Category Archives: reflections on theory

High-Stakes Reflective Blogging within Cohorts

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This is a follow-up to Jen Ross’ excellent comment, which I insert here:

…from my point of view the danger isn’t so much ridicule and indifference as a construction of a writing self that ‘hides its own mechanisms’ – that pretends there is no audience and no strategic choices being made for the benefit of that audience. I’d rather see writers in online environments (whether there by choice or not) embrace and explore addressivity than buy into the idea that they can, in this medium, truly ‘write for themselves’ only.

This really required me to stand back, and think again. I did not even consider this perspective, of the type of student that would knowingly distort one’s authenticity to construct a false self, or of a student willingly ignoring any audience and demonstrate a lack of self-critical judgement.

I had considered my own experience, struggling to be more authentic and probing, for my own sake. I had considered adult literacy learners, often blocked by needing to adopt a formal writing style irrelevant to their real-life contexts.

I addressed some of these concerns about addressivity in an earlier post  and another related post on student blogging roles, yet the issue about how to address the extremes of the reluctant and the narcissistic bloggers is crucial for instructors, and how they compare with what I consider to be autonomous, social, reluctant, and defensive bloggers, needs further exploration.

This is indeed a starting point, a draft to clarify some differences between how student bloggers (and likely, faculty, too, for that matter) perceive their adopted roles, how they adopt a perspective before they even begin to start blogging. For many, under differing circumstances, they tend to shift between them.  It would be interesting to observe in hindsight how one has switched these roles, and perhaps speculate on reasons for the switching.

Jen covers  metaphors about the use of a mask while blogging, and this is an interesting common theme for both of us, as I have also done some blogging on the topic of blogging roles, or metaphors.

Narcissistic Blogger Autonomous Blogger Social Blogger Reluctant Blogger Defensive Blogger
Addressivity Indifferent  to audience Invites and welcomes audience Requires others as audience Overwhelmed by audience Apologetic or Attacking
 Compassion None- writes for oneself Minimal – Focus on self-interest Variable – conditional on others Minimal – over-concerned None – competitive, combative
Responsiveness  to Feedback by Others Absent Self-critical –Independent of Others Variable – Contingent on Others Internal – Critical of Self External –Critical of Others
Authenticity Distorted Independent Inter-subjective Hidden Distorted
Productivity Variable Optimal Variable Minimal Variable

I focus on the specific context of cohort blogging and elaborate further on roles I found myself adopting while engaging in reflections on academic blogging.

 

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Blogging and Literacy Instruction

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One of the greatest challenges I have had as a literacy educator is to reconcile the teaching of the strictly academic writing curriculum with real needs of learners whose interests in academic writing are limited.

The major obstacle for literacy instruction seems to be that despite curriculum guidelines that require training in formal writing, most learners don’t want to learn this stuff. They don’t really need it so much for their everyday lives.

Every single time a course is revised, or a new course proposed, the designer/writer/reviewer needs to come up with ways to prove that it is worthwhile by speaking the language of performance objectives and learning outcomes, by justifying the effectiveness of the course in terms of how specific activities match up with specific objectives.

In this kind of climate, does encouraging blogging with learners have a chance of acceptance? And when I refer to blogging, I am also referring to the other dozen or so technologies that blogs need to make them work well online.

I have been blogging from the perspective of  a graduate student engaged in a demanding academic program, and have been wondering what can be done to encouareg literacy learners. I have sometimes doubted that what I had learned had much relevance for this group. Assessment, learning objectives, sequencing, and timelines, all are set assumptions about how courses are created. The problem is, those assumptions sometimes hold little weight with those literacy practitioners and tutors working with adult literact learners.

I am not saying do away with the academic part of the instruction. I am saying introduce a complementary paradigm for allowing literacy learners to choose to NOT pursue academic writing, and instead pursue personal writing instead.

Most of my learners don’t see the point of writing essays, but do see the point of writing down family stories. Some students don’t feel comfortable giving a formal, stand-up presentation. However, those same students would enjoy talking and sharing ideas in a round-table discussion among peers over a potluck.

What can blogging do for literacy learners?

For one thing, blogging on its own cannot be justified for literacy learners without the support that face-to-face instruction brings. There, that is said.

Secondly, blogging cannot duplicate the face-to-face form of instruction. It is not the same as a forum, either. Blogging cannot be justified as a replacement for these formats. Okay, next up.

Blogging can encourage literacy learners to participate in self-sponsored writing, writing that is personal, reflective and emotional -in effect, meaningful and passionate.

Blogging can encourage literacy learners to participate in blogging circles that support performance writing, and enabling them to share their self-performed texts. Instructors can empower learners by modelling how they can make use of blogs for spoken word events and learning talent showcases, or learning feasts. In effect, instructors can play a pivotal role in encouraging their learners to engage in purposeful talk.

The integration of blogging into everyday instruction to encourage literacy learners to complete perfomance writing and self-sponsored writing can open up many opportunities for meaningful, transformative learning.

Here is a table summary of the concepts I have described above that argue for the introduction of blogging for literacy within the Personal sphere:

Blogging for Literacy Personal Sphere
Metaphor Homesteading Seeding
Writing Type Self-sponsored writing Non-Formal Performance writing
Connections Made through… Reflection, rehearsal, review, revise Shared insights, story-telling, reporting, witnessing, visioning
Strategies/Methods Visualizing, self-reflecting, incorporating, bracketing, scanning, filtering, analyzing, comparing, evaluating Dialoguing, interacting, cooperating, collaborating, participating, sharing
Assessment Self-assessments, interviews, testimonials Learning events, open panels, showcases

Listen to the podcast:  personal blogging 4 literacy learners

Click on the picture below to view larger image.

Personal Blogging for Literacy learners

Personal Blogging for Literacy learners

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High-Stakes Reflection as Performance Blogging

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Path-Finding Activity:
I was reviewing Lilia Efimova’s mathemagenic blog, and came across Jen Ross’ blog.

Her ideas resonated with me in that I had summarized a crucial issue for student bloggers that needs to be addressed, and found many of her ideas are aligned to mine.

I seek to encourage student bloggers to see the larger picture, and go beyond the institutional practice network. Yet Jen Ross has pointed out some issues I had not considered before, that learners do need to consent to having their identities shaped by the activities required of them. This tends to become acutely felt when students are required to use blogs and other network tools to perform within a practice network.

We need to make the emotional shift from showing and acting upon our reluctance over voicing our opinions, to possessing what can be only described as impervious optimism, to be courageous enough to “connect-for-oneself” despite the real possibilities of ridicule and indifference, from oneself and from others.

We need to make the emotional shift from reticence and fear over voicing our views, and bolster our resolve and strengthen ourselves, so that we can confidently write for ourselves even in the absence of any guarantees of reciprocity, of feedback, or of acknowledgement from others.

 

the convergence of surveillance, authentication, assessment and reflection exposes students and teachers to a new intensity of gaze and to increased demands for confession as performance.

 

Source: Traces of self: online reflective practices and performances in higher education (Ross, J., 2008). URL: http://jenrossity.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/ross_tracesofself_aoir08.pdf
Retrieved July 17, 2010

Significant Concepts:

1.categorizing reflection into four types: informal, non-academic, low-stakes, and high-stakes
2. reflection as performance: map, mirror and mask metaphors
3. six genres of mask: disguise, performance, protection, transformation, discipline, and trace
4. “metaphor of the subject as palimpsest (a manuscript where previous writing has been scraped off so that the paper can be reused, but traces remain)” (Ross, pg. 7).

Relevant Quotes:

“Hargreaves (2004) argues that compulsory reflective practices are essentially narrative in character. She claims that: “in producing narratives for assessment students are being asked to produce a story, and… in nursing (and possibly other professional settings) only three ‘stories’ are legitimate” (199). She identifies these as ‘valedictory’, ‘condemnatory’ and ‘redemptive’ narratives (200).”

“In constructing a narrative for the purposes of assessment the successful student understands which kinds of stories are legitimate, and shapes her words accordingly.”

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Scratch Notes – Frameworks for Learning

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The CoI framework is comprised of three interdependent and dynamic structural elements: social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence.

Social Presence

Social presence has been defined recently by Garrison (2009) as “the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g., course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop inter-personal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities” (p. 352). There are three categories of social presence: affective expression, open communication, and group cohesion.

Cognitive Presence

Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2001) define cognitive presence as “the extent to which the participants in any particular configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained communication” (p. 11). Based on the practical inquiry model, it consists of four phases: triggering event, exploration, integration, and resolution.

Teaching Presence

Teaching presence is defined as “the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes” (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001, p. 5). There are three categories of teaching presence: design and organization, facilitating discourse, and direct instruction.

For learners interacting with others in different learning networks, the CoI framework is limiting.  many such learners seek ways to coordinate their activity and

 

Autonomous Blogging Framework (ABF)

This is a learner-centered model for student bloggers to address the development of learner self-regulation. Unlike the CoI model, which describes learners as primarily dependent upon others’ social presence to feel motivated to learn, the ABF model describes the learning activities of student bloggers who are self-motivated and autonomous, who invite and enjoy cooperative and collaborative learning opportunities, but who can just as readily remain motivated and engage in solitary learning using their blog as their central node, as the hub of their personal learning environment.  Unlike learners described under the CoI framework, these autonomous learners remain engaged and motivated despite the lack of social, cognitive or teacher presence.

The autonomous blogging framework suggests a complimentary approach to the Community of Inquiry Framework, and provides more detail about the practical inquiry process in which learners engage in three interrelated learning activities: knowledge construction, network construction, and identity construction. Rather than approach the formation of community as the primary goal of educators, seen from a macro perspective, the autonomous blogging framework instead considers the rational decision-making activities of individual learners.

Both frameworks aim to “…assess the nature and quality of critical, reflective discourse that takes place within an online learning environment” (Garrison, Anderson, Archer, 2004). These authors argued that critical thinking, as a product, is best understood from an individual perspective. Unlike the CoI framework, however, which examines the iterations between private reflection and public discourse, the autonomous blogging framework examines the process of cooperative, synergistic sense-making.

In contrast to cognitive presence, which involves meaning-making through sustained interaction with others, knowledge construction requires learners to engage in information seeking, gathering, and sense-making from a variety of online resources independently of others.

 

In contrast to social presence, Network construction – learners actively engage in forming, strengthening, and expanding their personal web of connections with others, and participate as both presenter and as part of student audiences in ever more widely in more cooperative and collaborative learning events.

Identity construction – learners actively participate in transformative self-making, engaging in recollection, reflection and resolution of transitional life events, and undertaking personal story-telling to interpret and make sense of conflicting expectations, intentions, goals, roles, and perspectives as learners.

In contrast to cognitive presence, which involves meaning-making through sustained interaction with others, knowledge construction requires learners to engage in information-seeking, gathering, and sense-making from a variety of online resources independently of others, for independent purposes.

In contrast to social presence, in which the onus of responsibility for connection rests with the designer and instructors, and less so with the learners, network construction involves the process in which individual learners develop the attitudes and skills to actively pursue and engage with others in forming, strengthening, and expanding their personal web of connections with others, and participate as both presenter and as part of student audiences in ever more widely in more cooperative and collaborative learning events.

The concept of social presence pre-supposes that learners are in need of support from their instructors and the from the created online learning environment, that is, there is a perspective that learners are essentially passive, and that the umbrella of support is essential to learner success. Undoubtedly, this is true for many learners in the early stages of their development as autonomous learners. However, I argue that the idea of a Community of Inquiry limits learners to an apprentice role, and assumes that most of what is learned is within the borders of the individual CoI.

Identity construction involves the process in which learners actively participate in transformative self-making, engaging in recollection, reflection and resolution of transitional life events, and undertaking personal story-telling to interpret and make sense of conflicting expectations, intentions, goals, roles, and perspectives as learners.

Practical Inquiry Model:

Trigger event: “evocative”

Initiation phase of critical inquiry process, in which an issue, dilemma, or problem that emerges from experience is identified or recognized;

 

Exploration: “inquisitive”

participants shift between the private, reflective world of the individual and the social exploration of ideas; occurs within CoI by iteratively moving between the private and shared worlds— between critical reflection and discourse; activities: brainstorming, questioning, and exchange of information

 

Integration: “tentative”

constructing meaning from the ideas generated in the exploratory phase;

students move repeatedly between reflection and discourse.

 

“This phase is the most difficult to detect from a teaching or research perspective. Evidence of the integration of ideas and the construction of meaning must be inferred from communication within the community of inquiry”

“This phase requires active teaching presence to diagnose misconceptions, to provide probing questions, comments, and additional information in an effort to ensure continuing cognitive development, and to model the critical thinking process.”

Resolution: “committed”

implementation of proposed solution; testing hypothesis;

Involves some way for learners to apply newly created knowledge

Cognitive Apprenticeships should allow students to actively practice what they have learned in a mock “real-life” environment (Driscoll, 2005, 174-175). This practice can be broken down to five components (Convey, 1997):

  • Modeling: involves an expert’s carrying out a task so that student can observe and build a conceptual model of the processes that are required to accomplish the task. For example, a teacher might model the reading process by reading aloud in one voice, while verbalizing her thought processes (summarize what she just read, what she thinks might happen next) in another voice.
  • Coaching: consists of observing students while they carry out a task and offering hints, feedback, modeling, reminders, etc.
  • Articulation: includes any method of getting students to articulate their knowledge, reasoning, or problem-solving processes.
  • Reflection: enables students to compare their own problem-solving processes with those of an expert or another student.
  • Exploration: involves pushing students into a mode of problem solving on their own. Forcing them to do exploration is critical, if they are to learn how to frame questions or problems that are interesting and that they can solve (Collins, Brown, Newman, 1989, 481-482).

 

References:

http://communitiesofinquiry.com/files/CogPres_Final.pdf

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About Play-Building and Using Group Blogs

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Robyn Philip and  Jennifer Nicholls (2009) wrote an interesting article about group blogging, titled Group blogs: Documenting collaborative drama processes

Here are some notes about the significance of play-building, a process that involves the documentation of collaboration, reflection and creativity.

Playbuilding is described as Group devised theatre, in which “students create, produce and perform the play to audiences including peers, family, friends, examiners and the general public”.  

 Playbuilding can be conceptualised as “a sustained exploration of ideas or images” where students move in and out of character, collaborating and “critically reflect[ing] upon a fictional world of their own creation” (Simons, 2004, p.1).

 The emphasis of facilitating play-building is on group identity and cohesion, on the process in which learners share and make visible their thinking to each other. The authors also refer to Dacre and Mackey’s (1999, p.69) model for reflection.

 The steps are as follows:

1. Reflect on the structure and workings of the group;

2. Reflect on your own role as an autonomous individual member of the group;

3. Place the work within the relevant theoretical tradition; and

4. Reflect on your own narrative as a practitioner, i.e. examine the stories and generalisations you have created about the process and your professional context.

I especially like the distinctions the authors make between introspective, or stream of consciousness blogging, and reflective posts that are either analytic or evaluative blogging.  

 I wonder if such group blogging would have any place within formal educational institutions within their LMS’s, and what formal instructional activities might be supported using this method. 

 Here are some tentative skills that might be practised within such a group blogging environment:

 

  • Negotiating
  • Brainstorming
  • Bracketing
  • Rehearsing
  • Trial performing
  • Visualizing
  • Elaborating
  • Probing for detail
  • Storytelling
  • Role-Play
  • Re-conceptualizing
  • Commenting
  • Criticizing (positive feedback)
  • Elaborating
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