EngL5630: Theories of Writing and Writing Instruction Sp06

Help from someone with a better memory? Who was it who refuted the “Vygotsky or nothing� approach earlier in the packet, with an argument about children’s speech not being entirely social?

I have more markings, question marks, and comments on this reading than perhaps any other. Maybe it’s just because I can’t do it to my students’ papers any more.

I do buy that collaborative learning can help you figure out a discourse community.

I’m not really clear on what I think after that. If I think through it, I need to use crass metaphor. So, okay, teenage girls. Who teaches them how to dress, how to talk, how to be accepted in society? Other teenage girls, absolutely. So students can help each other learn the forms of power. Yes, yes, yes. And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. We don’t have to be talking about size-zero skirts.

Say one of these teenage girls breaks away from the consensus and finds a different group of teenage girls—or boys, or women—with whom to socialize. Why did she do this? Trimbur quotes Rorty as claiming, “A shift in a person’s relations with others, not a shift inside the person that now suits him to enter new relationships.� But doesn’t this, somehow, create an “environment only� picture of humans (whereas science posits half heredity, half environment?) A person only changes because their group changes?

Teenage girl only changes because she goes to college?

Isn’t it possible that she feels a dissonance with a community, just like she might feel a dissonance with a word on the page? (Okay, then she feels this dissonance because it doesn’t fit with the other rules of writing that she knows… Hmm.) So I just put myself back with Bruffee.

But, then, how does this fit? Bruffee writes, “Much of what we teach today—or should be teaching—in comp courses is the normal discourse…� (Etc.) What if, in fact, we disagree with the “normal discourse?� In the time of slavery, was it okay to teach racist discourse? Are we really just supposed to help our students become earners/performers? I suppose Trimbur helps to unpack that…

I also strongly suspect that Bruffee has never participated in business, industry, the professions.

When Bruffee says that “[m]uch of what we teach today—or should be teaching—in composition courses is the normal discourse of most academic, professional, and business communities� (370) he sounds to me like our old and dear friend Bartholomae. But then I wonder where Bartholomae is at with collaborative learning. It seems to me that in some ways learning the academic discourse of a field, at least in some cases, might not necessarily lend itself very well to collaborative learning. Aren't there cases where the instructor might need to be in some position of authority for the information to be taught, and wouldn't going to a more student-centered, collaborative approach seem to run counter to that?

I also don’t know if I necessarily agree with Bruffee that other communities—“business, government, and the professions� (369)—“work� collaboratively so therefore academic communities should, too (at least that’s what I think he’s saying, though I'm not completely sure...Marcia, is that what you're hinting at?). The environments I’ve worked in outside of academia have been decidedly “uncollaborative,� efforts to make them look otherwise notwithstanding.

Also, with the exception of peer review, I have a hard time thinking of a lot of other concrete ways that collaborative learning "fits" in a writing classroom, or maybe once again we’re back to trying to come up with some sort of balanced approach. Are class discussions of texts collaborative? Is anything that isn't strictly me collaborative? Conferences, I suppose, are one method, if I can force myself to be non-directive enough to let something come out of the “collaborative conversation� rather than having it devolve into a one on one lecture.

Interestingly, I would have been much more in agreement with the premise that we "know something only when they can explain it in writing to the satisfaction of the community of their knowledgeable peers� (p.412) before last week. Last week, I received a rejection on an article I had submitted for publication. Okay, not a problem, per se. But one of the reviewers had so obviously missed several crucial points that her/his comments were only useful to me in demonstrating that I must write to a lower "common demoninator." Does not writing to that reviewer's "satisfaction" mean that I don't "know" the phenomenon I described? I don't buy that. The other reviewer "got it." My advisor and two other professors in my dept. "got it." So what happens when the community of peers is split? I could suppose that the problem is the question of "knowledgable" peer, but that leads to a circular argument: who is knowledgable enough to decide who is knowledable? Where does that leave me?

It reminds me of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling back in the 1940's that "white" is what the "common [white] man" recognizes as white. Like Marcia, that leads me to wonder what happens when you disagree on moral grounds with the normal discourse.

It seems in my experience that having students recognize themselves as "status equals: peers" is sometimes problematic. Too many other forces in the world (sexism, racism, nationalism, etc.) are sending messages that they are not status equals. It's an idealistic view that first-year college students will be able to ignore all that.

I'm perfectly willing to believe that thought is social and that "thought itself is conversation" (369) even if this line of thought does threaten to go into some strange places (I'm thinking here of Wittgenstein on the nonexistence of a private language and thus the meaninglessness of words like "pain"). But it seems to me that Bruffee makes an unwarranted leap in this article. Assuming that thought is social, does it really follow that "our task [as writing instructors] must involve engaging students in conversation among themselves at as many points in both the writing and reading process as possible" (369)? To say that thought happens within language and language is social is very different from saying that the best way for students to learn is for them to converse with one another. Why can't they learn just as well by conversing with their instructor or by reading? (This isn't to say that they do learn just as well by conversing with their instructor or reading, but trying to justify collaborative learning on the theoretical grounds that thought is social seems a mistake to me.) I'm also very suspicious of this move Bruffee makes: "if we accept the premise that knowledge is an artificat created by a community of knowledgable peers constituteed by the language of that commmunity, and that learning is a social and not an individual process, then to learn is not to assimilate information and improve our mental eyesight" (371). This strikes me as very off, but it's typical of Rorty's position. Rorty seems to think that abandoning epistemological foundations (accepting the idea that knowledge is social, that we as a group actively make sense of the world and that we might be mistaken about literally everything) means that some discourses don't do a better job of getting at the facts than other discourses do. I think you can see that if you compare the definition of knowledge analytic philosophy still throws around ("true justified belief") with Rorty's definition of knowledge ("socially justified belief"). Assuming that both definitions agree that the like-minded judgments of our peers are a big part of what justifies our beliefs, Rorty's definition is missing the word "true." Supposing that we define a true statement as one that accurately states the facts (corresponds to reality), Rorty's definition leaves out a mind/language independent reality that our beliefs are trying to accurately describe. Hence we get Bruffee's comparison on page 371 of collaborative learning and scientific knowledge. Yes, scientific knowledge is blatantly collaborative, but the reason why we value it is that we think it gets the facts right at least a lot of the time. If you come down with cancer, you go to the people who are going to give you the chemotherapy drugs; you probably do not go to the people who are going to give you acupuncture. Medical doctors and acupuncturists both have discourses that describe cancer, but we tend to assume that contemporary medicine's cancer discourse does a better job of describing the way cancer works and thus of curing it than the discourse acupuncturists use. (I think that if we really accept Rorty's idea that all we as academics do is engage in conversation then we owe our students their money back. Our students are not paying us ten of thousands of dollars to engage in pleasing discourse. They can engage in pleasing discourse with each other for free. They are paying us for discourse that gets the facts right. And if we don't feel that we can give them something that at least comes close to that then we have no business charging them for it.) I think the reason Bruffee wants to stress the collaborative aspect of scientific knowledge is to suggest that our students talking with one another isn't particularly different from scientists talking with one another. But it, of course, is very different. While many of the conventions of academic discourse are purely arbitrary (formal grammar) many of them are there because they really seem to work (here I'm thinking of the formal ways we as academics have of dealing with evidence). Our students participate in a great many non-academic discourses, but how many of those discourses have sophisticated ways of thinking about evidence? How many of those discourses are not just products of the marketplace?

I’m hearing in Gary and Anonymous (Steven?) questions about how effective collaborative learning is at teaching disciplinary discourse, and a recognition of the disparity between the conversation among student peers and the conversation among academics. If we’re not prepared to say that knowledge generated in one community is every bit as true or worthwhile as knowledge generated in another community, then we may want students to generate our kind of knowledge in their collaborative activities. The only potential value in small group work would be to harness the peer influence that Bruffee and Marcia discuss. And it might be more expedient, as Gary notes, to retain one’s authoritative instructor role and lead the class.

Bruffee seems to believe the trick is to structure collaborative learning experiences so that they are neither “merely an extension of … the social structure of traditional classroom learning� (367) nor exercises in superficiality (“anti-intellectualism�). I find some truth in the idea that “the way [students] talk with each other determines the way they will think and the way they will write� (369). So we as instructors need to influence how students talk and think as they collaborate in our classrooms. Hmm! Bruffee suggests, like Bean, structuring discussion around a problem that the instructor, a member of the community the students would presumably like to join, “has judiciously designed� (370).

But I also want to preserve the flexibility that allows students to critique our disciplinary modes of thought—and offer critiques in their own terms, as well as learning to critique our methods in our terms. I still remember my Introduction to Ethics prof listening intently to my nascent critique of procedural fairness, though it was hardly more than “It feels wrong.� A respected scholar, he took the feelings and thoughts of his first-year students seriously, and he told me that if people responded poorly to a theory, then maybe there was a problem with the theory. I loved that! (and began referring to him as the Everyman Philosopher). I want to trust my students that much.

How do we teach the tools of normal discourse “in such a way that students can set them aside, if only momentarily, for the purpose of generating new knowledge� (373)? Almost seems to me (and here I’m perhaps at odds with others) that the class should build some knowledge on its own, with little guidance from the instructor, before the instructor introduces concepts and tools from “normal� discourse. Then instructor and students would be able to draw on, refer back to, the content and patterns of thought that they earlier generated. “Let’s recall our initial reactions to this article—what might theory x say about those reactions? What might our reactions say about theory x?�

Both Bruffee and Bean recognize the challenge that collaborative learning may pose to the instructor’s authority, if we view that authority in a certain way. I feel strongly that we as instructors shouldn’t try to create a false sense of authority for ourselves, which students (in some class at some time) will inevitably dispel. Don Ross presented a sensible way of viewing ourselves, especially in terms of grading: we’re professionals giving professional opinions. In Bruffee’s scheme, we’re people with inside knowledge of a community that our students may wish to join, and we’re assisting with their induction.

I would love, incidentally, to pose a problem like “In what way, if any, is Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm different from the results of a monkey throwing paint at a canvas?� with regard to literary theorists. I’d probably have to assign some people the role of defending the theorist …

Applied to psychology, I don't agree with Ann in "want[ing] to preserve the flexibility that allows students to critique our disciplinary modes of thought—and offer critiques in their own terms..."

Yes, there's something to be said for taking the Everyman approach to philosophy. I agree that if people respond poorly to a theory, then maybe there is a problem with the theory.

I do not want my students taking the Everyman approach to critiques of psychological studies however. When balancing empirical data and feelings (of students or even expert others), empirical data needs to-- for the sake of the field-- win out.

How does this concern play into concerns about collaborative learning? I find myself comfortable with collaborative learning only to the extent that the instructor can establish what constitutes ND a priori. That is, to use collaborative learning students should have already been guided towards recognition of the "set of conventions about what counts as a relevant contribution, what counts as a good question, what counts for a good argument for that answer or a good criticism of it" (369).

Come to think of it, isn't establishing ND a priori the reason why we were asked to write guidelines for peer workshopping?

Ideally collaborative writing should imply decentering and balancing the authority between students and teacher. Additionally, students can participate in tasks using their own “expertise language� (as Marcia pointed out—a teenager can easily share with other peers) OK…all this makes me think about Elbow’s teacher-less class and the idealistic class where everybody is responsible enough for learning process. But at the same time, I was thinking about my own experience as a student in the class Writing for Academic Purposes; and what would happen when I worked with my partners in collaborative way. Sometimes it is all out of the control of the task designer. For instance, in my writing class, we spent most of the peer editing time discussing men’s compositions because they always took the first chance to discuss (it is fair to recognize that this happens because most of my female peers felt more comfortable with men going first) and so on. As Rorty has claimed, the consensus problem always implies what underlying interests are being served.
On the other hand, if I understand correctly, “Normal Discourse� is manifestly clear and avoids questioning only because the community agrees about its conventions. That is why racist or Nazi discourse could be “normal� at a certain time and that is why “Abnormal Discourse� could be important so. But what are the practical and pedagogical implications if we decide promote creativity and “abnormal discourse� through collaborative work?

I like Ann's idea of letting a class build their own knowledge first - but my guess is that a lot of the students, when it came to the point of sharing the "normal discourse," would complain about wasting their time. I guess my question, then, is about face validity. How do we get students to believe in the value of collaborative learning?

Whatever idea a group comes up with, I think discussion is valuable. If they come up with a different answer/interpretation/idea from what ND says, they're ready to analyze, as Ann suggests, the reasons for the difference. And even if a group comes up with the same answer as ND, I think the time they spend thinking through an issue is valuable; people usually understand an issue more fully, I think, if they've worked through it actively than if they are simply told the answer.

Still, though, I've been in classes where I wish the instructor would just tell us what we're supposed to come up with. That's partly because it often feels like we students are told that our ideas are valid, but that in the end we still need to know and be able to articulate the "right" (ND) answer/interpretation/idea.

I think I'm guilty of that as a teacher; I often ask my students to discuss an article, say, and figure out what the author is trying to say. Then we discuss the article as a class, and I end up telling them what the author is REALLY saying (not in the literary sense; in most cases, due to language issues, when my students have a different interpretation I think it really is mistaken). Even when that happens, I think the discussion is worthwhile because they are actively engaging their minds in trying to figure out the meaning; I don't think they would get as much out of it as they would if I simply explained it from the get-go. I wonder, though, if my students recognize the value in the collaboration.

Maybe the sort of discussion I'm describing here isn't quite collaboration as Bruffee and Timbur refer to it. Still, though, I think the question is relevant; it seems to me a big challenge to convince students of the validity of collaboration when in the end they're often told that they need to conform to the normal discourse anyway if they want to succeed.

Yes, Ann thanks. The comment posted at April 9, 2006 01:24 AM is mine. I simply forgot to enter my name. I agree with you about the importance of an instructor seeming like "the Everyman Philosopher," but I wonder what kind of knowledge you get when "the class . . . build[s] some knowledge on its own, with little guidance from the instructor, before the instructor introduces concepts and tools from “normal� discourse"? I certainly do not want to suggest that we academics have a monopoly on truth (far from it!). But if I'm to be really honest, I think every semester out of a class of 25 students I only have one or two students who have access to knowledge that is more than just corporate propaganda. I know this sounds a bit fascist, but are we really liberating our students when we give them control of the classroom? When we give our students control aren't we just letting the marketplace control our students? I don't think Rorty's line of thinking really helps us with this problem.

No, I agree with Steven, that Rorty's argument ultimately leaves us exactly where we started.