What does it mean to teach after pedagogy? For a long time,
composition's pedagogical conversation has been defined by its
theoretical disagreements.
Is learning a cognitive process or a social one? Is the self expressed
or distributed? Can writing be understood as a process, or is any
process too messy to be understood? These debates have finally run out
of steam, argues Paul Lynch, leaving composition in a "postpedagogical"
moment, a moment when the field no longer believes that pedagogical
theories can account for the complexities of teaching. After Pedagogy
extends the postpedagogical conversation by turning to the experience of
teaching itself.
Though the work of John Dewey, After Pedagogy argues that experience
offers an arena in which theory and practice can coexist. Most
important, experience can fashion the teachable moments of
postpedagogical practice into resources for further growth. "We cannot
know what precisely the student will do with what we have offered, but
we can think with the student about the experience of the offer itself."
By turning what students and teachers know about writing into an area of
intellectual inquiry, a philosophy of experience can make teaching
sustainable after pedagogy.