Creating a Schema for Kinneavy’s Conception of Kairos: A Scaffolded Endeavor

 

            As a former language arts teacher, Kinneavy’s writing interested me as a way to frame rhetorical aspects of the writing classroom. To be frank, the first time reading through his work left me perplexed with many conflicting ideas all competing as the foundation defining the complex term. It was after working with Tyreek and generating a schema to organize Kinneavy’s conception of kairos did I fully understand these implications for pedagogy in a systematic fashion. Tyreek and I decided to generate a schema that would organize multiple facets kairos yet leave room for discussion. Kinneavy sets the foundation of karios as two main components: right timing and proper measure. We understood right timing as the “good time” to deliver and proper measure as a metaphorical appropriate proportion of what is given. Starting from this point, we used the two dimensions to further think about and understand kairos.

            The first component of kairos, good time, is overarching and seems to bleed into the other dimensions found in the term. This was particularly interesting to Tyreek and I as we generated our schema. As we began our endeavor of organizing the complex word, we believed the two primary components were distinct and separate parts of kairos that had no interlacing and that “good time” essentially stood and worked alone. It was after working through the five dimensions of proper measure did we begin to notice the need for good time in those areas as well. So while our schema has good time and proper measure as distinct entities, they are deeply and interestingly connected with and within one another. The second component of kairos is proper measure. This one, as Kinneavy puts it, is “elusive” in that it contains multiple and complex dimensions that work interdependently to do something right. Tyreek and I decided to continue to organize our schema by separating the five dimensions of proper measure into five distinct categories: ethical dimension, epistemological dimension, rhetorical dimension, aesthetic dimension, and the civic education dimension. While we saw a place for each dimension, we found the epistemological dimension to be especially intriguing, as it seemed to us to encompass all of life. Kinneavy calls this “critical moments” and the “defining of the character”. We appreciated that a writer’s previous experiences were taken into account as an important factor of composition, as this is a ideal that both Tyreek and I hold valuable in our personal pedagogical philosophies.

            In addition to defining kairos, Kinneavy laid out the historical framework of his conceptualization. This was helpful to us in identifying the theorist and therefore assumptions Kinneavy held as valuable. While we did find some fault with this way of viewing the composition classroom, I found it helpful in understanding the multiple facets of the composition classroom as new to the field and was able to take away newly constructed ideas and an organizational tools that could be implemented in the future.