What Does a Model Model? And for Whom?

Abstract

Writing is an ever-creative artifice, elaborated in many different ways and used for many different purposes in different situations throughout history. From this perspective, each writer, embedded within a perceived sociohistoric moment, poses problems to solve, makes choices, and creates solutions from locally available resources and practices to create an effective communication for local circumstances. Writers develop down idiosyncratic pathways by iteratively solving myriad problems from early childhood through advanced adult competence, at times choosing contingent models, but these are different from the generalized models sought by psychologists. Standardized and standardizing models of writing performance, although having some educational value, do not capture the variety of ways people go about writing and can constrain writing development outside the school walls. This article considers a number of the complexly ramifying problems writers may address, forming individualized solutions of how to go about writing and what writing to produce.