Week 8, Blog 2: Boil It Down, Boys

THEORY: Blogging group 2: Expressivism
For your assigned theory please discuss the following. Also make sure that your read and comment on your group-mates blog postings:
How would you define the theory/model?
What are the main components of the theory/model?
How does it differ from the other 2 theories/models?
Who are the key players (e.g. theorists, pedagogies)?

The Expressivists
To the extent of the reading experience, Expressivists vest the power in the reader himself, encouraging students to "develop their own 'individual' and 'authentic' responses to texts" (30).  According to Expressionist philosophy, reading is thought to be a completely "natural" act.  Frank Smith, a chief proponent of Expressionism, said that reading should not be regarded as a "special activity" at all (and opposed all reading programs wholesale!), since, like all childhood learning, it goes on "all the time," without effort or prodding (32).

Several schools of reading theory have contributed to the various principles that have come be regarded as general components of this field.  Perhaps most influential to this theory is Reading Response Criticism (Active Reader school), which says the reader is "active," a far cry from the Objectivists, who are described as seeing the reader as a "blank tape registering a ready-made message" (36). 

The Objectivists
By contrast, the Objectivists put the power of the reading experience in the text; they're said to have seen the text as a "container of meaning" (46).  So far as instruction, the teacher in such a a context is said to act as "banker," depositing riches into the empty minds of students.

The Social-Culturalists (Social-Constructivists)
Under "culture theory," readers are seen as "socially constructed," yet not without agency, "balanced between determinism and autonomy."  Texts are neither "containers" nor, per Expressionists "infinitely pliable."  Instead, this school holds it important to view texts as "in use," produced in response to an audience, the times, and social conditions (60).  

Movers and Shakers
Most influential to this model are psycholinguists Frank Smith and Kenneth Goodman; reading-writing educators James Britton, Margaret Meek and Harold Rosen; also I.A. Richards, Q.D. Leavis, David Bleich and White & Pritchard.