DOI 10.35381/cm.v8i2.718
Product and process models of writing and their pedagogical practices
Los modelos de escritura de producto y por proceso y sus prácticas pedagógicas
Lidice Mónica Franco-Franco
lidimoni.franco@gmail.com
Ministerio de Educación, Guayaquil, Guayas
Ecuador
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2137-3805
Zila Isabel Esteves-Fajardo
zila.estevesf@ug.edu.ec
Universidad de Guayaquil, Guayaquil, Guayas
Ecuador
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2283-5370
Mainer Gregorio Alcívar-Olvera
mainer.alcivaro@ug.edu.ec
Universidad de Guayaquil, Guayaquil, Guayas
Ecuador
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7960-5333
Norma Narcisa Garcés-Garcés
norma.narcisag@ug.edu.ec
Universidad de Guayaquil, Guayaquil, Guayas
Ecuador
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0972-8714
Recibido: 15 de enero 2022
Revisado: 10 de febrero 2021
Aprobado: 15 de abril 2022
Publicado: 01 de mayo 2022
ABSTRACT
The general objective of this research was to describe the product and process models of writing and their pedagogical practices. This research was developed from the qualitative approach, using several bibliographic sources in order to obtain real information and to be able to reach the stated objective. In addition, the following methods were used: historical-logical, since it helped to establish the relationships between the facts that take place in the development of science, analytical-synthetic, since it was possible to generate a superior knowledge since additional knowledge was added to previous concepts, and the inductive method. It is concluded that both the product theory of writing and the process theory of writing are insufficient to address the semiotic, discursive and pragmatic components of written language. This is because they neglect the social-cultural character of language.
Descriptors: Writing; pedagogical research; teaching. (UNESCO Thesaurus).
RESUMEN
El objetivo general de la presente investigación fue describir los modelos de escritura de producto y por proceso y sus prácticas pedagógicas. Esta investigación se desarrolló desde el enfoque cualitativo, se ha hecho uso de varias fuentes bibliográficas a fin de conseguir información real y poder alcanzar el objetivo planteado. Se utilizaron, además, los siguientes métodos: histórico - lógico ya que el mismo ayudó a establecer las relaciones entre los hechos que tienen lugar en el desarrollo de la ciencia, analítico – sintético ya que con este se pudo generar un saber superior puesto que, se añadieron conocimientos adicionales a conceptos anteriores y el método inductivo. Se concluye que tanto la teoría de la escritura de producto y la teoría de la escritura de proceso son insuficientes para atender los componentes semióticos, discursivos y pragmáticos de la lengua escrita. En razón de que dejan de lado el carácter social-cultural del lenguaje.
Descriptores: Escritura; investigación pedagógica; enseñanza. (Tesauro UNESCO).
INTRODUCTION
It should be noted that writing models are associated with pedagogical practices. These are evaluated by experts on their scope and contribution to human development. After all, the common goal where social and psychological sciences converge is the human being. In this sense, writing is one of the complex and interdisciplinary tools of a social, linguistic and cognitive nature. Hence, we start from the premise that we are discursive beings. Therefore, discourse becomes the common ground where communality of knowledge and interests are constructed and identified (Martínez, 2001, p.197).
From this assumption, the intention that motivates this article is to analyze, describe and compare the product model of writing together with the process model of writing and their respective pedagogical models in force in the classroom. Therefore, this intention arises from the critical reflection on the teaching and learning process that takes place in the classroom around writing and how this practice affects the written culture of students and teachers.
This situation has been observed by the researcher in the educational institutions where she has worked as a teacher. Likewise, in the experiences that emerge from the academic interaction that takes place with the students and teachers of Basic and Secondary General Education of the community of Chichiriviche through workshops, cultural activities and lately through the theatrical plays that have led to the elaboration of scripts for the staging. In summary, this academic situation has been registered descriptively and has made it possible to identify that the students present difficulties in terms of their written competence and that the teacher develops a pedagogical practice based on an outdated and obsolete writing model. In this regard the study conducted by Borregales, (2019) at the U.E. "Colegio Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe" in the community of Chichiriviche of Falcón State, revealed in relation to the written competence of students in the 5th year "B" (2018-2019) the following:
...in the spelling subcomponent present difficulty in applying spelling rules. This has repercussions when writing and expressing words accurately, affecting the clarity of the ideas of what is to be communicated in the text (what was said). With respect to the lexical subcomponent, it was found that they present difficulties in terms of vocabulary knowledge and word meanings due to the phenomenon of polysemy, homonymy, synonymy, hyponymy and hyperonymy (p.60).
It is worth mentioning that this incompetence in writing is a problem of a social nature and occurs both in Venezuelan and Latin American students. Although it should be clarified that neither do teachers and other professionals escape this reality, who also show deficiencies in their writing performance. However, for the purposes of this article, only the educational scenario will be addressed. In this regard, it should be specified that for the purposes of this research, written culture is understood as the performance capacity to make use of the resources produced in the sociocultural evolution of writing and thus be able to appropriate the psychological tools to participate in the different discursive, academic and professional communities through which students and teachers interact by means of reading and writing.
On the other hand, there is the challenge that this implies when exercising the role of teacher in a world where there is an urgent need to contribute to the reduction of inequalities and the eradication of poverty. This has produced the accumulation of so many backwardnesses, thus understanding the meaning of poverty from multiple perspectives, especially here in Latin America. Faced with this social and educational situation that is worsening every day, it is urgent to make a decision on an option to produce a change in the educational dimension seen from the focus of the macro category of written culture, whose macro concept establishes a semantic network between three categories: the writing model, the pedagogical model and the curriculum. These are the bases on which the educational model is based.
On the other hand, behaviorist pedagogical practice has generated apathy, disinterest and what has been worse a phobia to use writing as a space for spiritual, cultural and epistemological growth as evidenced in the attitude of the students in the descriptive record of Borregales, (2019). Consequently, this writing and pedagogical model has contributed to the deficiency in the written competence of students propitiating the increase of school dropout from basic education to graduate studies. The problem goes beyond the children of illiterates. Therefore, this is a complex problem that transcends the educational sphere and is located in the socio-cultural dimension.
It is therefore a matter of ensuring that curricular change is consistent with the accelerated and diverse forms of knowledge construction in which we operate today, based on disciplinary transversality, in order for it to be sustainable over time.
Consequently, this challenge summons all professionals regardless of their specialties because the epistemological model of the Venezuelan educational system is based on the principles of transversality, interdisciplinarity and productive pedagogy through the learning-by-doing approach (Ministry of Popular Power for Education, 2018). Therefore, within our disciplines and together with the other areas of knowledge we must face this insufficiency of written competence to generate a dialogue of knowledge with society and its institutions from an integral, complex and transdisciplinary vision.
In this sense, writing performance is linked to two categories: the writing model with which he or she learned and, in turn, this learning is oriented by the pedagogical model that teachers developed in him or her (since each student summarizes a personal and collective history of teaching-learning in terms of writing and reading that determine his or her belief system and the way of constructing learning has an impact on his or her mental structure).
The above arguments establish the purpose of this research. There is still a great need for debates that generate a dialogue of knowledge that would allow us to identify and recognize in the practices developed by teachers the assessment of what to learn about writing and how to learn writing. Beyond the acquisition of the code for its decoding. Since the adoption of any of these writing models and their pedagogical practices affects the written competence with which students and teachers interact for the generation and transformation of knowledge in academic and professional discursive communities. Therefore, according to Martínez (2001), a conscious and intentional discursive appropriation is merited.
According to the formulated approaches, the general objective of this research is to describe the product and process writing models and their pedagogical practices.
METHODOLOGY
This research has used the qualitative approach as a methodology, using several bibliographic sources in order to obtain real information and to be able to reach the proposed objective. The following methods were used: historical-logical since it helped to establish the relationships between the facts that take place in the development of science, analytical-synthetic since with this method it was possible to generate a superior knowledge since additional knowledge was added to previous concepts and the inductive method, since it was based on the observation of the facts with the mechanism of generalization of the action that has been appreciated (Behar, 2008). Through the application of the methods indicated in the preceding paragraph, a critical analysis of the bibliographic and documentary material was carried out.
RESULTS
Product Writing Model
It should be noted that the product writing model is linked to the writing practice that has been developed since ancient times and has persisted through time in school institutions. Among the causes for which it originated are related to the emergence of grammatical knowledge that was produced, which oriented writing towards the correct reproduction of handwriting and faithful compliance with the standard established by the scribes. Hence, this conception of writing forged a mechanical, punitive pedagogical current based on the detection of errors. This meant that the focus of attention was centered on the formal and superficial aspects of writing. In this regard, according to Díaz (2002), this product model considers that:
[...] writing is a mechanical phenomenon strictly centered on the graphic representation of linguistic data, provided by external sources. It is an activity comparable to transcription: the tracing of letters and the faithful copying of the displayed models are important; this justifies the fact that writing practices emphasize the final product.
This conception about the nature of writing was then produced by the normative and prescriptive influence of grammar, based on the criterion of authority. In this regard Arnáez and García, (2012, p.16) added that it was also due "to the treatises of classical rhetoric, in which the teaching of rules and directions for speaking and writing appropriately was imparted". Consequently, this fact resulted in the teaching of written composition being assumed as part of the teaching of grammar.
It is worth noting that oriented from that conception associated with behaviorist teaching practices in which "writing is a set of skills that can be taught", writing was fragmented into sub-skills (Caldera, 2006, p.116). This vision resulted in the application of atomistic and sequential pedagogical and didactic methods aimed first at the development of skills related to psychomotor skills. Then to the domain of transcription, passing through the recognition of the letter. Then with its reproduction through words, sentences, paragraphs and finally its integration in the text, where only spelling correction and cohesion are taken into account.
Consequently, from the product approach, writing then becomes a support for the transmission of knowledge and only fulfills secondary recording functions. Therefore, in the mechanistic pedagogical practice, writing is used to carry out the evaluation commissioned by the teacher. A quantitative vision of writing predominates, which undermines the writing process. In short, for the Product Writing Model, the communicative intention does not count, nor does the audience to whom it is addressed. Hence, its practice in the classroom is based on superficial, decontextualized, insignificant activities reinforced by memorization and recirculation of information through copying and dictation, as detected in the descriptive records made by Borregales (2019).
Finally, the inadequacy of this model reported by research conducted in this field in the 1980s opened the possibility of new lines of research. On the grounds that these models "have been insufficient to conceptualize writing or explain its nature". (Hernández & Quintero, 2001, cited by Arnáez & García, 2012; p.16). In this regard, it is appropriate to emphasize that the product model of writing has been developed under the mechanistic pedagogical model. Let us then examine the psychological currents of learning on which the product writing theory is based.
Cognitive or Stage Model of Writing
The nature and function of language has led to "the great theoretical diversity that has characterized linguistic research since its beginnings" (Camargo and Martínez, 1994). This multidisciplinary position has implied carrying out interdisciplinary research among the language sciences from which emerges Psycholinguistics as a discipline that addresses the problem of the role of language in human psychological functioning. Consequently, this discipline conceives writing as a particular instance of individual behavior. In this regard, Marinkovich, (2002, p.217) points out that Cognitive Psychology:
...by focusing its concern on mental processes and representations of the human cognitive system, it revolutionizes the psychological and philosophical foundations of research into human abilities, emphasizing certain principles, namely:
(1) the mind can be studied;
(2) complex abilities are composed of processes and subprocesses; (3) the mind can be studied; (4) the mind can be studied; and
In this direction, Mostacero, (2017, p.256) points out that there is a shift from the "reader's prose" to the "author's prose", since the concern until then had been oriented, according to constructivist currents, towards the reading process. However, the growing difficulties in the written competence presented by students contributed to shift the focus to writing (Camps, 2003, p.3). Thus, a change was generated in these fields, since attention was focused on the description and explanation of the functioning of writing models. It was then a question of investigating the cognitive processes that human beings execute when writing. Consequently, this approach was developed from the psychological dimension of the individual, since this model:
It referred to the main intellectual tasks that the author had to plan and execute in order to compose the text, but which began as individual tasks. The focus of attention was directed to the individual in that he had to integrate his short and long-term memory with various elements of the external rhetorical situation [...] (Mostacero, 2017; p.256).
In this sense, attention is focused on the mental processes that the writer must develop in order to activate his or her previous knowledge. Hence the focus on working memory where a set of processes for planning, textualizing and revising are operationalized. It follows from the above that, unlike the product model of writing, which considers writing as a mere mechanical transcription of ideas, writing is a faithful reflection of thought. Therefore, "they write what comes to mind" (Caldera, 2006; p.110). They even say everything they know about the subject without taking into account the context from which the communicative situation arises, nor the communicative intention.
On the other hand, for the process or stage approach, writing is seen as a complex process depending on specific communicative situations, this being a great advance in cognitive science. Of course, these contributions would have implications for the teaching of writing, since it could no longer be approached as fragmented and decontextualized skills, since these subprocesses are integrated in several dimensions and are recursive and interactive in any of their stages, being summarized in the generation of ideas, the organization of information and the formulation of goals.
Similarly, the discovery of the learner and the learner's voice as the author of his or her writing led to a new way of understanding the process. Therefore, this perspective places the process of written production from another angle by giving the subject a permanent capacity to reconstruct his or her knowledge, which is so different from the conditioned and behaviorist learning theories of the mechanistic pedagogical model that focus on the automatism of behavior.
Therefore "teaching writing as an expert would entail promoting metacognition." (Espinosa, 2018, p.11) This control allows the writer to regulate the processes of written production in order to achieve the objectives proposed in the planning of writing.
The traditional mechanistic pedagogical model based on a supposed authority, which sent the teacher, who was the one who spoke and decided. From this situation it is derived that his knowledge did not admit criticism and was a dogma of faith. In this sense, the students' previous knowledge was not taken into account, their brain functioned as a deposit, since the student's participation was restricted to memorizing the teacher's knowledge, incorporating the information given arbitrarily and to the letter in their cognitive structure.
Another change was the conception of the textualization subprocess as a continuous, recursive, systematic, metacognitive process that implies rereading and evaluating what has been written in order to consider whether the communicative purpose has been achieved. However, this approach is the opposite of product writing, which did not even require revision, since a single transcription of the ideas in the mind was enough to obtain a finished product. On the other hand, for the process writing model:
el texto en sí es un sistema global que se construye paso a paso, a través de actividades cognitivas y subprocesos organizados (planificación o preparación, textualización o elaboración de borradores, revisión y edición) que son interactivos y recursivos, porque es posible hacer modificaciones al texto en cualquier etapa del proceso en la que se encuentre el escritor. (Madrigal, 2015; p.205).
Teorías psicológicas del modelo pedagógico constructivista e interaccionista
El enfoque constructivista parte de la premisa que el conocimiento no es copia de la realidad, sino una construcción del ser humano. El aprendizaje es un proceso interno de reorganización cognitiva que depende del nivel evolutivo del sujeto. Por ende, la postura epistemológica se fundamenta en las diversas corrientes psicológicas entre las cuales están: el enfoque Psicogenético Piagetiano, la Teoría de los Esquemas Cognitivos, la Teoría Ausubeliana de la Asimilación y del Aprendizaje Significativo y la Teoría Instruccional, entre otras. (Díaz, y Hernández, 2002, p.28).
CONCLUSIÓN
Se concluye, del análisis que la escritura de producto “no tiene trascendencia ni personal, ni académica, ni social, porque carece de propósitos comunicativos definidos”. (Díaz, 2002). En cambio, la escritura por proceso si bien reconoce que la escritura es compleja, gradual, progresiva e interactiva sólo se centra en los procesos intrapsicológicos que efectúa el escritor experto, pero desconocemos como lo realizan los novatos y de qué manera influye la mediación semiótica. Por consiguiente, tanto la teoría de la escritura de producto con su modelo pedagógico mecanicista y la teoría de la escritura de proceso con su modelo pedagógico constructivista son insuficientes para atender los componentes semióticos, discursivos y pragmáticos de la lengua escrita. En razón de que dejan de lado el carácter social y cultural del lenguaje.
FINANCIAMIENTO
No monetario.
AGRADECIMIENTO
A todos los agentes sociales involucrados en el proceso investigativo.
Psychological theories of the constructivist and interactionist pedagogical model
The constructivist approach is based on the premise that knowledge is not a copy of reality, but a construction of the human being. Learning is an internal process of cognitive reorganization that depends on the evolutionary level of the subject. Therefore, the epistemological position is based on various psychological currents, among which are: the Piagetian Psychogenetic approach, the Theory of Cognitive Schemas, the Ausubelian Theory of Assimilation and Meaningful Learning and the Instructional Theory, among others (Díaz and Hernández, 2002, p.28).
CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the analysis that the writing product "has no personal, academic or social transcendence, because it lacks defined communicative purposes". (Díaz, 2002). On the other hand, writing by process, although it recognizes that writing is complex, gradual, progressive and interactive, only focuses on the intrapsychological processes carried out by the expert writer, but we do not know how novices do it and how semiotic mediation influences it. Therefore, both the product theory of writing with its mechanistic pedagogical model and the process theory of writing with its constructivist pedagogical model are insufficient to address the semiotic, discursive and pragmatic components of written language. This is because they leave aside the social and cultural character of language.
FINANCING
Non-monetary.
THANKS
To all the social agents involved in the research process.
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