Revisiting the Pedagogy and Theory Corral: Creative Writing Pedagogy Teachers’ Conceptions of Pedagogic Identity

Abstract

This article, based on a panel presentation delivered at the 2015 Conference on College Composition and Communication in Tampa, Florida, describes an on-going study of the conceptions of creative writing pedagogy teachers regarding creative writing teachers and teaching. Using a phenomenographic approach, the study reveals five broad categories of pedagogic identity: Expert Practitioner, Facilitator, Change Agent, Co-Constructor of Knowledge, and Vocational Coach. This framework of pedagogic identity can serve as an instrument for explaining tensions and contradictions between and within conceptions and practices of teaching creative writing and creative writing pedagogy.

Keywords:

• creative writing pedagogy
• pedagogic identity
• teaching
• writing
• teaching conceptions
• creative writing

Acknowledgements

Thanks must go first to my study participants whose thoughtful and candid responses to my interview questions yielded rich and revealing data. Many of the ideas in this article were first presented at the 2015 Conference on College Composition and Communication in Tampa, Florida at a panel organised in recognition of the 25^th anniversary of Joseph M. Moxley’s seminal collection, Creative Writing in America: Theory and Pedagogy. I wish to thank the other contributors to the panel, ‘Creative Writing in America: Considering the Past, Imagining the Future’: Patrick Bizzaro, Dianne Donnelly, Graeme Harper, Joseph M. Moxley, and Stephanie Vanderslice. My dissertation committee – Anne Ruggles Gere, Petra Kuppers, and Lisa Lattuca of the University of Michigan and Gregory Light of Northwestern University – deserve credit for guiding my on-going research, although any errors or oversights are mine. Finally, I am grateful to my family, especially my parents, for their support and encouragement.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Rebecca Manery is a doctoral candidate in the Joint Program in English and Education at the University of Michigan. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College and an MA in Literacy Education from Northeastern Illinois University.

Correspondence

Any correspondence should be directed to Rebecca Manery, Joint Program in English and Education, Department of English, University of Michigan, 435 S. State Street, 3187 Angell Hall, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA ([email protected]).

Notes

Notes

1. For creativity research specific to creative writing, see the TEXT Special Issue, ‘Creativity: Cognitive, Social, and Cultural Perspectives’ edited by Nigel McLoughlin and Donna Lee Brien (2012) as well as The Psychology of Creative Writing edited by Scott Barry Kaufman and James C. Kaufman (2009). The most persuasive evidence for the teachability of creative writing I have seen is Gregory Light’s 1995 phenomenographic study, ‘The Literature of the Unpublished: Student Conceptions of Creative Writing in Higher Education’, conducted at three universities in the UK.

2. From the Iowa Writer’s Workshop website: ‘Though we agree in part with the popular insistence that writing cannot be taught, we exist and proceed on the assumption that talent can be developed, and we see our possibilities and limitations as a school in that light. If one can "learn" to play the violin or to paint, one can "learn" to write, though no processes of externally induced training can ensure that one will do it well. Accordingly, the fact that the Workshop can claim as alumni nationally and internationally prominent poets, novelists, and short story writers is, we believe, more the result of what they brought here than of what they gained from us. We continue to look for the most promising talent in the country, in our conviction that writing cannot be taught but that writers can be encouraged.’

3. A preliminary search for creative writing pedagogy courses in university creative writing programmes as of March, 2015 revealed four in the United Kingdom (Keele, Kingston, Northumbria, and the University of Gloucestershire), one in Canada (University of Calgary), and 30 in the United States (Adelphi, Antioch, Ball State, Binghampton, Bowling Green, Butler, Chatham, Colorado State, Georgia College, Indiana, National, Oklahoma City, Purdue, Salem State, San Francisco State, Southern Illinois, Spalding, and the Universities of Central Arkansas, Cincinnati, Georgia, Massachusetts [Amherst], Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina [Wilmington], North Dakota, Pittsburgh, South Florida, Southwestern Louisiana, Texas, and Wisconsin [Milwaukee]). Kindly send corrections and additions to this list to the author at http://[email protected].