1 minute
A conceptual string is the idea or framework that spans the entire work, and upon it are hung all the chapters. I had some ideas before I started the work, but since I started, it seems that they are not strong enough to hold the book together, or perhaps the book spans too wide a chasm for the those ideas.
This is fundamental problem then becomes a problem of structure. How does one write something when there is no unifying theme to hold it together. The cheat or, if I were being generous, the hack is to think of the book as a series of essays. That would mean that they need to have that conceptual string only running through each essay/chapter. However, that is not quite what I want to achieve.
When I started, the book was going to be about how my teachers influenced me how that I am a teacher. Even before I started writing, I realised that it was too limiting a focus, and, to be honest, also quite boring. As I thought further of the role and influence of teachers, I arrived at three foci — the development of the student’s self-identity, an understanding of community, and the responsibility of citizenship.
This is influenced partly by some of the thinking from a couple of projects that I have worked on as well as the teaching that I have done in the last 3-4 years. Those three are areas where education is moving away from to focus on employability as the key measurement of academic success – which is unfortunate and to the detriment of the future. But how do I reconcile the three foci into a conceptual string. That is the challenge.
Any thoughts?