Technology on the Margins: Redefining Where Students
Can Learn
by Alexandra
Socarides
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I. "Success" and the Accomplished Student
"Is it possible that success is
not only manifest in the student who jumps the chasm, but also in
the student who has less of a leap to make? How do these students
navigate the road to success when their goals are not unimaginable
and their teacher is not their hero? What would we learn by understanding
their smaller, even sometimes undetectable, steps towards success?"
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When teachers tell the story of teaching, they usually
speak about the biggest challenges they have faced in the classroom.
While "biggest" is often defined by how difficult the experience
was for them and how much time and effort went into understanding
and attempting to remedy the situation at hand, the real gauge is
ultimately just how much of a difference was made in the life and
work of the student being taught. We all know these miraculous stories.
The student who hated the class the first day developed into the class'
strongest participant. The student who failed the first half of the
semester began succeeding in the second half. Most of us can spot
these students immediately--the face lowered, no pen or paper on hand--and
if there wasn't something inside us that believed we might be able
to make all the difference to them, to change the way they approached
their education and, by extension, the world, we probably wouldn't
be teachers. These stories teach other teachers valuable lessons.
But while we may be drawn to the neediest students because they are
challenging and force us to develop and use new resources, oftentimes
this act of "rescuing" also makes us feel like heroes. While
there are moments when nothing feels better than being someone's hero,
for every one student for whom we play this role, there are whole
classes of students left behind. While we don't literally leave them
behind as we teach, we do leave them behind in our stories about teaching.
We don't tell the story of the "B" student who becomes an
"A" student because the assumption is that that student
was progressing along an individual learning trajectory and just happened
to be in our class when he/she hit his/her stride. We don't even tell
the story of the "A" student who did outstanding work because
we see that student as his/her own hero. But when these are many of
the stories that populate our classrooms, shouldn't we look at them
more closely? Is it possible that success is not only manifest in
the student who jumps the chasm, but also in the student who has less
of a leap to make? How do these students navigate the road to success
when their goals are not unimaginable and their teacher is not their
hero? What would we learn by understanding their smaller, even sometimes
undetectable, steps towards success?
In attempting to answer these questions, I am going to tell the story
of Alex, a bright young man who enrolled in my expository writing
class in his first semester in college. Alex represents many of the
students all teachers find in classes every year--a dedicated, interested,
and hard-working young person--and his story is only unfamiliar in
so far as we are not used to turning our attention to an analysis
of his success. My desire to pause and look closely at Alex comes
not only from my sense of the dearth of material on already-successful
students and what I imagine we can learn from them, but is also motivated
by Alex's specific mode of success. Through the use of an outside
technology--the on-line forum that I introduced to the class almost
half way into the semester--Alex was able to take his already-strong
writing skills to the next level. Because this specific technology
altered the context in which he worked, therefore allowing him to
tap into a different set of resources and motivations, Alex was able
to become the excellent student I hadn't predicted he could become.
Because I never could have imagined that technology would lead him
to such success, he revealed to me not just what technology can do
for students like him, but what changes in learning contexts might
be able to do for all students. |
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II. On Creativity and Resistance
"When the university tells us
that this kind of "defiant" work is either resistant or
creative, it fails to see that some amount of resistance is a necessary
part of all creative endeavors."
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Like many students, Alex came to college with a desire to succeed.
Along with my required class that first semester, he was enrolled
in introductory Biology, Chemistry, and Precalculus courses, all
classes in which he ended up receiving grades in the A-B range.
When asked to describe what his first impressions of college were,
he wrote:
I suppose most people enter college with some sort of vision
of what it will be like, but that wasn't me. I came in assuming
nothing and expecting nothing. All my friends thought it would be
fun--a real chance to explore and 'find yourself.' For me it turned
out to be nothing like that. I came here knowing who I am, and instead
of finding myself, I'm trying to hold on to what makes me Alex.1
This self-knowledge and confidence that is so much a part of Alex's
character was apparent to me right away: He was the only student
to ask a question on the first day of class--it was about the grading
policy--and within the first few weeks he had started speaking to
me after class about ideas he was having and connections he was
making. In an otherwise silent group of twenty-one students, Alex
was the voice of enthusiasm and he almost always played the role
of leader in small group discussions. Yet despite this attitude
and desire to succeed, Alex received a non-passing grade on his
first paper.
The assignment for this paper was to read the essay "Playing
God in the Garden" by Michael Pollan and write about the ways
in which biotechnology was going to affect the future. Alex wrote
the following introduction to his paper:
Biotechnology is like a giant Ring-Ding. It's tasty, and very
promising, but it is enwrapped with chocolate mystery and white
creamy intrigue. Biotechnology has its positive attributes yet possibly
many negative repercussions. The future of biotechnology--such as
future in general--is uncertain. Though we may hope for the best,
the end results may not be in turn. Biotechnology is an enigma that
will never be solved for the answer is blowing in the wind.2
Despite the fact that Alex had done well in all the required English
classes in High School and had taken AP English, he did not start
the writing portion of the semester well. Unlike other students
who over-intellectualize in the first paper, adopting and most-often
using incorrectly the language of the so-called "university,"
Alex was taking a different approach.
In his landmark article "Inventing the University," David
Bartholomae claims that "every time a student sits down to
write for us, he has to invent the university for the occasion"
(511). In doing so, "he has to learn to speak our language,
to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting,
evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourses
of our community" (511). Bartholomae finds that students, on
the whole, engage in this "inventing" in a variety of
ways-through appropriating, mimicking, and claiming authority. Alex's
refusal to even attempt this inventing, through his donut metaphor
and reference to a Bob Dylan song, would have landed him the label
of "resistant student" in many classrooms. Not only was
he refusing to engage the university on its terms, but one could
interpret his writing as an attempt to mock the university itself.
The alternative to labeling Alex as a resistant student would be
to see him as a creative student. In order to stand out in a classroom
of students who are all writing on the same topic, some students
imagine that the university is asking them to be creative, not conformative.
Yet when the university tells us that this kind of "defiant"
work is either resistant or creative, it fails to see that some
amount of resistance is a necessary part of all creative endeavors.
Therefore, whether or not Alex knew that the assignment was asking
him to attempt using the university's rhetoric-something I believe
he was not fully aware of, given his preoccupation with wanting
to succeed-he was unable to approach this assignment straight on.
He needed to use his own cultural references, as well as humor,
and this produced what we would all call, at the very least, an
original approach.
Thus, I had a problem on my hands. Not only had half of the class,
including some students in need of serious tutoring and extensive
one-on-one help from me, failed, but so had the most active, dedicated,
and interested student in my class. Although I knew that Alex would
quickly pull himself up when he had seen some successful student
papers, when he understood better what was expected of him, and
when he had more time to reread and rewrite, at this point I assumed
that he would probably top out at the "B" level. I imagined
that, with work, he could harness and use his creativity productively,
but that he would always fall just short of the dazzling, fully-coherent
and expertly-crafted "A" paper that at the time I felt
was only within the reach of students who already knew about Bartholomae's
university, students who were able to employ the creative/resistant
approach with greater ease.
But Alex's expectations for himself looked different than mine.
In articulating how he thought he would do in this class, he wrote:
I thought I'd do well in this class. I've always enjoyed writing
and was pretty good at it. Not to mention I had my sister who was
a journalism major and my mother to help me if I got into trouble.
But after my first paper failed I had second thoughts. From then
on I was determined to get that A paper, and without my sister or
mother's help. I was bent on getting an A and I was going to do
it alone.
So while my focus was on all of the really struggling students,
Alex worked steadily toward his goal, receiving a C+ on the second
paper, and a B on the third. At this point he was writing strong
essays, and, indeed, using his creativity to more productive ends.
He was writing sentences that, although not syntactically flawless,
indicated that he was struggling with complicated concepts on his
own terms. For example, in an essay on the origins of authoritarianism,
he wrote, "In order to analyze authoritarianism one must realize
that it is the managerial equivalent to a soundly built car with
a bad engine, it has the potential to work, but the driving force
behind it (its ideology) is corrupted (based on falsehoods)."
This kind of thinking, in my mind, was a great improvement, and
due to my own inability to understand what could move Alex into
the "A" range from here--for he really had come a long
way already--part of me was happy to think of the bulk of his work
as done.
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| III. The On-line Forum |
At this point in the semester I introduced my students
to the on-line forum. I had never used technology in my teaching before,
but the web site for this forum had been easy to navigate, there were
already-formulated instructions for me and my students to follow,
and, to be honest, we all needed a break from the classroom. But before
deciding if it was going to be right for them and if I was going to
understand how to use it effectively, I tried it out myself. This
is how it worked.
On the web-site there was a list of "threads" that had been
started by different students and teachers of the community, and the
subject of each of these threads was visible to anyone who visited
the site. If a subject heading seemed interesting, you could click
on it and the starting comment or question would appear. Then you
could scroll down and read the extended conversation that different
members were having in reaction to the opening piece. Once I saw how
many conversations were taking place and the variety of topics under
discussion, I realized that being a part of this community could really
benefit my students.
But the variety of conversations I imagined they could engage in was
not my only motivation. While we had all grown to know each other
better over the first two months of class and some students were now
regularly speaking in the classroom, on the whole this was a shy and
reserved bunch. There was a quiet and formal atmosphere in the classroom,
which I attribute partly to the early hour at which we met, partly
to the fact that it was a challenging class that almost everybody
wanted to do well in, and partly to the attitude which I put forth
as the teacher. I have always worked to establish environments that
are respectful of all members of the community, an approach that I
believe allows me to teach and them to learn most productively. Because
I lay out the various rules of the class on the first day and present
myself as someone who is dedicated to every student who wishes to
dedicate themselves to working hard, many students take a serious
approach to my class. So, while the formal quality of the classroom
was producing hardworking students, there was a certain amount of
easiness and fun that was missing from this learning environment.
Thus, I turned to the on-line forum with the hope that my students
would be able to hear some of the conversations that other classes
were having and also that they would be able to interact and express
themselves in a less-regulated environment. While I told them that
I would check to see if they were doing their "postings"--I
required fifteen before semester's ends--I let them know that they
would not be graded on what they wrote on the forum. I wanted them
to explore different ways of writing without feeling as if they were
being monitored by me. In opposing Bartholomae's idea that teachers
force students to use the rhetoric of the university, Joseph Harris,
in his article "The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing,"
claims that teachers should simply encourage students to be aware
of the competing discourses around them. While I believed that my
ability to teach my students about these various discourses was nearly
impossible because Harris' idea presupposes that students are able
to identify and understand various complex discourses, I recognized
the need for a space in-between Bartholomae and Harris, a place where,
outside of my regulating vision, students could find those discourses
for themselves, play with them, and decide how to use them most effectively.
I was hoping that the on-line forum would be this place, and in thinking
in such a way, I was imagining that context and discourse existed
in tight conjunction; if I shifted one, I might be able to shift the
other. |
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IV "Tussin" Goes On-Line
"COME ONE COME ALL ASK THE GREAT
TUSSIN!
STUMPED?
NEED CLARIFICATION?
NEED SOMEONE HELP BREAK THAT WRITER'S BLOCK?
COME AND ASK TUSSIN!ANY THOUGHTS, QUESTIONS, OR CRITICISM?"
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On October 22, 2001, Alex logged into the on-line forum for the
first time and made his first postings under the name "Tussin."3
While it is impossible to know exactly how long
he was on-line and how many posts he read, the times of his own
posts tell us that he was writing steadily from a little before
10:30 p.m. till about midnight. In that time he responded to five
already-established threads; these five threads dealt with three
different essays, all of which we had read in class, but some of
which he was no longer being asked to write about. From the beginning
he seemed to be simply interested in what other people were talking
about and full of opinions to share.
One of his posts on this first night contains many of the seeds
for his later work in this environment. In class, the students were
currently working on essays about selections from Jasper Becker's
book Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine, and one of Alex's
classmates had asked this question: "Did Mao really have control
over the people of China and if so how did he obtain that control?
If not who was in control, or what was in control?" Two other
classmates had already responded to this question, both saying that
Mao did have control over the people of China. In response to them
and in an effort to answer the question in a new way, Alex wrote:
Have you ever heard of the saying 'the truth will set you free',
well Mao denied the Chinese people from the truth thus, keeping
them enslaved--stuck in a system that was bound to fail. The people
had no choice b/c they were denied any source of fact-based knowledge.
So it can be said the Mao did exhibit control over the Chinese people,
but it is worthwhile to note that they followed his lead willing,
believing in and trusting him. In this respect a strong argument
can be made that he did not control the peasant, btu that the peasants
chose to support a 'homegrown hero' and hope for the best. Personally
i feel he did have control over the population, but think where
that power came from. Where did, and does the ultimate power lie?
Answer this question, and one day you to can be a king my son...
you too can be a king.4
Alex does a variety of remarkable things in this response, not the
least of which is respectfully complicate the more standard opinions
that had already been expressed. He also uses his speaking voice
("Have you ever heard of the saying..." and "Personally
i feel..."), is both humorous and ironic ("one day you
can be a king my son... you can be a king"), and seamlessly
uses the language of the university ("In this respect a strong
argument can be made..."). Additionally, Alex refuses to fall
into the "for or against" mentality that Lynch et al.
point out is the trademark of most student discourse in their article
"Moments of Argument: Agonistic Inquiry and Confrontational
Cooperation" (390). What Alex began displaying in this very
first post is that a variety of discourses were rattling around
in his head, discourses that the classroom couldn't accommodate,
but that an on-line environment could.
Alex wrote on the forum again the very next night. He logged on
at a slightly later hour and made four posts that are very different
in nature from the level-headed ones of the previous evening. He
opened with an aggressive reaction to a fellow-classmate's thoughts
about biotechnology. Much of Alex's aggressiveness is manifest in
his use of all-caps and his tone:
QUESTION HOW DID YOU KNOW THE OTHER POTATOES WHERE BIOLOGICALLY
ALTERED? THEY HAD NO STICKER SAYING BIO APPLES, ALSO WHAT THE HECK
ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? I TRIED TO FOLLOW BUT YOU LOST ME AT THE
THUMBS UP SYMBOL! SO YOU ARE SAYING THAT THE ESSAY IS ABOUT CLONING?
WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?
AND WHAT WAS FUNNY ABOUT MACDONALDS? IS THE WORD FRIES COMICAL TOO?
THE ESSAY IS ABOUT CHOICE. YOU WERE ABLE TO CHOOSE THE NON STICKERED
APPLES BUT IF SOMEONE CAM AND TOLD YOU TO ONLY TAKE THE NO STICKERED
APPLE YOU'D BE ON HERE CRYING ABOUT IT. BASICALLY, I DON'T SEE WHERE
YOU ARE COMING FROM, AND WOULD APPRECIATE IT IF YOU CLEARIFIED YOU
THOUGHTS MORE, YOU MAY HAVE SOMETHING I DON'T KNOW, BUT I CAN'T
TELL WHERE YOU ARE TRYING TO GO WITH IT.
This is a tone which I would have discouraged in my classroom--it
reads a bit like a loudly-voiced attack--and Alex's use of it here
indicates to me that he not only recognized the rules of the classroom
proper, but that he was attempting to carve out this new space for
himself, marking the forum as a venue in which he could speak in
his own way. Although the student that Alex is critiquing here did
not respond to his questions, the end of Alex's post indicates that
ultimately he is trying to open up a dialogue. He is questioning
his fellow student in the way a teacher might question a student
("I DON'T SEE WHERE YOU ARE COMING FROM, AND WOULD APPRECIATE
IT IF YOU CLEARIFIED YOU THOUGHTS MORE"), although, again,
slightly more aggressively. He is asking for substantiation and
for the student to be more critical and thoughtful in his writing,
but the presence of the all-caps and the direct address to the student
closes down the chance for a dialogue.
This very same night, Alex writes his most unusual post of the semester
and, once again, there is silence on the other end. He writes:
COME ONE COME ALL ASK THE GREAT TUSSIN!
STUMPED?
NEED CLARIFICATION?
NEED SOMEONE HELP BREAK THAT WRITER'S BLOCK?
COME AND ASK TUSSIN!ANY THOUGHTS, QUESTIONS, OR CRITICISM?
TELL TUSSIN, THIS IS SPECIAL BONUS FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO HAVE HEALTHY
DEBATES ABOUT VARIOUS TOPICS!
COMPARING IDEAS OR ARGUING WITH TUSSIN WILL ALLOW YOU TO FOCUS YOUR
PAPER AND ORGANIZE YOUR IDEAS. SO COME, AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS
ONCE A SEMESTER OFFER!
~TUSSIN NOT SOLD IN STORES, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY WRITING PROGRAM FORUM
IS NOT IN ANYWAY HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR MISUSE OR ACCIDENTAL CHOKING
ON TUSSIN.~
In this post Alex uses an alternative approach to liven up the forum:
He casts himself in the role of expert. While the motivation for
this is altruistic--as he reflects later, "After the first
couple of posts I decided I could possibly help others to develop
their writing skills"--the forum members did not know what
to do with this. Although nineteen people read this post, not a
single person responded to it.
When the web-site administrator read this post, he tracked down
who this student was and notified me of what was happening on the
forum. He said that he had considered deleting Alex's post because
it didn't adhere to what he considered to be the guidelines of the
forum, but on second thought, he decided to see what the community
would do with it. The administrator brought up Alex's post in a
public setting and he and other teachers discussed Alex's work as
that of a resistant student whose defiant behavior the other students
on the forum were "regulating" with their silence. These
teachers interpreted the other students' silence as a disapproval
of the way Alex was using the forum. Because I knew Alex and I understood
that he was playing around with different stances and voices, I
refused to see his writing as solely resistant, was intrigued by
what else was motivating such writing, and decided not to intervene.
Without a word from any authority figure, Alex never made a similar
post again. While we may partly attribute this to the non-responsiveness
of the community, his future posts tell us much more about what
he was learning at the time. Over the course of the next week, Alex
made four more posts and this time they are all in the form of questions.
He starts interesting threads about the readings we were discussing
in class and he waits for responses. Sometimes he responds to the
answers that come back from the community; other times he doesn't
reengage. At all points, though, he is working on opening up discussions.
For example, on October 25th he started a poll and asked a question
about Susan Faludi's essay "The Naked Citadel":
I'm curious how many people feel that the Citadel should have
been forced to admit women. Feel free to not only take part in the
poll, but share your opinion as well. This is a very interesting
topic, in many respects, and I'd love to hear other opinions.
That same evening he starts another even more inclusive thread:
Does anyone else see a resemblance between the Citadel and sports
teams/clubs? I see many similarities in the attitudes of the Citadel
students and that of a player on an high school sports team. How
would football players or soccer players respond to a girl joining
their team? How would opposing teams view them? Or a boy joining
the field hockey or girls lacross team, would it change the feel
of the game? I was fortunate enough to be on a team that had a female
participant, and I can say she was a part of the team, but many
time my heart went out to her. Personally, I admired her bravery
and persistence. And was digust by how others on and off the team,
male and female, would treat her or say to her (to her face or behind
her back). But she hads courage and by her presistence she grew
large support and exceptance, though there were still moments. Can
anyone else relate to this exclusionary mentality. Not just men
against women, but vise-versa, or racial, or cultural, etc.
The best way to analyze a literary work is to make it parallel
an event in your own life. Think about a time when you have had
the "Citadel mentality", or you have been the 'victim'
of it.
HAPPY WRITING
Alex had moved from an aggressive to an authoritative to a didactic
stance, the last of which can be seen in this post. Here he phrases
his question the way a teacher would. It feels friendly and inviting
("Does anyone else see..."), it reminds everyone of the
purpose of answering the question ("The best way to analyze
a literary work..."), and it provides encouragement ("HAPPY
WRITING"). His tone indicates that he is not just interested
in what people have to say, but honestly wants to help other students
with their writing. This is a very different kind of help than the
sort he was offering in the earlier thread entitled "ASK TUSSIN:
ANY QUESTION YOU NEED ANSWERED TUSSIN WILL ANSWER."
Whether Alex knew it or not, his appropriating of the role of teacher
on the forum was his first step to writing truly excellent papers.
My presence in the classroom negated his ability to take on this
role, as he seemed to have a great deal of respect for me and was
the kind of student who would never want me to be disappointed in
his behavior. Therefore, while he hid this desire to help others
while in the classroom and was therefore more silent than he needed
to be-it's worth noting that his behavior in class did not change
substantially during his time on the forum-the forum allowed him
to navigate the ins and outs of this desire more productively.
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V. Moving Back from being the Teacher to being a Student
"As he slowly moved away from
the position of teacher, he began to reinhabit the position of learner."
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Over the course of his months on the forum Alex made
twenty-three posts, but the work that he did in those first few weeks
reveals the early steps he made towards his later success. When writing
about his initial impressions of the forum, Alex wrote:
At first I thought the forum would be a waste of time. I considered
it needless busy work, that gradually changed. When I first got on
the forum there wasn't too much activity, but I did a few posts anyway.
Eventually, I would do two posts or more everytime I'd write a paper.
I would use the forum as a well to pull up ideas and get my thoughts
flowing. Sometimes when I was at a road block I'd just go on and write
something. Afterwards I could continue my paper with more ease.
Before Alex had the forum as a place to try things out, he was writing
all of his thoughts into his papers. He didn't know what to do with
all of his original ideas, and he thought that, since he was having
them, he should try to show them. What the forum taught him was that
people only responded to a certain version of his creativity--the
creativity that comes from deep, interesting thinking, not from aggressive
attacks, the authoritative "expert" stance, or the overly
didactic approach.
Therefore, after experimenting with these three modes in late-October,
Alex soon began to work on both sides of the forum, responding to
other people's threads while still placing his own questions front
and center. As he slowly moved away from the position of teacher,
he began to reinhabit the position of learner. He resituated himself
as a student on the forum, writing from his true perspective--"I
have a lot more to say on this and other topics, but I'm still reading
the essay"--and engaging in long, productive debates in which
he speaks as a learner who is struggling with ideas and multiple perspectives--"I
understand what you are saying and you do have a point, not that I
agree with you, but i see where you are coming from." In this
new position his voice was much more confident and level-headed for
having made his journey to becoming the teacher and coming back to
his role as student.
The result of this journey is reflected in Alex's two final papers
of the semester, papers that demonstrate some of the best writing
I read all semester long. In these complex and interesting essays,
Alex used his own, original perspective as a way into complicating
the issues that the texts he was reading posed. He abandoned donut
metaphors, perfected his syntax, and found a tone that reflected authority
and openness. The opening sentences of his fifth paper read:
What is your vision of a 'perfect' world? Is it a vision of people
of all creeds and colors joined in harmony? Is it a vision of a world
where no man or woman will be judged by the shade or shape of their
bodies, but instead by the substance of their spirit? Would there
then be no class difference, no war, no hatred or bigotry? If so,
this dream is one shared with many others across the world, both free
and oppressed alike. Though perfection is out of human reach, we must
still strive for the unattainable-continue to dream the impossible
dream--a dream that may never be fully realized but is worth striving
for nonetheless.
This paper goes on to critique Martha Nussbaum's essay, "Women
and Cultural Universals," by exposing a variety of complications
that arise when people try to better the global community on moral
grounds. Drawing on three essays and his own knowledge of Martin Luther
King, Jr.'s teachings and the Civil Rights Movement, Alex ends up
making a compelling argument for freedom at all costs--costs which
he accounts for in the paper. Having produced work of this caliber,
Alex landed the "A" he had been striving for all along,
and as the semester came to a close, it occurred to me that his achievement
felt "bigger" to me than any other student's achievement
precisely because I couldn't put my finger on how it had happened.
It was then, with Alex's permission, that I called up all of posts
from the on-line forum and read the narrative of his success. It had
occurred at the margins of my class, in a place of which I was barely
aware.
In his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big
Difference, Malcolm Gladwell analyzes the issue and importance
of context in causing cultural change. His claim is that "the
impetus to engage in a certain kind of behavior is not coming from
a certain kind of person but from a feature of the environment"
(142). Gladwell's theory allows teachers to think about the parts
of teaching that are directly affected by their students' surroundings
and not simply by the students or teachers themselves. Gladwell allows
us to entertain the idea that environment, over everything else, might
be the very thing that allows real teaching to be done. While I may
have previously denounced this opinion in favor of claiming that students'
successes lie in the hands of the hard-working teacher, Alex's experience
has taught me otherwise.
Do I think that Alex would have eventually succeeded had he not experienced
the change in context that the forum provided? Probably. But do I
think that his success would have occurred so rapidly and on his own
terms, therefore working to invigorate him so dramatically? Probably
not. Alex's own assessment of the forum's effect on his work is much
more humble than the praise I have given him, but in it is his understanding
that what he experienced there had larger implications than the "A"
on his transcript: "The forum was very helpful [and] perhaps
it was the difference between an A and a B for me. But far more importantly
it may have been the difference between actually understanding and
going along with the program." |
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VI Conclusion
"While it may be impossible to
know in what environments each of our students will learn most productively,
we must be open to the idea that, for many, that space is not the
classroom proper."
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The change in context that technology provided for
a strong student like Alex made all the difference in his achieving
excellence. It allowed him to place himself in a position of authority,
an option not available to him in the classroom setting. Yet if that
was all he needed, this change in context could have been provided
by a variety of other resources. Instead, because this specific technology
that was working at the margins of the class allowed for an anonymous
interaction with other students--everyone had a username on the forum
that didn't necessarily reveal his/her identity--it taught him about
the intersection of creative and productive discourses, and eventually
landed him back in the position of learner. It was this journey to
authority and back that allowed Alex to understand and shape his knowledge,
experience, and creativity--all aspects of his writing that he eventually
employed to extremely effective ends.
Alex's experience shows that when we read our students' writing carefully,
we might be able to better predict what small shifts in our own pedagogical
resources will help them reach their goals. While it may be impossible
to know in what environments each of our students will learn most
productively, we must be open to the idea that, for many, that space
is not the classroom proper. By altering the settings that our students
are allowed to learn in we grant them the space to discover and explore
the very discourses and subject positions that are at the heart of
learning. |
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1 At the end of the semester, Alex
answered several questions on a written form. Unless otherwise noted,
his quotes have been transcribed directly from that document. Back
to article
2 Excerpts from papers are reprinted here with the
consent of the author. Back to article
3 "Tussin" is a reference to a Chris Rock
stand-up comedy skit. Back to article
4 Throughout this paper I have transcribed Alex's
posts as they appeared and have not included a [sic] every time he
makes a grammatical error. Back to
article |
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Works Cited
Bartholomae, David. "Inventing the University." Literacy:
A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Ellen Cushman, et al. Boston &
New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. 511-524.
Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can
Make a Big Difference. Boston, New York, & London: Little,
Brown and Company, 2000.
Harris, Joseph. "The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing."
On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa
Ede. Boston & New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 1999. 260-271.
Lynch, Dennis A., Diana George, and Marilyn M. Cooper. "Moments
of Argument: Agonistic Inquiry and Confrontational Cooperation."
On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa
Ede. Boston & New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 1999. 390-412.
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