This book argues that contemporary neuroscience compliments, extends, and challenges recent and influential posthuman and new materialist accounts of the relations between rhetoric, affect, and writing pedagogy. Drawing on cutting-edge neuro-philosophy, Comstock re-thinks both historical and current relations between writing and power around questions of affect, attention, and plasticity. In considering the uses and limits of exciting new findings from the neurobiology, this volume both theorizes and offers pedagogical strategies for teaching writing in a digital age characterized by the erosion of wonder and pervasive disaffection. Ultimately, in response to recent critiques transcendental reason and subjectivity, and related calls for the increased inclusion of multi-modal and digital writing and rhetoric, Comstock argues for an embodied pedagogy that values the substantial relations between writing and pedagogical care.

Using the concept of "plasticity," or the brain’s ability to change through growth and reorganization, as a theoretical framework, this book argues that encouraging an exploration of the self better establishes emotional value in the composition classroom. This book explores recent evidence from studies in modern neuroscience to provide biological correlations between current and developing theory and pedagogy in Composition Studies. Starting with the concept of self, each subsequent chapter builds a neurobiological understanding of how emotional value, intrinsic motivation, creativity, and happiness are constructed and felt. This material exploration shows how these factors can maintain motivation, improve long-term memory, encourage creative risk, and initiate complex considerations of being. Recognizing the shift in Composition Studies to posthuman and new materialist methodologies, this modern neuroscience is presented as a useful parallel to—rather than being at odds with—these and other current methodologies, theories, and pedagogies. Outlining the need for a more student-focused, guided-discovery framework for the composition classroom, this interdisciplinary resource will be of interest to scholars and students in the field of Composition Studies, Communication Studies, Education, Psychology, and Philosophy.

An essential guide to cultivating joy in your professional and personal writing Writing should be a pleasurable challenge, not a painful chore. Writing with Pleasure empowers academic, professional, and creative writers to reframe their negative emotions about writing and reclaim their positive ones. By learning how to cast light on the shadows, you will soon find yourself bringing passion and pleasure to everything you write. Acclaimed international writing expert Helen Sword invites you to step into your “WriteSPACE”—a space of pleasurable writing that is socially balanced, physically engaged, aesthetically nourishing, creatively challenging, and emotionally uplifting. Sword weaves together cutting-edge findings in the sciences and social sciences with compelling narratives gathered from nearly six hundred faculty members and graduate students from across the disciplines and around the world. She provides research-based principles, hands-on strategies, and creative “pleasure prompts” designed to help you ramp up your productivity and enhance the personal rewards of your writing practice. Whether you’re writing a scholarly article, an administrative email, or a love letter, this book will inspire you to find delight in even the most mundane writing tasks and a richer, deeper pleasure in those you already enjoy. Exuberantly illustrated by prizewinning graphic memoirist Selina Tusitala Marsh, Writing with Pleasure is an indispensable resource for academics, students, professionals, and anyone for whom writing has come to feel like a burden rather than a joy.

Examines the role of image and affect in teaching with new digital technologies and multimedia composition.

This book examines disability, diversity, and schooling exclusion in Haiti in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. Defending a social and anthropological conception of disability as a consequence of any situation that makes a subject uncomfortable and unable to live or act properly, the book explores the difficulties that disabled children face within the school system and considers how social exclusion provokes and exacerbates educational exclusion. With contributions from linguists, educational sociologists, educational psychologists, educators, and historians, the chapters focus on a range of phenomena such as the balance of languages used for teaching, gender equity, associated disorders, and the experiences of left-handed and deaf students. Ultimately, the authors demonstrate how the educational relationships built and practiced in school influence the perceptions of people with disabilities, with respect to both singular contexts and pedagogical practices. As such, it represents an important study of the relationship between school exclusion, disability, and those with precarious socio-familial conditions, and how they can be conceptualized and addressed in the context of crises. It will appeal to scholars, researchers, and academics with interests in diversity and inclusive education, pedagogy, crisis education, and educational psychology. Chapters 1, 3, 7, and 8 of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. They have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

What happens when teachers are removed from the equation, when we learn by ourselves or with peers? Increasingly rapid change is part of our world today and tomorrow. The need to learn and to adapt is now lifelong and ubiquitous. But are educators and educational institutions preparing today’s students for this reality? Educators and institutions choose pedagogic models, design curricula and provide instruction. However, this does not mirror the learning environments that we inhabit outside of formal education, nor does it reflect all our learning time during formal education. This text provides a data-driven picture of the independent learning experience – what occurs in the minds of learners as they negotiate learning tasks without (or with less) guidance and instruction. Cognition, distraction, embodied experience, emotion, and metacognition are central to this learning. Drawing on new empirical data, this volume focuses on university-aged learners. These are the learners who have been through our formal educational systems. Do they learn well in independent settings? Have they been prepared for this? Through an explication of this experience, this volume makes a case for how we can better prepare them for the demands of current and future learning.

Drawing on holistic research and professional practice, this book provides rich empirical, scientific, and clinical lenses to the discourse on wellbeing in higher education. The authors have appraised the underlying, conceptual, empirical, and applied nature of existing mind-body programmes often utilized to cultivate wellbeing (e.g., seated meditation, yoga, Taijiquan, Pilates, Feldenkrais, biofeedback, and the Alexander technique). Higher education is touted as a sector that develops new ideas for the wider community as well as ensuring students are provided with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes to positively contribute to the wider community. Within this setting, there are numerous benefits (e.g., attaining a reputable qualification), but there are also risks (e.g., stressors associated with expectations). To ensure the higher education setting is a place of wellbeing in addition to achievement, several strategies are promoted to assist staff and students whilst working and studying. Chapters offer clear implications for research and practice, and explore effective strategies for enhancing wellbeing for students and staff. The integrative mind-body programmes have considerable potential for developing wellbeing in the higher education settings. As such, this book will appeal to academics and researchers in the higher education sector, including scholar-practitioners, and teacher educators.