My classes have moved steadily toward large projects based on qualitative
research and simple analytical frameworks; everyone works individually
but they also practice their professional voices by frequently explaining
the current status of their projects to the whole class. We have a lot
of discussion but it is never undirected; the students are either applying
an analytical framework to empirical materials, or explaining where their
projects stand, or trying to contribute to other people's projects. Class
discussion is never graded, though I reserve the right to deduct grade
points from people who disrupt the process. I never criticize anybody in
class, but I do frequently model various ways of suggesting next steps,
treating mistakes and obstacles as part of the process. I talk constantly
about the feelings that are involved in research (e.g., the feelings that
go with not being able to apply the concepts), but I do not coerce anybody
into discussing their own feelings. I am constantly "selling" the material
covered in the class, both for its intrinsic importance and its usefulness.
I insist that everything be both scholarly and practical at the same time.
I insist that ideas are powerful when they make us see the world differently
in our own everyday lives and useless otherwise. I introduce and apply
concepts for understanding the process of research, and I make sure that
everyone can use those concepts to name their own experience. I teach
conservative styles and structures of writing but then insist that styles
and structures should be conscious choices, forms fitted to functions.
I structure the projects so that students can study something that they
personally value, and if they cannot decide what to study then I start by
asking them what they value and what they want to become, and then I help
them work backward from there. I use theoretical concepts not as ways to
frame the "right answer" but heuristically, as a schedule of good questions
to ask about the materials. I swear up and down that I will apply no
political agenda to their projects, and I insist that I don't want to read
statements from my lectures in their writing. I constantly tell them that
I don't know the right answers because they know their materials better
than I do; my role is to help structure their own process. I tell them
that good research must necessarily go through a period of chaos and
confusion, and that part of my job is to watch the process closely enough
to tell them whether they're going to be able to emerge from that chaos
and confusion with something to say that's worthwhile and authentically
observed, as opposed to something recited from the textbook.
Examples: In my Internet class, I teach genre analysis. They pick any
genre(s) of communicative materials that they want, and then everyone
applies the same analytical framework: communities, relationships, activities,
genres, and media. In my ethnography class, I teach no substantive concepts
at all, just concepts about the process of research, for example concepts
for understanding entry into fieldsites and for understanding the existing
literature and how to engage into dialogue with it. Then halfway through
the course, I talk with each student separately (I find it works best on the
telephone for some reason), have them tell me in their own words what they
have found interesting, and I explain back to them what they're saying, only
in academic language, using keywords that they are likely to be able to find
references for in the library catalog. In my sociolinguistics class, I have
everyone talk to a group of people who have a jargon (an idea I got from
Claire Ramsey). I give them a long list of questions to ask their subjects
and themselves, in the hopes that one of them will cause them to notice
something worth writing about.
Most students do in fact choose to study things that they value, or that
relate to their own identities. Students intending to go to law school will
study subpoenas or lawyers. Students doing internships will frequently study
the people they are working with. Many students define projects that relate
to their ethnic identity. It tends to work best if the students study
something that they are located on the edge of: the line of work that they
want to go into next year, their spouse's social circle, or whatever. With
remarkable consistency, students' projects fail if they are chosen to be
"easy", and they succeed when they are chosen as explorations in the student's
own identity.
This method of teaching places some demands on me. It requires me to be
acquainted with lots of different academic literatures, ethographic and
otherwise. Increasingly, though, I am assigning the students, as part of
the offical assigned work of the class, to visit another faculty member
during that person's office hours to explain their own project and ask
for good references and other advice. The point is that many students
have never learned how to ask for help without feeling as though they are
subordinating themselves to someone; I talk about this point specifically
and encourage them to get practice asking for help as part of the emergence
of their own professional voice. This kind of teaching obviously only works
with small classes. I once killed myself doing it with a class of fifty,
but I can do it with thirty students pretty easily if I take care to
structure and streamline the process. I also create structures within
which the students can help one another. Most recently I have been trying
to get students to put their draft term papers on the WorldWide Web, so that
they can read each other's drafts and provide comments. This will probably
be more practical a couple of years from now, when students learn web-page
construction in high school as a matter of course (I hope, I hope).
The teaching techniques I've been describing are, as I say, intended to
synthesize constructivism with the imposition of forms. I refer to the
underlying idea as the "critical appropriation of forms". The classes are
full of structures, but the structures serve facilitating roles. They are
viewed as means to an end; they are always on trial. Most importantly, I
always emphasize that the concepts I provide do not in themselves provide
an inner logic to their research project. The inner logic of each student's
project resides in that student's own evolving relationships to the materials
they're studying, the literature they're reading, and the paper they're
writing. The structures are scaffolding. I encourage them to develop their
"professional voices": a voice that is *theirs*, developed through their
own appropriation of the forms, and their own feelings and preferences, and
their own identifications with authors whose ideas they have found useful
in talking about their materials; but at the same time, a voice that is
*professional*, in a professional register, in dialogue with the existing
professional conversation, with serious and consciously chosen intent.
The students are the authorities on their own feelings and preferences and
perceptions and identifications, but I am the authority on what is professional.
The central dogma of each class is that academic concepts can provide a
powerful way of seeing the world, that a professional voice is a good and
useful thing to have, and most importantly that whatever they want to say
can be said using their professional voice, if only they'll take some time
to develop it. I think that this basic approach could begin in grade school,
and that it would be a big improvement over both constructivism and the
rigid imposition of reified forms.
Phil Agre, UCSD