Bruffee, Myers, Holt: Collaborative Learning

¶ … Bruffee, Myers, Holt: Collaborative learning discourse analysis

Kenneth Bruffee's essay "Collaborative Learning and the 'Conversation of Mankind'" promotes the use of collaborative learning in undergraduate classrooms. Bruffee analyzes the process of collaborative learning in the abstract and draws connections with the use of peer tutoring and critiques to previous learning strategies and theories. In contrast, Mara Holt's essay "The importance of dissent in collaborative learning" from the Writing Center Journal uses Holt's experience as a participant in one of the Bruffee's seminars to examine the use of collaborative learning in the 'real world.' Although Holt's experience was largely positive and Holt generally agrees with Bruffee that collaborative learning can be useful, her description of the experience of using collaborative learning calls into question Bruffee's whole-hearted endorsement of his method.

Unlike Holt's essay, which is free from terminology and written in a straightforward manner, Bruffee has a habit of writing in the passive voice with great frequency, and using vague generalizations without concrete substantiations. This can be seen in following paragraph, discussing why collaborative learning was adopted in the first place: "One symptom of the difficulty these students had adapting to college life and work was that many refused help when it was offered. The help colleges offered, in the main, were tutoring and counseling programs staffed by graduate students and other professionals. These programs failed because undergraduates refused to use them" (Bruffee 637). Bruffee does not explain precisely who 'these students' are and the nature of the failed programs that collaborative learning is attempting to remedy. Only by reading John Trimbur's essay in defense of Bruffee, "Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning" do some of the political arguments against Bruffee's approach come to light. According to Trimbur: "One line of criticism argues that the use of consensus in collaborative learning is an inherently dangerous and potentially totalitarian practice that stifles individual voice and creativity, suppresses differences, and enforces conformity' (Trimbur 602). Bruffee's original article outlining his use of the technique does not specifically frame his learning technique in a political fashion, although it does contain some of the language of what could be called 'leftist' notions of the social contextualization of identity and production of knowledge. For Bruffee, collaborative learning is an acknowledgement that "knowledge is an artifact created by a community of knowledgeable peers constituted by the language of that community, and that learning is a social and not an individual process" (Bruffee 646). Knowledge does not exist in the abstract, and the aesthetic value of writing is based in a social consensus.

Bruffee devotes the substantial portion of his essay talking about the philosophy of the process of collaborative learning. Peer critiques and team assignments are vital collaborative learning devices. Collaborative learning does not alter 'what' students learn, according to Bruffee, but precisely 'how' they learn it. Bruffee's discussion of collaborative learning, is fairly abstract, other than vague discussions of its applications: "Recent developments in philosophy seem to suggest a conceptual rationale for collaborative learning that yields some unexpected insights into pedagogical practice" (Bruffee 637). Bruffee defends his theory by stressing how collaborative learning harkens back to the ideas of the educational thinker Vygotsky, the need for social conversation within the learning process, and to Thomas Kuhn's notion of scientific revolutions as being produced by a larger cultural scientific conversation rather than individual efforts (Bruffee 640).

To truly understand how the process of collaborative learning functions in actual fact, with all of the messiness of the real world of the classroom, one must look to the teacher Mara Holt's essay. Holt, who attended a workshop with Bruffee does praise his methods but notes that the way that his techniques function can be problematic in a classroom of diverse opinions. Through the use of "writing short papers and three-layered peer critiques" and small group and class discussion, every seminar participant's learning took place almost completely in a community environment (Holt 53). Although Holt praises the value of the struggle of the collaborative method, the day-by-day chronicle of the workshop she attended highlights some of the difficulties of the peer learning process. It did alienate some people from the group -- such as Steve, a Mormon, whose literary interests and personal beliefs were very different from those of the other freewheeling workshop participants. On the other side of the ideological spectrum, a woman named Susan found Bruffee's approach stifling to her personal creativity.

The criticisms of Bruffee Trimbur felt compelled to respond to in his essay thus seem to be not without merit, even though Holt's tone is positive, even defensive at times. "Bruffee's method of "small group consensus discussion" asks the reporter in the group to record dissenting views" Holt points out (Holt 56). Despite Holt's praise of Bruffee's methods, she admits that even the teachers who supported Bruffee exhibited resistance to the actual method: "Among ourselves we voiced the usual student complaints -- not enough time to write the three-paragraph papers, pique at having to follow instructions, the desire for grades (even though Ken gave us immediate, detailed comments), outrage at having to rewrite a paper or cut it by several hundred words, gripes that descriptive outlines were 'busy work'" (Holt 52). While something may have been gained through the collaborative writing process, Holt reflects, there was also something lost in terms of individual determination, expression, and direction.

Although less story-like in his approach than Holt, Bruffee does practice what he preaches and includes self-reflectiveness as part of his essay: "My ability to write this essay, for example, depends on my ability to talk through with myself the issues I address here. And my ability to talk through an issue with myself derives largely from my ability to converse directly with other people in an immediate social situation" (Bruffee 641). Mastering discourse is a process of peer interaction, not simply individualized learning, states Bruffee, and he tries to illustrate this engagement process even within himself, in the process of writing the essay supporting his methods. Bruffee's point is that although collaborative processes feel more contentious, writers are always in active conversation and argument with society, with other writers, even if only in their minds when writing alone. Collaborative processes merely bring such contention to the forefront of writing.

Yet author Greg Myers uses self-reflection in the context of his essay on peer learning to criticize Bruffee: "I would like to raise some political questions about two methods of teaching I use in my writing classes: having small groups of students collaborate on and critique each others' writing, and having case assignments based on some actual writing situation, whether a technical proposal or an anthropology exam" (Myers 154). Myers calls Bruffee's approach an appeal to the rhetoric of consensus, and fears that Bruffee has lost some of the individualism necessary to the heart of meaningful artistic endeavors by eliminating brainstorming and other individualistic pre-writing procedures (Myers 160). While Myers does use some collaborative approaches in his classroom, he does have the oft-expressed "fear that collaborative learning denies differences and threatens individuality" (Trimbur 603).

Appealing to consensus can alienate minority voices and minorities: a "constant appeal to consensus usage assumes the inherent superiority of certain language groups. When he [Leonard, a discipline of Bruffee] compares grammar books to etiquette books, he assumes, correctly I think, that issues of grammar are debated with such heat because they conceal issues of class, and especially the uneasiness of the middle class about its status. But there is little sense in his usage studies that there might not be just one answer for each item, that different classes or regions or races might have different usages, and that conflicts between these usages reflect other social conflicts" (Myers 160). The hammering out of a piece of prose into a mutually-agreed upon document can reinforce class norms in the name of creating a 'social conversation.' It preserves the rules and etiquette of the dominant discourse community, rather than questions them, says Myers.

Myers takes a cautiously argumentative approach, taking issue with Bruffee's fundamental contentions, while Holt's mostly praiseworthy tone uses her own, personal experiences even though many of her anecdotes reinforce Myers' reservations about the use of collaborative learning in writing. Conflict, such as the Mormon who was silenced in Holt's group, can be stifled in collaborative learning. "I will argue that ideas of consensus and reality, as they are used by Leonard, thought they seem so progressive, are part of the structure of ideology" says Myers (Myers 156). Myers is not against all of Bruffee's methods, but believes the collaborative approach can be counter-productive to achieving Bruffee's ideals. The social order and social surface polite chatter is often maintained collaboratively, Myers implies -- collaborative learning is not always radical.