AT ANT and the relevance of the University
For hopefully obvious reasons I could not stop thinking about my teaching practices and pedagogy while reading "Worlds Apart," by Patrick Dias, Aviva Freedman, Peter Medway, and Anthony Pare. My contemplation only deepened while revisiting Clay Spinuzzi's Network: Theorizing Knowledge Work in Telecommunications. I found it remarkably interesting to read these two pieces in tandem and through the lens of technical communication.
As what seems to be standard practice here at SU, I structure my classes around a theme of my own choice and then create writing tasks that allow me to teach students how to approach said task. However, while reading both pieces I couldn’t help but wonder if I would be more effective in the classroom by teaching genre theory, rhetoric, and composition studies. In other words, instead of developing a class around a theme that is not only interesting to me but also “hopefully” interesting to the students then providing opportunities for students to “practice” important rhetorical strategies, I am considering focusing on “writing” itself.
Although the authors of “Worlds Apart” focus on courses and workplaces that are not typically considered writing centered I felt it was very insightful. According to the authors, "As studies of nonacademic writing proliferate, it is possible to see the extent to which writers rely on situation-specific knowledge in the preparation of texts. This "local knowledge" (Geertz, 1983) concerns all aspects of the writing situation, from disciplinary and institutional regulations governing the form and substance of texts to relationships among writers and readers. Such a view of writing has been confirmed in the growing consideration of genre theory in theorizing about writing (Bazerman, 1988; Bazerman & ParadiS, 1991b;Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Cope & Kalantzis, 1993; Freedman & Medway, 1994a, 1994b: Swales, 1990)" (qtd in “Worlds Apart”).
After reading the excerpt above I was reminded of how often we talk about genre in class but how rarely we focus on the importance of such knowledge. Spinuzzi echoes this concern with genre when he explains, "Genres—which can be glossed as typified rhetorical responses to recurring social situations (Miller, 1984)—do much of the enacting that holds a network together. They do this work not by virtue of being simply text types or forms but because they are tools-in-use. That is, in this analysis, I stress genre as a behavioral descriptor rather than as a formal one (cf. Spinuzzi, 2003b; Voloshinov, 1973)" (qtd in Network).
In fact both the theories Spinuzzi invokes (activity theory and actor-network theory) are greatly contingent on genre. Because “Worlds Apart,” articulates the importance of understanding how to negotiate writing tasks within the workplace and Spinuzzi illustrates the significance of genre for networks to be effective, it seems imperative that genre be central to writing instruction.
To be clear I do not posit composition as a “service industry” but rather as a discipline that is deeply concerned with making transparent what is often opaque.
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I agree with you, Nicole that genre is highly emphasized in both the texts. But it seems that they differ slightly in their concept of genre. Patrick Dias et.al's view of genre is the usual one. They are talking about the writing genres in disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts but Spinuzzi's view surprised me. For him, even human and non-human components in a net work are genres. May be we need further discussion on this tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteYou are spot on, Nicole on your realization that what we are teaching may not be relevant to workplaces. Actually, my writing instruction may not be relevant anywhere. But there can be disagreements on what genres to teach even if we decide to teach them. Genres themselves are not stable structures/forms and vary widely across contexts. Can we then teach a certain genre and send students to workplaces? Or do we teach the rhetoricity of genres or writings in workplaces? I think these are puzzling questions. As Patrick Dias et.al have realized that there is no correspondence between the writing in the univeristy and writing in the workplace and Spinuzzi talks of insufficiency of training or apprenticeship to make anybody perfect in writing therefore inevitability of continual learnining on the part of technical communicators or any net workers, a complete rethinking of what to teach in writing class, I think, is absolutely necessary.
I found your post really interesting, Nicole, and relevant to a conversation taking place right now among some folks in the field. I posed this question from your blog in our class discussion:
ReplyDeleteNicole: I couldn’t help but wonder if I would be more effective in the classroom by teaching genre theory, rhetoric, and composition studies.
...providing opportunities for students to “practice” important rhetorical strategies, I am considering focusing on “writing” itself.
[Doug Downs and Elizabeth Wardle have a CCCCs article and a chapter in press discussing this].
Rachael says, Even when people invest in the place where they're working, there is still a predominantly individual motive - people have personal, psychological, and material desires whether they are in the university or in the workplace.
I contend that the university space is a different kind of space because it is more of a means to an end than it represents a goal in itself. Rachael says that a job is a means to an end - a paycheck. I would suggest that the university is a means to a job - where the primary goal is to get that paycheck.