Notes on the Heart: Affective Issues in the Writing Classroom
By Susan H. McLeod
It has long been recognized that affect (that is, the noncognitive aspects of mental activity) plays a large role in writing and learning to write. According to Susan H . McLeod, however, the model that has been most used for empirical research on the writing process is based on cognitive psychology and does not take into account affective phenomena. Nor does the social constructionist view of the writing process acknowledge the affective realm except in a very general way. To understand the complete picture, McLeod insists, we need to explore how cognitive, affective, and social elements interact as people write.
In this book, McLeod follows a group of students through a semester of writing assignments, tracking the students’ progress and examining the affective elements relevant to their writing. To facilitate future discussion of these phenomena, McLeod also provides suggested definitions for terms in the affective domain.
In a very real sense, this book is the result of a collaboration of three women: Susan McLeod, who researched and wrote the book; Sue Hallett, an instructor in Washington State University’s composition program whose classes McLeod observed and who helped provide much of the data; and Susan Parker, a graduate student who observed Hallett’s class and who ran a tutorial connected to that class. To provide a narrative structure, McLeod and her two collaborators have constructed a simulated semester, condensing the year and a half of their study into one semester and creating a class that is a composite drawn from seven classrooms over three semesters.
Although philosophers have had much to say about the affective domain, Notes on the Heart is based for the most part on research from the social sciences. This study’s discussions of pedagogy are suggestive rather than prescriptive, an approach that will help teachers see their practice in a new way.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Beginnings: Learning the Names
Chapter 3. Motivation and Writing
Chapter 4. Beliefs and Attitudes
Chapter 6. Endings: Teacher Affect/Teacher Effect
About the Author
Susan McLeod is a retired Research Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, where she served as UCSB Writing Program Distinguished Scholar. Her scholarship includes ten books (five of which are available in open-access formats on this site) and numerous articles on writing across the curriculum, writing program administration, and the affective domain in the writing classroom. Prior to her tenure at UC Santa Barbara, she served as Professor, Department Chair, and Associate Dean at Washington State University as well as director of its writing across the curriculum program. She served for more than a decade as editor of the Perspectives on Writing book series with the WAC Clearinghouse and co-editor (with Margot Soven) of the Writing Program Administration book series with Parlor Press.
Publication Information: McLeod, Susan H. (2025). Notes on the Heart: Affective Issues in the Writing Classroom. The WAC Clearinghouse. https://wacclearinghouse.org/books/landmarks/notes/ (Originally published in 1997 by Southern Illinois University Press)
Publication Date: December 29, 2025
Contact Information:
Susan H. McLeod: mcleod@ucsb.edu
Landmark Publications in Writing Studies
Series Editor: Mike Palmquist, Colorado State University
This book is available in whole and in part in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF).
Copyright © Susan H. McLeod. Republished with permission. You may view this book. You may print personal copies of this book. You may link to this page. You may not reproduce this book on another website. For permission to use materials from this book in other publications, please contact Susan H. McLeod.