“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.]
Showing posts with label collaborative pedagogy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collaborative pedagogy. Show all posts
23 September 2008
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.
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.
Social writing for a social world
Rebecca Moore Howard offers Kenneth A. Bruffee’s three principles as the basis of collaborative pedagogy, but they stand here without qualification. If I were to disagree with his very first premise (“thought is internalized conversation”), which I am inclined to do in the absence of supporting evidence or argument, how can I approach this pedagogy?
To me, the value in collaborative pedagogy lies not in the fact that it is a more natural means of communication but that it can help students learn to communicate in a means that is advantageous in our social world, especially in the workplace. Howard invokes Lunsford’s recognition that employees are increasingly asked to perform collaborative tasks that involve groups working together at all levels to discover and resolve problems, and to report on findings. This type of collaboration can involve the first three categories that Howard presents in this article, learning, contribution to solo-authored texts, and writing, though I argue that writing in fact contains both of the others.
Because of the social stigma related to collaboration, it is easy to see why Howard chose to present these as separate categories. As she points out, “the very notion of collaboration contradicts a long cultural tradition that privileges the individual agent and especially the solitary author” (55). This value penetrates all levels of writing, down to the ideas that comprise it, thus it is difficult to get people to accept the idea of collaborative invention even while some of our most prized authors made active use of it.
While some of my most rewarding classroom experiences as a student have involved collaborative learning and contribution, I have never participated in collaborative writing and have a hard time imagining doing so. I see its possibility in my future professional career, and so would love the opportunity to try it in a classroom setting.
The last category seems to stand apart from the others. While Howard presents writer/text collaboration as something novel, it seems to me what every writer does. Our knowledge is comprised of the information that we take in, and so all that we have read becomes a stimulus for creation. While this type of collaboration in its strictest form may disregard idea ownership as we currently understand it, as a whole it differs very little from the student who writes an essay response to a piece of literature. I would be interested to hear about this area from my fellow students – how do you understand writer/text collaboration?
To me, the value in collaborative pedagogy lies not in the fact that it is a more natural means of communication but that it can help students learn to communicate in a means that is advantageous in our social world, especially in the workplace. Howard invokes Lunsford’s recognition that employees are increasingly asked to perform collaborative tasks that involve groups working together at all levels to discover and resolve problems, and to report on findings. This type of collaboration can involve the first three categories that Howard presents in this article, learning, contribution to solo-authored texts, and writing, though I argue that writing in fact contains both of the others.
Because of the social stigma related to collaboration, it is easy to see why Howard chose to present these as separate categories. As she points out, “the very notion of collaboration contradicts a long cultural tradition that privileges the individual agent and especially the solitary author” (55). This value penetrates all levels of writing, down to the ideas that comprise it, thus it is difficult to get people to accept the idea of collaborative invention even while some of our most prized authors made active use of it.
While some of my most rewarding classroom experiences as a student have involved collaborative learning and contribution, I have never participated in collaborative writing and have a hard time imagining doing so. I see its possibility in my future professional career, and so would love the opportunity to try it in a classroom setting.
The last category seems to stand apart from the others. While Howard presents writer/text collaboration as something novel, it seems to me what every writer does. Our knowledge is comprised of the information that we take in, and so all that we have read becomes a stimulus for creation. While this type of collaboration in its strictest form may disregard idea ownership as we currently understand it, as a whole it differs very little from the student who writes an essay response to a piece of literature. I would be interested to hear about this area from my fellow students – how do you understand writer/text collaboration?
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