Blog #5: "Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.'"

Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” College English. 46.7. (1984) 635-652.

After reading Teaching Writing Online:How and Why, I was interested in looking at one of the sources Scott Warnock cited for his chapter on conversation (chapter 8). I was intrigued by Bruffee’s title and especially the notion of “The Conversation of Mankind,” as it seemed to expand the idea of writing to a more philosophical level and not just something required in the classroom and other contexts such as “everyday life, in business, government, and the professions” (642). Although, this article was published in 1984, it seemed to under gird some of the rationale behind using collaborative writing tools in the digital age these twenty-six years later.

The most notable concept to me is the idea that one’s thoughts are actually internalized conversations from the social sphere; what one thinks is based entirely on what one has heard or read—from what is in the social discourse (639). This reminded me of a concept from Peter Morville’s 2005 book Ambient Findability: “What we find changes what we become.” What we hear/read/see/experience influences our worldview and how we process subsequent new information after that.

Bruffee is not writing about how to find texts in a crowded society, rather the cyclical process of our expanding human knowledge. Humans encounter concepts in the social sphere, internalize them, turn them around and write them back out into the public sphere again, thus perpetuating the conversation: “Our feelings and intuitions are as much the product of social relations as our knowledge” (641) and “in every instance writing is an act, however much displaced, of conversational exchange” (642).

As an introvert, I at first felt a knee-jerk reaction against this idea, as I like to think of myself as someone who isn’t swayed by peer pressure and that any new information I encounter is sifted through my worldview and readjusted as a decisive act on my part. However, Bruffee isn’t talking about mindlessly being swayed by our peers. We all readjust because of what is external to ourselves, as I am adjusting to this new idea, but how I adjust may be different from someone else.

How does this all fit with wikis and blogs? Bruffee’s goal is to encourage teachers to “try collaborative learning and to help them use collaborative learning appropriately and effectively.” (636). Though he doesn’t really define “appropriate” or “effective,” perhaps, the strength of this article is that it doesn’t offer a set protocol on collaborative techniques or tools. Teachers just need to keep in mind that the greater conversation and indeed knowledge of mankind comes from communities of knowledge and they are disseminated from the language of those communities of knowledge (646).

As Kevin DePew mentioned the Burkean Parlour in one of our class sessions, the conversation is endless. Any way we can get our students to converse with one-another and to re-externalize those conversations through writing can be a boon to the greater body of knowledge and not just those of the individual students--something to think about.