Collaboration, Context, and Rhetoric

Collaborative pedagogy provides an important social context in which students learn to discuss ideas in a thoughtful, constructive way. Reading the methods of employing collaborative pedagogy, I recognized that many of my methods align with this approach when it comes to classroom discussion and the “power politics” of a classroom, namely, de-centering power so the majority of the power is in the hands of the students. However, like any pedagogy, collaborative pedagogy needs to be tempered with other approaches as well, specifically when it comes to the concept of “socially justified belief.”

Case in point, today in my AP Rhetoric and Composition class, we were reading the introduction to Jeffrey Walker’s Investigating Arguments: Readings for College Writing, a book used in college for a class entitled “Texts, Subtexts, and Contexts.” The introduction is in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus, in which the two argue about what rhetoric is, both, of course, using rhetorical strategies to persuade his opponent. Upon reading a bandwagon argument, I asked the students if bandwagon arguments were a strong way to win an argument. They unanimously said “yes.” I then rephrased my question asking, “Well, is it a logical way to win an argument?” Again, they responded with the affirmative. After some discussion, they were willing to agree that bandwagon arguments are not an appeal to logos, but rather pathos. After establishing this, I then asked in the form of an example: if everyone were cheating on a certain quiz, does that mean it is okay to cheat since everyone else is doing it? Once again, the haunting “yes” returned to the room.

In a school where integrity, scholarship, and respect are the tenets of the honor code, does the collaborative approach, with the notion of “socially justified belief,” construct a community? Or does it become an excuse for dishonorable decision-making? Does socially justified belief (SJB) lead to a new kind of learning? Or does it promote an environment of bandwagoning, peer pressure, and ignorance?

While I know that the collaborative approach, generally speaking, can be very positive and very powerful, I’m not sure that SJB achieves its aim of divergent thinking. In a high school classroom, it’s possible that SJB promotes the pressure to conform and allows for misconceptions and stereotypes to breed freely rather than shedding light on misconceptions. Perhaps the concept of SJB is more successful in post-secondary institutions where students are more likely to question assumptions and to speak up, even if their beliefs seem to be in the minority. Then again, when I consider how some of my English classes were as an undergraduate, these discussions ultimately seemed to be a test of students’ rhetorical skills, and the discussions seemed to end in more of a consensus rather than difference.