CMC as Written Conversation: A Critical Social-constructivist View of Multiple Identities and Cultural Positioning in the L2/C2 Classroom

 

MARY E. WILDNER-BASSETT
University of Arizona

Abstract:
This article proposes a model for a critical social-constructivist (CS-C) approach to the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in language/culture education. CS-C theories emphasize a critical approach to social interactions, interpersonal relations, communication, and the influence that these activities have on learning. I will use the model to explore the extent to which CS-C approaches, especially in relation to the principles of connectivism, impact postsecondary language and culture education and its effects on identities within the constraints of a CMC institutional setting. Readers will participate in an exploration of new ways of thinking, learning, and teaching that emerge from the ecology of second language and culture classrooms integrated with CMC. There I have found the life experiences of learners and my own experiences as a teacher to be highly relevant to the learning processes at hand. I develop these explorations using global qualitative discourse-based analyses of selections from learner data produced in asynchronous CMC contexts over the course of 3 years. My focus is on the learning of culture rather than on second language acquisition in a narrow sense. Language learning and even language attrition are thematized in the learning ecologies that are my focus. This study does not, however, make any claims about language acquisition that are not mentioned in learners� own reflections. The data include written conversations produced in both English (often as the second language of the participants) and German (most often as a foreign language for the participants) using various platforms for asynchronous CMC interactions.

INTRODUCTION

My intention in this article is to share an exploration of new ways of thinking, learning, and teaching that emerge from the ecology of second language and culture classrooms integrated with computer-mediated communication (CMC). In CMC, I have found the life experiences of learners and my own experiences as a teacher to be highly relevant to the learning processes at hand. This observation, documented in the remainder of the article through the development of a critical social-constructivist (CS-C) approach to the use of CMC in language/culture education, puts into question the perspective that technologies uniformly condition personal, social, and historical change—a viewpoint often termed technological determinism. In order to actively engage with the challenge that results from this critical approach to voice and identity in a CS-C pedagogical climate, I turn to the ideas of a recent and closely related development of George Siemens. Siemens has worked to integrate ideas that have found expression in chaos/complexity theories, networking theory, and systems/self-organization theories.² Using the term “connectivism” to characterize his integrative model, Siemens interprets CS-C and related models with an emphasis on what he calls the “information climate.” Stewardship of the information climate provides connections that nurture and maintain the “… health of the learning ecology …” in a constantly changing landscape (Siemens, 2004, p. 4). Thus, key to learners' engagement with the processes of their learning is to have them connect in a real and personal way to the practices of CS-C and the theories that inform them in order to engage with that out-of-body experience which fosters critical language and culture learning. It has been my experience, as documented in Wildner-Bassett (2001, 2002, n.d.), that by gaining more and more familiarity with the practices of CS-C and connectivist learning and teaching made manifest in written conversations using CMC, learners become active participants in a new, emergent paradigm. This article will illustrate the extent to which the CS-C model, especially in relation to the principles of connectivism, impacts postsecondary language and culture education and its effects on identities within the constraints of a CMC institutional setting. I develop these explorations using global qualitative discourse-based analyses of selections from learner data produced in asynchronous CMC contexts over the course of 3 years.³ My focus is on the learning of culture rather than on second language acquisition in a narrow sense. Language learning and even language attrition are thematized in the learning ecologies that are my focus. This study does not, however, make any claims about language acquisition that are not mentioned in learners' own reflections. The data include written conversations produced in both English (often as the second language of the participants) and German (most often as a foreign language for the participants) using various platforms for asynchronous CMC interactions.

DESCRIPTION OF THE LEARNING ECOLOGY—CLASSES AND CONTENT

In order to be better able to interpret the processes and products of the classroom context that are my focus, it is important to know more about the ecology of the classrooms involved. For these classes, learners' writing, research, and opinions become essential content of the class work, and these processes are co-constructed and assessed/evaluated with the help of multimedia resources and especially asynchronous collaborative computer-mediated writing and discussion activities.

Technology Used

All participants in our study had the luxury of using the COHLab, a computer lab created and maintained within the College of Humanities at the University of Arizona. The room and equipment have been designed to facilitate collaborative writing, small group interaction, and the ability to move easily and freely from group to group. Throughout the room are three custom-designed circular “pods” each with eight computer workstations surrounded by bright red chairs on wheels. There is a large electronic whiteboard in one corner. Computers are at every workstation with their monitors recessed so participants can see everyone else at their “pod.”⁴

The software used for the asynchronous discussions has changed over time. In general, discussion board tools were used, such as those found in WebCT or, most recently, D2L. The word processing and “track changes” tools of Microsoft Word were also used as learners edited and made comments about their formal and informal writing. The CMC discussion boards as well as the processes and products of the exchanges by participants using any of these software platforms, both inside the COHLab and off site as part of the temporally and spatially extended classroom, are all parts of what I refer to as written conversation (Ittzes, 1997).

Classes

One of the classes best suited to serve us with some concrete examples carries the title “Dialogue of the Sexes: Women and Men in German-speaking Societies.” It is a course taught in English with a general studies focus in the category of “individuals & society” and can be applied to students' requirements for course work that addresses general education requirements for gender, race, class, ethnicity, or non-Western area studies (see http://catalog.arizona.edu/2001-02/gened.html). This course views many aspects of the daily lives of individuals in contemporary European German-speaking societies. The course content includes recent historical perspectives, such as the Wall and unification; daily life, including the political issues that affect daily living; and personal profiles of women and others in German-speaking countries. Collaborative CMC activities are integrated as essential elements of the course. I have also pursued this pedagogical approach, with the CS-C theoretical underpinnings and with similar aspects of course content, in intermediate and advanced German language courses, as much of the data throughout the paper will illustrate. In all of these classes, the phenomenological stance⁵ comprises both the pedagogical approach and the content of the class. The focus in both course types is on an exploration of narratives that construct the Other, the foreigner, and the outsider in German-speaking societies.

Content

The content of the courses mentioned above encourages the participants to engage with a sense of being beside themselves or outside of themselves in a different epistemological, discourse, and political space than they typically would inhabit (Luke, 2004). We focus on recent historical perspectives on daily life, including the political issues that affect the daily living of women and Others in the German-speaking societies. Personal, first-person narratives are the focus for learners to look at themselves and their places in groups and societies and at their own voices and identities as they know them in their own language(s) and culture(s). In addition to utilizing the wide resources of multimedia (e.g., the Web, film, asynchronous computer-mediated discussions, books, and articles), learners are their own and each other's main sources of interaction.

The Intellectual and Cultural Autobiography

Rationale for the Assignment

Our first assignment, both for individual and then for collaborative written work, is the Autobiography. The Autobiography can indeed include the facts (where you were born, what your family background is, etc.), but it should then include a reflection on which of these facts and events have been most important or defining for how you see the world. We want to explore together how meanings you have found in your life story so far are similar or different to the histories, experiences, and meanings of Others, both those partners we have here in class and in our examples of women and Others within the German-speaking cultures. This assignment is the first step in our process of engaging in a dialogue of the sexes and a dialogue with the Other. By viewing another but closely related culture (whether that is the culture of the opposite sex or the culture and way of knowing of someone who otherwise is different or “other” from ourselves) from the standpoint of each of our positions in the diverse American culture, we can learn how to get a critical perspective on the spontaneous assumptions, presuppositions, and consciousness created by viewing the world in a way that otherwise begins and stays in our own dominant and accustomed social and cultural location. As our readings will also show us, our stories, our autobiographies and narratives about our experiences, locate our own personal culture, our way of seeing. These narratives make our own consciousness more visible to us. Stories, that is, narrating our experiences, transform them into ways of knowing—ways of knowing about ourselves individually and about ourselves as men and women looking at the world.

How to Accomplish the Assignment:

Write at least 500 words which describe what you find most important to discuss about your personal history and experiences. Include mainly those events, experiences, and facts that you see as having shaped you into the person you are and the way you think about the world. Consider as your assumed reader/audience first your partners, then myself as the instructor, and then also the members of your larger collaborative group in the class.

As the semester progresses, students have two more assignments, which are summarized below:

Researched and Interview profiles of women or other Others in German-speaking societies

The second and third parts of the Profiles project are to complete a researched profile (a biographical essay) about a person who lives or lived in a German-speaking society and then an interview profile with a living person who has some connection to the German-speaking societies. These profiles will not be a complete biography of the person, but they should include a more in-depth discussion of aspects of the person's life that overlap or are very similar to your own interests, goals, talents, personal history, or other overlaps and a discussion of aspects of the person's life that are different or “other” than your own interests, goals, talents, personal history, or other overlaps. A paragraph that explains connections between the process of researching and writing about this person and thinking about and writing your own standpoint autobiography should also be included.

PARTICIPATING IN MULTIPLE AND COMPLEX CULTURES: WRITING TO THE “OTHER”

In this section, the goal is to see a way in which data from CMC conversations reveal how participants in one of the classes engage in writing their identities as participants in multiple cultures. Below are contributions from a single participant in her initial responses to the assignment for the autobiography. They are notable contributions because the participant, RD, a Native American woman and member of the Navajo tribe, explicitly names the act of story telling and its role in defining who she is and how she came to this place in her life. What I see in these contributions are specific moments where this student began to reshape her identity within the local context of CMC written conversations. I offer these three excerpts from RD's writing as a possible model for observing a writer participating in complex ecologies of culture; this will set the stage for later discussion concerning other learners who also participate in cultural ecologies, though perhaps without the extent of RD's critical self-consciousness.

Before I move the discussion to other classes, though, there is more to be learned from RD. In another posting, RD discusses a person whom she has interviewed and reported on to the class in a description posted on the asynchronous CMC site. We see here how central the idea of narrative is to the negotiation of meaning and to learners' assessment, reassessment, reflection, and reformulation of accounts of experience. RD uses her discussion of the interview and reflections on similarities and differences between herself and the other woman to critically reassess and reflect on her own relationship to her multiple positionings in multiple cultures. The power structures of dominant or nondominant language communities become an implied focus of her reflections on the force these experiences had on her identity building.

POWER

The CMC classroom can show us the way because it is self-reflective of the power it exerts on the participants, including the teacher. As we all know from personal experience, the dynamics of power permeate any classroom with questions of whose experience is valid, what counts as legitimate knowing, and how that knowing can be transmitted or constructed. To explore these ideas further, we can turn to the work of Judith Butler (1997), who gives us a perspective for engaging with the creative tension endemic to the two sides of the power paradox: power as projecting and imposing versus power as the prerogative to make choices about what to integrate. When we confront the paradox, we first enter the uncomfortable spaces of either subjecting others to our own power or feeling subjected to “others'” power. For instance, if we imagine that I am a participant in peer-editing activities in a CMC classroom, does it mean that I have relinquished power over my own work if I accept editing suggestions for my writing from peers or others? Or, is it more likely the case I might perceive that their suggestions are helpful and even expand my own perspectives? By accepting suggestions for editing, I use the framework that defines power as the ability and freedom to consider other perspectives and make choices about what to integrate into my own writing. In addition, when I am able to make these choices and integrate others' ideas, I am at the same time subverting a social construction of power defined as projecting and imposing my perspective on others, and thus also subverting its converse. That converse idea is that if I accept others' perspectives, I am losing power. I can replace the latter idea of losing power with a shared, co-constructed redefinition of power. New ideas and better writing might emerge from my acceptance of editing suggestions by peers or others. Butler points the way to making these sorts of connections among the dynamics of power and the ideas of emergence that are so important to complexity theory. Complexity theory promises to lead us away from a dualistic view that sees only paradox (power as imposing one participant's will on others vs. power as choices to integrate from others) to a view of emerging coherence. That coherence is, though, in an organic, nonlinear, and dynamic form. Butler points out that power imposed on us or taken away from us, whether we were conscious that we “had” it or not, “animates our emergence” (p. 198). As became apparent in our reading of RD's postings, the dynamics of power in the CMC environment shape identities and promise to shift the positionalities of all participants and the information climate surrounding them. When we experience shifts in a learning landscape, we can and will experience shifts in power and identity. This process, one of emergence, is only possible through conscious stewardship of the learning landscape.

MULTIPLE IDENTITIES AND CULTURAL POSITIONING: SEE THE SELF IN THE “OTHER”

The process of emergence, which allows learners to experience shifts in power and identity, is, as we have seen, fully intertwined with a critical social co-construction of the particular ecology among learners. In this ecology, learners cooperate in their ways of knowing and of being together by revealing their processes of naming and critically viewing their own identities. They use CMC to accomplish this cooperatio n and revelation.

MULTIPLE IDENTITIES AND CULTURAL POSITIONING: INTERROGATING THE “OTHER,” THEORIZING THE SELF

We see evidence here for critical social co-construction of the particular learning ecology as learners cooperate in their ways of knowing and of being together. In other words, they see aspects of themselves in the “other,” as revealed in their processes of naming and critically viewing their own identities. They use CMC to accomplish this cooperation and revelation. Another manner in which these co-constructions emerge is when participants in the classroom interaction note what is somehow missing in the narratives that their classmates offer.

IMPLICATIONS FOR CLASSROOMS

In this section I now shift to a concentration on the pedagogical principles and practices for engaging participants in exploring language and culture learning in the CS-C context and the paradigms that emerge from the work so far. While this section will not include “teaching tips” of a generic kind that any given teacher could take into the classroom directly for “Monday morning” use, pedagogical principles and real CMC classroom experiences will serve here to explore the pedagogical implications of this work.

All of the suggestions that emerge from the processes I describe here emphasize that a critical approach to social interactions, to interpersonal relations, and to communication with others will influence learning. In learning that emerges from these processes, there always needs to be an emphasis on getting input and responses from participants on all class activities. Interactions in any such classroom need to emphasize flexible thinking, mutual tolerance and respect, as well as self-respect and self-acceptance. Communication among the members of the class and among the class members and the cultures they are studying are at the heart of the instructional climate, and the multimedia resources available are key to enabling, supporting, and enriching that communication, though not, as discussed earlier, deterministic of the communication. Learners are the center of the process, and we take a phenomenological stance to lead all participants toward making connections between their own personal and individual histories, experiences, and the meanings and values they have found in their life stories so far and those of their classmates, those of others in our society, and those of members, past and present, of (in the case of my own classes) German-speaking societies. Whenever possible, as Kubota (2004) has pointed out, the efforts are also to “… understand the Other in relation to the Self or allow the Others to express their authentic voices in educational settings …” without imposing an “… essentialized, idealized, or stigmatized identity onto the Other …” (p. 44). The effective stewardship of the CS-C learning ecology, then, is possible not because we have simply added CMC to the traditional classroom interactional structure, but because we encourage transparency for all participants, learners and teachers alike, about the forces and structures at work in the classroom and in their lives.

LEARNERS' VOICES

I have put a lot of emphasis here on the effective stewardship of a CS-C learning ecology. However, when students walk into these or any classes on their first day, they always need to get their bearings in the landscape of a new class for the semester. As they learn to see the power structures working on all participants in the classroom and as they take more and more initiative to express their own multiple identities and cultural positioning, they cocreate the course and the role of their teacher in it. When I am teaching, the learners are cocreating me as their teacher. Toward the end of the semester, learners have assumed power, integrating what they accept or contest in the power dynamics of the classroom. In the spiral of the interaction, supported so well in the temporal and spatial independence offered by CMC, I have also been challenged to integrate their power and decided what to accept or contest in the dynamics of the classroom. Learners' writing which expresses fruition of this process will serve as the final section of this contribution. These learners' voices, then, and literally scores more of these types of summary statements, some more and some less articulate, all show how effective stewardship of the CS-C learning ecology can help CMC language and culture classrooms and their participants thrive. By initiating and supporting this kind of ecology and climate, all participants' multiple identities and cultural positionings can be expressed with the temporal and spatial independence offered by CMC. For them to express these identities and positionings, for them to teach and learn from each other, learners and teachers alike need to be able to see the forces and structures at work in the classroom and in their lives. Critical social-constructivist/connectivist approaches make the transparency for this seeing possible, and it creates the atmosphere in which learners' voices can all be heard. Indeed, in this kind of climate, it becomes apparent that “Everybody has a story … . Everybody is willing to share. Now all we have to do is listen.”