Hunt, the other co-founder, explained that it was their intention to make "freewriting," a strategy popularized by composition theorist Peter Elbow, into "something dialogically transactional"[5] by embedding the writing into situations, usually in classrooms, where the freewritten texts were immediately read by others, in search of ideas or insights that impromptu writing might generate.
The Inkshed conferences used this strategy in various ways over the years, the common thread being that written texts were created and read immediately, and stood in for—and underlay and promoted—some part of the oral discussion that usually characterizes academic gatherings.
[6] Inkshed's origin has been characterized as in part a reaction among Canadian teachers of English to the widespread advent of the (often required) introductory composition course in US universities,[7] and the concomitant growth there of the "comp industry."
[12] The annual conferences, usually in loose association with meetings of CCTE (the Canadian Council of Teachers of English) or the "Learneds" (the annual national meeting of university faculty, since renamed the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences Archived 2021-08-18 at the Wayback Machine) had become an important venue for teachers and theorists to explore at length new ideas about the teaching and learning of literacy at every level.
[20] The larger influence of the organization is found primarily in its role in the paradigm shift which theory and practice of literacy teaching underwent beginning in the 1980s.
[22] It has been argued that Inkshed participants like Anthony Paré were at the forefront of this increasing awareness, and that many members of the organization over the years have been instrumental in this process of collaborative discovery.
More generally, It has been argued that Inkshed was at the forefront of the movement away from "process-based" models of writing to external, transactive and social ones.