Class 2/20/02

II. Writing as Knowledge-Transforming   and Writing as Knowledge-Telling.

The model depicted in the figure and that we have just walked through is writing that thinks; as you write you are thinking and learning new things – refining your ideas. Changing your beliefs and content knowledge.

A. Scardamalia and Bereiter (1987) describe this as mature writing – writing as knowledge transforming. By their account, writing is a problem solving process in which the challenge is to bring together content and rhetorical structure. There is a back and forth movement as these joint goals are achieved.

“The transformation of knowledge (which is what the model is intended to account for) takes place within the content space, but in order for the writing process to play a role in knowledge transforming, there must be interaction between the content space and the rhetorical space. The key requirement is for problems encountered in the rhetorical space to be translated into subgoals to be achieved in the content space and vice versa. For instance, difficulties that are encountered in the rhetorical space, in making a statement clear or convincing, may be translated into subgoals of generating examples of a concept, reasons for a belief, intermediate steps in a chain of reasoning, arguments against a competing belief, and so on. Operations carried out within the content space toachieve such subgoals may in turn lead to changes in the writer’s belief, elaborations, new connections, or goals for future study and thought. In this way, the dialectical interaction between the two problem spaces can produce changes in the content and organization of the writer’s knowledge. “ (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1987, pg. 147).

Notice that what’s embedded in writing as knowledge transformation is an immature form of writing – writing as knowledge telling. Knowledge telling is “I think it, I write it.”

B. Knowledge telling: Use the assignment to identify what you should be retrieving from memory (or from sources) – both content and genre information . If what’s retrieved seems appropriate it goes directly into text. The evolving text (produced thus far) serves as the next set of retrieval cues. Knowledge telling   relies on content and discourse knowledge to provide the retrieved information.  But there is little or no monitoring and evaluation of whether the content and the rhetorical problems are being solved. So there is no dialect process.

Differences are captured by descriptions from a couple of immature writers as contrasted with the way a mature writer describes his process: (excerpts taken from Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1987).

6th Grader: “I have a whole bunch of ideas and write down till my supply of ideas is exhausted. Then I might try to think of more ideas up to the point when you can’t get any more ideas that are worth putting down on paper and then I would end it.” (pg. 149).

6th Grader: “I have a whole bunch of good ideas and I start writing the major ones first because they are the ones that are in the front of my mind. Then the smaller ones start coming three quarters of the way in the page and maybe a shole bunch of those…a swarm of those…. So I might write as many of them as I can….It doesn’t take that long.” (pg. 149)

Aldous Huxley: “Generally, I write everything many times over. All my thoughts are second thoughts. And I correct each page a great deal, or rewrite it several times as I go along….Things come to me in driblets, and when the driblets come I have to work hard to make them into something coherent.” (pg. 149 as cited by S & B from Writers at Work , 2nd series, 1963, pg. 197).

 

C. Moving from knowledge telling to knowledge transforming

1. Knowledge telling is an efficient and effective way of reducing the cognitive resources needed for writing.

            It is not easy to move from an oral, conversational mode of exchange of ideas to one that must “stand alone.” Conversation allows you to negotiate meaning with the conversational partner.  If something is not understood you can say it another way, provide an example, etc. “in the moment.”

Written text has to make it without you there. Anticipate what needs to be said, figure out how to say it in such a way that your message will get across, etc.

Knowledge telling is a way to reduce some of the demands of a writing task.

As well, if there is limited knowledge, putting it all down is a way to meet the demands of the task.

 

            2. What promotes a switch or the addition of knowledge-transforming writing to one’s repertoire?

            This is the challenge of writing instruction. There are some hints in research. Scardamalia and Bereiter suggest two kinds of instructional approaches.

            a. Demonstrate mature composing processes – expose immature to the thinnking of mature writers.

            b. Reflective loops – structure the writing task so the “straight through” knowledge-telling process is interrupted with reflection – diagnosis, choice of action and possible revisions – after each sentence or paragraph. Rethink decisions, consider other things that might be said at that point in the text, other ways to say it, if the text is communicating the writer’s idea. “models” the monitoring process.

            They scaffolded the reflective loop process with prompts. They found that these helped some students move toward knowledge-transforming writing.

 

These are prompts that you can try in your writing to assist with the monitoring process as you translate your plan into text.  Can help you get going and keep you going.

            Prompts used by Scardamalia and Bereiter (1987).

 

            Goal                My purpose is

                                    A goal I could write to ….

New idea:         An even better idea is….

                                    An important point I haven’t considered yet is…

                                    A whole new way to think of this topic is…

                                    No one will have thought of ….

                                    An important distinction is…

                                    A consequence of this is….

                                    The history of this is

                                    Something that is similar is

                                    A cause of this is….

 

            Elaborate         An example of this …

                                    My own feelings about this are

                                    Another reason that’s good

                                    I could develop this idea by adding…

                                    A good point on the other side of this argument is….

                                    I’m impressed by

                                    An explanation would be

                                    An example of this is

                                    This results in

                                    My own experience with this is

 

            Improve           I could make my main point clearer by…

                                    I really think this isn’t necessary because….

                                    I’m getting off topic so…

                                    But many readers won’t agree that….

                                    To liven this up, I’ll….

                                    I could describe this in more detail by adding

                                    This isn’t exactly how it is because

                                    I could give the reader a clear picture by

                                    This isn’t true of all

                                    To put it more simply…

 

            Putting it together

                                    If I want to start off with my strongest idea I’ll…

                                    I can tie this together by….

                                    My main point is….

                                    If I want to start off with my strongest idea I’ll

                                    I can tie this together by

            `                       My main point is

 

Also, refer to Chapter 5, Organizing the Research Process pp. 87 – 96.