Proposal for a workshop/discussion facilitated by Sean Sturm (Centre for Academic Development and English Department) and Stephen Turner (English Department) of the University of Auckland:

Teaching to the Room

What it’s about and why it’s important

We wish to address the issue of the multiplicitous materiality of the classroom. This “big” classroom is systematically disaffected by templating from above about what counts as teaching and learning in the classroom, and about the place of teachers and learners there. In particular, the “template university” demands template teachers and learners whose throughputs and outputs are countable in terms of their content delivery. This templating is at issue in the writing studies classroom, where the content is, as it were, the students themselves: their bodies, lives and “peoples,” as manifest in the affective economy of the classroom. This economy problematises the distribution of authority in the classroom: the nature of teaching and learning, the relative position of teachers and learners, assessment, spatial and institutional context (the room and the university), and so on.

In short, we teach not to the template student but to the classroom, which requires that we "picture" the classroom and "match" it, in other words, give an account of it in our teaching. We ask the same of those learning there. This requires a redistribution of authority in the classroom, a redrawing and owning of the template, which we do by various “deformative” classroom tactics like “decryption,” “erratology,” and “teaching the university.”

Stephen will address the framing and composition of the writing classroom; Sean will report on its content and the techniques we practise there (see below).

How the workshop will work

The session will take the form of a brief (20-minute) preamble about teaching and learning in the writing studies classroom, after which we will invite discussion on these and other issues of teaching and learning in this and other classrooms:

a.     the frame: the template university, teacher and student;

b.     the composition: picturing and matching the classroom—the distribution and redistribution of authority in the classroom;

c.     the content: the affective economy of the classroom—bodies, lives and peoples;

d.     the techniques: deformative classroom tactics—decryption, erratology, teaching the university.