CCR 691: North (1987) "The Making of Knowledge in Composition"

North, Stephen. (1987). The Making of Knowledge in Composition: Portrait of an Emerging Field. New Jersey: Boynton/Cook Publishers.

· Preface: North uses anecdotes from his first experiences entering the emerging field of Composition to illustrate his early realization that all through the 60s-80s “the field didn’t have a core or a center: there seemed to be no way to frame its central problems, nor any method by which to set about trying to resolve them.” Thus, with his book, he seeks to answer the following questions: “What exactly is this field called Composition? Where does it come from? How does it work? Where is it going?”

· Introduction (1-6): North outlines a narrowed focus to his goals in exploring the ways knowledge is constructed in composition studies: he hopes to reveal how we’ve gathered constructed knowledge in composition studies. Methodologically speaking, North shows his concern that in the years up to the publication of his text, the field of composition has produced vast knowledge that, due to its ‘newness’ and lack of center or core defining and reflecting on methodological practices—is lacking in coherence and methodological integrity (p. 3). To address this dilemma, North presents his analysis of the field by identifying different communities in composition studies where researchers follow various modes of inquiry (which he sees as being practitioners, historians, philosophers, critics, experimentalists, clinicians, formalists, and ethnographers, p. 4).

· Historical Context, “composition becomes Composition” (9-17): True to his method outlined in the preface and introduction, North proceeds to discuss not only that composition studies emerged to be a professional field, but also how it emerged. North draws on historical contexts and national influences to composition’s initial recognition as a valuable field of investigation (mostly since national concerns in the mid 1960s aimed towards increasing citizens’ ability to read, write, and think critically, thus, giving credibility—and funding—to research in composition). Composition began to be distinguished as a field away from its former position of being the “lowliest members of the English academic community,”—those that did the service work of teaching freshmen composition, while the superior English teachers taught and studied literature (14). North admits, though, that such an emergence was challenging since the teaching of writing had thus far been based on practice—“in English teaching we have relied too long on our best guesses” (J.N. Hook, qtd. in North, 16)—and not based on solid research or theory. North suggests the reason why composition research was not credibly grounded and why ‘compositionists’ were timid about asserting their authority is that the field did not yet have the means to do so: “it had no such control over knowledge, no mode of inquiry by which such order might have been imposed, nor whose findings would have been acknowledged by the wider profession” (15). Then, after Braddock, Lloyd-Jones, and Schoer’s Research in Written Composition was published—a report which basically concluded that most research so far in composition studies were grounded in faulty and irresponsible research methods—North suggests the field began to advance its research, calling out for the practice of teaching composition to stem from ethical, appropriately designed, and regulated methods for theory and research.