College Composition and Communication Jul 2023

Toward a New Neurobiology of Writing: Plasticity and the Feeling of Failure

Edward Comstock

Abstract

This article will explore the potential of recent neuroscience to inform a writing pedagogy aimed at a habitus of plasticity and emotional intelligence. Arguing that our field has never fully realized the embodied pedagogy called for decades ago by compositionists such as Brand and McLeod, by placing affect theory in our field in conversation with neuroscience, the article theorizes the value of understanding the plasticity of embodied affects as meaningful in writing processes. It demonstrates that neuroscience offers advances in our understanding of the emotions involved in learning while providing practical resources to “recategorize” emotional experiences in ways that will enable students to persist in writing-related tasks and to better realize their rhetorical and social goals. Ultimately, addressing the limits of reason and metacognition, the article claims that our pedagogies must confront the new forms of woundedness and ossification that pose increasing challenges to learning today.

Journal
College Composition and Communication
Published
2023-07-01
DOI
10.58680/ccc202332523
Open Access
Closed
Topics
writing pedagogy multilingual writers affect and writing

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

  1. Walker (2025)
    Machine Learning’s Unintended Curriculum: The Impact of Large Language Models o…
    College English
  2. Mack (2024)
    Developing Dispositions for Transfer
    Pedagogy

Cites in this index (9)

  1. Jack (2022)
    The Cognitive Vernacular as Normative Mandate in Habits of Mind
    College English
  2. Ballenger et al. (2019)
    The Emotional Work of Revision
    College Composition and Communication
  3. Boyle (2016)
    Writing and Rhetoric and/as Posthuman Practice
    College English
  4. Anson (2016)
    The Pop Warner Chronicles: A Case Study in Contextual Adaptation and the Transf…
    College Composition and Communication
  5. Gross et al. (2016)
    Frameworks for Failure
    Pedagogy
Show all 9 →
  1. Banks (2015)
    2015 CCCC Chair’s Address: Ain’t No Walls behind the Sky, Baby! Funk, Flight, Freedom
    College Composition and Communication
  2. Gruber et al. (2011)
    Rhetoric and the Neurosciences: Engagement and Exploration
    Poroi
  3. Martins (2008)
    Scoring Rubrics and the Material Conditions of Our Relations with Students
    Teaching English in the Two-Year College
  4. Brand (1987)
    The Why of Cognition: Emotion and the Writing Process
    College Composition and Communication
Also cites 12 works outside this index ↓
  1. Alcorn (2010)
    ’The Desire Not to Know’ as a Challenge to Teaching
    Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society  ↗
  2. Anderson (2016)
    Neural Reuse in the Organization and Development of the Brain
    Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology  ↗
  3. Broad (2003)
    10.2307/j.ctt46nxvm
    What We Really Value Beyond Rubrics in Teaching and Assessing Writing  ↗
  4. Davis (2010)
    10.2307/j.ctt5vkfx1
    Inessential Solidarity: Rhetoric and Foreigner Relations  ↗
  5. 10.1093/actrade/9780199299515.book.1
     ↗
  6. Jack (2019)
    Raveling the Brain: Toward a Trans-disciplinary Neurorhetoric
     ↗
  7. Malabou (2019)
    Morphing Intelligence: From IQ Measurement to Artificial Brains
     ↗
  8. Murray (2009)
    Non-Discursive Rhetoric: Image and Affect in Multimodal Composition
     ↗
  9. Rice (2015)
    Pathologia
    Quarterly Journal of Speech  ↗
  10. Rickert (2007)
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  11. 10.20429/ijsotl.2017.110213
     ↗
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    Overlearning Hyperstabilizes a Skill by Rapidly Making Neurochemical Processing Inhibitor…
    Nature Neuroscience  ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 5 View in citation network →

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