Hi Folks,
I’m pleased to share the news that a new book has been added to the WAC Clearinghouse (https://wacclearinghouse.org). This book appears in the Landmark Publications in Writing Studies book series.
Notes on the Heart: Affective Issues in the Writing Classroom
By Susan H. McLeod
It has long been recognized that affect (that is, the noncognitive aspects of mental activity) plays a large role in writing and learning to write. According to Susan H . McLeod, however, the model that has been most used for empirical research on the writing process is based on cognitive psychology and does not take into account affective phenomena. Nor does the social constructionist view of the writing process acknowledge the affective realm except in a very general way. To understand the complete picture, McLeod insists, we need to explore how cognitive, affective, and social elements interact as people write.
In this book, published originally by Southern Illinois University Press in 1997, McLeod follows a group of students through a semester of writing assignments, tracking the students’ progress and examining the affective elements relevant to their writing. To facilitate future discussion of these phenomena, McLeod also provides suggested definitions for terms in the affective domain.
In a very real sense, this book is the result of a collaboration of three women: Susan McLeod, who researched and wrote the book; Sue Hallett, an instructor in Washington State University’s composition program whose classes McLeod observed and who helped provide much of the data; and Susan Parker, a graduate student who observed Hallett’s class and who ran a tutorial connected to that class. To provide a narrative structure, McLeod and her two collaborators have constructed a simulated semester, condensing the year and a half of their study into one semester and creating a class that is a composite drawn from seven classrooms over three semesters.
Although philosophers have had much to say about the affective domain, Notes on the Heart is based for the most part on research from the social sciences. This study’s discussions of pedagogy are suggestive rather than prescriptive, an approach that will help teachers see their practice in a new way.
You can find the book at https://wacclearinghouse.org/books/landmarks/notes/. Thanks to Sue for her decision to share it with us as an open-access publication. Thanks as well to the members of the series editorial review board who reviewed it for inclusion in the Landmarks series.
All the best,
Mike
Mike Palmquist
Publisher, The WAC Clearinghouse
Emeritus Professor and Emeritus Associate Provost
Colorado State University
Email: Mike.Palmquist