The article is
"Physicists Reading Physics: Schema-Laden Purposes and Purpose-Laden
Schema." WRITTEN COMMUNICATION 2 (1985): 3-24.
in slightly different form it appears as chapter 8 of SHAPING WRITTEN
KNOWLEDGE. University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.
Beyond providing evidence for the well-known phenomena that
scientists read opportunistically, the article proposes that the
opportunistic value of information is perceived against a personal
construction of the knowledge, social activity, and participants of
the relevant fields--that is fields perceived as relevant. These
field schema are doubly dynamic (or activity oriented)
because they are framed in terms of a field in the process of solving
problems AND the individual's own research program that is making certain
bets as to the best way to procede in advancing the interests of the
field and the interests of the individual. As the activities are
constantly unfolding and evolving so is the organization of the
activity-oriented schema. Dialectically, the activities are framed
against the perception of the field and knowledge.
The study is based on interview and observation of seven
publishing research physicists.
END OF SUMMARY
While the current interests and projects of people in fields
beyond science may be less well-defined (although Lawyers, for example,
may be even more case/project focused, I would imagine), I think the
argument I make may have much broader applicability, with some
modifications for the different structures of the fields of activities,
the social interactions, and the nature of individual projects. It may
even be at least heuristic for thinking about recreational reading of
various sorts, even though many personal and field and organizational
aspects would be radically different.
I have been following the "How do YOU read" thread with great
interest. Over the years I have done lots of self-observing in this area,
and then when I wrote this article, it became a tool for organizing and
perceiving my own experience. One of the things I examine in the article
is the process by which we scan available reading possibilities (in the
case of phyusicists embodied in CUREENT CONTENTS or the tables of
Contents of journals already determined to be relevant) in order to
select texts to look at, and then the processes by which we devote more
or less attention of particular kinds to the texts.
There was a period pre -tenure where I would never read anything
unless I was going to write directly on it. Now that I have a bit more
leisure and security, while there are clearly some texts that are
immediately required by current projects--like histories of worlds fairs
to understand the Edison participation in electrical exhibitions--there
are some things that I am attracted to that seem to have little to do
with anything current--but they almost always wind up being part of some
underlying long term concern--or at least I wind up integrating it into a
concern. Sometimes I am attracted to books are articles by a
pre-conscious affinity, almost like a tropism. And of course there are
constant tropism like choices in picking up or laying down reading or
switching levels of attention or speed of scanning or issues I am
attending to. Sometimes there are conscious choices in this moving in
and out or around texts, but often these choices happen so rapidly or for
such obscure reasons that I am hardly aware of them. Some of these sub
rosa reorientations to a text I think have much to do with how close or
alienated we feel toward a text ands therefore how much of what sort of
thing we absorb from it. This ability to integrate or align our minds
with a text in pursuit of projects important to us is I think one thing
that those of us who have stayed in the academy and bookish professions
have a lot more experience and skill in than many of our students. That
is one reason I have made response to reading a central part of the
writing pedagogy in my textbooks.
I have gone on quite a long time with this, but let me just
mention one other aspect from the teacher's point of view. We select
books and articles for our student's to read from certain criteria having
to do with our and our field's projects, and our perception of our
students' pathways into those and their own projects. Then when we read
those texts again in preparation for class, or examine them further in
class, we read with not only a more intense attention than p[erhaps we
have read them before, but also with a different kind of attention. The
increased attention has not only to do with our sense of responsibility
and frear of embarassment--that somehow we have to perform with those
texts, but also there is something to do with our awareness of the
particular students who are engaged in simultaneous acts of reading the
same texts.
This is a great topic, and we should find some way of keeping it
going.
Chuck Bazerman
On Thu, 14 Dec 1995 SMAGOR who-is-at aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu wrote:
> In the 1980s Chuck Bazerman published an article in Written
> Communication about how scientists read scientific articles.
> I remember being comforted to learn that I wasn't the only one
> who read quickly and pragmatically. Chuck, do you have the
> reference on that piece? I think it speaks to the issues
> we're discussing here.
>
> Peter Smagorinsky smagor who-is-at aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu
>
>