Patrick J . Slattery APPLYING INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY TO COMPOSITION

After summarizing a scheme of intellectual development, and the debate that has taken place over applying such a model to composition, this article presents the findings and pedagogical implications of a study that focuses on intellectual orientation and multiple-source writing. The findings of the study suggest that first-year college students who write from sources can approach divergent points of view from a variety of intellectual orientations and that students' assumptions about paper topics and academic disciplines influence the approaches taken in particular essays. These results imply that to foster critical thinking, teachers can respond individually to students' papers in terms of their specific intellectual approaches. Over the last decade, a number of researchers have applied models of intellectual development to composition studies, arguing that these schemes illuminate the difficulties of beginning writers and suggest pedagogical strategies for helping them improve. However, some teachers have criticized developmentalists not only for incorrectly attributing differences in student writing to variations in intellectual orientation, but for wrongly claiming that basic writers cannot think abstractly. In this essay, I would like to present one model of intellectual development and to summarize the debate that has taken place in the Journal of Basic Writing over applying Patrick f. Slattery, associate director of composition at the University of Michigan , teaches writing and literature. He has contributed to The Leaflet, Rhetoric Review, and College Composition and Communication and is currently working on a textbook about writing from sources. © Journal of Basic Writing, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1990