Working Normally (and Abnormally) with Collaborative Learning
- Bruffee writes, "The first steps to learning to think better, therefore, are learning to converse better and learning to establish and maintain the sorts of social context, the sorts of community life, that foster the sorts of conversation members of the community value" (640). This idea emerges from an epistemology that places conversation before thought. What do you think about this this idea? This epistemology? Does it have implications for our notions of what it means to author a text?
- Bruffee devotes considerable attention to Richard Rorty's notions of normal discourse and abnormal discourse, ideas that modify previous work by Thomas Kuhn. Following Rorty very closely, Bruffee claims that "abnormal discourse is . . . necessary to learning. But, ironically, abnormal discourse cannot be directly taught" (648). Bruffee is raising a fascinating conundrum here. Draw on your experience teaching this term, as well as your previous experience as a student, and consider just how one might both help students understand and enter normal discourse while also creating a space for the kind of learning that might only emerge through abnormal discourse.
- Develop a collaborative learning activity for your next class meeting. Think carefully about the issues of conversation, discourse, and the importance of knowledge communities. How do you see this activity drawing in the ideas in Bruffee? Can you provide an opportunity (at some point in the activity) for students to reflect on the value of the conversation, the way they are participating in normal discourse, or even the ways they use abnormal discourse to construct a shared meaning for the content that is the subject matter of the activity?
Don't like the look? Restyle!
Produce | Wikiwiki | Escher
| Cloisonne | The
Blues | Negative | Skinless