Keywords: Freshman Connections

"The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing" by Joseph Harris

"Building a New Culture of Teaching & Learning" by Pat Hutchings

Harris, Joseph. "The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing." College Composition and Communication 40.1 (1989): 11-22.

The idea of community and its impact on the teaching and study of writing is the basis for Harris’ exploration in this article. Beginning with Raymond Williams’ reflection that the word "community" seems to be used only in favorable terms, Harris argues for a more critical look at that word and its uses, particularly as it applies to the teaching and study of composition. Harris argues that recent views of writing have presented "academic discourse" as something foreign to writing students, which in turn leads to the question of how (and if) students can (or should) learn to "do" academic discourse. By taking a different approach, Harris suggests that the differences between the "common" discourse of everyday life and the "academic" discourse of the university are not as clear cut as some theorists would have us believe.

Harris questions the idea of "insiders and outsiders" in the academy; he asks us to consider that no one--student or instructor--is wholly inside or outside any community, but each of us continues to exhibit characteristics of the many communities of which we are a part. Harris pins this dichotomous thinking--this insistence on a division between those who are "inside" and those who are "outside"--on the abstract concept of a "discourse community." The idea of a discourse community, says Harris, cannot exist in either a wholly theoretical sense (as does the idea of an interpretive community as used by Stanley Fish and others) or in a wholly concrete sense (as does the idea of a speech community in linguistic circles). Such a community, if it does exist, creates a sense of "inside" and "outside," for the suggestion that the members of such a community are like-minded would, by default, imply that others are somehow unlike its members. Thus, the assumption of a singular academic discourse community sets up a situation that alienates anyone who is not already a part of that community; it also creates a situation whereby attaining membership in the community means transferring allegiance from one community to another--the only means by which one can move from the outside to the inside of the discourse community.

Harris suggests that writing instructors need to view their position not as one in which they help students move from one discourse community to another, but one in which they help students add to or complicate their uses of language. He writes, "It seems to me that they might better be encouraged towards a kind of polyphony--an awareness of and pleasure in the various competing discourses that make up their own" (17). Because of his recognition that everyone comes to the university with a multiply-voiced background, Harris focuses on the need to reposition ourselves and our students in relation to "several continuous and conflicting discourses" (19). In the end, rather than forcing students (and themselves) to choose between competing discourse communities, the goal of all of those in the university should be to reflect critically on the multiple discourses to which they belong. The "academic discourse" so many point to will then be seen for what it is--a place where competing beliefs and practices are continually confronted and critically examined.

Hutchings, Pat. "Building a New Culture of Teaching & Learning." About Campus (November-December 1996): 4-8.

The focus of this article is creating a learning culture on campus, not just for students, but among the faculty. The author assumes that faculty tend to concentrate on research and devote only the minimal necessary time to teaching. Hutchings proposes weekly gatherings of faculty and student affairs staff who work with freshmen, called "teaching circles," to exchange teaching problems as well as attempts to solve them. Such group meetings of faculty are conducted informally with the intent of learning "more about the experiences students are having across their courses" (6). Teaching circles are low-risk and low-cost, but care must be taken to keep the dialogue from degenerating into weekly complaints about students. Such complaining defeats the purpose of understanding how students perceive their classroom experience. Hutchings proposes getting quick responses from students to the question, "What was the Muddiest Point in today's class?" Such responses, when shared, can aid the teaching circle in developing an understanding of what the students experience in the classroom. The teaching circles will be assisted by raising the prestige of teaching at the university, putting teaching on a par with research.