In a recent English Subject Centre newsletter, Ben Knights issues an invitation for colleagues ‘to engage in a range of related activities which may be described as variously Pedagogical Research, Scholarship of Teaching, and Reflective Practice’ saying that ‘writing and research about pedagogy can be as important and valuable as subject research traditionally conceived.’ (1) As such, Rebecca O’Rourke’s case study is definitely worthwhile reading, not just for creative writing specialists but for anyone interested in pedagogical research in English Studies.
My own teaching experience is limited to undergraduates and postgraduates in higher education, while O’Rourke’s book focuses on the adult education sector, so if like me, you’re largely unfamiliar with pedagogy outside higher education, this may well be a further reason to investigate her book. Indeed, midway through the study, O’Rourke warns:
There is also a danger that creative writing in higher education will monopolise both the knowledge production and pedagogy of creative writing, assuming that in both instances higher education practitioners are more sophisticated than those working in schools or adult education (p.140).
Like it or not, I suppose there is a sort of hierarchy implied by the ‘higher’ in the term ‘higher education’. To this end, O’Rourke also criticises some histories of Creative Writing for focusing only on higher education, arguing that pedagogy in higher education, adult education and schools shares much in common and that practitioners working in different areas can learn much from each other, and this is also a position maintained by NAWE (National Association of Writers in Education). To return to Ben Knight’s invitation, O’Rourke’s work is, quite simply, exemplary as Pedagogical Research.
Her study is motivated by an important and clearly defined question:
Had late-20th-century campaigns for a more democratic and inclusive approach to writing and literature in British cultural policy and education been successful? (p. 230)
To investigate this, O’Rourke engages in a five year long ethnographic study exploring the dynamic that exists between policy and practice in Creative Writing courses and free-standing groups in the adult education sector in Cleveland, Teesside. The methods she uses include participative observation and a comprehensive range of qualitative investigation techniques, such as structured interviews. In keeping with good practice, she anonymizes students, tutors and names of all courses and free-standing writing groups.
The book is structured as follows: O’Rourke sets up the context of her study by considering literature in relation to changes in cultural policy with its focus on becoming more inclusive and participative. She discusses new managerialism and market reasoning with its attack on dependency in this context and states that this is tempered by educational values and purposes. (I plead ignorance on management theory and market reasoning, but I do have a minor quibble here insofar as I do wish O’Rourke spent more time unpacking this aspect of her argument. However, other readers will no doubt disagree.)
Next O’Rourke gives a critical account of the rise of Creative Writing in education and argues how different educational locations and contexts result in different ideas about Creative Writing’s value and purpose and hence entail different pedagogies. She then sets out details of her extensive ethnographic study of social writing. This theorises cultural policy’s shift from conceptualising writing as a singular to a socialised activity, e.g., of the sort found on courses and in writing groups. To explore this, she develops the concept of a ‘local culture of writing’ for the following reason:
I developed the concept of the local culture of writing to represent and analyse the complex ground of lived relations between writers and their writing. This holds cultural and educational policy on one hand, and their social practice on the other, as important terms but it enables a more complex account of the interaction between them. Local cultures of writing not only mediate policy towards creative writing but also generate their own form of regulation. This is not always directed towards the same ends as that of cultural policy, whether it is driven by an older set of values and ideology, to do with elites and individual genius, or more contemporary values of diversity, inclusion and socialised activities. (p. 231)
The argument she then develops is particularly strong insofar as it shows the complexity of forms of organisation and support for writers across the study.
Next, she considers ‘peopling local cultures of writing,’ giving profiles of participants, including how they started and continued writing, reasons for joining courses and writing groups, and their initial expectations of such activities. Her participants’ profiles conformed to national profiles for participation in adult education, being ‘predominantly female, over 50 and white’ (p.94). Decisive catalysts for joining groups and courses were often due to externally imposed changes such as motherhood, divorce, bereavement, ill-health, redundancy and retirement. O’Rourke argues that writing came into focus for participants at times when personal identity, direction and values were in crisis. She finds that getting into writing was as much down to chance as it was to inclination and considers how many potential participants knew little if anything about what goes on in socialised Creative Writing activities, arguing that this represents a major barrier to participation.
Initially O’Rourke distinguished between free–standing groups and tutored courses as she anticipated differences of experience, writing ambitions and types of activities. However, there was not much differentiation between them, with participants moving between groups and courses and likewise attending both simultaneously. She finds that participants talked about courses as if they were groups and that tutors as well as students played down the educational dimension of their activities: ‘I’m not the teacher and I don’t think of them as my students’ (Tutor, Crowden and Stanage, p. 9). O’Rourke considers how this seemed to challenge the power relations of compulsory education systems with both tutors and students conceptualising Creative Writing as exploratory and tending to construe education in terms of regulation and control that ‘precluded developing active and transformative pedagogies.’ (p.119)
She describes the following standard format of activities across most groups and courses:
People in turn read their work. The tutor or chair of the group comments first and then other people add their questions and comments. The only variation is whether a time or word allocation operates. It is assumed that everyone will read something each week, and that this will be new work, usually a response to a group task. Work was rarely revised and brought back to the group. (p.120)
This contrasts with creative writing pedagogy in higher education insofar as re-drafting is often a key activity (2). Also, unlike many higher education courses with their learning outcomes and activities clearly specified and linked to assessment and assessment criteria, O’Rourke finds in her study that there was little if any discussion of why or how work should be discussed, and she concludes that, ‘where rationale for workshops remains tacit its potential for learning and teaching is curtailed.’ (p.120)
In both free-standing writing groups and courses led by tutors O’Rourke finds several contradictions embedded in pedagogical practice. For example, she finds that although creative writing has a rhetoric of empowerment, quite often in practice it entails group and tutor dependency. Students often depended on tutors to generate topics, rather than thinking them up on their own. They also expected tutors to give formulae and rules for writing and had difficulty making the transition to independent writing that giving feedback on each other’s work in progress is supposed to engender. Similarly, students often wrote for the course or group and what they felt others such as potential publishers expected rather than following their own agendas. As such, there were tensions between individual development, group considerations and commercial imperatives. There are also a host of other issues discussed and I urge readers to explore this area as it is fertile ground for learning as well as for the making of comparisons between pedagogy in adult education and in higher education settings.
O’Rourke moves on to discuss the experience of creative writing tutors, including the tutor’s standing as a writer, locating a creative practice in an educational setting, managing feedback and criticism, and diversity of purpose and experience in student groups. She explains that her findings confirm Linda Anderson’s ( 993) view that becoming a writing tutor can distort a writer’s identity; rather than working primarily to gain status as a writer, tutors gain status and identity by being teachers. This results in a contradiction: tutors are employed for their work as writers but rewarded by their ability to improve other’s writing, while in the process their own writing is often adversely affected. (Note: It may be my mistake, but I couldn’t find a full reference to Anderson in the bibliography.)
O’Rourke also discusses how many tutors seemed to shy away from the role of tutoring, and she sets out some implications of this. For example, when tutors are reluctant to specify aims and objectives a ‘fuzziness’ develops around courses and this may result in barriers to participation insofar as students don’t know what they’re asked to participate in and how to do so effectively. As such, tutors’ reluctance to take directive, interventionalist roles paradoxically emphasises the dependency relation between them and their students. She also finds that many tutors act as if power is centred outside the classroom, with agents, publishers and editors, rather than considering and confronting the power they have as both published writers and tutors. To return to her research question, O’Rourke argues how this rhetoric obscures the extent to which participation needs to be consciously brought about rather than merely assumed. (Readers interested in this strand of argument concerning power and identity, should also refer to Anna Leahy’s forthcoming edited book: Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom: The Authority Project, (Multilingual Matters, November 2005).
The argument then considers three myths of the common writer:
Firstly, that their work simply gushes out, sloppy and unworked; secondly, that they are obsessed with publication; and finally that they seek and depend upon each other’s critical admiration. (p.172)
O’Rourke likewise explores questions of progress and value, considering three aspects of progress reported by participants:
Firstly, they related areas of personal development, such as increased confidence, a wider social circle and general intellectual stimulus to their involvement in creative writing activities. Secondly, they sometimes saw progress in terms of the wider educational opportunities creative writing introduced. Finally, as might be expected, they measured progress by changes in the writing itself. (p.190)
She critiques the myth of mutual admiration, but also considers tensions between feedback and criticism, including participants’ feelings that they are not skilled enough to give valuable criticism and that friendships sometimes ‘muffled their response’ to work. O’Rourke also addresses the issue of internal / external guidance, with many participants discussing how feedback carries more weight when it comes from an authority like the tutor. As such, she finds that neither groups nor courses took full control of the process of giving and receiving feedback and that therefore these skills often remained underdeveloped.
Valuable aspects of their experience included the chance to be heard and read by an audience and appreciation of the diversity within groups. Interestingly, O’Rourke finds that the providers and organisers of the many elements ‘saw the range of interests and abilities as a factor that limited the potential achievement of those writers involved’ and argued that a narrower focus ‘would enable individuals to progress further with their writing’ (p.226). Overall, O’Rourke finds that socialised writing was valuable insofar as it eased participants into the ‘ebbs and flows of the writing process,’ modelling how writing is ‘a combination of inspiration and technique and as much about discipline and habit as one-off flashes of inspired, driven writing’ (p. 226).
The final chapter returns to O’Rourke’s question concerning the success of policy campaigns for a more democratic and inclusive approach to writing and literature.
I won’t spoil anyone’s experience of reading this remarkable book by dwelling on details from the final chapter, but as O’Rourke says, a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ does not quite answer the question she initially poses. I hope it’s clear that this book covers a lot of ground in interesting and original ways: please put it on your ‘must read’ list.
Notes
1. ESC Newsletter Issue 8, June 2005, p.13.
2. See, for example, Peter Howarth’s article .
