Since starting graduate school, I have been on this hamster wheel of excitement. I'm always excited, even when I'm stressed and anxious, I'm excited because I feel like I'm doing what I have always wanted to. That excited energy seems to also attract its own kind of unique opportunities, because I have been offered a position to teach college composition this coming fall.
The thing is that opportunities like this don't always just happen; you also have to be ready for them to happen. As excited and nervous as I am to teach, I have spent a semester studying, working, and preparing for that opportunity. Now, as I develop this portfolio and develop the class syllabi to set it up, I kind of wanted to reflect on all that learning and preparing that I did.
What Is a Dialectical Journal?
In spring of 2023, I took a Teaching College Composition class. The class was centered around the history and theory involved in teaching college composition, which meant that there was a heavy load of reading to do for the class. The way that my professor wanted us to process our readings was in the form of dialectical journal entries.
The dialectical journal was a bit more detailed in how I normally approached my readings (I normally highlight and make notes in the margins). Per the class syllabus, "A dialectical reading entry is the process of dissecting a text using a Socratic method that asks readers to reflectively engage on a micro-level with the concepts/ideas of a text. This task invites readers to excerpt specific content/direct quotes from the reading and respond by engaging in conversation with the text. When reading assigned texts, be sure to annotate and highlight specific points of interest to aid your ability to complete this exercise."
It was different from my normal method because there was a whole chart of how it was formatted and what things might mean, and I actually found it pretty time consuming to question, analyze, or re-evaluate everything that I was trying to process and learn about. I ended up putting it into Excel sheets to make it a little bit easier on me formatting-wise, because I just had so much information to process. In the end, it was a helpful way of processing all the information that was waterfalling all over my life.
All that to say, I think it would be interesting to look back on my journals, entries, and notes as I go about creating my classroom and reflecting upon the work I did. Hopefully this is interesting and not too boring, but if it becomes the latter I will just discontinue sharing the journals.
The subheadings to come will probably be quotes from the reading, and the thoughts following will be my response to it. In case you want to read along, I will make sure to include the source that I'm reading from. I'm also not going to give you everything (this would get way too long if I did).
Reading/Reference
Taggart, Amy Rupiper, H. Brooke Hassler, and Kurt Schick. "What is Composition Pedagogy? An Introduction" A Guide to Composition Pedagogies 2nd ed. edited by Tate, Gary et. al., Oxford University Press, 2014, 1-19.
"Pedagogy" (1)
I remember hearing this word a lot the first week of class, and then it appeared in the reading. It was perfect, because I had no idea what it meant, and that gave me the moment to read about it. My note next to it based on my reading was, "The way you teach writing based on different teaching theories."
"...variously refers to the practices of teaching, the theories underlying those practices, and perhaps most often, as some combination of the two--as praxis" (2).
This highlight was a continuation of the previous note about pedagogy, but I also needed to know what praxis meant (even though the context kind of provides it for us). I ended up going to Google, and the definition I was given is, "practice, as distinguished from theory."
Linda Ferreira-Buckley's Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition
No, I didn't read the Encyclopedia, but there was a quote from it that I underlined in this reading because I thought it defined what Composition Pedagogy was. I thought that would be important information to understand what I would eventually teach, and the quote goes, "Central to the study of rhetoric, especially at the secondary and postsecondary level; concerned with teaching both the production and analysis of discourse" (3). I wondered if reading it would help my understanding in the long run, which is another reason why I noted it.
Nancy Myers' "The Slave of Pedagogy" (3)
There is a long pull quote here that I'm not going to include, but I highlighted it because I thought the information was important. Next to it I wrote, "Pedagogies are highly theoretical."
That thought took a couple of readings before I understood it completely. I spent a lot of time reading things and questioning if they made sense, until this idea finally set in a few weeks into the course when I was discussing the material with friends. Reading all this material had started to feel like we were swimming in a large tank where we couldn't see where the information started or ended, and couldn't even see the bottom.
"Writing theory deals with text production, circulation, and reception, while writing pedagogy explains the teaching and learning of writing." (4)
Like I previously said, I spent a lot of time trying to understand the material I was being given. This statement kind of explained the difference between theory and pedagogy to me, so I underlined it and wrote "Theory vs. Pedagogy" next to it. But then, when I go back to my working definition of pedagogy in the beginning, it gets a little jumbled so the definition probably had to change in the long term.
"...genre theory, a production and reception theory, suggests that types of writing emerge out of social conditions to meet communicative needs" (4).
In hindsight, we didn't touch on genre theory until near the end of the semester. I'm kind of proud of myself for realizing that it might be important though. Next to underlining it, I wrote "Genre Theory" so that I could go back to it and reference it easily.
"What genre theory does not do is explain how to help students or novice writers understand and write genres better...drawing together the twin strands of learning theory and genre theory and bringing them to inform classroom and extracurricular practice" (4).
Again, this difference between theory and pedagogy. Right next to this I wrote "Genre Pedagogy," and I wonder if I read this in a state where I was too tired to completely see that I was still reading about genre. It literally goes back and forth about it on the same page, which might have played a role in why I thought these readings were so complex sometimes.
"...theory or "pure" theory has historically been valued over the teaching and learning arm in higher education generally and in English departments in particular..." (4)
In the reading, this idea is discussed from ideas brought forth by Ernest Boyer. Next to this line, I wrote, "complementary, not hierarchical," because what Boyer offered was that, "theory, research, and pedagogy are complementary, not hierarchical..."
I can see how this would be important in hindsight after learning what I've learned and having class discussions over the course of the semester; however, I don't think this information fully sunk into my brain when I first read it. That is kind of cool to see that now.
David Kolb's Learning Cycle (7)
So I didn't really make notes next to this, but I knew that it was important to note because it was a chart detailing information. The main purpose of Kolb's learning cycle is to showcase "the role of pedagogies and their relationship to practice" (7). So I've recreated that chart here so that you can see it too.
And I think that is where I am going to end this dialectical journal this week. It was really interesting for me to go back and look at this to see where my foundations came from for this class, and where that foundation might have been weaker or stronger. If you have thoughts, you are welcome to share them with me; I love discussing what I'm reading, and I typically get a deeper sense of understanding when that happens.
Are you interested in reading my dialectical journals? Is there something you would be interested in reading about? If you are a teaching professional, what would your advice be to me, as someone who is first starting out? I would love to know in the comments below.
Sincerely,
Kristi Dao