Interview With Robert Probst: The Effects Of Blogging

In an interview with Robert Probst (2012), author of Response and Analysis, Probst discusses Rosenblatt’s work on the transactional nature of reading, and reminds us that Rosenblatt taught us that the only way you can see anything is through your own eyes. Then you can refine your vision by respecting what you see first, knowing it and understanding it, and then looking at what another viewer might offer (Probst, 2012).
Rosenblatt (1995) reminds us that readers transact with texts for different purposes, which fall along what she terms the efferent-aesthetic continuum. At one end of the continuum, is the efferent, the situation in which the reader will carry away information from the text. At the other end of the continuum is the aesthetic: “In aesthetic reading, the reader’s attention is centered directly on what he/she is living through during his/her relationship with that particular text” (Rosenblatt, 1995, p. 25).

Given these two extremes at either end of the continuum, Rosenblatt asserts that much of our reading falls into the middle of the continuum, the reader responding to cognitive as well as emotive aspects. She argues, however, that some materials such as newspapers, advertisements, and political writings require a predominantly efferent approach while others, such as novels and poems, require the aesthetic.
When reading a blog, the reader’s journey can be even more personalized. Hyperlinks to other blogs with narratives from various bloggers can create a unique experience for the reader. The degree to which the reading is defined as efferent or aesthetic may also change.
Reflective practice is common in the blogs of educators. As Jamie Field Baker indicates in her article “The Future Belongs to Educators who Shift,” personal development and learning are a combination of feedback, self-reflection, knowledge, and disciplined practice (Baker, 2011). Administrators are not formally observed like teachers, so opportunities for feedback are minimal. Reflection must be self-imposed.
In his 2009 book Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink suggests that we become competent in giving ourselves “honest, meaningful, rigorous feedback because feedback informs us, as individuals and as school leaders, of our progress and of our remaining gaps” (p. 20). To be meaningful and helpful in our learning of new skills and attitudes, feedback should be frequent; however, the professional feedback offered from most administrators in our schools is infrequent and usually not meaningful (Baker, 2011).
As I continued to research blogging, I wanted to explore the specific effects of blogging.

Does blogging advance one’s concept of identity? How does blogging affect administrators who have begun the practice? Does it make them more effective? Can blogging help make administrators more empathetic? I have broken this section down into three subsections. Each subsection explores those questions.
Identity and Blogging
Rory Ewins (2005), a Research Fellow in Information and Communications Technology Policy & Strategy at the Scottish Centre for Research into On-Line Learning and Assessment, suggests that blogs enabled academics to establish an identity as both author and audience (2005). In his article, “Who are you? Weblogs and Academic Identity” (2005), Ewins stated:
The single author weblog is an ideal format for creating a sense of individual presence on the Web. It allows its author to build up over time an archive of thoughts and writings; when regularly updated, it gives its readers a strong sense of the author’s presence. (p.

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Ewins (2005) explored the idea that blogs could end up changing their authors’ sense of identity in ways they did not expect. Ewins’ (2005) research takes the form of auto-ethnography, detailing his five-year experience as an academic blogger, using the theoretical lens of Madan Sarup and Walter Truett Anderson, two commentators on identity. Sarup was born in India, and according to his book Identity, Culture, and the Postmodern World (1996), spent most of his life, like Ewins, in England. Sarup’s book has much to say on concepts of home, place, and the impact of emigration on identity. Sarup stated:
[It] is interesting to leave one’s homeland in order to enter the culture of others’ but, on the other hand, this move is undertaken only to return to oneself and one’s home to judge or laugh at one’s peculiarities and limitations. (1996, p. 9)
Sarup, like Ewins, wrote of a strong relationship between identity and narrative. Sarup (1996) believed that as we tell our own stories and continue to construct our autobiographies, we begin to emphasize certain events and exclude others, and explained the difference between a fixed identity and a changing identity. In a fixed identity, one’s gender, age, religion, and race coalesce to form a single identity. Sarup rejected the idea of identity being fixed, and believed that as we change and grow, so does our identity (1996). Our identity is intertwined with our narrative, and our narrative may change over time. According to Sarup (1996):