Provocateur Piece: Let Your Reader Do Some Work: Twelve Theses (and an Appendix) on Leaving More to the Imagination in Academic Assignments

Abstract

This provocation addresses the prevalence of “scholarly laziness” in academic reading and considers its effect on scholarly writing in ELA and teacher education classrooms. The essay is constructed as twelve theses (a nod to the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation and the contemporary propagation of standardized rubrics as doctrine). Blending narrative and scholarship, these brief statements consider possible reasons for this so-called laziness, ways it manifests in education and scholarship, why it is a problem, and possible approaches to encouraging more critical reading and writing practices among students, preservice teachers, and scholars.