Participants in this case study have explored concepts of creative writing where ‘you don’t always know the outcome’ (T1, Focus Group 1) and the process ‘takes you down a path you didn’t expect’ (T5, Focus Group 1). The concept of ‘not knowing’ presents a problem in a context that is driven by outcomes related to assessment and testing, and in which pedagogy has been influenced by a conception of literacy that marginalises creative writing in favour of those aspects of writing that can be securely measured. Some of the participants in the case study acknowledged that ‘not knowing’ contrasted with their usual objective-led framework for teaching, and that this added to their anxiety:
181
At first, in seminars, I found many of the activities puzzling or challenging because I was constantly trying to guess where they were going…To head out without a map is unusual for the pupils I teach and is precisely not what assessed writing at Key Stages 3, 4 and 5 is about. There, writing must be planned, drafted, perfected and have a definite purpose in mind, usually one dictated from outside, such as by an exam setter. (T1, Essay)
Within the workshops the teachers were asked to perform a number of freewrites, often using freewriting from a small stimulus such as a sentence starter,
visualisation or object…The lack of a specific form in which to present my work, made collecting my thoughts and words into a poem rather difficult to begin with. (T10, Essay)
The difficulty identified here connects to participants’ expectation that the process of writing will start with the articulation of an anticipated outcome and a systematic plan for achieving that end. This is perhaps further evidence of the influence of the strategies on pedagogy, where clarity of teaching objectives is identified as paramount, and
predictability in teaching and learning is highly valued (DfEE, 1998: p.10). In this way, we may see that participants’ experiences of themselves as teachers implementing a didactic pedagogy influences their expectations of themselves as learners. The absence of a pedagogy that demonstrates or ‘tells’ practices, conventions, and rules (Bruner, 1996: p.55) is ‘puzzling’ and ‘difficult’. As participants pursued their learning in this context, they explored the idea of creative writing practice as unpredictable:
Throughout the seminars I occasionally experienced moments of inspiration during the two hour sessions however, I also became aware that this was not something that was reliable and often the two hours in class were merely the beginning of a much longer process that was not confined to lesson times. (T9, Essay)
Here, the idea that writing requires time to develop is central. The workshop process is described as providing ‘inspiration’ (albeit unreliable) that provokes considerable further work. The understanding of the requirement of a considerable time investment was reinforced by other participants:
182
Becoming a writer allowed a number of revelations, first of which was to have a belief in myself, and to understand that it takes time to produce work that I am proud of. (T10, Essay)
The investment of time required in developing writing is identified by a number of teachers in the commentaries they produced to accompany their poetry. The commentaries also reveal how this time was used. The activities described by the participants depict recursive actions which include reading (of own text and the text of others), re-reading, writing, re-writing, thinking, and re-thinking. The actions are complex, interlinked,
sometimes concurrent, and have the potential to confound intentions as well as to achieve them:
It was originally a short work and did not feel complete as a poem. I have since attempted to extend the piece…After leaving the poem for a while and returning to it to edit, I gradually found myself twisting the poem in a darker direction…I wanted to leave the reader thinking…I found after a while that I became a little muddled with it. Because I had changed the direction, I found the poem had become an amalgamation of two ideas and the beginning no longer matched the end. (T11, Poetry Portfolio)
Although all of the teachers wrote about enjoying the experience of writing their own poetry, and expressed a sense of pride in their overall achievement, many expressed the frustrations that can be seen in the extract above:
I have redrafted the poem many times. I have learned much about editing and the need to be wary of repetition. In order to redraft effectively and develop the poem, I found it necessary to again use the visualisation technique…I had still not edited sufficiently. The phrase…is perhaps overly sentimental…when I re-read this, I feel that it is still slightly contrived. (T6, Poetry Portfolio)
Although a cycle of creative actions are taken in the writing, the text itself continues to an exist as a ‘problem space’ in which knowledge is ‘worked out’ (Bereiter and Scardamalia,
183
1987: p.11). This is reiterated in the reflections of other teachers in considering their completed poetry:
The result is a heavily edited poem that I still feel needs reworking. (T12, Poetry Portfolio)
I am less certain about its achievement overall; perhaps it is successful as a demonstration of one technique rather than a fully evolved poem. (T9, Poetry Portfolio)
Whilst I liked the idea, I could never finish the poem to my satisfaction. (T11, Poetry Portfolio)
Teachers’ conceptions of the acts and actions involved in undertaking creative writing reflect notions of complexity, difficulty and uncertainty that relate to a ‘knowledge
transforming’ rather than ‘knowledge telling’ model of practice (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1987: p.11). Such conceptions are absent from the ‘knowledge telling’ focus of the plan- draft-revise pedagogy prescribed in the NLS.
Participants identified the seminars as sites in which knowledge about creative writing was constructed through both the writing acts and actions, and the rituals of reflection and sharing practice that emanate from the writing activities. Many participants in the case study identified the workshops as catalysts for not only writing, but for reflecting on the process of writing. Through practice and reflection, participants’ began to construct new knowledge about creative writing:
By experiencing the process myself I was able to connect with the importance of ‘incubating ideas’ …From my objective, disconnected position I had frequently instructed students to redraft work however, not until my own experience of the nature of this process and the importance of it to the creation of a piece of writing was I able to properly communicate how to go about this. (T7, Essay)
Experimenting on my own with sound play, visualisation, using the senses, line breaks, question prompts and other skills has developed new ways of approaching creative writing (T3, Essay)
184
This (line breaks) is a feature of poetic writing that I frequently encourage my students to identify when reading and responding to published poetry, however, until I became a writer and used this technique in my own work, I realise I was not really engaging with the effects it can have on meaning and tone. The impact this writing experience had on my ability to engage with previously overlooked aspects of familiar poetry is exactly the experience I wanted to recreate for my students. (T9, Essay)
Teachers here identify that beyond learning new techniques that they can employ in their own approach to teaching creative writing, they have been able to deepen their
understanding and knowledge of the complexity of creative writing. This is achieved both through writing, and through reflection that enables them to ‘critically engage with the forms and tropes from a writerly perspective’ (McLoughlin, 2007: p.96). The complexity is often characterised by participants as connected to uncertainty, ambiguity and risk. This is, of course the antithesis of knowledge about writing contained in the strategies and frameworks that seek to define reliable processes that will achieve guaranteed outcomes.
6.5 Conclusion
Participants in the case study express their evolving understandings of creative writing as actions and processes that encompass the exploration and contemplation of imaginative thoughts and ideas, and the capacity to tolerate risk and ambiguity in constructing and conveying meaning through written texts. Their conceptions of creative writing encompass an acknowledgement of knowledge constructed through experience of creative writing, gained at first hand, and seemingly unavailable through other processes. This personal knowledge is deepened through intersubjective exchange, and continues to evolve through internal reflection and mutual dialogue (Bruner, 1996: pp.56-57). This contrasts with a conception of knowledge about creative writing handed on from teacher to learner embedded in the NLS.
185
As conceptions of creative writing evolve to encompass new knowledge constructed through practice, teachers are presented with a dual pedagogical challenge: how can they develop an effective approach to creative writing that builds on their creative writing knowledge; and how can they implement such pedagogy in the face of punitive policy measures and rigid assessment frameworks that are driven by narrow conceptions of writing? Complex conceptions and deepened understandings of creative writing gained through their own experience of practice, shaped participants responses to these challenges, as explored in the next chapter.
186