Building real knowledge with imaginary tools...

Tyreek and I chose to construct a searchable archive because we wanted to allow researchers full access to the breadth of material accessible for this topic. In contrast to a bibliography like Rebecca Moore Howard’s, this searchable archive does not compartmentalize knowledge topically. We do allow researchers the option of navigating the archive topically, if they wish, via the “subject” search field. Researchers can also search by title, key word, or author if they find themselves in need of following a particular line of inquiry with these delineations. In providing the fully searchable archive of texts, however, we really wanted to stress the necessity of having these voices in conversation with one another, as they were meant to be in response to one another through the development of the historical “turn” in discussions of cognitive and process theory.  

   

Providing a full archive also allows these pieces the opportunity of being absorbed into multiple conversations aside from the particular historical moment we are tracing in this set of readings. We can think of the arrangement of material, then, as intersecting microcosms and macrocosms, or if we want to borrow terminology loosely from Carter, as local and general knowledge. I use the term “local knowledge” loosely here to suggest that the particular turn of cognition and process operates on a local level to represent a body of knowledge that is “constituted by a community and that writing is a function of a discourse community” (266). So while this turn mostly reflects theories of cognition and process, some of these texts could just as easily be placed in conversation with one another (or other texts) to yield a different scholarly discussion about a different topic altogether, thereby entering a different “discourse community” of research. For instance, we could just as easily place Elbow’s reading in a wider discussion on assessment within the field of first-year composition pedagogy. His piece certainly occupies a position within discussions of process, but he also offers a guiding disciplinary definition of evaluation that shifts the conversation away from process to encompass assessment more centrally: “By evaluating I mean the act of expressing one’s judgment of a performance or person by pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of different features or dimensions” (395). Murray’s article on voice represents one of many contributions to the discussion of voice within rhetoric and composition as a field of study as well. Similarly, the Flowers and Hayes piece could just as easily occupy space within a discussion of cognitive psychology. So what we are doing by providing access to the full text, along with the chronological framework of the particular “turn,” is allowing the researcher a guided tour through this particular disciplinary shift without clearly restricting these texts to roles that function as guideposts solely indicative of the turn. We want researchers to see these selections as resources that are a part of a larger network of knowledge communicated through various intersecting discussions. Because the nature of the field is interdisciplinary, we cannot give the impression through our archive that these texts operate monolithically as a set of references merely on the topic at hand. In this way, we present the conversation as it exists within this scholarly discussion, but we don’t prevent these texts from being subsumed within other scholarly discussions as the need arises.

We thought it was important to create one space to which students could come for both consumption of text or for preliminary searches. We also wanted to provide a tool that would aid students throughout their entire writing process, not just at the beginning of it. The Olson piece elucidated for me the need for a tool that would facilitate dialectical inquiry. Invoking Lyotard, he writes, “Since questions always already carry within them their own answers, are always ‘interested,’ it is the act itself of questioning, of remaining open, that is most useful to Lyotard. An ‘answer’ then is only interesting insofar as it is a new question, not in that it allows someone to assert a solution to and thereby close off inquiry” (13). I see the searchable archive as a tool that completely fulfills these outlined needs. A bibliography, for example, provides a line of inquiry and clearly delineated scholarly conversation, which is highly beneficial for the beginning stages of the research process, when students are beginning to view the proliferation of texts as if they are so many dots on a map, leading to one locale. But a tool like this doesn’t allow students to hear the cacophony of voices in conversation with one another in quite the same way that an archive does. Inquiry with a bibliography is not as easily fueled by the emergence of a “new question,” merely because the conversation has already been outlined for students through its use of topics. The affordances of our tool outweigh those of a bibliography or glossary because the tool presents each text as an artifact that stands alone to make an argument, but also stands alongside accompanying texts to create a discussion, a paradigm shift, an contribution, etc. It is a tool that is familiar to students, as they are becoming more used to accessing and consuming texts in an online format versus print. So, for that reason, we felt we were appealing to an ideal audience of student researches who want to be able to locate a text and search it all in one place. Aside from convenience, though, this archive acts in a way as a metaphor for the interconnecting conversations of such an interdisciplinary field.

             From our readings, the idea of student-centered approaches to teaching and learning arose. These concerns were also at the forefront of our tool’s creation and our ideas about how knowledge is construction through research. We constructed the archive in a way that to us seemed student-centered and student-directed, in accordance with our readings’ notions of student empowerment. Instead of restricting the student’s consumption and production of knowledge (through inquiry), we allowed the student full access to the texts, as well as the multiple search options that allow the student to construct his or her own argument from the availability of source material. When using this tool, you could concede that, yes, as Olson tells us, all tools and all disciplines are “in the business of producing narratives,” (10) but the archive also allows students to construct their own narratives by providing them with the necessary material to do so. To me, the benefits of this tool also speak to Irmscher’s notions on the simultaneity of internalizing and externalizing processes. Although his claims speak to the writing process, they still ring true for a method of research that is similarly student-centered. He writes, “Although we commonly think of writing as a way of connecting with the larger social order, as a form of communication, as an externalizing process, we need to see it also as a way of connecting with ourselves, an internal communication” (242). Our tool allows students to experience the external scope of the scholarly conversation as it is constructed for them by the presentation of materials in chronological order, but our search features also allow students to create their own discussion by drawing parallels and noting dissonances in conversations they’ve discovered for themselves through intertextual readings. This “internal communication,” we hope, would lead to a more inquiry-based form of research that begins rights when the student thinks research has ended.

Elbow, Peter. "Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting out Three Forms of Judgment." NCTE 55.2 (1993): 187-206.

Irmscher, William. “Writing as a Way of Learning and Developing.” CCC. 30.3 (1979): 240-244.

Murray, Donald M. "Finding Your Own Voice: Teaching Composition in an Age of Dissent." NCTE 20.2 (1969): 118-23.

Olson, Gary A. “Toward a Post-Process Composition: Abandoning the Rhetoric of Assertion.” Post-Process Theory: New Directions for Composition Research. Ed. Thomas Kent. Carbondale: Souther Illinois UP, 1999. 7-15.