Exploring genre to develop creativity, awareness, and critical skills

Abstract: Genres have familiar patterns (Schryer, 1994) that are often learned and can influence one’s opinions and beliefs (Gronbeck, 1978). Genres have dominant, identifiable representational patterns, but they are not necessarily independent of each other. To some degree many texts are hybrid genres; they draw upon various textual patterns (Bakhtin, 1986). The nuanced play of patterns in blurred genres can have a tremendously powerful affect. Bawarshi and Reiff (2010) outline three approaches to genre pedagogies: explicit, implicit, and interactive. This panel presentation explores these approaches by offering three ways to implement the notion of genre, and specifically genre-blurring, into the classroom as a way to: 1) continue to foster students’ creativity in poetic reading and writing; 2) explore students’ understanding and response to environmental issues and 3) develop students’ critical digital literacy skills.

Conference paper with Claire Ahn and Clarissa de Leon