Community...what does that word really mean? Most would probably conjure up a vague mental image of a group of people getting along together. The word community tends to give a sentiment of closeness and goodness. Nothing particularly concrete comes to my mind when given the word community and that vagueness in community is exactly the issue behind much of writing instruction in our classrooms.
Joseph Harris in his article “The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing” addresses the issue of what it really means to instruct our students with the idea of “community” given the lack of an unambiguous definition surrounding the concept. He builds upon the ideas proposed by Patricia Bizzell and David Bartholomae, and suggests that we need to take a closer look at what we are teaching when we teach writing as a communal activity. He wrote, “We write not as isolated individuals but as members of communities whose beliefs, concerns, and practices both instigate and constrain, at least in part, the sorts of things we can say. Our aims and intentions in writing are thus not merely personal, idiosyncratic, but reflective of the communities to which we belong” (Harris 749). This idea of community as a shaping agent is a critical factor to why many teachers have kept this vaguely formed idea as a pivotal component of their teaching pedagogies. Harris explores this phenomenon of community throughout his article and relies on the idea of opposing binaries and how those have a pivotal impact on how students approach writing.
Many writing curriculums approach writing with one of two attitudes: that of writing being a communal effort and the other being that of the power of the individual imagination. Since many academic writing programs are moving towards the community approach, we have developed a sense of a we which is a very powerful motive for many writers but it also has the adverse effect of creating a they. Both terms create a sense of other and we challenge our students to negotiate that binary. Many times, they come up short and we are disappointed as instructors because we have aimed to create a community which has failed. More often than not, our students end up summarizing thoughts of others within that particular community that they are challenged to write in. This is not a fault of the students but rather a problem that writing instructors must frame and teach to the students. How do you as the writer negotiate different types of discourse? Harris proposed that “they [the students] might better be encouraged towards a kind of polyphony - an awareness of and pleasure in the various competing discourses that make up their own” (754).
Writing instructors must teach students how to “reposition” (Harris 755) themselves in relation to different competing discourses when they approach academic writing, or any writing for that matter. One idea proposed by Wayne Campbell Peck, Linda Flower, and Lorraine Higgins advocates towards writing and the issue of community in writing is their approach to alternative discourse or “community literacy” (1102). In this idea, they define four key parts that support community literacy as a means to negotiating writing in different discourses.
Community literacy “supports social change” meaning that problem solving for a purpose is a key aspect behind communal writing practice (Peck, Flower, and Higgins 1102). The second component of community literacy is the idea of “intercultural conversation” which gets at the idea that oppositional viewpoints must be in constant conversation with one another to reach a solution and that this discourse is “bridging conversations that seek out diverse perspectives for the purpose of reaching mutual ends” (Peck, Flower, and Higgins 1102). The practical implications of intercultural conversations is that this will bring about a strategic approach that supports the new discussions (Peck, Flower, and Higgins 1102). And finally, the fourth component of community literacy is the shared experience of inquiry which means to “purposefully examine the genuine conflicts, assumptions, and practices we bring to these new partnerships” (Peck, Flower, and Higgins 1102).
From these two articles on community, we as instructors can see the difficulties that arise from this commonly taught approach to writing as a communal activity. Community is not an altogether bad thing for us to teach in composition. We just have to approach this idea with caution and propose a meaningful idea of what community actually is for our students. They do not need to completely jump from one discourse community to another but rather we need to teach them the meaningful tools to integrate their ideas and who they are as writers to develop their own writing voices and styles which address their given writing context. They do not need to completely forget their prior knowledge and abandon their own opinions when they write but instead, they need to be taught how to integrate their prior experiences and given opportunities to develop their understanding of what constitutes community.
We cannot leave all the pressure on our students. We as teachers must also strive to build our own writing to be more welcoming for conversation. Much of the academic world is somewhat off-putting to newcomers. By practicing community literacy and building our own skills in writing, we can share those tools for bridging different discourse communities with our students who are new to academic situations which call for integration and conversation, not merely summarization.
Joseph Harris in his article “The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing” addresses the issue of what it really means to instruct our students with the idea of “community” given the lack of an unambiguous definition surrounding the concept. He builds upon the ideas proposed by Patricia Bizzell and David Bartholomae, and suggests that we need to take a closer look at what we are teaching when we teach writing as a communal activity. He wrote, “We write not as isolated individuals but as members of communities whose beliefs, concerns, and practices both instigate and constrain, at least in part, the sorts of things we can say. Our aims and intentions in writing are thus not merely personal, idiosyncratic, but reflective of the communities to which we belong” (Harris 749). This idea of community as a shaping agent is a critical factor to why many teachers have kept this vaguely formed idea as a pivotal component of their teaching pedagogies. Harris explores this phenomenon of community throughout his article and relies on the idea of opposing binaries and how those have a pivotal impact on how students approach writing.
Many writing curriculums approach writing with one of two attitudes: that of writing being a communal effort and the other being that of the power of the individual imagination. Since many academic writing programs are moving towards the community approach, we have developed a sense of a we which is a very powerful motive for many writers but it also has the adverse effect of creating a they. Both terms create a sense of other and we challenge our students to negotiate that binary. Many times, they come up short and we are disappointed as instructors because we have aimed to create a community which has failed. More often than not, our students end up summarizing thoughts of others within that particular community that they are challenged to write in. This is not a fault of the students but rather a problem that writing instructors must frame and teach to the students. How do you as the writer negotiate different types of discourse? Harris proposed that “they [the students] might better be encouraged towards a kind of polyphony - an awareness of and pleasure in the various competing discourses that make up their own” (754).
Writing instructors must teach students how to “reposition” (Harris 755) themselves in relation to different competing discourses when they approach academic writing, or any writing for that matter. One idea proposed by Wayne Campbell Peck, Linda Flower, and Lorraine Higgins advocates towards writing and the issue of community in writing is their approach to alternative discourse or “community literacy” (1102). In this idea, they define four key parts that support community literacy as a means to negotiating writing in different discourses.
Community literacy “supports social change” meaning that problem solving for a purpose is a key aspect behind communal writing practice (Peck, Flower, and Higgins 1102). The second component of community literacy is the idea of “intercultural conversation” which gets at the idea that oppositional viewpoints must be in constant conversation with one another to reach a solution and that this discourse is “bridging conversations that seek out diverse perspectives for the purpose of reaching mutual ends” (Peck, Flower, and Higgins 1102). The practical implications of intercultural conversations is that this will bring about a strategic approach that supports the new discussions (Peck, Flower, and Higgins 1102). And finally, the fourth component of community literacy is the shared experience of inquiry which means to “purposefully examine the genuine conflicts, assumptions, and practices we bring to these new partnerships” (Peck, Flower, and Higgins 1102).
From these two articles on community, we as instructors can see the difficulties that arise from this commonly taught approach to writing as a communal activity. Community is not an altogether bad thing for us to teach in composition. We just have to approach this idea with caution and propose a meaningful idea of what community actually is for our students. They do not need to completely jump from one discourse community to another but rather we need to teach them the meaningful tools to integrate their ideas and who they are as writers to develop their own writing voices and styles which address their given writing context. They do not need to completely forget their prior knowledge and abandon their own opinions when they write but instead, they need to be taught how to integrate their prior experiences and given opportunities to develop their understanding of what constitutes community.
We cannot leave all the pressure on our students. We as teachers must also strive to build our own writing to be more welcoming for conversation. Much of the academic world is somewhat off-putting to newcomers. By practicing community literacy and building our own skills in writing, we can share those tools for bridging different discourse communities with our students who are new to academic situations which call for integration and conversation, not merely summarization.
Works Cited
Peck, Wayne Campbell, Linda Flower, and Lorraine Higgins. "Community Literacy." The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 1097-1116. Print.
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