Teaching through Transition:
Cultivating Pedagogical
Responsivity in Third Spaces
Jennifer Eidum Zinchuk, University of Washington
Watson Conference, October 17, 2014
@jzinchuk
jzinchuk@uw.edu
Key Questions:
1. How can we as instructors and as universities
be responsive to our students and their needs?
1. How can students be responsive to their
changing relationship with learning (writing)?
Key Concepts
• Consequential Transitions
• Pedagogical Memory
• Third Space
Consequential Transitions
• Transition to college one of the most significant
transitions in one’s life.
• Consider other transitions:
• language learner to language user
• General studies to disciplinary writing
• Academic study to workplace
Consequential Transitions
King Beach (2003):
• Transition: "developmental change in the
relation between an individual and one or more
social activities”
• Consequential: "when it is consciously reflected
on, struggled with, and shifts the individual's
sense of self or social position"
Reflective struggle is key to knowledge
propagation and is a force for change:
"consequential transition is the conscious
reflective struggle to propagate knowledge
linked with identity in ways that are
consequential to the individual becoming
someone or something new, and in ways that
contribute to sociogenesis; the creation and
metamorphosis of social activity and
ultimately, society" (Beach, p 57).
Developmental Coupling
• Developmental Coupling places individuals
experiencing transition in conversation with
changing social activity
• The coupling is powerful as the primary unit of
study;
• More valuable than the individual or the
activity on their own.
Developmental Coupling
• How can we use this coupling in order to
cultivate a pedagogy of responsivity?
• Beach asks us to look for artifacts that are
relational in nature:
"objects that embody human intention and
agency in some form, and that extend
beyond a particular individual participating
in a particular social organization ad a
particular time" (p48)
Pedagogical Memory
Jarratt, Mack, Sartor, Watson (2009):
“a process of remembering writing not tied
to
a single writing class or written product and
shaped, but not wholly determined by, the
discourses and strictures of institutional
assessment. Pedagogical memory comes
from individual students, but … it is
produced from a broadly shared, collective
experience" (p 49-50)
Third Space
• Two conceptions of third space:
• physical locations such as office hours, writing
studio courses, writing centers, bridge courses
(Fraizer, Grego & Thompson)
• cognitive space that brings student learning
outside the classroom together with classroom
learning tasks (Mauk).
• Interstitial / “space between”
Final Thoughts
• Third spaces provide opportunities for
pedagogical innovation.
• During consequential transitions, we have a
chance to disrupt and shape individual
dispositions and institutional practices.
• Pedagogical memory is a powerful concept &
method for studying consequential transitions.
Thank you!
Jennifer Eidum Zinchuk
University of Washington
Jzinchuk@uw.edu
www.globalpedagogy.com