#11 - Gee and curriculum design

A few of the principles I consider "core" in the composition classroom (from Gee):

4) Semiotic Domains Principle

Leaning involves mastering, at some level, semiotic domains, and being able to participate, at some level, in the affinity group or groups connected to them.

5) Meta-level thinking about Semiotic Domain Principle
Learning involves active and critical thinking about the relationships of the semiotic domain being learned to other semiotic domains

6) "Psychosocial Moratorium" Principle
Learners can take risks in a space where real-world consequences are lowered

14) "Regime of Competence" Principle
The learner gets ample opportunity to operate within, but at the outer edge of, his or her resources, so that at those points things are felt as challenging but not "Undoable"

I could list more, but if I had to narrow my classroom design down to only a few "core" principles, these are the ones I'll stick with for now. Let me explain how I see this working:

The most important principle that I can see in the composition classroom is #14, the "Regime of Competence" principle. Students will get bored if asked to do things that are too easy or rote, and will usually lose interest in both the activities and the classroom (consequently leading to failure or lowered performance when they could easily achieve higher marks); conversely, students will collapse in frustration if what they're being asked to do is too far outside their abilities (I call this insufficient preparation). Now, as teachers (or future teachers) we know this already. What this principle asks us to do is to take this knowledge into account when we design activity sequences, and writing sequences, so that each one pushes students "to the next level," rather than fulfilling a few unrelated genres (for example, the "reflective" hand-turkey paper). With this principle, each paper in a writing sequence teaches students a skill they'll need in the next paper--such as a paper focused on critical analysis of sources so that students become familiar with working with sources, which they'll need for the next paper which (among new tasks) asks them to work with a number of sources.

The second core principle is #6, the "Psychosocial Moratorium" principle. In an earlier post on the Angel discussion board, I referred to this as the "newbie zone" (a place where students/players can learn the rules of a system in a safe environment). Of course, the portfolio grading system is an example of this principle, but I think that this also applies to other class assignments and activities. For example, grading students on the quality of online discussion posts before they've learned the genre violates the "newbie zone." For similar things (I don't use online discussion posts), I grade each activity on only a few criteria that I feel students are capable of (though they may find it challenging). However, the principle of the "newbie zone" is that once they've learned the rules, they need to get out into the "real world;" the "newbie zone" should only apply to the new skills they are learning. A video game example would be the first 20 levels or so of World of Warcraft, where even after players leave the official "starter area," they continue to play in an expanded "newbie zone" that incrementally tests their new skills and knowledge, and introduces them to new skills and challenges only when they're ready.


The third and fourth principles are actually only one principle to me. In order for students to begin to write for academia, they have to realize that academic writing is not a single genre, but a convoluted mess of different discourses all taking place within incrementally isolating communities (for example, Humanities->English->Literature->20th Century->Postmodern Analysis). However, as I know many of you are about to point out, there are many similarities between literary postmodern-analysis and different fields of rhetoric, history, women's studies, and comparative ethnic studies--to name a few; that's where principle #5 comes into play for Gee, and for me is just the flip side of these two (one) principles. In other words, students must recognize that academic writing is conducted within a semiotic domain that's isolated into a small community, but that these semiotic domains also "talk to each other," and otherwise borrow, steal, or influence each other. What they need to discover is what we already know: scholars are fish who swim in many different lakes and streams.