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Kenneth Bruffee Annonated Bibliography Articles and Chapters

Articles

(By Subject)

Collaborative Learning

“Sharing Our Toys: Cooperative Learning Versus Collaborative Learning.” Change 27.1 (Jan-Feb 1995): 12–18.

In this article Bruffee reflects on the ability of community college instructors and practitioners to observe and foster collaborative learning in their classrooms though small group work within class contexts. Bruffee feels that research in this area can shed light on cultural differences and exchanges in important areas of American communities.

“The Art of Collaborative Learning: Making the Most of Knowledgeable Peers.” Change 19.2 (Mar-Apr 1987): 42–47.

In this article, Bruffee discusses the need for collaboration and group work in various environments. Drawing on the work of Richard Rorty, Clifford Geertz, Theodore Newcomb, and M.L.J. Abercrombie, Bruffee discusses the various trends and situations in which ideas about knowledge and practical experiences in collaborative learning have proved beneficial to students. Bruffee asserts that students learn more openly in groups where they can be challenged, questioned, and can compare themselves to others. It is the highest aim of the instructor to create an environment where students have the ability to make informed judgments in the “real world.” Bruffee underscores the importance of collaboration with peers in making interaction with peers possible for students. However, Bruffee notes that most classroom collaboration is semi-autonomous due to the organization and classroom structure of the traditional university. He states that the “degree of autonomy is the key to collaborative learning because the issue that collaborative learning addresses is the way authority is distributed and experienced in college university classrooms” (44). It is then, the agreement on this authority in the classroom by the students and their peers that makes a successful classroom. The three things that Bruffee considers central to this type of classroom environment depend on the students’ willingness to grant authority, willingness to take on and exercise authority, and interact with each other in the context of friendliness and good grace (44). Bruffee reiterates that this sharing of knowledge and authority can be difficult for students because they have learned to work individually and because it questions the way that many students are taught knowledge is acquired. Working through these differences collaboratively helps students to learn to rely on and share the power in the classroom with their peers.

In this article Bruffee prepares an overview of the work done on social construction. He relates current work in social construction to the ideas of Thomas Kuhn. Using the literature of the field Bruffee discusses the differences between how knowledge is constructed in what he calls traditional cognitive theory and the more collaborative ideas on socially constructed knowledge. Bruffee’s guide to social construction includes texts in literature, the sciences, composition studies, and general education courses. He ends this article with a discussion of the impact of social construction and ideas about socially constructed knowledge on education. This is a helpful article for those interested in a general survey on the literature published about the ideas of social construction to 1985.

In this article Bruffee reflects on the influx of unprepared students into colleges in the early 1970s. He discusses how the specific needs of these students forced educators to examine the way that traditional classrooms were teaching and look for new models that would better accommodate diverse groups of students. He discusses this change and the introduction of collaborative group work in classes and how this group work allowed students to create a community of learners in the classroom. Bruffee also discusses the use of peer tutors as a way to decenter the authority of the teacher in the classroom and create “conversation” between peers. To support this shift Bruffee discusses the changes in how educators view how learning takes place in the classroom to reflect the idea that it is created by a “community of learners.” It is through conversations and collaborative learning that students own their education and feel responsible in the classroom. In this dynamic true learning takes place. This article proved to be the single most important of Bruffee’s career and the ideas presented changed the face of learning in the classroom by initiating a conversation about not only what is taught in classrooms, but in looking at who is being taught and how this effects the creation and focus of knowledge. “Reading and Writing as Social Acts.” Journal of Teaching Writing 2.2 (1983): 149–154.

Bruffee discusses the ways collaborative learning is taking place inside and outside the classroom and offers practical examples on how collaborative learning can be integrated into classroom situation. In order to incorporate collaborative learning into the classroom teachers must “reconceive” their roles in the classroom. The teacher does this by creating a “polycentralized” classroom where he or she moves to the perimeter of the action on the scene is set and allows the students to lead the class. Bruffee is careful to state that moving away from the action is not abdicating teaching responsibilities, but that the role of the teacher must be reinterpreted to act as this organizer rather than leader. Bruffee gives four classroom situations that illustrate this model and suggests that collaborative learning helps students because people naturally learn best when helping others. As a last note, Bruffee states implementing this model ad becoming comfortable with it is a slow process that involves the teacher demythologizing his or her own role in the classroom. The teacher must also resist slipping back into the roles of adult/child and/or dominate/weak with students.

Peer Tutoring

In this article, Bruffee discusses the two main issues that need to be resolved when setting up a writing center: if tutoring should be required and how tutors should be trained and supervised. Bruffee suggests that the best model for the writing center would involve tutors who are staffed as part of a larger writing class. These tutors should be undergraduates who are gaining advanced composition credit for their work in the writing center. He believes that the writing centers run best when these undergraduates tutor students on a drop-in basis and are allowed to work independently with the students seeking help. The most important element in the writing center should be the tutor’s ability to participate in constructive peer criticism. He urges that tutors be trained to practice peer criticism and learn how make descriptive, evaluative, and substantive comments and that they learn to respect other students’ writings while working collaboratively with others. Bruffee asserts that a model of tutoring based on teaching tutors the value of peer criticism and evaluation “tends to produce confident, consistent, and readable undergraduate writers” (79) while keeping tutors vested as responsible collaborators in their peers work.

Higher Education Reform/Curriculum

In this article Bruffee discusses the current trends in multicultural liberal education. He states that the original task of multicultural education, acknowledging differences and creating cultural “groupings,” has fallen short as the differences between “them” and “us” become more apparent in higher education. He suggests that students must now “learn to recognize and affirm our genuine commonality” (12). Bruffee suggests that students should instead learn more about their own identities and appreciate the differences that their identities share with others (bias, rituals, meanings, and values). He recommends that this be done through three principles. The first is to understand that “most cultural communities are nearly identical in many of the most rudimentary elements of social structure, needs and desires.” The second is recognizing that “culturally distinct communities nested together in heterogeneous societies do share solid common ground.” The third principle asks for recognition that “taking the common ground requires learning the intricacies and tact of re-negotiating membership in one’s own cultures and of finding new occasions to negotiate across the boundaries that divide cultural communities” (14–15). Bruffee follows these founding principles with the understanding that simply having students study the history and context of these issue will not make them discover what he calls “common ground” between themselves and others.

In order to create this common ground Bruffee proposes a curriculum with five phases. The first phase asks students to explore their differences face to face with classroom discussion groups and interviews. The second phase takes students into the community where they can put to work the understandings they learned in phase one but working on projects that contribute to community betterment. Examples of community involvement might involve working on Habitat for Humanity or researching oral history and folklore. The third phase focuses on documenting these experiences in ways that would facilitate discussion. The fourth phase or element deals with curriculum development. In this phase the “common ground” work that students have done contributes to the learning of their classmates “by offering perspectives on the diverse ethnic, racial, and cultural peoples who inhabit the institution and surround it” (17). The final phase or element includes the studying of multicultural texts that support the interdisciplinary focus of the preceding phases. Bruffee proposes this model for taking the traditional multicultural focus of the classroom a step farther and allowing students access to a common ground and understanding between themselves and others.

“Thoughts of A Fly on the Wall.” Writing Program Administration 22.3 (1998): 55–64.

“Science in a Postmodern World.” Change 24.5 (Sep-Oct 1992): 18–25.

“A New Intellectual Frontier.” Chronicle of Higher Education 40 (1978): 27.

“Where is the Teaching of Writing Headed?” College English 36.4 (1973): 634–643.

“On Graduate Education in English.” ADE Bulletin 36 (March 1973): 25–28.

In this article Bruffee reflects on the influx of students due to the open admissions policy at the City College of New York. Bruffee discusses the need of student-centered rather than teacher-centered classrooms and the ways that a shift toward focusing on the student is occurring in groups titled Student Volunteer Resources that produce student created, student designed, and student administered projects. Through these programs, Bruffee urges the students are developing “self-realization, self-esteem, and a new sense of mutual responsibility and trust” (10). Bruffee uses these organizations as a model and suggests that the freshman composition classroom should mimic such student-centered activities. Bruffee uses the term collaborative learning to describe a classroom setting in which students design, implement, and become responsible for their own education with the teacher as a guide. He argues that this enhanced responsibility for the student will make him invested in his own education and will allow the teacher to appraise his conception of his own educational role. Bruffee points out that while his article does not address the differences between students that arise from open admissions, collaborative learning will help students to focus on commonalities. Bruffee ends the article by asking the question that will haunt his later work: “What is the role of our social context in the values and activities of English teachers?”

In this article Bruffee reflects on the recent body of publications that have begun to question the way and how students are taught in traditional classroom settings. He proposes that trends in the literature about teaching comment on the classroom shifting toward a more nontraditional model where the classroom is a community of individuals working together towards the goal of learning. He states that this new approach to learning as a community creates an environment in which learning is a social act. He urges that this idea of learning as a social act stems from a resistance to traditional models of lecture and reciting from students, but addresses the reasons why resistances to this traditional classroom has failed because of the tend to replace the authority of the teacher and structure of traditional assignments with weak or nonexistent models. For Bruffee, success in changing this model is due to the “redistribution” of authority to students so that they can form a community and learn how to work together toward a common goal. Bruffee makes it clear that students must feel they are in a safe environment where they can question and contribute to the classroom community without the fear of being punished or penalized by an authoritarian teacher. This is done through a collaborative relationship between the student and the teacher.

Replies/Responses

Of special note are Bruffee’s numerous responses and conversations with his colleagues that occurred in the pages of College English in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Throughout this period scholars in the field responded to Bruffee’s ideas challenging common views of how knowledge is created (or understood) and the use of alternative (perhaps revolutionary) dynamics in the classroom. These conversations consisted of responses, rejoinders, and rebuttals to colleagues about ideas and theories expressed in articles and the defense and explanation of the material expressed in his own. Scholars that participated in these “conversations” included Perdo Beade, Milton Birnbaum, Marilyn M. Cooper, Peter Elbow, Richard Gebhardt, Greg Myers, Carl Mills, Cynthia Self, Patricia Sullivan, John Trimbur, and Harvey S. Wiener among many others. What follows is a list of Bruffee’s responses to his peers and a list of their responses to him. What is interesting about these exchanges is that Bruffee was able to create, through diligent response with colleagues, the very types of conversations and collaborations about creating and agreed upon knowledge that he proposed for classroom environments. This list is a guide for the conversations occurring between scholars in the field of collaborative learning at the time and should serve as a starting point for those interested.

In this comment Bruffee explores Patricia Sullivan’s “disaffection” for his book Collaborative Learning, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge in her December 1995 review. He points to several flaws in her understanding of collaborative learning and its key tenants that lead to misunderstanding in her review. The first flaw is her version of social construction as foundational and nonfoundational. Bruffee points out that this division should instead reflect pre and post-deconstruction. The second point that he clarifies stems from this misunderstanding. Bruffee asserts that Sullivan incorrectly equates “dissent negotiation” with “arbitration of different frames of experience and modes of expertise” (599). Bruffee explains that arbitration occurs at every step in collaborative learning due to the need for knowledge communities. Bruffee responds to Sullivan’s remarks that she likes Bazerman’s and Flowers books better than his by pointing out that she also has a flawed understanding of their theories.

Bruffee responds to Marilyn M. Copper and Cynthia L. Selfe’s article “Computer Conferences and Learning: Authority, Resistance, and Internally Persuasive Discourse” stating that he liked the authors use of computer conferences as a form of collaborative learning, but that he would have wished to see the authors add comments about the role that collaborative learning plays in the construction of knowledge. He makes a note that although the model that Copper and Selfe portray for collaborative learning is technology dependent, educators do not need the privilege of technology to use a collaborative process. Bruffee illustrated the benefits of face-to-face (as opposed to technological collaborative learning) by tracing collaborative strategies to early woman’s group movements. Bruffee laments that Copper and Selfe did not recognize that every type of collaborative learning, including those environments that use technology, “involve the teacher’s exercise of authority” and that not only the students, but the teachers must come to terms with this authority (951). He accuses Cooper and Selfe as being a part of the problem in refusing to acknowledge teacher authority in the technology model and states that “masks such as anonymity and passive voice neither change not ameliorate non-egalitarian relationships” (951). Bruffee ends his response by stating that acknowledging the authority of teachers “does not limit our ability to change the way in which classroom authority and the authority of knowledge are constructed and exercised” but makes a stronger case.

In this response Bruffee makes note of his “minor” reservations about Trimbur’s article “Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning.” Bruffee argues that Trimbur’s thesis sentence could be tightened to allude to the fact that students are acknowledging differences and not creating them. Bruffee also discusses that substantive issues in Trimbur’s article he does not agree with. The first issue Bruffee raises is in the way Trimbur defines the word struggle as a “polyphony of voices, an internal conversation traversed by social, cultural, and linguistic differences” (693). The problem with this definition, Bruffee states, is that this definition can be related to Roberto Unger’s ideas on association with others breeding “domination and dependence,” and urges that education is one way to deal with the fears that arise from this definition. Bruffee states that an education based in collaborative learning can provide the reliance and interdependence “required from constructive change, precisely because it can help minimize the risks of vulnerability in human association” (693). The second element in Trimbur’s article that Bruffee takes issue with is Trimbur’s success orientation toward education. Bruffee argues that the business of college is to teach students how to be successful members of a community and that the organization of education helps students to work toward this success. He asserts that Trimbur is wrong in assuming how to avoid this, but instead should focus on teaching others “how to exercise it and thus give them genuine access to it” (694). Bruffee calls this access empowerment. He ends his response by stating that both he and Trimbur agree that collaborative learning empowers students – even if they disagree on the details about how this is done.

Bruffee reflects on a Richard Rorty interview in the Journal of Advanced Composition and how the language of Rorty has helped Bruffee to express concepts that he has been unsuccessful in expressing himself. Bruffee conveys gratitude that the editors of JAC interviewed Rorty, and that they even allowed Rorty to discuss Bruffee, but states his disappointment at the way the interview and the questions were framed. He argues that labeling Rorty a theorist is a disservice to him and to JAC readers because social construction, and through social construction collaborative learning, is not a way of thinking but a way of describing. Bruffee points out that a theory-practice dichotomy is obsolete and ends his response by stating that the terms that the interviewers used in addressing Rorty speaks more to the “stage that the conversation in composition studies is currently at” then what Rorty offers about himself or Bruffee in the interview.

Bruffee responds to Don H. Bialostosky’s article “Dialogics as an Art of Discourse in Literary Criticism,” published in PMLA 1986, in which Bialostosky attempts to “fence Rorty out of the dialogic community” (216). Bruffee argues that Dialogics and social construction are related in the intent and assumption of their methods and “both offer an alternative to dialectical and rhetorical uses of language” (216). Bruffee asserts that Rorty does find problems with “linguistic mediation,” but that these problems are based on language. Bruffee feels that those interested in Dialogics would also find this point of interest.

Bruffee Responds to Thomas Johnson’s accusations that the article “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind’” is Orwellian in nature. Bruffee suggests that minor misunderstandings in Johnson’s reading of the article may have resulted in this major misconception. In defense of collaborative learning Bruffee clarifies definitions of normal discourse and the idea that students and teachers are peers – he clarifies that students are peers to each other and the teacher acts as a facilitator. Bruffee questions Johnson’s assumption that Nazis and fascists are collaborative in nature and asserts that collaborative learning is built on the foundation of negotiation rather than assertion and acceptance. In response to Johnson’s allegation that Bruffee includes creativity in his classrooms as an afterthought, Bruffee comments that no one can teach creativity, but that collaborative learning makes a place for it.

Bruffee responsed to Richard Gebhardt’s article on collaborative learning published in College English (September 1980) by stating that emotional development is not and should not be the focus of collaborative learning. Bruffee states that the purpose of collaborative learning is to help students personalize knowledge “by socializing it” and to “provide students with a social context of learning peers with whom they are engaged on conceptual issues” (745). This, he argues, helps students to understand that knowledge is a social artifact and learning is a social phenomenon. Bruffee urges that while a good knowledge of group dynamics and the emotional factors at play in groups is important for the teacher in collaborative learning, this is not a useful source of knowledge for teachers and that “the bottom line in our profession [as teachers] us what our clients know, not how they feel” (746). He states that emotions are important in collaborative learning because they help students to learn contextually through the “social context or peer influence” and not by the doing of the teacher and while the teachers should be aware of the student emotions, his job is not that of the social worker in the classroom.

Kenneth Bruffee response to Milton Birnbaum’s comments in “The Drift of College English in the Last Three Years” (College English, January 1974), that Bruffee’s list of the values students should learn in traditional education are mere slogans. Bruffee asserts that the values he proposes are not those espoused by a “single martinet,” but those proposed by all educators throughout a student’s life. Bruffee states that all educators propose these values by the way that they teach. He accuses Birnbaum of taking his “slogans” out of context and ignores to review, in his article, genuine alternatives to traditional learning. Bruffee goes on to reiterate that collaborative learning challenges the traditional learning model and that learning and thought are a social process. Bruffee urges that Brinbaum has unfairly lumped collaborative learning in with “other innovations.” Bruffee defends collaborative learning by stating that it is: 1.) is not unstructured but tightly organized, 2.) does not simply translate into the open classroom of higher education, 3.) that the teacher does not have to be a psychologist or showman to direct students in learning, and 4.) that collaborative learning is not a substitute for traditional learning in every instance.

In this response Bruffee apologizes to Peter Elbow for using him as a straw man in an earlier argument and suggests that many educators are caught up, unwittingly, in their own individualism. He asserts that he does not favor this individualism, but that he does have his own concerns about what goes on with his students when he relinquishes control in collaborative learning situations. He states that this feeling is symptomatic of his “own dependence of his students dependence on him. Bruffee suggests that alleviating this feeling can only be accomplished when educators look at the traditional model of teaching and understand that teachers must change, “not only what we do as teachers, but the way we feel about what we do” (467). Bruffee urges that students are comfortable with individual models of learning because often traditional models are the only type of learning that students have ever known. He acknowledges the feeling that many student have about learning together as an illicit behavior. Bruffee suggests that rather than ignore this feeling educators and students alike find out what this feeling means.

Bruffee responds to H.L. Anshutz’ comments on his opening paragraph of Elegiac Romance. Bruffee compares is own difficulty in introducing and concluding his prose with the difficulties of his composition students. He discusses his tendencies to write “bad news” in “flabby prose” and good news in “sharp, succinct prose.”

Book Chapters

In this book chapter, Bruffee extends his ideas on the benefits and meanings of collaborative learning in the classroom to discuss the uses and needs of peer tutors in writing programs. Bruffee again discusses the production of knowledge through the basis of writing as “internalized thought” and the need to participate in conversation with peers. He discusses the benefits of a student-conversational model to foster learning as opposed to an instructor based authority model, and urges that the use of peer tutors in the curriculum allows students to become a part of the conversation of learning. Peer tutors acts as knowledgeable peers that allow others to become more familiar with the values, codes, and discourses of the academic learning community by providing a social context for the student. Bruffee states that it is through collaboration with writers and peer tutors that knowledge is produced.

This article discusses many of the foundational ideas that Bruffee uses to support his later ideas on collaborative learning. Bruffee urges that the way students learn to write and read are social in nature and continue to be social activities throughout their lives. As children grow this process is internalized (thought as internalized speech). The way for individuals to share these thoughts is through the act of social conversation. Because thought and speech are internalized thoughts reading and (more importantly) writing become collaborative in nature as individuals participate in conversations with others.