LuceKapler, Engaging minds: Learning and teaching in a complex world (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000), "Chapter two: Learning and teaching structures," for additional descriptions of commonly used metaphors in education. 12. Phil Smith, "Drawing new maps: A radical cartography of developmental disabilities," Review of Educational Research 69, no. 2 (summer 1999), 131. 13. James Moffett, "Introduction," in Collaborating through writing and reading, ed. Anne Haas Dyson (Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1989), 21. 14. James R. Squire, "The history of the profession," in Handbook of research on teaching the English Language Arts, ed. James Flood, Julie M. Jensen, Diane Lapp, and James R. Squire (Don Mills, ON: International Reading Association and National Council of Teachers of English, 1991). 15. Geraldine Joncion Clifford, "A Sisyphean task: Historical perspectives on writing and reading instruction," in Collaborating through writing and reading, ed. Anne Haas Dyson (Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1989). 16. Clifford, "A Sisyphean task." 17. Steven A. Stahl, "Why innovations come and go (and mostly go): The case of whole language," Educational Researcher 28, no 8. (November 1999). 18. Clifford, "A Sisyphean task," 33. 19. Ibid.; Squire, "The history of the profession"; Dorothy S. Strickland and Joan T. Feeley, "Development in the elementary school years," in Handbook of research on teaching the English Language Arts, ed. James Flood, Julie M. Jensen, Diane Lapp, and James R. Squire (Don Mills, ON: International Reading Association and National Council of Teachers of English, 1991). 20. Marie M. Clay, Reading: The patterning of complex behavior (Auckland: Heinemann, 1979) and The early detection of reading difficulties, 3rd ed. (Auckland: Heinemann, 1979). Clay has contributed several books on writing. See Marie M. Clay, Writing begins at home: Preparing children for writing before they go to school (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1987) and

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What did I write? (Toronto: Heinemann, 1979). 21. Robert J. Tierney, "Studies of reading and writing growth: Longitudinal research on literacy development," in Handbook of research on teaching the English Language Arts, ed. James Flood, Julie M. Jensen, Diane Lapp, and James R. Squire (Don Mills, ON: International Reading Association and National Council of Teachers of English, 1991). 22. Squire, "The history of the profession," 4. 23. Ann E. Berthoff, The making of meaning: Metaphor, models, and maxims for writing teachers (Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook, 1981). 24. W. Ross Winter, with Jack Blum, A teacher's introduction to composition in the rhetorical tradition (Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1994), 81. 25. Tierney made this observation over ten years ago in, "Studies of reading and writing growth." However, in current times, the focus on standards and skill acquisition often means that a writing focus within language and literacy programs are left behind in favor of 'testable' reading skills. 26. The Handbook of Early Literacy, ed. Susan B. Neuman and David K. Dickinson (New York: The Guilford Press, 2001) is a compilation of research which the authors suggest, ". . . represents what we would consider the now-and-future phase of work in early literacy" (3). While eight of the thirty chapters are specific to reading, only two chapters focus specifically on writing. I expect that this is not an editorial oversight, but reflects existing trends in early literacy research. This ratio is also representative of what I have observed at national and international conferences. 27. However, I do not mean to imply that most standardized reading tests adequately reveal the complexity of the reading process. Such tests, at best, can only provide a snapshot of a child's abilities. To gain a fully developed understanding of a child's reading abilities more complex methods of documentation and assessment are necessary. 28. Jerome Bruner, cited from his keynote address, "Reading for possible worlds" presented at the National Reading Conference, Orlando, FL, December 1999, and later published in the 49th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference, ed. Timothy Shanahan and Flora Rodriguez-Brown (Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference, 2000). 29. Squire, "The history of the profession"; see also Donald H. Graves, Writing: Teachers and children at work (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1983) and Discoveryour own literacy (Toronto: Irwin, 1990); Lucy McCormick Calkins, Lessons from a child (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1983), The

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art of teaching writing (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1986), and Living between the lines (Toronto: Irwin, 1991); Nancie Atwell, In the middle: Writing, reading and learning with adolescents (Toronto: Heinemann, 1985) and Side by side: Essays on teaching to learn (Concord, ON: Irwin, 1991). 30. Graves, Writing. More information about his life, work, and publications can be found on his website, available: (retrieved June 12, 2004). 31. Timothy J. Lensmire, When children write: Critical re-visions of the writing workshop (New York: Teachers College Press, 1994), 2. See also Lensmire's Powerful writing/responsible teaching (New York: Teachers College Press, 2000) for his suggestions on creating a more democratic environment within the writing workshop. 32. See Steve Kowit, In the palm of your hand: The poet's portable workshop (Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House, 1995), 248-249, for descriptions of typical problems. For a humorous example of the "critical overkill" which sometimes occurs in workshops, the poem, "Emily Dickinson Attends a Writing Workshop" (246), presents a Dickinson poem subjected to a workshop where it receives such comments as "Emily, nice language here, but I end this poem feeling confused. I'd like to see you bring this through workshop again." 33. Mem Fox, Radical reflections: Passionate opinions on teaching, learning, and living (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1991), 40. 34. Atwell, Side by side, 104. 35. Excerpted from my masters thesis, Linda Laidlaw, "Dangerous writing: The necessary risks of writing for 'real'" (Master's thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1996), 23. 36. A number of studies point out that most elementary school teachers receive little or no instruction in writing after they complete the English courses required for their degree. See, for example, Janet Emig, "Writing, composition, and rhetoric," in Encyclopedia of educational research, ed. H.E. Mitzel, (New York: Free Press, 1982). 37. Anna Sfard, "On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one," Educational Researcher 27, no. 2 (March 1998), 5. 38. Ann Berthoff, The sense of learning (Portsmouth, NH: Heinmann, 1990), 12. 39. Lensmire, When children write and Anne Haas Dyson's Writing superheroes: Contemporary childhood, popular culture, and classroom literacy (New York: Teachers College Press, 1994). 40. Dyson's more later work does challenge this perspective. She writes, "I am not focusing on written language as a kind of code but as a kind of symbolic tool that mediates human experience and interaction," in

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"Writing and children's repertoires: Development unhinged," Handbook of Early Literacy, ed. Susan B. Neuman and David K. Dickinson (New York: The Guilford Press, 2001), 126. 41. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the flesh (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 47. 42. Of course, the same metaphors also apply to other curriculum areas, and in fact, a number of my resources come from mathematics education. 43. Marguerite H. Helmers, "In her eyes you see nothing," in Writing students (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1994). 44. Sfard, "On two metaphors...." 45. Helmers, "Writing students" 45. 46. Ibid. 47. Sfard, "On two metaphors...." 48. Brent Davis and Dennis J. Sumara, "Curriculum forms: On the assumed shapes of knowing and knowledge," Journal of Curriculum Studies 32, no. 6 (2000): 821-845. 49. Davis and Sumara, "Curriculum forms," 822. 50. English language arts K to 7: Integrated resource package (British Columbia Ministry of Education, Skills and Training: The Queen's Printer, 1996); The Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8: Language (Ministry of Education and Training: Queen's Printer for Ontario, 1997). 51. Davis and Sumara, "Curriculum forms," 822. 52. However, the reverse seems to work rather well. Students who have engaged in and planned complex writing practices and structures are better able to translate them into a variety of curriculum frames and seem to more easily recognize that such frames do not represent the entire 'territory' of teaching and learning. The results of reductionist framing is also echoed in the case of individual writing—I have often noticed in my own work and in student writing, that setting very rigid criteria tends to preclude the possibility of spontaneous, diverse, creative work. Instead, what appears is usually uninspired and looks very similar across a group using the same criteria. 53. Sfard, "On two metaphors...," 6. 54. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Barbara Rogoff, Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1990). 55. Fritjof Capra, The web of life (New York: Anchor Books, 1996), 138. 56. Davis and Sumara, "Curriculum forms," 834. 57. Margaret Atwood, The blind assassin (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart,

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2000), 1st quotation, 43, 2nd quotation, 95. 58. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and method, 2nd rev. ed., trans. and rev. by J. Weinsheimer and D.G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1999), 108. 59. Ibid, 116. 60. Olson, The world on paper. 61. Madeleine R. Grumet, Bitter milk: Women and teaching (Amherst, MA: University of Massachussetts Press, 1988), xv. 62. Ruth Behar, The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1996), 132. 63. Phyllis Root, Aunt Nancy and Old Man Trouble, ill. David Parkins (Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 1996). 64. Capra, The web of life, 30. 65. Ibid. 66. Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum theory, cited in Capra, The web of life, 30. 67. Albert Borgmann, Crossing the postmodern divide (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992). 68. See Brent Davis, Teaching mathematics: Toward a sound alternative (New York: Garland, 1996) for an elaboration of what he names occasioning, where rich possibilities for learning may be offered through events of teaching. 69. Ursula Franklin, The real world of technology (Concord, ON: Anansi, 1990), 20. 70. I would speculate that some commonplace structures or practices already exist in many classrooms—in my conversations with teachers, these could often be identified as practices that didn't have a name or a description, but were a part of the unmapped daily curriculum. 71. See Linda Laidlaw, "Commonplace books, commonplace practices: Uncovering the bones of a complex pedagogy," in 50th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference, ed. James Hoffman, Diane L. Schallert, Colleen M. Fairbanks, Jo Worthy and Beth Maloch (Oak Creek, WI: National Reading Conference, 2001); Dennis Sumara, "Researching complexity," Journal of Literacy Research 32, no. 2 (2000): 267-281; Private readings in public (New York: Peter Lang, 1996); "Using commonplace books"; Linda Laidlaw and Dennis Sumara, "Transforming pedagogical time." 72. Dennis J. Sumara, "Using commonplace books," 45 73. Miles Harvey, citing an anonymous map collector, "Mr. Atlas," in The island of lost maps: A true story of cartographic crime (New York: Random House, 2000), 247. 74. See Dennis J. Sumara, "Researching complexity," for further discussion of the use of commonplace books in literary studies. 75. Davis, Sumara and Luce-Kapler, Engaging minds, 87. In their text they

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use the term liberating constraints, but the authors have begun to use the term enabling constraints in more recent presentations. 76. In the excerpt which describes students' coyote and trickster stories, it was apparent that, in a similar way, students used their previously collected knowledge and interpretations (both oral and written) in creating their later stories. 77. Umberto Eco, Six walks in the fictional woods (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994); Louise M. Rosenblatt, The reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the literary work, 1978, reprint (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994). 78. Wolfgang Iser, The fictive and the imaginary: Charting literary anthropology (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1993), xiv. 79. Roland Barthes, S/Z (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974). 80. John Marsden and Shaun Tan, The rabbits (Melbourne, Australia: Lothian, 1998). 81. Ibid., np. 82. Mary Aswell Doll, "Winging it," in Action research as a living practice, ed. Terrance R. Carson and Dennis Sumara (New York: Peter Lang, 1997). 83. Reading aloud may be experienced as risky for some students and difficult for some children in the early primary grades. Collective reading aloud, choral speaking, storytelling or talking about the text or drawing can also be used to help create an alternative ritualized structure for oral sharing. 84. Victor Turner, From ritual to theatre: The human seriousness of play (New York: PAJ Publication, 1982), 27. 85. I would like to acknowledge Brent Davis for pointing me to the research on fractals and bones. For one example of medical fractal analysis of bones see Michael L. Richardson and Thurman Gillespy III, "Fractal analysis of trabecular bone," (University of Washington, Department of Radiology, Seattle Washington, [on-line], available: <www.rad.washington.edu/ exhibits/fractal.html> (retrieved May 10, 2001).

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Additional Internet Resources The Butterfly Effect Complexity and Education Website Cybernetics Information—"Principia Cybernetica Web" The Mandelbrot Set "No Child Left Behind" Legislation Visual Cognition Information and Experiments: Inattention Blindness and Change Blindness Writing Teacher and Researcher Donald Graves

205


index

207


Index

Aboriginal: beliefs, 29; legends, 32 affrication, 178 aleph-beth, Semitic, 77, 180 alphabet, 71; Greek, 77-78; influences of, 79; invention of 77-78 Ames-Cantril experiments, 109 artifacts: memory and, 128; of teaching, 130-131 Atwell, Nancie, 134, 136 Atwood, Margaret, 147 author's chair, 108, 135 automaticity: learning and, 27 Barthes, Roland, 158 basal reader, 19-20, 172 Bateson, Gregory, 35 Behar, Ruth, 148 behaviorism, 11-12; language arts and, 132 Berthoff, Ann, 137 Bobbitt, Franklin, 11-12 bones, 128-129, 160; as metaphor, 126-130 Borgmann, Albert, 151-152 Briggs, John, 28, 39 Bruner, Jerome, 53—54 butterfly effect, 40-41. See also subtle influence. Calkins, Lucy McCormick, 134-135 Canada: navigation of, 6 Catalan Atlas, 186 censorship: children's writing and, 101; picture books and, 74 chaos theory, 39-42 child development: literacy and, 133 children: writing and, 101 Cilliers, Paul, 31 classroom spaces, 3, 5 Clay, Marie, 133 Clifford, Geraldine, 132 Clifford, Patricia, 106 cognition, xviii, 80; complexity science and, 47; language and, 16; teaching and, 48 cognitive science, 35

collections, 154 collectivity, 34, 53-54, 56, 83, 107; classroom practices and, 152; commonplace book and, 155; literacy practices and, 125; orality and, 158— 159; writing and, 147-149, 166 commonplace book, xvii, 124—127, 154-155, 157, 165 commonplaces, 57, 153 community of practice, 55 complex systems, 42, 52 complexity: curriculum and, 144—145 complexity science, xiv, xv, xviii, 2829; chaos theory vs., 40; definitions of, 30; education and, 29 composition, in high school, 133 consciousness, 49; learning and, 48 context: learning and, 52-53 copying: as writing, 132 culturalism, 54 curriculum, xviii, 8-9, 11; complexity and, 149; interpretation and, 150; reconceptualist movement, 18; scientific method in, 11-12 curriculum documents, 9, 20; Euclidean forms and, 143 cybernetics, 35 Davis, Brent, 55, 142-143 Deacon, Terrance, 72 Descartes, Rene, 10, 35 Dewey, John, 12 Discourses, 115

DNA, 175 Doll, Mary Aswell, 82 Doll, William Jr., 44 drama: teaching examples 46, 61, 62; fractals and, 176 Dyson, Anne Haas, 139 early literacy, 89 ecology: learning and, 52-53, 160 emblems, 74, 75 emergence, 30—31, 33; classroom experiences and, 34, 150; learning and, 36; teaching and, 37-39

209

Index

Emig, Janet, 133 enabling constraints, 156-157 enactivism, 54 factory production model, 11 feedback, 33 Feinstein, Bertram, 49 focal practices, 138, 151-153, 158-160 Fox, Mem, 42, 136 fractals, 44, 151, 160; assessment and, 46; reading and, 154; teaching and, 46; writing and, 45, 146, 148, 154 frame, 28 Franklin, Ursula, 68, 153 Friesen, Sharon, 106 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 105, 147 Galilei, Galileo, 10 Gee, James, 115 geometry: Euclidean, 142-142, 175; fractal, xv, 44 Gleick, James, 39 Goldberg, Natalie, 129 gradual instant, 68 grammar: etymology, 102 Graves, Donald, 134-136 Greek literature, 87 Grumet, Madeleine, 3, 54, 101, 103, 111, 148 Gutenberg, Johannes, 87 Harvey, Miles, 154 Helmers, Marguerite, 140 hermeneutics, 104—106; classroom experiences and, 106; writing and, 112 Hermes, 105-106 Herotodus, 127 Hobbes, Thomas, 10 Hoffman, Eva, 113, 121 home literacy: practices, 75 Hume, David, 10 inattention blindness, 15 identity, 114; artifacts and, 116; learning and, 55; names and, 115; social context and, 56; schooling

210

and, 116; writing and, 120 ideographic writing systems, 73-74, 79 intelligence, 47 interpretation, 113-114, 119; examples of, 158; classroom writing and, 107-108; identity and, xix, 111; of writing systems, xviii interpretive community, 147, 156 invented spelling: speech and, 64 Iser, Wolfgang, 107, 109, 114, 117 Jardine, David, 106 journals, 155—156 Kerby, Anthony, 114 kindergarten: literacy and, 89 King, Thomas, 29 Kuhn, Thomas, 17, 57 labeling, 17, 61, 62 Laidlaw, Linda, 95, 137, 154 Lamott, Anne, 103 language: cognition and, 81, culture and, 85, infant development, 81; registers, 56 language arts: history of writing in, 132-137 Language Experience Approach, 132 Lave, Jean, 55 learning: nonconscious dimensions, 51-52 Lensmire, Timothy, 136-139 Libet, Benjamin, 49 liminality, 114 Lionni, Leo, 108 literacy: acquisition, xviii; artifacts of, 90; context and, 65; difficulties, 142; electronic technologies and, 85; emblematic approach and, 75, 76; history of, 70—79; human development and, 63, 65-66, 70; identity and, 69, 76, 86, 90; influences of, 63, 65, 68; perception and, 64; representation and, 64 literary anthropology, 117

Index

literary fiction, uses of, 61—62, 157 Locke, John, 10 Lorenz, Edward, 41 loss: experiences of, xix, 6—7, 161; remembrance and, 112 Lowry, Lois, 70 Luther, Martin, 105 maps, xix, 3—4, 6-8, 10, 25; history, 66; of learning, 144; metaphor and, 45 Man, John, 72 Marsden, John, 158 Maturana, Humberto, 36, 56 McLuhan, Marshall, 66 Mead, Margaret, 35 memoir, 112 metaphor, 137; acquisition, 141—142; curriculum and, 130; fractal, 146; participation, 145; pedagogy and, 18; writing instruction and, 140— 141 Michaels, Anne, xix, 3-4, 68, 91, 127, 148 microworld, 36 mind, 47 modernism, 9-10; schooling and, 1314, 19, 27 Moffett, James, 132 Murray, Donald, 134 narrative: self and, 114 Newton, Isaac, 10 No Child Left Behind, 12: consequences of, 89 Norretranders, Tor, 49 Olson, David, 16, 72, 79 Ondaatje, Michael, 127 Ong, Walter, 72 Opie, Iona, 82 Opie, Peter, 82 orality, 79-85; classroom examples of, 82-83; early childhood and, 82; interpretation and, 102-103; texts and, 84

pain: mind and, 129 Paley, Vivian Gussin, 107 panda principle, 21 paradigm shift, 57 Peat, David, 28, 39 perception, 14—16, 48—49; classroom environment and, 50; expectation and, 16—17; learning and, 26—27; nonconscious, 50, 176 philosophy, hermeneutic, 105-106 pictographic writing systems, 73-74 Pinar, William, 18 poetry, 25; constraints and, 131 process writing. See writers workshop. quantum physics, 151, 173—174 Read, Charles, 64 reader response: theory, 109 reading: ancient texts and, 102; aesthetic, 110; aloud, 82-83, 152153,159,192; efferent, 110; emergent, 68-69; silent, 88, 120 rebus, 76 Reggio Emilia schools, 29, 53 report cards: complexity and, 145; as literate artifacts, 90 representation practices, 84 research: reading, 134 role drama, 60-61,150; as fractal, 46 Rorty, Richard, 19 Rosenblatt, Louise, 109-110, 112 Sacks, Oliver, 15 Sarno, John, 129 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 105 Scientific Revolution, 88 script, 73 self-organization, 30—31, 34; cognition and, 36; teaching and, 37 self-similarity, 44 Sfard, Anna, 137, 141, 145 Smith, Phil, 131 social constructionism, 55 Sowers, Susan, 135 Squire, James, 133

211

standardized tests, 134 storytelling: scribing and, 125 structural coupling, 36 subtext, xvi, 78 subtle influence, 40—41; of environment, 50; literacy and, 63; pedagogy and, 42; school experience and, 43. See also butterfly effect. Sumara, Dennis, 53, 55, 120, 142143 syllabaries, 77 synchronicity, 51 systems: complex, 31-32, 34; complicated, 31; learning, xiv; nonadaptive, 34; open, 33; theory, 35 tableau, xvi, xvii; narrative, xvi Tan, Shaun, 158 teaching: experiences, 26 technology, xviii, 66—67; development of, 67; print, 88; printing press, 87; writing and, 69-70, 86 tekhne, 67 terra incognita, xix, 3-7, 20; classroom practice and, 149 text: modernism and, 78; representation and, 79 texts: interpretation and, 157; print, xv; writerly, 158 Thorndike, Edward, 11 transactional theory, 109-111 transcription: writing and, 139 translation, 85, 113; language to print, 113 Turner, Victor, 159-160

212

Tyler, Ralph, 11-12 Urquhart, Jane, xiii van Herk, Aritha, 65 Varela, Francisco, 36—37, 56 Vygotsky, Lev, 7, 16, 54 Watson, John B., 11 Wenger, Etienne, 55 Winterson, Jeanette, 114 word magic, 74 word processing: keyboards and, 21 Wright, Stephen, 29 writers, beginning, 71 writers workshop, 134—137; acquisition metaphor and, 141; alternatives to, 138; critiques of, 136 writing: aesthetic, 110; as collective location, 126; as complex system, 68, 146-147, 160; difficulties, 120121;drawing and, 118-119; efferent, 110; emergence and, 32; equity and, 153; identity and, 86, 117; interpretation and, 102, 111; literacy and, xiv; literary, xiii, xv; meaningmaking and, 104; memory and, 70; misinterpretation and, 119; portfolios, 45; resistance and, 117—118; in school, xiii; subtle influence and, 104; teaching, 139; as technology, 68, 140; tools, 86-87; as transcription, 72; as translation, 72, 84-85; as transmission, 140; workshop, 108; young children and, 71

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