Quilted Writing (Conference Preview)
A preview of an upcoming workshop on dual coding theory.
This week I’m presenting the workshop “Images and Words: Dual Coding Theory for Beginners” at a local teaching conference. While I’m still converting my notes to script form, I wanted to post the first part.
✍️ Please give feedback in the comments section!
📚 My citations are loose but functional. I’m not publishing for an academic journal.
TEASER
“I want to start with a list of questions. Raise your hands if you experience these problems too.
“My students struggle organizing their writing.
“My students struggle with following directions and oral comprehension.
“My students can decode words but not understand them.
“If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re in the right place!
OVERVIEW
“Dual coding theory (DCT) has been around for fifty years. Its research has been documented and replicated across scores of academic essays, only now climbing into accessible books. DCT proposes that the brain processes information through two distinct channels—the verbal and the nonverbal. Why does this matter? Language takes time to process while pictures do not. Information moves seamlessly between images and words in everyday life. Do our materials, activities, and educational system reflect this simple fact? No.
“I’ve been slowly digesting related research papers and books over the past year, and while I’ve learned a lot—so much so, in fact, that I’m working to overhaul my entire teaching style—I’ve only scratched the surface here. Some aspects read as technical as a physics or linguistics textbook while other aspects read like scribbles from a hippie commune. Presenting the right balance between the linguistics textbook and hippie scribbles has proven challenging. My grasp is incomplete but improving. But we all know the best way to learn is to teach.
“Today’s talk will have three distinct sections, which were written as three separated yet interlocking essays or ideas.
“First, “Quilted Ideas” will set up the problems that led me to DCT. Since DCT proves incredibly abstract at times, quilting will be both focus point and metaphor. Also, these problems will explain what solutions I’ve pulled from DCT, although I’ve by no means exhausted the topic.
“Second, “Dual Coding Theory Explained (Sort Of)” will explore the most relevant and interesting aspects of DCT. To the best of my ability. As a theory, DCT connects and unites, incorporating other findings under its umbrella. If I address each related topic, the explanations feel like running up sand dunes. So this section will be concise.
“Third, I’ll explain several big changes I’m making to my classroom. Part wish list and part to do list, this will explain other facts of DCT in application rather than getting mired in technicalities. We might even run through some applications together.
I. Quilted Ideas
“My wife quilts. This venture started by complaining that women’s clothing never had pockets, and maybe she’d just sew her own clothes. But after a failed start, she turned her sights towards a quilting project that turned into a hobby. (By the way, if you want custom burp cloths, she sells them!)
“While expert quilts dazzle like tapestries (And I’ve seem some impressive designs at quilt shows!), the basic ‘quilt sandwich’ has predictable layers: the top layer or quilt top has the designs, the quilt batting has the puffy stuffing, and the quilt backing decorates the underside. The binding consists of long strips which hold the other layers together at the perimeter.
“Everyone knows the basic sewing machine, which moves the fabric through the machine, but nearly room-sized machines exist which move the machine over the fabric. Longarm machines sew intricate and elaborate patterns across the quilt tops and through the other layers, creating an additional complementary layer, best viewed up close. Longarming does not always require the machine—you can freehand designs by tracing shapes on parchment paper and sewing over them.
“Many quilts feature repeating patterns but others form single, nearly person-sized pictures. Regardless, it’s never ‘just a blanket.’ It’s art. Whereas painters have blank canvases and sculptors may have single stones, quilters create both the canvas and the art through interlocking blocks.
“Did you know that quilts have established designs or blocks? I’m sure overlapping terms exist, but when quilters talk, certain patterns mean certain patterns. What would you call this block? (Figure 1.) And this block? (Figure 2.)
“Figure 1 is a Log Cabin Block and Figure 2 is a Double Wedding Ring.
“Even in crazy quilts or sampler quilts, which feature non-repeating patterns, nothing is random. Pretend an evil fairy godmother took her magic wand and poofed away all the thread. What would happen? Hundreds and hundreds of precisely cut geometric shapes would fall like leaves. Quilts reduce to blocks and blocks reduce to basic geometric shapes like simple squares, rectangles, and triangles. (Yes, circular shapes exist, but with increasing skill levels.) Each shape—each side—reflects purposeful measurements, cuttings, arrangements, and stitching.
“Also, the same block with different fabric becomes a different block. Yes, the same fabric can create many blocks, but the same patterns become different structures. Just google a block and study the differences. This doesn’t even account for changing dimensions.
“How many block types are there? Wrong question. Instead, beyond specific patterns and plans (You can purchase patterns for specific quilts), ask a quilter if they have quilting pattern books. This part fascinates me: Entire pattern catalogues exist. Do they overlap? Of course. But the important part revolves around a common language. Nobody complains about overlapping dictionaries.
“It’s been ages since I’ve sewed a button, but if you ask me, the machines aren’t the most important tool that quilters have—it’s their patterns.
“Let’s switch gears.
“After ten years in the classroom, I have many mantras, but here’s my most important: I have few truly bad writers, but instead many inexperienced organizers. And that can be taught.
“Writing is thinking. We easily forget what we say, but when we write it, it becomes something else. Externalized thinking. An object. Though a cliche, The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory. Just don’t ask Plato—he hated the written word. And perhaps if we dive into the oral epic poem, our ancestors once passed down the secrets to prodigious memory. But that’s another topic. Plato would have hated Gutenberg.
“Writing consists of many dichotomies—form and fluency, style and structure. Form and structure are synonymous, so hold that thought. Fluency means how easily one can write. Style means the basic surface level aspects like tone and word choice, spelling and punctuation, and fitting the media. Structure separates signal from noise, arranging otherwise disconnected information into greater wholes.
“What happens when we organize information? Let’s prematurely steal a page with a strategy from Visualizing and Verbalizing. Picture the common red Bicycle playing card. Picture the mirrored angels riding a bicycle over grassy terrain, mountains and birds in the distance. Now picture those cards spilled over a table. Picture random cards facing different directions. How would this fare for playing? Useless. They need the same location and placement (facing). So let’s turn them the correct way.
“Once arranged, how do we group cards? By color? By suit? By number, either up or down? Before playing, cards must be randomized or shuffled. If the dealer forgets to shuffle, sequenced cards become cheating. How do you win at cards? After following basic procedures, winning means creating better sequences or creating sequences faster. How do you win at Solitaire? Sort the deck. How do you win at Poker? Arrange the best hand. How do you win at Shanghai? Arrange the hand the faster.
“How do writers organize information? Through patterns. Through arranging information. Text structures or organizational patterns translate noise to signal. Patterns such as spatial, topical, chronological, sequential, compare and contrast, pro’s and con’s, cause and effect, and problem solution order information. Zoom in or zoom out, as word list, sentence, paragraph or page, they hold their structures like fractals or Mandelbrot patterns. Once you see them, you cannot ignore them.
“Learning to write means learning to organize. Patterns become invisible grids, snapping information into place. Grids become units. Comparing writing and jazz, improvisation reflects a deep mastery of internalized patterns rather than creativity alone. Everything from the story to the essay relies on basic patterns. In fact, if you removed a book’s spine and sorted the pages, you’d find predictable patterns.
“Like a quilt.
“Just my two cents: If you place composition before epistemology, thinking itself reduces to several interrelated and interconnected thought patterns. No single pattern comes first. They organize and generate information, useful for composition as well as comprehension, mixing and matching to form more complex structures. Once you understand the simple, zoom out. The microscopic becomes the macroscopic. Small patterns become big patterns.
“Like a quilt.
Tangent: “What do I say the first day of English? Humans are storytelling creatures. Yes, we use language, but language exists to tell stories. How was your day? You tell a story. How did this happen? You tell a story. Biographies tells the stories of individual lives while history tells the stories of societies. Stories teach children right from wrong. And contrary to Principals extolling VCR manuals as non-fiction, fiction is not frilly. Stories simulate. We learn without lived experience. Myths rank as the highest stories
“My vision for teaching English means comfortably writing across mediums. Academic essays are not it. Letters, emails, and scripts should hold equal importance to the canned academic essay, only found in the sanitary confines of school walls. As for literature, the baby literature paper should become the currency. Literary devices were not meant for the suffocating confines of multiple choice. Instead, they become the lens to analyze stories.
“My perfect writing instruction would have students addressing the same prompt with multiple writing patterns. Once students become comfortable switching between multiple styles and structures, like a musician switching genres or an artist switching mediums, their thinking becomes flexible, durable, and adaptable.
“But there are several major problems.
“One, textbooks skip arrangement and invention, assuming without teaching. Arranging information is a skill. It’s either right or wrong. Purpose or intent is not a skill. It’s subjective. Yet policy and pedagogy, legislation and textbooks, revolve around a crippling category error. Whether concept creep, carelessness, or clueless, our categorizations fail. Classical, folk, and rock are musical genres. Comedy, drama, and action are movie genres. Chronological, compare and contrast, and problem solution are text structures. Letters, scripts, and essays are mediums. But what do you call exposition, description, narration, and argument? Rhetorical mode. And rhetorical mode is not a skill. We may as well argue thermometers are rulers because they have notches. Fahrenheit is just another word for inches or centimeters. (This topic deserves a book.)
“Two, not even composition scholars agree on text structure. Read through free online writing labs. If Masters Degrees and Doctorates don’t confuse text structure with rhetorical mode, their pages still border on the erroneous. Read Patterns for College Writing or similar tomes. Rather than just say topical, which lists according to time, they say definition, classification, and division, which list particular things. A box may as well be a different box because it houses different things. Overlap overcomplicates. My hunch? Literature reviews would produce confusion, not clarity.
“Say you don’t understand perimeter, area, or volume. While there are only so many ways to phrase the terms, the formulas remain the same. (We won’t touch non-Euclidean geometry.) What if we never used the same word for squares? The same rulers for inches? And what if one definition just pointed to a bird? (Shout out to The University of Washington for the only comprehensible page on the topic.)
“However, text structure for comprehension brings focus. You have to. Without clear definitions, research studies would prove impossible. You couldn’t talk about the same things. Composition and comprehension exist on two sides of the same coin, but as far as I can tell, their scholars operate in different universes.
“(Note: This talk is not a literature review, so I’m refraining from rattling through my favorite essays as I frame the problem. Please comment if you’d like to hear more. Follow the footnotes and more will appear.)
“While researching text structure for composition, I found Bonnie Meyer’s 1982 essay, “Reading Research and the Composition Teacher: The Importance of Plans.” In it, Meyer, arguably the leading authority in text structure research, identifies five main patterns: antecedent/consequent, comparison, description, response, and time order. (If you read across her works, the patterns do change!) Meyer described a simple yet profound realization: When students learn these organizations, recall strengthens over time. If you understand these patterns, navigating non-fiction texts becomes easier.
“Don’t overthink this: If you don’t understand the rules and layout of rugby, you won’t understand watching a rugby game. The same applies for other sports. What separates basketball from football? Aside the obvious, the rulebook. What’s a court or field? What’s the ball? How does scoring work?
“In 2004, Joanna P. Williams and others published the essay “Close Analysis of Texts With Structure (CATS): An Intervention to Teach Reading Comprehension to At-Risk Second Graders.” (Whew! Long title!) As an intervention, they taught fifty lessons on five text structures through social studies. Their lessons featured explicit instruction on cue words, analyzing example paragraphs, producing written summaries, and using graphic organizers, among other things. What were their findings? Not only did the intervention group score higher in reading comprehension, but even as a supplementary program, this learning easily transferred. Crack open the References, and this isn’t surprising. As for the CATS program, it only exists in the research paper.
“Three, any literature on text structure talks about graphic organizers. Yet like the structures themselves, the literature is disconnected. Why does that matter? Take the word itself: Are they graphic organizers, concept maps, nonlinguistic representations, or knowledge maps? Depending on the word, researching is like herding cats. Within that, while the effectiveness of picturing information has been documented many times over, which drawings mean which structures? Overlap becomes overcomplicating.
“Implicit but rarely explained, is that ideas have direct spatial equivalents. Teaching structure, both through words and through pictures, help both reading and writing. But we can’t agree on terminology for either the ideas or their pictures. If you consider Thomas Kuhn’s famous The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the topic lies in pre-science with multiple emerging paradigms. Stuck.
“Again, if this were Math, either the terms mean many things or we have many terms for the same thing. We use different rulers, different units, and colleges flat out confuse terms. As for the secondary textbooks, they’d promote actual mis-learning.
“To conclude, what is my problem? Why did I seek out DCT? The problem is three fold, although I could spin a few tangents to last several hours. (We didn’t even talk about teaching materials and citations!)
“1. If ideas have visual and spatial equivalents, why not think of essay planning like quilted ideas?
"2. As students learn how to write, why not teach the visual before the verbal?
“3. If quilts have well-known thought patterns, stemming from geometric shapes, why not writing?
“(By the way, if music has books like Music for Sight Singing, which develops the “minds ear” through patterns, why not English? I won’t mince words: I have my own working catalogue or pattern dictionary. Let those with ears hear.)
To be continued…
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Bibliography (For Parts II-III)
Sadoski, Mark and Allan Paivio. Imagery and Text: A Dual Coding Theory of Reading and Writing. Routledge, 2013. 2nd ed.
Caviglioli, Oliver. Dual Coding with Teachers. John Catt. Educational Ltd., 2019.
Caviglioli, Oliver. Organise Ideas: Thinking By Hand, Extending The Mind. John Catt. Educational Ltd., 2021.
Bell, Nanci. Visualizing and Verbalizing for Language Comprehension and Thinking. Gander Publishing, 2007. 2nd ed.
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