2 heads are better than 1, right?

“Collaborative Pedagogy” by Rebecca Moore Howard

My first reaction to reading the opening was, Oh no, not another wide-open ambiguous pedagogy! My next thought was how can collaboration yield its own pedagogy? Will the author argue for group work all the time? Well, I was half right ☺

Collaborative Pedagogy (CP) does utilize group work to accomplish ‘better’ writing, according to Howard’s interpretation of CP supporters. In addition to group work, CP stresses the social element of writing, going as far as saying “all writing is collaborative” (Howard 55). While I believe that writers need collaboration with a reader or with a particular text, I’m not sure I completely agree with doing away with solitary writing. In fact, I got the feeling that some CP advocates would like to do away with current documentation methods (APA, MLA) citing that writing isn’t a solitary action so it doesn’t make sense to continue using other sources to denote between the writer’s ideas and those of others. In some countries documentation (of sources) doesn’t exist; therefore, writers use that country’s great works in their own writing as a sign of respect or reverence. Are CP advocates saying writing should be more like this? What would be the implications? The volume of work per field of study/discipline is quite large, can every scholar or scholar-in-training know these works in such a detailed way that they become common knowledge among that discipline? I don’t think so, but I digress.

Removing solidarity could cause some students to become lazy or too reliant on others for critical thinking and invention. While there are many benefits to collaboration, ‘true’ (ideal) collaboration may never exist.

On the positive side of CP…
Students find confidence in having others to work with. Their idea pool is larger (2 heads are better than one, right?). Group work/collaboration happens in the work world, so knowing how to collaborate is an asset. Writers can get valuable (sometimes) feedback from reader during collaborative sessions in a writing classroom (peer response/review), conferences (teacher-student), and writing center tutorials. [I do think some would argue that peer review and teacher-student conferences aren’t always effective, but students and even teachers can be taught peer review/tutoring skills.]

What I liked about this chapter, after it’s all said and done, was pages 62-66. Howard gives writing/teachers advice for using CP in a classroom. As a teacher, this is helpful. One thing I wish Howard would’ve elaborated on was the writer and text collaboration. Applications for integrating text-writer collaboration would’ve been helpful to read.

In the end, collaboration is necessary and helpful. I think, for me, the key is figuring out how much collaboration I want to use in my classroom. [I already use group work (not group papers), peer review, and student-teacher conferences. Sometimes I successfully use text-writer collaboration too.]