Productive Uncertainty and Postpedagogical Practice in First-Year Writing

To succeed beyond the writing classroom, students need creative thinking and adaptable, transferable writing and learning strategies, both of which are emphasized by a classroom approach called “postpedagogy.” Postpedagogy emphasizes experimentation and reflection as integral to composing processes, especially digital composing. One feature of postpedagogical classrooms is writing assignments that require students to make a broader range of rhetorical choices and experiment with new approaches, audiences, mediums, and/or technologies. I offer my “definitional text” assignment as an example of one such writing assignment. Though the experimentation encouraged by postpedagogical approaches may lead to initial failures and frustration, such failure can be made productive via intensive, sustained, and specific reflection on composing and learning processes.