Dear all,
I'm responding to Gordon's posting, although I refer to others' postings, too.
I think that the talk of what makes a community and a community practice is
leaving unsaid what institutional features are in place that silence or
inhibit discussion, and what these structures imply about issues of race,
gender, homophobia, and other inequities.
It is so clear to me that gender plays a part in women's experience of
academia. It does not surprise me that my marriage fell apart when I went back
to graduate school. The end/beginning occurred when I found myself pleading
with my ex-husband to take care of our son for a few hours so that I could go
to the library to study. After he left for good, I found myself trying to
finish my coursework, trying to support myself on $800 a month from my
fellowship-- the "married student housing" costing me $700 a month, and the
university childcare costing me $400. When I went to the housing office to
ask if I could get a lower rent because I was a single mother, they looked at
me with something close to horror. You mean, like, wwwelfare??? Yes, I am
now $40,000 in debt. My current partner says, when I feel like giving up, it
would not be financially advisable, and that I should get something for the
money. And the most ironic part is that I went back to school because I
wanted to think a little after being in the "field" for ten years after
getting my Masters degree. I had a good job, and didn't (don't) want to be a
college professor or full-time researcher. And I'm a white woman from an
upper-middle class background, I have a lot of privilege, a fairly extensive
academic and professional background. And we wonder why low-income kids don't
make it to college or don't stay in college? Duh!
I appreciate Gordon's discussion of what makes a community. Community is a
term that I'm finding extremely problemmatic in my own research. Gordon's
distinctions have been helpful and I loved his description of how the teachers
and students in his study go about doing what they do -- through engagement
in projects and activities which subsume, although incorporate, the other
aspects of learning that we tend to get obsessive about (like readin' and
writin'). Even the notion of theory as an artifact, even though I've heard it
before, has a fresh ring to my ear, and releases me from a bind. So Gordon,
thanks.
When I think about schools that are not doing such a good job, though, I get
worried. Although I try to stay away from pathological thoughts about
schools, I'm left wondering why I don't recognize any of the kids that I'm
working with when I look at their report cards. Why a girl who I fight with a
lot because she's such a damned hellraiser (and bright as they come) at the
community center is considered "passive" by her teacher. Why another boy (in
fact, the majority of boys who attend this center) is in special education
when he is clearly capable of doing the work in another setting. What is
going on? So, I think, we need to observe what is embedded in that
institution (school) that creates one kind of learner and what is embedded in
other institutions that create others. Got to unearth and dust off my old Ray
McDermott articles. I think I also need to read some more articles on
nonparticipation - not that apparently there's a whole lot out there. Diane
Hodge's comes to mind as a really good one. Does anyone have others? Mary's
idea about posting some articles sounds good to me...
Sara
>===== Original Message From xmca@weber.ucsd.edu =====
>I have been reflecting on the discussion around the suggestion that the
>object of xmca is 'community-building' and tentatively ofer a perspective
>from our work in schools that may - or may not - be seen as relevant. But
>first, my understanding of what it takes to have a community.
>
>There are several ways of understanding the term 'community'. One version
>would be a religious community, which members join by choice; here the
>community exists in order for its members to engage in practices according
>to shared values. A second version would be the sort of community of
>practice envisaged by Engestrom in the health centre context or by Lave
>and Wenger in the case of midwives or tailors, where the activity in which
>the members variously engage is what coordinates them in a community.
>Third, there is the community constituted by people who happen to live and
>work in the same place, as in a village community which is relatively
>isolated and not made up of commuters to or from elsewhere. Jay Lemke
>recently wrote about becoming a village, using the village as a metaphor
>for individual identity formation, but the village community is itself
>constantly developing/becoming as members join through birth or
>immigration and others leave.
>
>Although the village is different from the first two types of community in
>the sense that membership is not (usually) a matter of choice but of
>birth, in all three examples what makes the community is not the effort to
>create it; rather, the community is a by-product or outcome of the
>work-related and other action-related relationships into which its members
>enter in the practices in which they engage together.
>
>Classes of students are not communities in any of the ways sketched above.
>Their members are not there by choice, nor do they enter a pre-existing
>community, as in the village. The question facing a teacher, therefore,
>is how to create a community - if this is what s/he believes would be
>beneficial for all concerned. One strategy that is often used is that of
>mutual self-interest: if the classroom is to be a congenial place to be,
>members will do well to agree to abide by rules and conventions of
>appropriate behavior. A second strategy is to emphasize the common goal
>of learning and to encourage various types of collaboration, as in a
>“community of learners”. In our collaborative action research group,
>however, we have taken a somewhat different approach, which we recognize,
>post-hoc, to most closely resemble the Engestrom model. As teachers, we
>have focused on the ‘object’ of our activity, seeing this not as learning,
>but as making and improving artifacts of various kinds. Sometimes these
>artifacts are material objects - models such as elastic-powered vehicles
>that embody functions that need to be understood in order for them to be
>constructed so that they ‘work’. In other cases they are solutions to
>problems arising in the life of the classroom, for example, procedures for
>conducting discussions that are not teacher dominated or planning a
>display/demonstration of work on some topic for an audience of parents or
>other students. Sometimes the artifact is more theoretical, for example
>an explanation of historical events or of phenomena considered
>scientifically. In all these cases, the emphasis is on improving the
>object being worked upon in what we think of as a collaborative attempt at
>knowledge building in action. It is this shared goal that encourages an
>inquiring stance and the respectful consideration of alternative points of
>view and that leads to dialogue, both spoken and written, in which both
>individual and collective understanding is enhanced. And, in our view, it
>is these ways of working that most effectively create and sustain the
>‘community’, particularly in the culturally and socially diverse
>classrooms that are the norm in Toronto, as in many large cities.
>
>This is, of course, a somewhat idealized account. Not all activities are
>so clearly focused on an ‘improvable object’; there are occasions when
>direct instruction in constituent tasks is considered necessary and others
>in which skills of various kinds are practiced. There are also times
>when ‘things fall apart’ - though these often become the ‘improvable
>object’ for discussion in class meetings. Currently, we are exploring
>ways of including the students as co-researchers, hoping in this way to
>help them to develop and use a ‘meta’ stance to the practices in which we
>engage and to enable us all to understand what facilitates a class
>functioning as a ‘community of inquiry’. In the process, we hope to
>discover how important a role the ‘improvable object’ and the knowledge
>building involved in working on it plays in the creation and sustaining of
>the community.
>
>Perhaps there are ways in which these attempts throw light on
>participation in the ‘xmca community’?
Vanderbilt University &
Partnership for After School Education
New York, N.Y.
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