Special thanks to ChelónaRSA member Thomas McCloskey for leading a workshop earlier this week about submitting G.I.F.T.S. proposals to NCA!
To see a copy of examples and his presentation, see our G.I.F.T.S. Overview document.
Remember, the NCA 2017 deadline is fast approaching and we want to see you all in Dallas!
Post by Cheló̱na RSA president, Rebecca Alt
Students enrolled undergraduate rhetoric courses actively engage with some of the most urgent contemporary public discourses. Whether it is a more general education course, like COMM 200: Critical Thinking and Speaking, or ENGL 296: Reading and Writing Disability, as instructors we expect our students to critically examine public discourses in order to make and contribute arguments of their own. From foreign policy to the economy, to the Purple Line and campus safety, undergraduates in rhetoric courses all take part in various “unending conversations” (Burke, 110-111) about their lives in macro and micro contexts. The hope is that we succeed in teaching them how to participate in these conversations ethically, compassionately, and effectively.
Many students in our classes are fulfilling general education or minor requirements; thus, not all students arrive with the same amount of background knowledge on every, or any, given topic. Though challenging, I believe this is ultimately a productive inequality wherein collaborative reasoning can flourish and our students can build on each other’s strengths. One way to promote this kind of joint reasoning is by teaching a classical rhetorical method: Stasis Theory.
SO WHAT IS STASIS THEORY?
Though the exact origins of stasis theory are contested, it is believed that Aristotle and Hermagoras developed this method of inquiry which was later refined by Cicero, Quintilian, and Hermogenes (Purdue OWL). In the classical era, it was primarily a tool for invention used in forensic settings (Fahnestock & Secor, 1985). Contemporarily, we can think of the stases as a practical way of categorizing arguments or points of contention, ultimately helping a reasoner arrive at a krisis, or a judgment, about a particular issue. (Corbett & Eberly, 2000). The modern system, developed by Fahnestock and Secor, consists of the following questions:
Ideally, the arguer interested in a problem or issue will begin at the primary stasis, fact/conjecture. Then, much like a detective, s/he searchers for information about and interrogates the problem itself. For example, if the College Park police department receives a report about this potential trespassing incident, the officers begin to investigate the “crime scene.” They collect relevant observations, narratives, and expressions in order to piece together what happened (Corbett & Eberly). They draw on surveillance footage, eyewitness accounts, and other clues. Once the police officers establish the facts of the case, they can determine if it was trespassing, or maybe Dan was lost, or even hurt and needed help. Once the definition of the incident is determined, the process of understanding the causes and consequences, quality, and procedures can begin. In any case, the last three levels of stasis are entirely contingent upon the first two. And, like most rhetorical concepts, the consensus or agreement at any level of stasis is field-dependent (Toulmin): contingent upon the context, the audience, and the time.
Any public exigence should be treated the same way. Before one decides whether or not building a wall between the United States and Mexico is the right course of action, s/he must first establish the facts of the case, the nature of the problem (definition), the causes and consequences, and the quality. On this topic, the student of rhetoric conducts academic research, analyzes audience, identifies common assumptions or topoi, and looks for personal stories and anecdotes. Given the facts related to this issue, the qualities ascribed to it, and the stakes, building a wall might not be the best possible course of action. Whatever topics our students work on independently or discuss collaboratively, this “method” should be emphasized.
In our basic oral communication courses, we call this process research. However, I prefer to think of it as investigative invention – students first ask the question, “What do we know about X?” before engaging in the rigorous investigation at the stasis of fact/conjecture. It’s more than “finding sources” to “support your point” – it is about coming to an understanding of the basic aspects of the problem. Chaïm Perelman believed that in an argument situation – with two interlocutors or a speaker and audience – “contact of minds” could be achieved through the establishment of common ground (The New Rhetoric); this “mind contact” was necessary for argumentation to begin. We often take “facts” for granted as just a “part of logos” or “sources,” but the process or dynamis of discovering these facts is a crucial part of rhetorical invention – for Aristotle, for “observing in any given case all the available means of persuasion.”
Deliberation—with oneself or with others—at each level of stasis is an effective method for encouraging our students to engage in more reasoned and ethical judgments in their practical discourse. True to its Latin translation, “stasis” means “stop.” When I explain this concept to my students in the courses I teach, I emphasize how important it is to do just that: stop. Public debates often grow heated, and usually the fastest and loudest one gets the most airtime. But to approach an urgent problem with a mindset that we don’t know everything or that definitions might change and values are field-dependent is to be a more ethically engaged citizen, which is a very important objective of a rhetorical education.
GREAT, SO HOW DO I TEACH STASIS THEORY?
There are a variety of ways to implement this theoretical frame into class meetings on a regular basis. An instructor can plan a dynamic lecture followed by group discussion on a case or cases, or design a more formal Problem-Based Learning Day that requires deeper investigation into an issue (first providing students with the theoretical context of the assignment). Here is a detailed lesson plan with learning outcomes, materials, and procedural details for a Problem-Based Learning Day.
Special thanks to member Cameron Mozafari, who contributed helpful and necessary clarifying information to improve this post.
References
Brizee, A. Stasis theory. Purdue Owl. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/736/1/
Burke, K. (1941). The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action Third Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Corbett, E. P.J., & Eberly, R. A. (2000). The Elements of Reasoning 2nd Edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Fahnestock, J., & Secor, M. (1985). Toward a modern version of stasis theory. In C. Knueppper (Ed.), Oldspeak/newspeak: Rhetorical transformation (pp. 217-226). Arlington, TX: NCTE.
Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1969). The New Rhetoric. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Toulmin, S. (2000). The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Post Author: Annie Laurie Nichols
The spring semester here at Maryland is drawing to a close and summer is fast approaching… the perfect time for our upcoming #rhetoricroadtrip to RSA in Atlanta! But also the perfect time to take a beat and really think about engaging pedagogically with redesigning lesson plans.
With the recent trend toward active learning, many of us have been trying to incorporate more activities into our lessons. But planning an active lesson is not as simple as adding a related activity and stirring. An active lesson plan must still consider how to help students use and master skills and concepts, how this lesson connects to prior and upcoming lessons and continues to build the major arcs of the class, and how projects and theories are scaffolded and modeled. This is quite a lot to think about simultaneously, so I have developed a method of block planning to ensure I incorporate everything into a thoughtful active lesson plan.
I start by asking myself a series of questions:
● What concepts do I want students to learn?
● What skills do I want students to learn/practice?
● What do they have to already know to be able to do/understand these concepts/skills?
● What have they already learned/what do they already know that can help them understand and use these concepts?
● What upcoming material will these skills and concepts help them understand and do?
Then I subdivide the lesson into three blocks. Each block includes an activity and direct engagement with course concepts:
| Block 1 (15 min) | Block 2 (15 min) | Block 3 (15 min) | |
| Goal 1 | Give students an experience that establishes the need for this material | Give students a way to analyze communication using the material | Give students a way to apply material and generate new material |
| Action 1 | Listening is Power activity to demonstrate the role of listening in communication | Watch a clip from Star Trek where several characters are involved in a negotiation. What kind of listening is each doing? How does that affect the communication? | In groups of 3, read the scenario. You are going to act as consultants to the people in the scenario. How should they change their listening practices? Convince them will solve their problem. |
| Goal 2 | Check comprehension of homework concepts | Debrief the analysis and connect to past material | Set up need for future material |
| Action 2 | Ask students to give concepts (5 types of listening), definitions, and examples; write on board | How does listening fit into what you have learned about negotiation? What kind of listening did you use in the yellow blueberries activity? How would a different kind of listening have changed how the negotiation went? What else was going wrong in the scenario? | Your homework is to read about group dynamics, particularly how groupthink develops and can be avoided. As you read, consider how these theories could help the people in the scenario avoid their problem. |
The answers to the questions I have asked myself map into these blocks, and are each paired with an activity. I have found this type of lesson planning to be useful across a variety of courses that include active learning. This particular example is for a 50-minute class period (with 5 minutes reserved to take attendance, make announcements, etc.). For a 75-minute class, I add two more blocks. Arranging the class period like this gives the class a good balance between thinking and application, and breaks up the time I am talking with students doing activities. It also makes sure that I don’t skip the vital step of connecting each activity directly to course content in a deliberate and explicit way.
– Annie Laurie
Getting undergraduates to read academic journal articles can be a daunting task.
Post by: Chelona RSA Exec. Board Member, Jaclyn Bruner
Even in upper level classes, if you aren’t careful with how and when you assign the more challenging reading assignments – even a good professor can stoke the fires of a revolt. As the instructor, you know you think the reading is interesting and that the author makes good points, but how can you know if your students will engage with the readings enough to make it worthwhile?
When I was an undergraduate, my rhetoric classes were small, seminar style classes. And guess what – the majority of the readings were journal articles. I loved classes where I didn’t have to buy a textbook and where I got to read things that challenged my perspective on the world.
Now that I am the one in front of a classroom, one course in particular stands out to me. I took “Public Memory” with Brad Vivian… and he practically threw us into the deep-end. My classmates would moan and complain about the reading load, and I would nod along with them, acting as though the journal articles were long and boring to me, too – all the while, keeping my gratitude for the challenging readings to myself.
Of course, in class Dr. Vivian would walk us through the articles, pointing out different ways to engage with the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial or explaining the concentric circles of Edward Casey’s public, collective, social, or individual memory. He would ask us if we bought the argument, what could have made it stronger, or to elaborate on something that really stuck out to us. I didn’t know it at the time, but these were some of the most formative elements of my graduate career, both as a student and as a teacher.
In that class, I learned to love the way that rhetorical criticism shone a light on specific texts. I was taught to evaluate authors’ arguments and problematize their claims. I gained confidence in understanding and critically engaging the world around me.
As I step back into the classroom this week, I have re-worked my syllabus to include academic journal articles as a part of the assigned readings. I have brought them into the classroom in the past, but only as in-class activities. This spring, I have upped the ante, and I am challenging my students to engage with the articles on their own.
So for the first two weeks, I plan to bring excerpts of journal articles into our classroom as group activities.
To keep students engaged when they are responsible for reading the articles later in the semester though, I want to use these early in-class activities to provide them tools for reading academic articles. I believe these tools can aid in developing an understanding of the complex arguments presented in academic articles. A method that has been working well for me (both in basic and upper-level courses) requires teaching the “Four Things” to look for when reading a journal article:
1) Research Questions/Argument,
2) Text,
3) Historical Info/Context, and
4) Scholarship.
In other words:
What is the author saying?
What is s/he studying?
What does the audience need to know?
Who else writes about these things?
I believe that equipping my students with these questions will help to eliminate some of the frustration that comes with trying to read and understand an academic article when preparing for class. By the end of the semester, my students will be reading a speech and a criticism of that speech, in addition to producing their own rhetorical criticism of a text they select.
In the meantime, for these early days of the semester, if a student comes to class willing to engage with the readings and ready to learn, I think the semester will turn out just fine!