INTRODUCCIÓN A LA CARACTERIZACIÓN DE BIOPOLÍMEROS

Situating the sharing of creative writing practice in the context of teachers’ professional and personal vulnerabilities raises questions about whether the process will bolster confidence or impede its development. In this case study ‘sharing writing practice’ included reading work to peers, poet tutors and poet mentors in seminars and giving and receiving feedback; and receiving feedback from poet tutors and poet mentors in one to one tutorials and mentoring conversations. Such sharing of practice was an expectation of involvement in the course, explicitly referenced in the Module Guide11_{. Each of these}

contexts presented different challenges for the teacher participants, and contributed to the development of writer identity in different ways.

The seminars often followed a traditional workshop pedagogy in which participants were asked to write in response to a stimulus, reflect on the writing, and identify a number of lines or phrases to read out for responses from the group. In addition to the course participants and the poet tutor, two of the poet mentors usually attended and participated in seminars. The following extract from seminar 2 (the first seminar in which teachers were asked to share their writing) demonstrates how this process was introduced, and some of the issues that arise from it.

P3: I think it would be quite nice to go round and hear everyone’s. T1? And T7, could you come up with the first response to T1?

T7: Oh, oh right okay, no pressure then… (Laughter)

T1: It’s called ‘Hard bargain’ but I wasn’t good with the title.

Everything everywhere smells of coal, he says give me a kiss and I’ll give you sixpence, and I run squealing away, his black face only pinky brown in

11_{The Module Guide states that students will ‘offer feedback on the writing of other students’ in}

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the creases, like his trousers are only blue there, under the table is my doll’s house, with red roof, cream walls, green shutters, and diamond lettered windows.

T7: I thought the title was quite appropriate, actually, when you said the title I thought oh what kind of bargain will it be and it got my interest quite a lot, and when you got to the second line and you mentioned the sixpence and that aspect I wondered what was going to happen as it continued. And from the first line, I already had an image in my mind and it reminded me of my Beamish trip and coalmining. So then as it continued on it built on that scene, and that imagery, that was really effective.

(Seminar 2)

The invitation to share, although quite low key (‘it would be quite nice to go round and hear everyone’s’) is, nonetheless, delivered in a manner that conveys an expectation that all of the participants would also like to hear each other’s work, and that they will be willing to contribute to the process. The semi-formality of this is reinforced by identifying another participant who is asked to ‘come up with the first response’. It is interesting to note that it is T7, who has been asked to respond, rather than T1 who will read and receive the response who feels ‘under pressure’. This reinforces the sense that assessment works in two ways: both for the person who has shared their work, and for the person offering their assessment – which may in turn, be judged. Although this comment is clearly delivered with humorous intent, it perhaps conveys some of the complexity of sharing practice. Just as reading work may be personally exposing, giving feedback may make participants feel vulnerable, raising concerns that their comments will be perceived as naïve, overly critical, or lacking in perception or validity. As such, the processes involved in both sharing and responding to creative writing practice incorporate elements of risk that potentially jeopardise teachers’ identities, revealing a lack of skill or judgement (Cremin and Myhill, 2011: p.129).

It is also interesting to note that in introducing her work, T1 precedes the reading with a self-deprecating comment – ‘I wasn’t good with the title’. This comment is typical of the

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kind of proviso used by participants in introducing their work – comments such as ‘this isn’t very good’ ‘I haven’t quite got there’ ‘I’m not sure about this’ were frequently used. Such comments may be indicative of authentic concerns about the work, and may equally work as warning signals to readers and potential critics, signalling that the writer is aware of faults and failings in the work before they are pointed out. Interestingly, T7’s first comment on the work is to refute the writer’s idea that the title is no good, by explaining how the title worked to draw her into the subject. This comment may be interpreted in a number of ways. It may, for example, be an attempt to bolster the writer’s confidence; a social device to contribute to a supportive and cohesive group dynamic; or a comment designed to show that the person responding is able to identify literary devices such as imagery. In other words, it is possible that the response to the sharing of work is in fact a response to a social situation that is loaded with vulnerability and exposure for both the writer and the person giving feedback.

The seminar continued by asking for further feedback from the group:

P3: Anybody’s favourite bit?

T4: I like the bit about the sixpence and give me a kiss and running away, I had an uncle who was a bit like that, say funny things and try and get a kiss and I used to visualise running away from him.

T10: I like the contrast between the coal imagery and the dark…then the really vivid green red silver in the doll’s house, the complete difference in colour between the child’s world and your granddad’s world, I like that, very clean images. Really surprising that last line. I really like that.

P3: Yes I agree.

T1: That was at the beginning of the prose, that was setting the scene then when you said put them in order (referencing the poet tutor’s instructions during the writing exercise) I was just going to put them in order that they happened, but now they’re completely jumbled up now….

T13: I loved ‘only pink at the creases, like his trousers are only blue there’, the sense of something underneath.

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P3: I liked the way you extended it to the trousers whether as an afterthought or a refinement, it made it so much more interesting.

T1: Thank you.

(Seminar 2)

The feedback offered to the writer in the extract might be characterised as a mixture of response to the subject matter (for example ‘I had an uncle who was a bit like that’), and response that concentrates on the writing choices (such as comments on the ‘surprising’ use of colour, and the way an image is extended). The process of giving and receiving feedback can be seen as a step in the process of intersubjective exchange that identifies learners as thinkers, engaged in ‘mutualist and dialectical’ learning that is ‘concerned with interpretation and understanding’ (Bruner, 1996: p.56). A such, it conceives of knowledge about creative writing being constructed through both an internal process and through a discourse that develops with others involved in taking the same creative writing actions. Such a conception relates to a pedagogical understanding of the learner as a ‘thinker’, capable of developing their understanding through intersubjective exchange (Bruner, 1996: p.56).

Evidence collected during the case study reveals that teachers located the value of sharing creative writing practice with peers not primarily in the feedback that they received, but in the way that the process of sharing work enabled them to develop a relationship with their own writing practice, and to start to overcome hurdles of self- consciousness and inadequacy that may impede the development of teacher-writer identity.

The fact that we were expected, though never pressed, to read something out was a positive (if initially uncomfortable) experience for me and as the weeks went on I found myself much more willing to read aloud. This was perhaps due to the positive and encouraging atmosphere in the class, coupled with a sense of achievement and sometimes pride at what I had written. (T11, Essay)

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Once I began to write and share my poetry, the initial feelings of inadequacy started to subside. (T12, Essay)

The process of sharing writing practice in this context, then, can be seen as an integral element of the participants’ experience of writing. The essentially private, internal process of carrying out a writing exercise is extended, developed, reconstructed through the process of sharing the work in the seminars. Such acts and actions deepen

understanding of creative writing practice, thus contributing to pedagogical development. The development of participants’ self-confidence in sharing writing practice may then be seen as a broader development of their experience of creative writing practice. As participants’ confidence developed, emerging teacher-writer identities were articulated in participants’ descriptions of themselves as ‘writers’ and ‘teacher-writers’. Such

descriptions - ‘through my experience as a writer’ (T9, Essay), ‘my new found position as developing teacher-writer’ (T2, Essay) ‘I have started to consider myself as a writer’ (T3, Essay) ‘what is important to me as a writer’ (T7, Poetry Portfolio) – contrast sharply with the rejection of a writer identity and self-deprecating references to participation in creative writing that were a trait of participants’ early engagement in creative writing.

Perhaps understandably, there is some evidence that the feedback of professional poets – both poet-tutors and poet-mentors – was given a higher value than that of peers, both in seminars and in tutorials and mentoring sessions. Poet-tutors and poet-mentors were involved in the process of sharing work and giving and receiving feedback in seminars. It is possible that their presence, as professional poets, would add to teachers’ feelings of inadequacy as writers. This was referenced by T2 (5.4 above) who described the feeling of having ‘those poets, so skilled’ present in seminars as she struggled with the thought ‘maybe I don’t have that creative side in me’. However, their presence in seminars also worked to increase teachers’ sense of self-worth as writers:

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You get a particular bit of feedback off somebody you think - one of the poets said something nice about one of mine, I couldn’t tell you what it was I just know that they did, and I was like ‘oh yeah!’ (T4, Interview 4)

When she said ‘oh it’s good’ I suppose that felt quite nice actually, to think alright, okay, well somebody’s validated it… (T3, Focus Group 2)

As well as receiving feedback in seminars, participants attended one to one tutorials with poet- tutors to receive formative assessment on their poetry portfolios, and also engaged in dialogue about their work with their poet mentors. Given that their status as published poets represented a level of skill, expertise and knowledge beyond that of the participants, this process could be seen to represent an area where fragile, emergent writer identities may be particularly vulnerable. The prospect of sharing work on this more intimate one to one basis provoked a new level of anxiety for some participants:

Sharing my classroom and children with my poet mentor was easy; sharing my collection was not. I employed every childish tactic to avoid sharing my writing. Therefore, I would question whether the writing itself is the hurdle to overcome or the sharing of the work and who the selected audience are. (T2, Essay)

The anxiety reverberating here may be connected to fear that the work will be negatively evaluated, but a number of teachers – including the one quoted above – identified that whilst this may provoke anxiety, they were keen that the feedback they received from professional poets was honest and rigorous: ‘I need somebody to be critical with me, that’s what I want’ (T2, Interview 3). Participants’ experience of giving feedback to pupils informed their understanding of this process:

I thought is she [poet-mentor] going to feel like she has to say it’s good. Yeah, when actually she might be thinking it’s a bit crap, and I was also then thinking, I don’t even mind if she does say that. I would rather that I knew she was being completely honest… (T9, Interview 2)

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The process of receiving feedback was characterised by teachers as concentrating less on the ways in which a ‘good’ poem could be written, and more on a process of self and collaborative reflection. In considering how she approached poems in the context of feedback from her poet tutor, T9 explored the way in which reading her work in the

knowledge that she was going to discuss it in a tutorial changed the way that she reflected on it:

When I re-read it I thought ‘oh it’s a bit rubbish’ and I think the reason I was most disappointed was because when I was writing it I was thinking ‘oh my God this is amazing, these line breaks are so telling’ (laughs) and then when I looked later I was a bit ‘oh, I’m not sure what I was thinking then’. But just the whole doing it at that time really made me think. (T9, Interview 2)

The process of sharing the work with a professional poet then does not solely rest on the professional poet ‘giving feedback’. For this teacher, the process starts before the point of external feedback; there is firstly, a point of self-reflection, of giving oneself feedback. The process of sharing the work with her poet-tutor instigates a re-reading of the work,

perhaps at more of a distance, which provokes reflection and review that may not otherwise have happened, and that emphasises the Brunerian concept of the learner seeing herself as a thinker. The sharing of work here, as in seminars, can thus be seen as an element of the teachers’ writing practice, a space in which the teachers’ relationship with their own writing practice is deepened and becomes more meaningful. As such, it can be seen as part of the construction of teacher-writer identity.

Similarly, the influence of professional poets is seen below as guiding participants towards a different way of engaging with the process of writing, rather than receiving feedback on a specific piece of work:

Yes, privately, there are a couple of lines in there, when I think – I like that line, I really, really like that line – not the whole thing, mind. But that’s been about as well

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working with my poet mentor, and when she has said, that’s what you need to work with, take that away from this process, and maybe it will emerge as something completely different. (T2, Interview 3)

The teachers’ growth in self-confidence as writers was evident in the ways in which some participants assessed feedback given about the development of their work against their own perception of the direction in which their poetry was moving, which was felt to be ‘potentially risky’ (T3, Poetry Portfolio).

Most of what she said was really positive and she made some suggestions like ‘oh I would have started the poem here’ and actually when I thought yeah, that’s...it’s quite a strange introduction but it does make you intrigued straight away I agreed with all the other changes…but it was just this one thing…and I wasn’t upset that she said people might not get it but it was just that for me that was almost the point (T3, Focus Group 2)

The relationship between writer and text is clear here, and this teacher goes on to examine how her experience as a teacher-writer, making decisions about writing, connects to her practice as a teacher engaged with pupils about their own writing:

…maybe that’s a good place to take the kids to, where they get to a point where they say but miss, you weren’t there and that’s what that’s about to me so if it’s alright with you I’m going to leave it like that. And if they are that passionate about what they’ve written and they can justify their responses then that’s a good thing. (T3, Focus Group 2)

Through sharing their creative writing with peers and professional writers, teachers were engaged in a process that developed their engagement with their own writing practice, and as such the process contributed to their emerging identities as teacher-writers. Teachers often, as in the case above, made comparisons between their own experiences as writers, and the experiences of their pupils. This reflects the fact that the central focus of the course was on the connection between creative writing practice and the teaching of creative writing. Taking the sharing of their practice into the classroom, however,

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5.6 Teachers creative writing practice alongside pupils: an articulation of