Surprised by Response:
Student, Teacher, Editor, Reviewer
LOUISE WETHERBEE PHELPS
A Hermeneutical Prejudice
In TwelveReadersReading:
RespondingtoCollegeStudentWriting,Richard Straub and
Ronald Lunsford suggest repeatedly that teachers who pay close attention to the
assignment project an ideal text that biasesor "prejudices" their responses to student
writing (184,190-191,205,250-21,261,446-47).
For instance, after they observe one
teacher explaining the assignment and then evaluating the writing "strictly in terms
of these expectations," they comment: "Of course, the more closely a responder
judges the writing against the requirements of the assignment, a teacher-oriented
concern, the more likely he will control decisions about the writing and the more
directive his style" (261).
In their tacitly evaluative continuum of response styles (193)and their conclusions about principles of response (373-74),the editors imply that they regard strong
teacher control as a feature of bad response.' I usetheword "bad" about extremely
controlling or "authoritarian" styles because of the moral connotations in their
portrayal of such response. It seems to them, not just ineffectual or unwise, but
ethically suspect to impose on students ateacher's prescriptive vision of the text in
lieu of engaging them actively in a dynamic pedagogical relationship. In this
relationship, imagined asa"conversation," respondents invite students to make their
own choices, provide support for doing so',and establish apersonal connection that
expresses a stance of respect and caring toward the student,
Implicitly, the editors associateahighly directive form of response
with prejudice
in the readingprocess.
Although they do not discussthe underlying phenomenology of
reading, the editors appear to assume that an authoritarian response derives from a
reading process dominated by prejudgments about what a "good text" should look
like, which are in turn closely keyed to the assignment. Such prejudices presumably
disable the teacher's ability to listen carefully to the text itself and to enter into a
genuine conversation with the student writer. This negative view of prejudice is
pervasive despite the editors' acknowledgment that "the meaning that a text comes
to have for a reader isafunction of her own prior experiences and expectations aswell
asthe words on the page" (4)and isonly slightly moderated by their recognition that
alltwelve readers bring teaching" agendas" to these readings that guide their reading
(447).
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In contrast, Gadamer in his monumental work TruthandMethodtreats
prejudice
asafundamental and inescapable condition for understanding. He defines prejudice
as "a judgment that is given before all the elements that determine asituation have
been finally examined" (240).In Gadamer's view, readersnecessarilybegin their effort
to understand atext by projecting before themselves apotential meaning for the text
as a whole, relying heavily on expectations they bring to it. This provisional
understanding or fore-project isconstantly revised during reading asother meaning
potentials or projects emerge and compete. If such expectations are prerequisite and
corequisite to any act of reading or understanding, prejudice is an inherently
productive aspect of interpretation. However, prejudice can be a negative force.
Gadamer says that "the prejudices and fore-meanings in the mind of an interpreter
are not at his free disposal. He is not able to separate in advance the productive
prejudices that make understanding possible from the prejudices that hinder
understanding and lead to misunderstanding" (263).Interpretation requires instead
an openness to being addressed by the text, suspending judgments and assimilating
one's own fore-meanings and prejudices while at the same time working with them
to construct understanding. In Gadamer's words, "our own prejudice is properly
brought into play through its being at risk. Only through its being given full play is
it able to experience the other's claim to truth and make it possible for he himself to
have full play" (266).The hermeneutically trained mind strives to become conscious
of its own prej udices in order to hear and respond openly to the meanings of the text.
This isnot, however, amatter of the reader's controlling or givingup control of
textual meanings, because the writer does not and cannot solely control these
meanings to begin with. 2 Gadamer describes interpretation as having the logical
structure of a conversation, in which to understand atext isto grasp and respond to
the question it asks of its interpreter. The text defines the horizon (in part, the
presuppositions) within which the sense of the text is determined, but it does not
determine the answers to its own questions. Fore-understanding itselfarisesfrom the
reader's prior concern with the subject of the text. The text raisesthis subject within
the horizon of a question that is genuinely indeterminate (326-27)and cannot fully
anticipate the consequences of the reader's taking up this question. Thus, Gadamer
says,"Not occasionallyonly, but always,the meaning of atext goesbeyond the author.
That is why understanding is not merely a reproductive, but always aproductive
attitude aswell" (264). "We cannot avoid thinking about that which was unquestionably accepted, and hence not thought about, by an author, and bringing it into the
openness ofthe question" (337).(Compare Ricoeur' sconcept of appropriation: "The
sense of a text is not behind the text, but in front of it. It is not something hidden,
but something disclosed .... What is to be appropriated is the meaning of the text
itself, conceived in adynamic way asthe direction of thought opened up by the text"
[87;92].)AsI will suggest,this structure of understanding means that both the author
and the reader should besurprisedbyresponse.
For meta respond, then, to TwelveReadersReading,
Gadamerwould tell meta go
beyond the explicit meanings and commitments of the text and to work within the
horizons of the questions it raises. Straub and Lunsford's characterizations of
Surprisedby Response 249
response, their categoriesand comparative judgments, and their conception of a
relationship between prejudice and degreesof control allexpressethical concerns
aboutteachingthroughthevehicleofwrittencommentary,whichI broadlyshare.But
I will refigure that relationship between prejudice and control(which expressesa
concernwith power)asarelationshipbetweenprejudiceandsurprise(whichexpresses
aconcern with learning). To do so, againfollowing Gadamer's advice,I must first
becomeconsciousofmy own prejudices,makethem visible,andput them into play.
This processleadsaway from the response stylesthat occupy the attention of the
editorsintheir descriptiveandcomparativestudy (acontinuationofpreviousresearch
incompositionon response)toward amore fundamentalinquiryabout the nature of
responseandthe definingfeaturesofthe hermeneuticalsituation inwhich teachers'
responsetake place.
My prejudice in understanding Twelve ReadersReading is precisely the
Gadamerian expectation that teachers' responses presuppose ahermeneutical
act. (This reflexivity-hermeneutics beginswith prejudice and my own methodologicalprejudiceishermeneutical-is the firstinstancehereof a"strangeloop"... of
whichmoreanon.)Hermeneuticalinquiryisnotaboutmethodsofreading,anymorethan
itisaboutstrategiesorstylesofresponse.Rather,itattemptstodescribethehermeneutical
situation in which activitybecomespossibleandtakeson acertaincharacter. "This
intermediatepositioninwhichhermeneuticsoperates[means]that itswork isnot to
developaprocedureofunderstanding,butto clarifytheconditionsinwhichunderstandingtakesplace"(Gadamer263).
To makemy hermeneuticalprejudicevisible,I willlayout abriefhistory ofmy
own questions and inquiriesabout interpreting student writing, datingbackto the
1970s.These studiestake two approaches: 1)ahermeneutical investigation of the
fundamentalsituationandessentialconditionsofinterpretingwritingin acontextof
pedagogicalpurpose; and 2)aphenomenologicalinvestigationof the experienceof
readingand interpreting inthis hermeneuticalsituation.
Asawritingteachermorethan twenty yearsago,I puzzledoverseveralquestions
about practicethat provedto beinexhaustiblyrichveinsoftheoreticalinquiry. The
possibilityofinterpretingstudentwritingwasoneofthesepuzzles.Why, I wondered,
do we take for granted the readingprocessby which teachers understand student
draftswellenoughto respondto themusefully?How doteachersmanageto makesense
of unfinished student writing at all, since artifacts of writing in progress are by
definitionincomplete,unstableintheirintentions,textuallyunformedor ill-formed,
andinadequatelyexpressive?What ethicalimplicationsforteachers,interventionsin
students' composingfollowfrom suchinherent difficultieswith interpretation?
At theUniversityofSouthem Californiainthe 19805Ididsubstantialwork with
graduatestudentsontheinterpretationofstudentwriting,or pedagogicalhermeneutics.
The work beganwith askingnewgraduatestudentsin rhetoric (mostlyexperienced
teachers)to write aphenomenologicalaccountoftheirpedagogicalreadingprocesses.
In an advanced course in reading, students followed up with more elaborate
investigationsoftheir own interpretiveprocessesandstudiedone another's readings
and responsesto student writing. Besidesanumber of conferencepapersby me and
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the students,this work ledto anessayabstractingasetofidealattitudesor possibilities
forpedagogicalinterpretivestances:evaluative,formative,anddevelopmental(phelps,
"Imagesof Student Writing: The Deep Structure of Teacher Response"). These
stancescorrelate with how readers selectand definethe object that they read and
respond to, corresponding to images of the text as "closed" or finished text,
"evolving" text or draft, or cumulative portfolio of written work. The article
hypothesizedanemergentfourth attitude,calledcontextual,inwhichthe apparently
discretestudenttext dissolvesinto acontextoforal andwritten communicationthat
makes it difficult to distinguish discourse participants and their roles from one
another. Althoughthesestancesapparentlyemergedevelopmentallyin atypicalorder
asteachersmature, ultimately they provide arepertoire of alternativestrategiesfor
reading and afford different kinds of response.
In my last year at USC, I had begun collecting reflectivephenomenological
accountsof readingfrom colleaguesincomposition andrhetoric for aneditedbook,
ascompanion to astudy Iplanned on the interpretation or hermeneuticsof student
writing. I regretfully set asidethis project when I left to take an administrative
position.' I was then at a critical moment of rethinking its goalsin light of some
difficultiesI had discoveredin developingapedagogicalhermeneutics.
I realized, first, that it isimpossibleto describeteachers' hermeneutical work
adequatelyin isolation from students' reciprocalinterpretations ofteachers' pedagogicalwritings to them. The whole rhetorical exchangemust beplacedwithin the
intellectual context of acourse designand the socialcontext of aclass,where talk
parallels,stimulates,supplements,andcommentsonwriting.' Two formsofteachers'
pedagogicalwritings areespeciallycrucialto the hermeneuticalsituation: teachers'
assignmentsandteachers'written commentary,both ofwhichelicitstudentinterpretations andachainofnew,reciprocaltexts.Thissituationismisrepresentedwhen we
definethe teacher'sresponseasthe only hermeneuticalactionor responsiveutterance;
it isliterally,not metaphorically,aconversation. Second,I hadbegunto feel(ashad
the fieldat large)that the sharp distinctions betweenwriter and reader,writing and
readingprocesses,that we had originallystudiedastransactionalwere beginningto
melt away, dissolvingtheir boundaries into achaotic context of conversation and
intertextuality, asubatomicdanceof discourse. I neededto rescuetheseboundaries
for heuristic purposes, and I needed aconception of authorship, reciprocal to the
hermeneuticalact,within atheory of dialogue.Bakhtin's work offeredthe potential
formeetingtheseneeds(phelps,"AudienceandAuthorship.")Thisisthe point where
Iwillpickup my readingof TwelveReadersReading.
Enlarging the Domain of Response
When others look at this book, they seea collection and acomparative study of
teachers' responses to student writing, which Straub and Lunsford define as"the
variouswaysteachersofferstudentsfeedbackto theirwriting"(174-75;seetheir chart
inFigure3.2,175).Their study focuseson teachers'written commentaryin marginal
or end notes (with the exception oftaped responsesfrom one teacher). I seeinstead
amaelstrom of responsefallinginto chaoticpatterns (Gleick).Patterns that appear
Surprisedby Response 251
random are repeated and have relations of parallelism, mirror image, recursivity,
embeddedness, reciprocity, and complementarity. As Douglas Hofstadter demonstrated in his tour de force Godei,Escher,Bach,this kind of recursively patterned
complexity iscaptured in the famous graphic prints ofM. C. Escher, which I will use
to illustrate this analysis. (SeeFigure 1, Escher print 23, "Square Limit.")
What is the difference in these visions of response? In this part of my essay, I
want to elucidate the ub iquity and comprehensi ve scope 0 f respo nsivity within a
Bakhtinian conceptual framework and then try to distinguish within this complex
texture of response the specialfeatures of the hermeneutical situation when it iskeyed
to a pedagogical relation between teaching and learning, teacher and learners. This
picture isfurther complicated by the insertion of that situation into TweiveReaders
Readingand the full context of the original conference presentation of this essay. There
it merged with other responses to continue an endless spiral: "reviews" or" responses"
by the members 0 f two panels 0 n TweiveReadersReading and rep lies to the panel
(involving exchanges among teacher-authors, editors, and conference participants),
not to mention presentations and debates about the book at other conferences,
published reviews, and subsequent, related publications by those involved in the book
andothers. (SeeFigure 2,Escher print 18, "Sphere Surfacewith Fishes.") To simplify,
I will ignore most of the latter penumbra of response and, in fact, deliberately avoided
reading it before writing my own.
Why don't others notice how pervasive "response" is? In the tradition of
response studies within composition that grounds Straub and Lunsford's study,
response is conceived as a discrete activity by teachers and has not been com prehensively linked to the hermeneutical activity and responses of others. Thus, this research
has not addressed students' interpretive acts: prior to initial composing, when
students interpret assignments asacallfor writing; within their compositions, where
they interpret other texts aswell astheir own worlds; and recursively after responses
from teachers, peers, and other readers, when students interpret these commentaries,
evaluations, and advice on their drafts in order to revise them orwrite new texts. Nor
has this research tradition carefully situated teachers' assignments, student writings,
andreaders' commentaries in the teaching-learning context, or pedagogical situation,
from which they grow. Primarily, it has offered categorical descriptions of response
products (teachers' written commentaries) and made judgmental comparisons of their
effectiveness,usually inferring rather than studying empirically their relation to longterm student learning and writing development. Insofar as it primarily addresses
methods or response style and does so comparatively, this body ofwork on response
represents an early stage of theorizing (asthe editors acknowledge about their own
study in their conclusion). 5
252]AC
Figure 1. M.C. Escher, SquareLimit
Surprisedby Response 253
Figure 2. M.C. Escher, Surfacewith Fishes
254 JAC
ThecomplextextureofresponseIperceiveinthesituationweareexaminingrefleets
afarmoreinclusiveandgenericconceptionofresponsethatleadsmetoviewallutterances
asresponsive-a simpleideabut fiendishlycomplexinpractice.JustasGadamerdefines
prejudiceasafundamentalconditionofunderstanding,Bakhtindefinesresponseandthe
capacityto addressandrespondtosomething"other"totheselfasafundamentalcondition
of human life,perhapsof alllife.(SeeFigure3,EscherPrint 46, "BondofU nion.")
Bakhtin'sconceptofresponsetakeslanguageinitsdialogiccharacterasthe model
forthe authorship ofthe selfthrough socialrelations.Wecanbeginwith the ideathat
"utterancesarealwaysconditionedby the potentialresponseofanother" (Clarkand
Holquist 217).6Thatis,they areboth responsive(toapriorutterance) and"addressed"
or oriented to apotentialrespondent. Everyutteranceboth anticipates(prejudice)an
answer-"response, agreement,sympathy,objection,execution,andsoforth"(Bakhtin,
SpeechGenres69)-and alsocallsforit. Discourse"alwayswantsto beheard,alwaysseeks
responsiveunderstanding,and doesnot stop at immediateunderstandingbut presses
furtherandfurtheron (indefinitely).
Fortheword (and,consequently,forahumanbeing,
thereisnothingmoreterriblethan alackofresponse"
(Speech
Genres127).LikeGadamer,
though, Bakhtin emphasizesthat such acallmust remain open to the unexpected
response (SpeechGenres168). Utterances enter into anendlesschainof response:as
Bakhtin remarks,no one is"thefirstspeaker,the onewho disturbsthe endlesssilence
of the universe" (SpeechGenres69);norwill he bethe last.
The listener's stancetoward a"liveutterance" isinturn inherently responsive.
Immediately,ashelistens,"heeitheragreesor disagreeswithit (completelyor partially),
augmentsit,appliesit,preparesforitsexecution,andsoon" (SpeechGenres68).
Thisaetive,
responsive attitude is as much a condition of understanding asprejudice is. "Any
understandingisimbuedwith responseandnecessarilyelicitsitinoneformor another:
the listener[orreader]becomesthe speaker[orwriter]" (Speech
Genres68).
Thispatternrefleetsthedeeperresponsivenessand"answerability"through which
selvesareconstituted.AccordingtoClarkandHolquist,"Bakhtinconceivesofotherness
asthe ground of allexistenceand ofdialogueasthe primalstructure ofany particular
existence,representingaconstantexchangebetweenwhatisalreadyandwhatisnotyet"
(65).In Bakhtin'sphilosophy,"dialogicrelationshipsareamuchbroaderphenomenon
thanmererejoindersinadialogue,laidoutcompositionallyinthetext;theyareanalmost
universalphenomenon,permeatingallhumanspeechandallrelationshipsandmanifestations of human life-in general,everything that has meaning and significance"
(Bakhtin,Problems40).The selfisconstitutedbythisvety capacityforresponse:"The
distinctivenessofeachresponseisthespecificformofthatperson'sanswerability.There
isnowayforalivingorganismto avoidanswerability,sincetheveryqualitythat defines
whether or not oneisaliveisthe abilityto reactto theenvironment,whichisaconstant
responding,or answering,andthetotalchainoftheseresponsesmakesup anindividual
life.... How we respond ishow we takeup responsibilityfor ourselves"(Clarkand
Holquist 67). The Russianword otvetsvennost,which contains both "answer"and
"response," can be translated either as "answerability" or, emphasizing its moral
dimension,as"responsibility,"revealingthe closelinkbetweenthe two (Morsonand
Emerson 76).
Surprised by Response 255
Figure 3. M.C. Escher, Bond of Union
256JAC
The recognition that every utterance, everything written, hasthis full dialogic
character of responsiveness and answerability iswhat createsthe chain or spiral of
response I perceive and respond to in reading this book. With this in mind, let me
try to sort out some strands from the complex texture.
Here's another image(whosebracketingisborrowedfrom syntacticanalysis)that
focuses on the infinite capacity for embedding response within response that
characterizesour presentsituation (student,teacher,editor,reviewer... andbeyond).
(SeeFigure 4, "Embedded Response.") How canwe distinguishteachers' responses
from the generalpattern ofpervasivehuman responsivenessto world, text, andothers
in order to discover their special conditions, character, and consequent ethical
responsibilities? First, let's isolatesomeroles-writers, readers,teachers,learnersand simply askwhat the people playingtheserolesareresponding to in the response
sequence. Let's start, asistraditional, at the deeply embedded center of the pattern
in TwelveReadersReading,
with thestudentwriterswhosetextsapparentlyinitiatethis
particular spiral.
Student texts and their authors andinterpreters operate simultaneously in two
hierarchically relatedhermeneutical contexts. Callthem the rhetorical situation of
the text, where studentwritersprojectthemselves(andtheir readers)into atextworld,
and the higher levelpedagogicalsituation where they areapprentice authors guided
by ateacher. In their texts, student writers respond to what I've labeled[Xl-some
aspectoftheir "real"world: to memories,observations,experiences,voices,persons,
ideas,perhaps texts they have read. On the higher level (the next outer bracket in
Figure 4),they play the role of learnersresponding to ateacher's assignment,which
exhorts or challengesthem to engagein activitiesthat promote learning. They write
in this context for pedagogicalpurposesthat aresometimestacit or invisibleto them:
to practice writing or play with textual possibilities,to demonstrate competence in
writing, to inquire through writing into ideas,situations, experiences,or problems.
Suchpedagogicalpurposesaredistinctfromtherhetoricalpurposesthat studentspursue
aswriters through the texts,though the relationshipbetweenthe two isnot arbitrary.
The responsesequencedidn't reallystartwith thewriter, ofcourse;the teacher's
assignment called for the student text. The assignment itselfwas in the ideal case
already responsive to elements in the pedagogicalcontext including prior student
texts,conversations,classdiscussions,andsoon. (Idon't meansimplythat the teacher
wasinfluencedvaguelyby the classroomenvironment, but that her assignmentwas
specificallydesignedto respond to events in her recent teaching experience or the
history of this classthat informed her about student learning,stimulated ideasfor an
assignment,violated her expectations, changedher mind, or otherwise elicitedand
shaped this particular pedagogical action.) The student texts then call forth the
commentaries featured in this book as"teacher response." These commentaries
generate other possible responses by participants, including conversations, class
discussions,more assignments,andof coursestudents' revisionsof the texts. I have
simplifiedthe spiral by omitting many other interrelated responseswe know to be
quite typical in classrooms,includingfor instanceresponsesto student textsby peers
in aclassroom, consultants in awriting center, or friends and family.
SurprisedbyResponse 257
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Figure 4. EmbeddedResponse
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258]AC
The followingfeaturesdistinguishthissituationfrom other kindsofdialogueand
differentiate the responses within it. As the diagram in Figure 5 ("Chain, Loop")
shows, in asequencewriting can functionally "address"another (a)or "respond" to
another (r).
1. The student writer's response isbi-directional, or Janus-faced.In one direction,
in his role asauthor he isresponding to the subject of histext (represented as X). In
the other direction, in his role as learner he is responding to the assignment as
directions for learning (e.g.,for practicing,for problem-solving,for experimenting,
for investigating). The dotted line shows the identity of the person in this dual
(sometimesconflicting)role.
2. The teacher's responseissplit aswell,into two rolesoperating simultaneously on
two levelsof ahierarchy. As shown by dotted linesin the diagram,the teacher plays
the roleofreader,projectingherselfinto the textualworld andthe rhetoricalsituation
of the draft, mirroring the student's practice of the authorial role.
3. The teacher'spedagogicalresponse,althoughit incorporatesandmakesinstrumental use of a direct reader-response that dramatizes her reading for the student, is
primarily ameta-response.It isparasiticalon the student text (wouldnot make sense
standing alone), reflexively referential to the student text, and carries a specific
responsibility to the writer asstudent that remains to be elucidated.
These three featuresof pedagogicalhermeneutics haveto do with complexities
of role and subjectiveinvolvement inherent in the structure and recursivepattern of
relations among the responses. The next two special features point to ethical
implications in those relations.
4. One can distinguish responses asanswering two kinds of calls,represented here
respectively by the student writer's text, responding to the assignment, and the
teacher's pedagogicalwritings (both the assignment and the commentaries.) The
student's writing iscalledforby the teacherin animperativemode andisstrongly and
purposefully guided by that call,which isthe assignment. (Thisrelationship isnot
uncommon in other settings: examplesincludethe proposal responding to acallfor
a grant proposal; or the report elicited by a client's charge to a consultant.) The
teacher'swriting, both the assignmentandthe commentary, isevokedor calledforth,
not necessarilyby asingleutterance but by elementsin amore diffusesituation, and
is self-guidedin light of genre and situation.
5. The entire exchange between student writer and teacher is pervaded by the
assumption of learningasanoverridingpurpose. That purpose subsumesallwritings
andreadings,authorship andinterpretation, in apedagogicalsituation. (Thequestion
is,however, who's learning-and about what?)
The structural complexitiesofthis hermeneutical situation arehard to explain
and graspin words. To help us understand both this structure and its implications,
I am using anumber of imagesthat suggestitscomplexity metaphorically without
necessarilyrequiringusto followitsparadoxesanalytically.AmongthetermsIintroduce
inthissectionarechains,loops,embeddedloops,strangeloops,andkeying.Theselabels
referto thingshuman beingsdo nonchalantly every day, but, asDouglas Hofstadter
showed us in Godel,Escher,Bach,they turn out to bevery strangeand puzzling.
Surprised by Response 259
Any sequence of responses that doesn't circle back to the beginning is a chain
(Figure 5). In asimple chain, K addresses L, L responds to K, M responds to L, N
responds to M,and so on A loop occurs when two people engage in aconversation,
responding to one another in cycles. This situation is illustrated by a (simplified)
pedagogical response situation, in whichstudent responds to teacher who responds
to student who responds to teacher and so on. I find it easiestto think of these relations
in terms of a syntax of response. Chains and loops of response are syntactically
compound. The chain of responses corresponds to an infinitely extended compound
sentence, in which response issimply added to response. Certain kinds of compound
sentences might approximate aloop (iftwo main clauses "speak" to each other in a
complementary fashion, as in the rhetorical figure antithesis). In the syntactic
metaphor, embedded loops create complex responses, like complex sentences with a
dependent clause (loop) subordinated to a main clause (loop). This syntactic
complexity occurs in our hermeneutical situation when the writer responds to (X),
an element or aspect of his actual world, creating a rhetorical situation that callsfor
a reader's reponse, but does so within the broader hermeneutical loop linking learner
to teacher.
Teacher
EMBEDDED (STRANGE) LC)OP
K
a=aetdresses
r=responcls
r
r
--
--
a
LOOP
Figure 5. Chain, Loop
CHAIN
260JAC
The situation ofpedagogicalhermeneuticsisrecursivein away that constructs
multiple levelsof realityandfictionthat foldin on one another likeaMoebiusstrip.
(SeeFigure 6, Escher print 72, "Print Gallery." For an entertaining philosophical
explorationofthis ideaanditsparadoxes,seeJosteinGardner'snovelSophie's
World.)
In pedagogicalhermeneutics, the invented rhetorical situation of text worlds is
fictional relativeto the "realworld" of the classroom (itselfseenasless"real"than
the everydayworld outsidethe ivory tower). The teacheristhe god..figurewho has,
through the assignment,establishedthe conditions for this fictionaltext world and
giventhe writer the directions for authoring it.
This situation appearsto qualifyasastrangeloop. Hofstadter definesastrange
loop asoccurring"whenever,by movingupwards(ordownwards)through the levels
of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselvesright back where we
started" (10).The teacher'srole in callingforthetext, andsubstantiallydetermining
itscontent or rhetoricalsituation inorder to servepedagogicalgoals,loopsstrangely
when hethen playsthe roleof itsreader. Self-referencecreatesstrangeloopiness,and
of coursethat meansthat languageisalwaysgettingusinto strangeloops by talking
about itself:"Here, something in the systemjumps out and actson the system, asif
itwereoutsidethe system"(691).Both theteacherandthe learner,asthey work with
the text, jump in and out of subjective involvement in its content and refer to its
pedagogicalmeta-functions in the student's growth asawriter. Just asthe teacher
writes commentsthat referto the student's learningsituation (notjustthe text for its
own sake),the student may submit with the text or in aportfolio areflective"gloss"
that makesexplicither questions,concerns,and goalsassomeonelearningto write.
To operate in both these worlds isvery tricky and requires amastery of what
Hofstadter calls"pushing" and "popping," which meanssuspendingaction in one
world in order to descend into the embedded one (pushing)or to ascendinto the
embedding one (popping up or out) (128).The teacher, in reading 0 r responding,
"pushes"to playthe roleofreaderandthen "pops"to return to the personaofteacher.
You canobserve these moveseasilyin the twelvereaders' responses. Becauseeach
frameisagestalt,anindividualcan't reallyparticipateactivelyin both framesatonce,
just asaviewer must switch gestaltsto perceiveambiguous figureslikethe Necker
cube. ErvingGoffman explainsthat human beingsframetheir own participation in
situations in order to understand what is happening and to organize their own
subjectiveinvolvementinevents(21..24).But framescanbe"keyed"to one another,
meaningthat aprimary pattern fordefininganeventcanbereframedsothat indoing
one thing we understand ourselves to be doing something else (44;48-74). In
pedagogicallysituatedwriting, the make..believeofthe textual situation engagedin
by the writer is keyed to pedagogical purposes such as practicing writing or
experimentingwith anew skillor genre. (Foradiscussionofinvolvementandother
modalities of discourse,seePhelps,"Composition in aNew Key" 67-77).
Surprisedby Response 261
Figure 6. M.C. Escher, Print Gallery
262JAC
One of the most striking features 0 f TwelveReadersReading-indeed, the first
thing I noticed about it-is that the editors' relationship to the teachers and their
written responses isa mirror image of the teachers' compound-complex relationship
to the students and their texts. The first loop embeds the second (creating another
strange loop). In each loop writers respond to an assignment that" callsfor" awritten
text and in the resulting texts play an assigned role within an embedded, virtual
situation. The editors gavescholar-teachers in composition an assignment that asked
them to pretend to be the actual teachers who wrote the assignments and to write
responses to the texts in that persona, just asthe students assumed the personas called
for by the rhetorical situation of their assignment. At each level,the "god" who wrote
the instructions for creating the imaginary world alsoresponds in writing to the work
(the rhetorical exchange) that is created in carrying out the assignment. In their
pedagogical meta-response to the text (and behind it, to the writer/learner), teachers
described, analyzed, projected meanings, reacted emotionally, and evaluated the text,
its meaning, and what lay behind it. In the research study conducted in TwelveReaders
Reading,the author-editors responded to the teachers' writing they had solicited by
describing, categorizing, analyzing, projecting meanings, and reacting to them, albeit
muting emotional responses. They also tactfully evaluated the response texts, their
meanings, and what lay behind them (philosophies of teaching, habitual practices of
response-and, by inference, teaching styles or abilities). Although these metaresponses were addressed to the field at large, not directed to the teacher-readers or
intended to revise their responses or response styles, you can bet that they read them,
were affected by them, and-as in the caseof several authors-may respond publicly
to them! There isthus avery detailed "reflection" or mirroring effectbetween the two
contexts. (SeeFigure 7, Escher print 48, "Puddle.")
Seeking Surprise
Forthe editors, conversation was a key theoretical concept for framing principles of
response (and Richard Straub has reformulated the concept to take it significantly
further in a recent article). 7 Both Gadamer and Bakh tin take up co nversatio nor
dialogue more profoundly ascentral metaphors for relations amongtexts and human
beings. In their writings about dialogue, conversation, authorship, and interpretation,
each emphasizes over and over the concept of openness to what I am calling
hermeneutical surprise, which is integrally related to the productive function of
prejudice as a projection or anticipation of meaning and of response. Whereas
Gadamer speaks of the need for a hermeneutically trained mind to be sensitive to
newness (238),Bakhtin develops a concept of "unfinalizability" that, Morson and
Emerson say, "designates a complex of values central to his thinking: innovation,
'surprisingness,' the genuinely new, openness, potentiality, freedom, and creativity"
(37;SpeechGenres167).This notion of freedom corresponds to the necessityin dialogue
for responsibility.
In this last section I want to argue that whereas prejudice conditions all
understanding, surprise is a defining quality of good response in a pedagogical
situation, that is, response that is significant, generative, and ethical. 8 Teacher
Surprised by Response 263
respondents should be surprised by the texts, meanings, and authors that they respond
to; and they should surprise themselves by making discoveries about student learning
in writing their responses. Student writers should be surprised by the responses they
make to experience, texts, and others; by the textual worlds they create; and by what
they learn about writing and themselves aswriters in composing atext. In otherwords,
pedagogically situated responses should both conduct and respond to genuine
Inqulnes.
Surprise isthe subjective correlate of learning, a consequence of being open to
changing oneself through dialogue with others. We have already seen that learning
isthe overriding shared purpose of hermeneutics in a pedagogical situation and the
written responses it engenders. Studies of human development suggest that in
children's development, activity and learning are typically synchronous and often
reciprocal (not only mutually supportive, but similar)with that of adults (Cairns 297317). Something like this interdependence seems to be characteristic of productive
pedagogical interactions, specifically the hermeneutical exchanges around student
writing. If so, teachers' learning is as important as that of their students and is
instrumental to it. Teachers may, of course, delight in learning what their students
discover about almost anything. But asteachers it istheir business to discover what
students are learning {ornot) and why: to experiment, observe, analyze, and reflect
on students and their learning as a basis for planning and improvising further
pedagogical actions.
There are strong signs in the book that the desire for surprise powerfully
motivates both teachers and editors even though there are always forces, including
prejudice, fear,and the counterpleasures of familiarity, certainty, and safety,that weigh
against taking this risk. In the responses of teachers in TwelveReadersReading,
the
willingness to risk surprise issignaledin expressions of uncertainty and tentativeness,
in questions and hypothetical language, in playfulness and respectful listening. (They
respond eagerly to the same signsin students.) The philosophies of teaching written
by the respondents, which would repay more intensive analysis, are filled with
affirmations of surprise asa positive value in student writing, in responding, and in
their own teaching. One can trace this theme in their comments on encouraging
student inquiry and being an inquirer into student's thinking and in different teachers'
positive referencesto surprise, changing one' sthinking, solving puzzles, conflicts with
expectations, dialogism, learning as creative, rhetoric as an act of discovery, or
instability and change (AppendixE395-420). In Straub's subsequent article, "Teacher
Response as Conversation: More Than Casual Talk, an Exploration," he himself
revises and enlarges the editors' concept of conversation in the book to emphasize
inquiry, exploration, and surprise. For example, he saysof productive commentaries
that "They [the teachers] turn their comments into an inquiry into the writing, an
exploration of the text and the student behind the text" (381). "By constructing
themselves asinvestigators, the teachers implicitly construct the student writer asan
investigator" (390).
264 JAC
Figure 7. M.C. Escher, Puddle [originally in color]
Surprisedby Response 265
Even more telling about the need to seek surprise are the expressions of
dissatisfaction by teachers in their hermeneutical experiences, where they were often
frustrated in trying to ground their responses in aproductive relationship between
prejudgments brought to the texts and experiences of surprise generated in and by
response. These unexpected difficulties on the part of the teachers, however, surprise
us and should prompt readers of the teacher's responses to inquire more deeply into
them. In the words ofN orman Lear, "Everywhere you trip iswhere the treasure lies."
Teachers' resistance to the editors' assignments and the conditions of the study
(including those potential respondents, like me, who declined their invitation) is
instructive." The respondents' frustrations, complaints, and inarticulation or even
"paralysis" in producing their responses, along with the discrepancies among their
ideal practice (implied by their philosophical statements), their usual practice, and
their actual responses all surprise us becauseweareexpectingfluent,expertresponse.
We have assimilated this prejudice from the editors. Ratherthan a defect in the book
or in the teachers' performance, this surprise is precisely where the study has
somethingto teach us, ifwe open our minds.
Because teachers attribute their troubles generally to the lack of pedagogical
context and specifically to the assignments given the student writers (a critique
articulated most eloquently in Richard Larson' sepilogue essay),their difficultiesserve
as a trip wire to alert us to the crucial part that assignments play in affording the
students' and teachers' ability to respond creatively. They focus our attention on the
writing assignments that evoked the student texts, which suddenly appear to be a
neglected and underanalyzed feature of the pedagogical situation (the" context") that
the editors created for the teacher-respondents. They point us directly back to my
beginning, in the editors' original identification of prejudice with the assignment.
The editors, remember, viewed the assignment as prejudicing teachers by
restrictingtheirresponse to acomparison ofthe student text with an idealtext projected
. by the assignment. (Ironically,this isnot unlike the way the editors' compared teachers'
responses to the styles suggested by earlier response theories.) But the teachers'
struggles and their explicit comments on their difficulties focus on the failure of these
assignments to provide rich enoughexpectations (besides Larson, see for example
Hull's concerns, 368).By pointing to what ismissing, teachers instruct us about what
is needed. These expert teachers needed expert assignments in order to function at
their highest level asexpert respondents. Their frustrations and desires speak to the
requirement for an explicitly pedagogical context and to the role of assignments in
constructing learning environments where responses by students and teachers can
make mutual sense. 10 Specifically, these problems suggest how teachers' prejudices
should operate constructively in a full and richly defined pedagogical situation to
ground their responses to student writing.
The prejudices that count are not about ideal texts (except instrumentally), but
about what students can learn by writing, both individually and asa class. Teachers
generate these expectations in the course of designing and implementing a learning
plan, usually for a whole class. 11 As Larson points out, a course design attempts to
orchestrate learning experiences for students through sequences of learning activities
266]AC
structured by writing assignments. These plans and learning goals create the
prejudices, or expectations and hopes, that structure teachers' readings of specific
student texts as well as their other pedagogical actions. But since good teaching
understands learning to be creative, it cannot finalize the learning outcomes of these
activities,which deliberately expose students to opportunities for taking risks , making
uncomfortable discoveries, changing their minds, and learning from instructive
failures. Instead, good teachers remain open to the surprises of student learning and
respond to them: globally, by replanning course activitiesandimprovisingpedagogical innovations; individually, by responses that acknowledge students' individual
histories and character as learners as well as their common experiences through
membership in the class. 12
Assignments are among the most important ways that teachers articulate for
themselves and their students their original designs for learning and, in subsequent
assignments, make revisions and invent new challenges that reflect their dialogic
encounters with student learners. Good assignments participate in a progression of
inquiry and discovery that students and teachers are co-constructing through their
responsiveness to one another. Just asstudents' writing provide the most visible clues
and fullest access to their own struggles, surprises, composing performances, and
learning experiences, teachers' assignments foreground their own learning and
perform pedagogical inquiries and interventions.
Here is an example excerpted from an assignment by Anne Fitzsimmons, a
professional writing instructor in the Writing Program at Syracuse University." In
this assignment, students are asked in their end-of-semester portfolios to reflect on
the learning they have accomplished in the semester in order to map and explicatetheir
collected writings. Fitzsimmons incorporates into the assignment itself examples of
discoveries that particular students have made about themselves during the semester
and uses her own reflective learning about these discoveries and about limitations in
students' current understanding to project alternative possibilities for them to pursue
further in the portfolio "reflection." Her choices alsoreflect an educated senseof what
kinds of problems and issuesare common to the classand they refer concretely to the
class history together. (Students' names are changed.) She writes to the students:
The reflection revealswhat you have discovered
. .. about your writing, oryour writing process,
or rhetoric, or reading, or how writin gworks. In the reflection you want to both name (identify)
and interpret (explain),and that naming and interpreting can be in reference to your writing and
reading, to your practices, or to your experiences. For example, Robin has discovered
something about the link between her reading and writing processes. Naming that link, or
identifying it is important, but it's only a first step. She won't have done all the necessary
thinking if she neglects to explain how the link came about, wh y it's important, what she has
learned from it as a result, etc.
Your discoveries don't have to be particularly grand or profound; small discoveries are just
asworth drawing attention to. Julio noticed that during the hub and wheel exerciseother people
were able to seethings in his book cover that he had either overlooked or had considered too
obvious to be important. He might try to name what he discovered about analyzing or drafting
or even reading as a result of that exercise) and take it up as an issue in his reflection.
You do need to link your discoveries to very specific texts, though. Back to the Julio
example: Julio might claim that the hub and wheel exercise led him to revise his analysis paper.
Surprisedby Response 267
It would make sense, then, for him to place any relevant drafts alongside (or behind) that
particular moment of discovery in his reflection. It would also make sense for him to in some
way annotate the drafts to draw attention to the sections that were most obviously affected by
the exercise. And Terence noted in his self-assessments for both his narrative and analysis
essaysthat he was dissatisfied with his voice-that it lacked humor and liveliness. He was able,
however, to do something new with his voice in the opening of his concept essay. He might
take up the issue of voice in his reflection, and for supporting documents include sections from
earlier essays to contrast with the beginning of his concept essay. (1)
Both before and after this excerpt, Fitzsimmons's assignment emphasizes the
writer's making senseof his or her own work. Her directions help students do so "by
inviting you to look closely at and draw conclusions about the writing you have done;
by inviting you to apply your knowledge of rhetoric; by inviting you to articulate what
you have learned or what you value, that might not necessarily be apparent in your
polished work orin any singletext." She offers examples, alternatives, and categories
that open up these possibilities.
I wonder what Straub and Lunsford would make of the "directiveness" of this
assignment. In focusing so heavily and so disapprovingly on teachers' directiveness
in responses, they failed to observe that assignments, not responses, are the primary
means by which teachers control student texts. As noted above, assignments are in
the imperative mode and call forth texts with all sorts of specifications of both form
and content. This assignment suggests that in both cases what matters is not the
intervention itself, northe explicitness of its directions, but the degree to which it
refrains from finalizing either student writers, their thoughts, or their words. The
criterion for unfinalizability isthe degree of surprise that this teacher and her students
actually experienced from the reflections they produced. But the true test comes, not
in this text per se, but in how the students perceive themselves asauthors of that text,
and more importantly what the students do next, after the course ends.
The sparse, unprovocative, and decontextualized quality of most assignments
used in the study had acumulative impact th wartingthe inherent potential for surprise
in the hermeneutical exchanges. On the whole, by not encouraging students' inquiries
or informing them of learning goals situated in the pedagogical history of the course,
these assignments diminished the potential for students to make discoveries that
would surprise them and their virtual teachers. By not giving the same information
to the teachers, the assignments prevented them from forming or identifying
interesting prejudgments against which they could experience and measure surprise.
Forthe teacher-respondents, it was a double whammy. 14
Because they use assignments to invent textual worlds for student writers to
elaborate and inhabit, teachers are answerable for designing these environments
hermeneutically, with the structure of a open question. As surrogate teachers
choosing the assignments on which students texts and responses would be based, the
editors shared this responsibility. Bakhtin identifies this responsibility asthat of the
novelist to make his hero "unfinalizable": "The author creates the world in which the
unfinalizab lecharacter lies,and may put chance encounters or provocative incidents
in his way. What he may not do isretain for himself a superior position beyond these
purely pragmatic necessities. It is asif the author could pick the hour and room for
268JAC
adialogicencounterwith acharacter,but oncehehimselfenteredthat room,hewould
have to address the character as an equal" (Morson and Emerson 242). This
responsibilityfor allowingthe hero hisor her elusivenessisincurredateverylevelof
response. Editors ofthe book had aparallel,mirror-imageresponsibilityasauthors
of the virtual teachingworld to setup aresponsesituation open to surprise and to
treat the teachers responding asunfinalizable characters. And they are similarly
answerableasresearchersin definingandcategorizingresponsesandresponders,just
asI amanswerableasreviewerto them andother participantsinthe embeddedspiral
of response created by the book. 15 The hero's unfinalizability and the novelist's
responsibility to respectit standin Bakhtin's work for the ineluctableopennessof
discourseandthe freedomof human beingsfrom attempts to categorizeand make
them predictable:
A livinghumanbeingcannotbeturned intothe voicelessobjectofsomesecondhand,finalizing
cognitiveprocess.In ahuman beingthere isalwayssomethingthat only hehimselfcanreveal,
in a free act of self-consciousnessand discourse, something that does not submit to an
externalizing secondhanddefinition.... As long asa person isalivehe livesby the factthat
he isnot yet finalized,that he hasnot yet uttered his ultimate word. (problems 58-59)16
Assessment
Theconceptsandrelationshipbetweenprejudiceandsurprisedevelopedherearenot
only tools forhermeneuticalinquiry, but alsoabasisforcriticalevaluation.Suchan
evaluationof TwelveReadersReadingwould
askhowwelltheeditorsmettheirstrategic
and ethicalresponsibilitiesin figuringandenablingthis relationship atmany levels
andto what extentthe study andthe book succeedin surprisingus,themselves,and
their participants.
Simplyjudgingthe editors' own responseto the commentariesthey collected,
how welldidthey succeed?
Their greatestachievement,I think, isin allowingthemselvesto be radically
surprisedandinstructedatthe beginningoftheirprojectbythe unexpectedresponses
ofteachersto the originalrequestandassignment.Their surpriseprompted them to
movebeyond merelycollectingmodelresponsesto openaninquirythat becamethe
study (andcontinueson beyond the book). I couldwish,however,that Strauband
Lunsford had dramatizedtheir own learningprocess asanunfoldingexperience(a
narrativeofinstructivebumpsandshocks)inthebook ratherthan smoothingit over
in the professionalized,timelessgenreofreport andanalysis,deliveredin asuitably
objective,authoritativetone. Their beautifullydisplayedreport andanalysisoftheir
resultsobscurethe chronologyofchangesintheirthinking,the points atwhichthey
revisedplansandrethought assumptions(forexample,about the teachers'needfor
context). Ifthey had seentheir own surpriseasamethodologicalissueand studied
it (andthe eventsthat provoked it) ascarefullyasthe objectsofthe study (teachers'
responses),theeditorsmighthavelearnedsomethingmoreprofoundabouttheirown
role asparticipants in the layeredloopsofinterpretation.
Althoughtheydidbecomelearnersintheirownstudy,StraubandLunsfordwere
lesssuccessful,asI have tried to demonstrate, in choosing assignments and texts
conducive for both writers and teachersto form generativeprejudicesand enable
Surprisedby Response 269
surprise in their responses. I wish that in analyzing teachers' responses the authoreditors had paid more attention to the readers' revealing desires, problems, complaints, and ways of compensating (that is, to the surprises) and lessto the theories
of response with which they started the study (i.e.,their prejudices and those of the
field). Those theories were almost self-confirming insofar asStraub and Lunsford
used them to categorize and evaluate responses in terms of degrees of control. 17 In
underrating the extraordinary importance of assignments in affording the ultimate
character and quality of responses, the editors missedan opportunity for learning and
teaching the profession more about the nature of the concrete pedagogical situation
in which response is situated. But as always, it is such stumbles and omissions, the
false trails and unfinished work, that genuinely surprise us, their readers, and thus
instruct both them and us. We must continue to work within the horizon of the
questions they have opened.
Syracuse
University
Syracuse,
New York
Notes
1I refer to participants in the situations created by TwelveReaders
Readingby role-names, asin my
title. Richard Straub and Ronald Lunsford are usually called here "the editors," although they are
simultaneously authors, researchers, and readers in this book; the expert readers are "the teachers,"
although they are also readers, authors of philosophical statements, teacher-researchers, and so on. The
difficulties with this labeling are instructive about the comp lexity of role playing in this intricate web
of interpretation and response.
21am ignoring here the distinctive nature of pedagogical hermeneutics, in which readers' responses
may directly affect the writer's future composing of a text, because it is necessary to understand first
how the teacher's act of reading itself raises issues of shared responsibility for meaning. The writing of
responses is, in any case,usually deeply integrated into the reading process itself, so that interpretation
generates such response while the act of writing responsively servessimultaneously to shape the reader's
emergent understanding. We can seethis shaping when readers write asthey read-in annotations or
notes that exclaim, puzzle, answer, resist, question, hypothesize, elaborate, reflect, and so on. A fuller
account of pedagogical hermeneutics, which is beyond the scope of this essay, would address the
hermeneutical conditions and responsibilities associated with "appropriating" atext-the worst sin in
Straub and Lunsford's scale of response styles-as an inevitable and potentially positive feature of
teacherly reading. The hermeneutical concept of appropriation is particularly apt for this purpose
because, in such theories asthat of Paul Ricoeur, it incorporates a dialectic between analytical distance
and subjective involvement that corresponds to moving between the hierarchical loops of response and
among "teacher," "writer," and "reader" roles.
3Bruce Lawson and Susan Sterr Ryan, who as graduate students at the University of Southern
California did my phenomenological reading assignment during their first course in rhetoric, subsequently co-edited with W. Ross Winterowd a collection of reading accounts by professionals in
composition and rhetoric.
"Graduate students working on this project discovered major gaps between the interpretations
that teachers and their writing students gave to texts circulating between them, as revealed in teachers'
written commentaries, office conversations, independent interviews of students and their teachers by
the researchers, and students' revised texts. One, John Edlund, found especially startling gaps and
misunderstandings among nonnative speakers, whose typical response to teachers' commentary was to
drop from subsequent versions of atext anything that had received attention from the teacher.
270JAC
5As I suggested in "Images of Student Writing," when this type of practically oriented inquiry
proves inconclusive, "researchers callfor more fundamental inquires into the constituent processes and
activities that underlie surface behavior or its products. The scholars construct theories and models of
these processes, often by borrowing or adapting basic research from other fields. At some point, they
look beyond behavior per seto define the underlying conceptual schemas that shape the attitudes and
choices of both teachers and students. Ultimately theories are brought into more comprehensive
networks of meaning, and metacriticism develops to evaluate the methods, assumptions, conclusions,
and roles of the researchers themselves. At this point it islikely that theoretical frameworks may effect
radical, even paradigmatic changes in practice" (37). I called this sequence the "PTF" arc from practice
to theory to practice. Astheory, TwelveReadersReadingissituated at the juncture between comparative
description and the attempt to define conceptual schemas governing both commonalities and individual
differences in teachers' response styles.
"This summary is drawn from interpreters ofBakhtin' swork, some of it yet untranslated, aswell
as from his translated work. In presenting a global view it obviously simplifies the way Bakhtin' s key
concepts emerged and changed asthey developed through the stagesof his lifework. Some of Clark and
Holquist's claims are controversial, particularly insofar asthey draw on Marxism and the Philosophy of
Language, whose authorship is disputed (Morson and Emerson believe it was written by Volosinov).
However, these interpretations of response are generally consonant with one another and the
conception they attribute to Bakhtin is both coherent and powerfully appealing.
7Byemphasizing the exploratory function of response, Straub begins in this article to resolve the
dilemmas created by the polarized classification schemes of the book. Instead of having to choose
between controlling and facilitating modes, he argues of the best (conversational) responders that
"Since their comments are designed to promote richer inquiry, they provide more direction and exert
greater control over student writing than recent models ofteacher response [including his own in the
book] recommend" (391).Straub echoes anumberof my own hermeneutical themes. Forexample, his
"double focus" corresponds to the embedded loops discussed earlier, with their different subjective
frames of involvernent: "On the one hand, she [the teacher] istrying to talk with the writer about what
he has to say; on the other, she istrying to explore and exploit the possibilities in the writing, to suggest
what else might be done with it and what else might be learned about how writers and readers use text
to come together and make meaning" (390).
sIt might be more exact to describe surprise as a function of teacher and student responses in a
pedagogical situation, necessary to effect learning (in genres dedicated to learning) . To put it this way
recognizes that, asRichard Haswell points out, "good" (pleasurable, engaged) reading involves awhole
gamut offeelings and intellectual involvements with the text; surprise is only one of these. However,
in the pedagogical context, this experience of surprise becomes adominant functional element in writing
and reading because of its relationship to prejudice (expectations) about learning. From this
perspective, other features of pedagogically hermeneutical reading (for example, the caring or respectful
relation between teacher and student or the assessment and self-assessment dimension of the
interchange) may also serve important functions in "good" (pedagogically dynamic) response.
91declined the editors' invitation to participate because I didn't feel I could fit my response
practices into the paradigm constructed by the editors' original plan, which called for responding asthe
responder typically would in an actual teaching situation. (This plan was modified later to ask teachers
to provide responses representing their "ideal" styles.) I wrote to the editors, "My interpretations
depend on knowledge of a person, a writing history, a classroom and university context, and I'm
reluctant to respond to a single anonymous text." My worries anticipated some of the difficulties
actu ally experienced by the responders, who in varying degrees felt it necessary to construct com plex
histories and contexts in order to respond at all. This was one of the major findin gs of the study (371).
However, the editors as well asthe readers who added" context)' tend to em phasize the teacher' sneed
to construct a personal portrait of the "student writer behind the text" rather than, asI will, the course
itself asa design for learning and a history of how that design played out with individual students and
the group.
lOOfall the teachers, Glynda Hull's response sty le and quoted comments express most exp licit!y
the assumption that assignments and texts should serve learning goals and the difficulties she felt in
responding without what she calls the pedagogical "subtext" of the assignment. In analyzing her
"uncon ventional" response style, Straub and Lunsford remark that for Hull "the papers they [students]
write in the course seem lessthe target for instruction and more occasions for instruction"; "she is less
Surprised by Response 271
concerned with the revision of drafts than with engaging students in working on those issues and
activities they most need to work on for their ongoing development aswriters" (272;263). Despite the
missing information, she strives to read in the developmental mode, characteristic of portfolio reading
or readings that take into account multiple texts by the student (phelps, "Images of Student Writing").
Many clues suggestthat other teachers had similar concerns about the pedagogical meaning and purpose
of assignments (367-71).But they reacted differently than Hull to the resulting difficulties in reading
(e.g.,]ane Peterson's initial "paralysis") and adapted their response styles more or lesscomfortably to
these circumstances. Most teachers adopted the formative mode of reading that interprets the draft as
"evolving" toward afinal , polished text (e.g.,Stewart and McLellan) and many (e.g., Anson) projected
a personal and pedagogical history for the student writer (371-73).It is clear that such strategies are
part of their repertoire for interpretation and response, asthey would be for most expert teachers. But
we don't know how much these choices deviate from teachers' habitual choices in the "normal" case
where readings and responses are seamless with teaching goals, assignments, conferences, and other
elements of the pedagogical context they carefully construct. In the caseof Till y Warnock, at least, the
result seems to substantially misrepresent herteaching (464).
t t This description of prejudice would have to be modified to fit the special circumstances in which
teachers read individual texts for pedagogical purposes, but not as the teacher who has given the
assignment, designed the course, participated in the social environment of a class, and observed the
history of learning by its members. Probably the closest model for the problems the twelve readers
actually faced in their interpretations and responses (asdistinct from the role they were asked to play)
is reading drafts as ateacher-coach in awriting center, atask which involves guessin g at the meanings
and learning goalsof an assignment given by anotherteacher, usually without benefit of the classhistory
that led to it. One way the writing center teacher handles this task issimply to adopt and dramatize the
role of an ordinary reader, avoiding directive advice; another isto assimilate the assignment to familiar
text types or broad genre expectations. Still athird isto fill in the relevant context hypothetically (by
imagining the goals of the assignments and the teacher's rationale) or directly (by questioning the
student, or even the teacher). The twelve readers used all the available strategies to overcome the gaps
and create the prejudices they needed for productive pedagogical reading. My point isthat they literally
could not read and respond, otherwise.
111 conceive good teaching asa characteristically reflective practice in which teachers continually
inquire into student learning and base pedagogical action on these inquiries (see Schon; Hillocks;
Phelps, "Practical Wisdom.") As George Hillocks puts it, referring to a reading given by a teacher to
his students, "If the teacher remains open to the possibility that the piece of writing may not have the
desired effect for one reason or another, if she monitors student response to determine how it is or is
not working, then the teacher maintains the basic posture of inquiry in teaching, regarding actions as
hypotheses to be tested" (30).Schon similarly describes practitioners' reflection-in-action as experimental (68-75),improvising response as in a conversation or jazz performance: "Each person carries
out his own evolving role in the collective performance, 'listens' to the surprises-or, asI shall say, 'back
talk' -that result from earlier moves, and responds through on-line production of new moves that give
new meanings and directions to the development of the artifact" (31).
131am grateful to David Franke forcallingAnne Fitzsimmons's assignment to my attention.
140ne response made by the editors to criticisms from the teacher-readers, and again at the NCTE
conference where this paper was presented, was that no matter what further context had been provided,
the readers would still have brought to the texts their own "prejudices" of background, experience, and
ideology. Of course this istrue. But "prejudice" asI'm using it here isnot an umbrellaterm forallaspeets
of context that inform personal readings and response styles, from teacher's own beliefs and teaching
histories to their knowledge of genre conventions and opinions about astudent' stopic. Of course, any
teacher reads as a person (and a writing expert) from such a tacit matrix of experience, feeling, and
knowledge, which helps her to form expectations for textual meaning. But as ateacher, reading a text
at a particular historical moment, her relevant prejudices are prejudgments or expectations highly
specific to the assignment and to the structures and histories of learning in which the assignment
intervenes. In this sense, both prejudice and context have afocused, narrow, and relatively accessible
meaning for pedagogical hermeneutics. But such explicitly pedagogical prejudices rest within and are
themselves generated by the nested prejudices and contexts of understanding (inthe broader sense)that
272JAC
representanyindividual'sgroundforunderstandinganything.One oftheimplicationsofdistinguishing
aspecificpedagogicalprejudicefrom allthesenestedcontextsisthat the editorsofthis book couldhave
chosenassignmentsthat communicatepedagogicalprejudicesincludingpurpose,andthey couldhave
suppliedpertinent pedagogicalcontext, without takingonthe impossibletaskofsomehowcommunicatingthe "whole"context.
15Genreconventionsfor "reviews,"whichrequirethat onespeakofa book's ideasandauthors in
the presenttense,obscurethe realitythat the book ismoresignificantlyafieldofquestionsthan answers,
whileitsauthorialcharactersarehistoricalandcontinueto learnandchangetheir minds. I hopeI have
accounted responsibly for their unfinalizability in this essay,even in criticisms of the book as a
temporary closurecreatedby the fixabilityofthe text.
16Myown conception of responseasan ethicalpedagogicalintervention might beginwith this
passagefrom Morson and Emerson andtracethe Bakhtiniansourcesthat inspiredit:Asaparticipant
in dialogue with the character, the author has at his disposalalmost the whole range of dialogic
interactions. He may teaseand provoke the character,cajoleand caresshim, irritate and insult him.
Indeed,the polyphonic author mustavoidonlytwo specifickindsofrelationwiththe character.Aswe
have seen,he must shun those that retain the essentialsurplus and so finalizethe character, because
then realdialoguewould beimpossible.The polyphonicauthor mustalsoavoidmergingentirelywith
the character. In that case,the author givesup hissurplus,the two voicescollapseinto one, and real
dialogueagainbecomesimpossible. (Morson and Emerson 242; seeBakhtin, Problems 47-77)
17Thestudy isself-eonfirminginanother, obvioussense.The editorschosereadersthey assumed
to beexpertrespondentsandteachersbecauseoftheir reputationsandauthority asscholarsofresponse.
In drawingconclusionsabout the consensus(implicitly,principlesofgoodresponse)that emergesin
their analysisofthesereaders'responses,the authorsaresimplyassuming(arguingfrom authority)that
the responsesmustbegenerallyexpertandinferringon theoreticalgrounds(orperhapsfromtheir own
reactionsin readingthem)that onepart ofthe responsespectrumthey constructedisthe mosteffective.
But the only way we could really know that these responses are "good" is to examine students'
interpretations ofthe commentaries,their viewsabout how effectivedifferentresponsesand response
stylesare,andthe evidence(fromrevisions,laterwritings,self-assessment,
interviews,etc.)about what
studentslearnedfollowingthesewriting experiencesandhow much ofthat learningcanbeattributed
to these responses. Assoon aswe beginto imaginewhat it would take to answerthesequestions,we
realize how context-dependent and longterm such learning would be, how closely related to the
assignmentandclassgoals,how variableamongindividualstudentsandstudentpopulations, andthus
how devilishlydifficultit would beto establishthat particular responsesor responsestylesarebetter
than others (thoughsomemay appearconvincinglyworse).
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