Rhetorical Situations: Thinking Critically About Assignment Design for both Teachers and Students
The five elements of the rhetorical situation are: rhetor, audience, exigence, purpose, and constraints.
Rhetors can be almost anyone. Doctors, attorneys, parents, siblings, friends, scholars, etc.
Students often imagine their teacher as their audience because they are submitting work for a grade. Sometimes that's okay. Often, considering audience makes for more meaningful work that is relevant and applicable to everyday life.
The five elements of the rhetorical situation are: rhetor, audience, exigence, purpose, and constraints.
Envision
Feeling creative? Build something.
Here are just a few credible and popular resources.
read
Teaching Critical Thinking by bell hooks
Written in a conversational style, this book could be read for personal or professional interest and in a secondary or college-level classroom as an interdisciplinary resource. Assign the whole book or consider one chapter based on contextual factors of the teaching and learning environment.
read
Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom (3rd Ed) by John C. Bean and Dan Melzer
This book can be used as a resource in secondary and post-secondary spaces. Authors focus on classroom teaching and learning activities across disciplines. In the age of AI, it is important to reflect on teaching and facilitation of learning. For example, one might plan in-class exploratory writing activities requiring students to remove all tech devices and use pen and paper.
watch
Visual Rhetoric (Purdue OWL)
Many students and teachers are familiar with the Purdue OWL (online writing lab). This short video introduces basic concepts in the study and practice of visual rhetoric as a means to influence perception, cognition, and action.
watch
This short video could be viewed as a general introduction to critical thinking and used as a personal or classroom teaching and learning resource.
read
Everyone's an Author (5th Ed) by Lunsford et al.
This academic textbook could be used in a secondary or college-level classroom, depending on the teaching and learning context. One could use a single chapter, multiple chapters, or implement the entire text. Depending on audience, purpose, and experience level, one could build a course around the text. Specific chapters might meet the need. For example, one might use chapters from PART 1 such as "Thinking Rhetorically" or "Language, Power, and Rhetoric."
read
Literacy and Power by Hilary Janks
This book is a helpful resource that maps the field of critical literacy education that could be used as a teaching and learning resource in teacher education programs in strands focusing on literacy and language, social studies, STEM, and art + design education. Critical thinking is an important skill within and across disciplines.
read
The History and Theory of Rhetoric (8th Ed.) by Luke Winslow and James A. Herrick
This academic textbook could be used in a secondary or college-level classroom. Depending on the teaching and learning context, one could use the first chapter, "An Overview of Rhetoric," consider single chapters based on audience and purpose, or implement the entire text. Depending on experience level, one could build a course around the text.
watch
This short video could be viewed as a general introduction to critical thinking and used as a personal or classroom teaching and learning resource.
read
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
This book is commonly used as a resource for teaching and learning by literacy and language instructors and those working in teacher education programs. In some teacher preparation courses, required reading might include the second chapter in which the author theorizes what he refers to as the "banking" concept of education and critiques it as an instrument of oppression, relevant across disciplines.