Inflection and Innuendo: Using the Writerly Framework to Achieve Deep Learning and Scientific Intuition

Abstract This article examines how a ‘writerly’ approach to teaching and learning might happen in an upper-level science course, shows what such an approach might look like, and explores what it may mean. The writerly framework for teaching and learning in higher education is based on Roland Barthes’s concept of the writerly text. For Barthes, writerly texts are texts that require the reader to participate in the production of a text’s meaning, such that reading effectively becomes an act of co-writing. In this study, we apply these ideas to teaching and learning, where students are put into a position of actively creating new meanings in the classroom. In this qualitative analysis, we use interview and observation data to explore how a writerly approach influences the teaching and learning experiences of a STEM instructor and his students.