Ketter/Hunter

Erin’s story of negotiating the transition between writing for academia and writing for work is unique. But her experience suggests one way in which students might learn about writing in different communities. Erin’s consciousness of her identity as a writer is heightened by her work on the boundaries of two contrasting communities of practice as she thinks about and comes to understand the constraints and freedoms afforded by each community. Her participation in the two communities of practice enhances her understanding of writing as a complex interaction between the writer’s identity and social cultural practices of the community. As do Dias et. al (1999), we see that the ways of learning about writing and the purposes of writing activity in academic and workplace communities of practice can differ, but we learn through this study that Erin benefits more from her participation in each because of her participation in both. (326)

I'm struck by a couple things here. First, there is the statement that her experience is unique--yes, unique for traditional-age students, but not at all unique for the population of students I am writing about, adults.

I am struck by the argument that her participation in these communities of practice brings two benefits:

1. Her consciousness of her identity as a writer is enhanced (not sure I understand or can articulate the advantage of this).
2. Her understanding of writing as "a complex interaction between the writer’s identity and social cultural practices of the community" is enhanced (this makes sense to me).

Furthermore, I am impressed by the argument that "Erin benefits more from her participation in each because of her participation in both." This underscores the notion of dual-participation as a positive, not a negative and this is, I think, a different way for me to think about my own study. What are the points I've been trying to make about the experiences of these folks:

1. They bring discursive resources from another community of practice with them.
2. There is likely to be some level of interaction between these resources and those they are expected to acquire in the new community of practice (school).
3. The fact of this dual participation is not something one must work against, but, rather, something that, as Ketter and Hunter argue, might be perceived as a good thing, as a tool, in its ability to enhance items 1 & 2 (above).

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...our study shows the benefit of providing opportunities for teachers and students to explore how contrasting communities of practice define successful writing activity and how writing activity operates in the cultural and political sphere of each community. Thus, we believe, academic communities of practice should provide students with opportunities to write in non-academic contexts and should encourage students to reflect about and discuss how these non-academic contexts frame writing activity. At the same time, students may benefit from discussing how the academic contexts in which college writing often occurs also affect writing activity. Such discussions should include how writing activity, both in academia and in other contexts, is a means of operating purposively in the world. (327)

Here, Ketter/Hunter argue for the importance of "providing opportunities for teachers and students to explore how contrasting communities of practice" do their work and define writing activity. Well, when it comes to adult learners, one need not seek out opportunities, the students BRING the opportunities with them when they arrive in the classroom. They are there to be exploited (or ignored or worked against).

Ketter and Hunter argue for providing students with not just the opportunity to experience contrasting communities of practice, but also the opportunity "to reflect about and discuss how these non-academic contexts frame writing activity." Well, this really is the starting point for a writing course for adult learners and this is the kind of course I have been kind of imagining for some time. Such a course might begin with the non-academic contexts and then shift to "discussing how the academic contexts in which college writing often occurs also affect writing activity." And what about school and academic histories? Those too.

Other passages of interest:

a portrait of a writer negotiating her identity as she becomes aware of and contends with the constraints of the genres she chooses to use. In working with and resisting the constraints of academic writing, Erin gains an understanding of how she can challenge the genre’s positioning of her as a novice who lacks agency. In experimenting with the genre of public relations writing, she enjoys its freedoms while learning about and challenging its constraints as well. (325)

Finding the writing activity in these two communities to be “worlds apart,” these researchers warn against “facile versions” of what Joliffe (1994) refers to as the “myth of transcendence,” the assumption that, while sites of writing may differ, the people who travel between them easily “transport or translate what they have learned as writers from one domain to the other” (Dias et al., 1999, p. 223). (308)

we show the complicated negotiation and transition Erin undergoes as she struggles to create coherence between two different writing communities, and how she uses writing to negotiate her identity as a future professional writer. (308)

By participating in the two communities, she experiences what Wenger calls "the demands of multimembership" 4 (1998, p. 159). (310)

What does academic writing require of you (or what demands does it make on your identity)?

The assignments themselves are usually perceived by both student and teacher as a display of what students have learned in the course and as evidence that they understand and can apply the theories in the discipline to new material. (311)

As Geisler (1994) notes in Academic Literacy and the Nature of Expertise, the sort of expository writing expected as a response to most academic writing assignments positions students as novices (p. 81). Geisler argues that attaining academic literacy has been viewed as a developmental process in which students slowly move toward expertise by being “apprenticed” as students of a discipline through the literacy activity demanded in their coursework. Underlying that view, she claims, is the assumption that “academic expertise is so cognitively complex that we can reasonably expect only some students to master it” (p. 89). Therefore, academic writing assignments often provide supports or scaffolding to move students toward more complex thinking in that discipline and to help students practice the modes of inquiry, the evaluation of evidence, and the theorizing about that evidence that represent the literacy practices of experts. Geisler claims that these approaches to teaching writing construct students as incapable of creating or revising theory and thus deny them access to meaning-making and hence, real learning. (312)

This is a goldmine for me and I need to get my hands on Geisler's text. The phrase that sticks is "positions students as novices." Additionally, the notion of "by being 'apprenticed' as students of a discipline through the literacy activity demanded in their coursework." Novices and apprentices. Are those identities which are in conflict with some students' work identities? Yes. Will they potentially create conflicts? Maybe.

For Erin, academic writing is primarily about producing writing that will display her knowledge to earn a good grade and win her the approval of her professors. (314)

As Dias et al. (1999) argue, genres often constrain and limit, but they also can be potential spaces for identity transformation and learning:
...we need to argue also for the potentialities of genres for creating spaces for forming and realizing new versions of self as one discovers new motives and transforms the self in response to the new communicative needs and opportunities. (p. 21) (319)