Writing as a Way of Participating in Knowledge Construction in Two University Classrooms

MOLINA, MARÍA ELENA; CARLINO, PAULA

Bogotá

Congreso; Writing Research Across Borders IV; 2017

Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá e International Society for the Advancement of Writing Research

Writing as a Way of Participating in Knowledge Construction in Two University Classrooms   Under which conditions teaching practices that include writing as a tool for learning could foster meaningful interactions within university classrooms? Focusing the analysis of class records and texts produced by students and reviewed by teachers, this presentation explores the ways in which the responsibility towards knowledge construction could be managed in order to increase the participation of students in two university classrooms. In our cases, one way of encouraging participation is based on the combination of teaching and writing practices. Thus, we explore how writing, whose epistemic potential and its actualizations in several levels of education and disciplines have been pointed out by numerous investigations, helped teachers and students to operate jointly in two classes: one Linguistic class and one Biology class. Following the Theory of Joint Action in Didactics (Sensevy, 2007, 2011), we show that, under certain conditions, writing serves as a way of sharing, constructing and negotiating the disciplinary knowledge at stake. In particular, we found that (a) students assume two different roles when they use writing as a way of participating in the construction of knowledge -they act as authors (Linguistics class) and as thinkers (Biology class)-; and (b) the activities proposed by teachers deeply shape these different positions adopted by the students. In this presentation, the assumption of these two roles is empirically substantiated, which contributes to establish how writing could foster the joint action (i.e. meaningful cooperation between teachers and students) within classrooms.  References  Sensevy, G. (2007). Des catégories pour décrire et comprendre l?action didactique. In Sensevy, G. & Mercier, A [eds] (2007) Agir ensemble. L´action didactique conjointe du professeur et des élèves. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes.  Sensevy, G. (2011). Le sens du savoir: éléments pour une théorie de l?action conjointe en didactique. Bruxelles: Éditions de Boeck.    Friday F Sessions: http://wrab2017.com/javeriana/schedule/