Amy Lee. Composing Critical Pedagogies: Teaching Writing as Revision
Amy Lee argues that it is crucial to consider the consequences of our practice when we are thinking about pedagogical theories. She expresses her frustration with graduate students who say they’re interested in pedagogy but never mention teaching (3), as if pedagogy can exist independently of actual classroom (brick or click) practice. Lee believes “we have a responsibility for reflecting on the implications and assumptions of our methods and frameworks” (21). Lee conceptualizes the teaching of writing as the teaching of choices, questioning with students the received knowledge about how discourses should look and helping students understand that “words do not simply describe a reality, but rather, that words actively construct a reality” (32). Furthermore, she aims to “emphasize the importance of respecting our students and of taking their writing seriously” (50). She critiques critical pedagogues like Henry Giroux for envisioning students as “the object of critical pedagogy, those waiting to be empowered” (106).
She asserts that writing doesn’t simply facilitate revisioning and critical processes; rather writing is revisioning and a critical process. Lee declares,
In her classes, students not only write, but they make writing and issues about writing, such as authority, an object of study. Students work in small groups to discuss and critique ideas and drafts.
Lee also conceptualizes students as “cocreators of our pedagogies” (12), and throughout the book, she provides examples of how she does this. For instance, after her students have met in a classroom set up in a circle, she has them meet in rows for a class, and then asks them to reflect on how class was different with the desks in rows. Students also work with Lee to negotiate assessment.
One of Lee’s most interesting moves is to read teaching itself as a text that can be revisioned. Throughout her book, she critiques her teaching and interactions with students, examining the assumptions she brought to the interactions and often revisioning her teaching. In this way she makes active reflection part of her practice. She emphasizes that “ongoing self-reflexivity and a dialectical relationship between theory and practice,” for both students and instructor, are crucial to critical pedagogy (130).
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