Electronic Quills

A Situated Evaluation of Using Computers for Writing in Classrooms

Bertram C. Bruce, Andee Rubin, with contributi Barnhardt and Teachers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136690556
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume centers on the words and experiences of teachers and students who used QUILL -- a software package developed by the authors to aid in writing instruction. It looks in detail at the stories of these early users and considers questions relevant for other teachers, students, researchers, and developers of educational innovations. Questions posed include:

* What does it mean to develop an environment for literacy in an actual classroom?

* How can a teacher create an environment in which students work together toward meaningful goals?

* How can a teacher promote the rich communication so necessary for developing language?

* What is the role of technology in the practice and development of literacy?

The examination of the QUILL experiences provides a fuller and more revealing account of what it meant to use QUILL than would have been possible through standard evaluation techniques. At the same time, the focus on the particulars also finds analogues in analyses of similar pieces of open-ended software or educational innovations in general.

Chapter 1

Introduction

About 10 years ago, we began to develop QUILL, a computer program whose purpose was to help upper elementary school students develop as writers. Our vision of QUILL was not one of a program that taught writing skills directly, but rather of one containing tools with which students and teachers could create a literacy environment in the classroom. By this we meant that QUILL would support collaboration; it would encourage writing for real audiences, with writing goals that came from the students; it would integrate reading and writing activities; it would foster a process for writing that included planning, critical thinking, and revising; and it would empower students so that they would understand the reasons for their learning and become actively engaged in furthering it.

Today, the growing use of electronic mail, bulletin boards, teleconferences, and computer-supported collaborative work systems has made increasingly apparent the intrinsic links among computers, communication, and community that QUILL exemplified (Handa, 1990; Hawisher & Selfe, 1989). Electronic systems are now used to shape, facilitate, control, or even establish communities and social relations. But in 1981 these ideas were relatively new, especially in school settings. QUILL thus represented a significant innovation in both the teaching of writing and in the use of computers in education.

We believe that the ideas in QUILL are still valid for teaching reading and writing. But our purpose is not to praise QUILL, nor to find fault with its vision of educational change. Instead it is to show that a detailed, self-critical appraisal of the evidence yields surprises and reveals a richness in what students and teachers do that belies both optimistic and pessimistic visions of technology in relation to educational change.

In order to be open to these surprises, we must make an important distinction between what an innovation purports to be and how it is used in real classroom settings. We conceptualize this distinction by contrasting the idealization of an innovation with its realizations. This book proceeds by examining how the idealization of QUILL was realized as many different QUILLs in diverse classroom situations. A better understanding of this realization process has important implications for curriculum development, teacher education, and evaluation of educational innovations.

INNOVATIONS IN EDUCATION

The linking of a new technology to a vision of a transformed pedagogy is a distinguishing feature in many proposed innovations in education. It is rare that the developer of an innovation would adopt the goal of simply facilitating current practices with a new technology. Instead, the argument is made that the expense of adopting new methods and tools is justified because major transformations, that is, improvements, will occur in current practices. Conversely, proposals to transform teaching practices often incorporate new technologies, broadly interpreted to include the use of new media, computers, new curricula, kits of “manipulables,” or catchy multi-step procedures for teaching or learning. These reifications are viewed as essential to achieving the developers’ pedagogical goals.

That new technologies are linked to visions of major educational change is not surprising. What is curious is that the new technology is often viewed as sufficient by itself to effect the desired changes. The assumption seems to be that if only teachers and students had access to the power of the new technology, then all aspects of the wonderful vision would be realized. Little thought is given to the possibility that traditional practices may be integral elements within a functioning social system and that they are unlikely to change simply because new practices are technically possible. In fact, those who do adopt innovations are typically faced with the challenging task of resolving conflicts between old practices that derive from powerful situational constraints and imperatives of the new technology.

Nevertheless, since the publication of R. U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) in 1923, one of the first fictional fantasies about computers, “thinking machines” have been seen as potentially “revolutionary” and in recent years, the word “revolution” has often been heard with respect to computers in schools. For example, in a Congressional testimony hearing shortly before work on QUILL began, one researcher declared that a revolution was possible over the next decade that would transform learning in our society, altering both the methods and the content of education. Another compared the computer technology revolution to the literacy revolution, noting that in both cases the longterm effects were unknown, but that in the current case, they were sure to occur more swiftly. In extrapolating further from the parallels between the two developments, he pointed out that in the same way that the advent of writing made possible a different definition of history, led to the growth of formal education, and eventually resulted in the equation of education with literacy, fundamental changes in the fabric of society may occur as computers and their capabilities become more integrated into our lives and educational systems. Computers could affect the way we educate ourselves, communicate with one another, and even the way we think of ourselves.

This visionary view of technology pervades much of the work that has been done on designing software and technology-based curricula for classrooms, including our own. People have been drawn to the use of the computer for learning because they see it as a source of leverage in the educational system. Its introduction will, they hope, go beyond specific pedagogical goals to catalyze fundamental educational changes, including new roles for teachers and students, as well as new views of how learning takes place.

For example, the computer is seen as enabling new forms of teaching in which students assume control for their own learning. In an early study of different types of educational software (Olds, Schwartz, & Willie, 1980), teachers looked at both narrowly directed drill-and-practice software and at software that purports to open up opportunities for students to ask their own questions. They found not only that different approaches to software design implied radically different models of learning and teaching, but also that in the process of examining software critically the teachers became more aware of their own values. The report had stated that, “teachers saw the enormous pedagogical difference between solving problems and formulating them, between answering someone else’s question and generating your own” (p. 40).

Papert (1980) adopted a similar position in his description of the ideal use of the programming language LOGO:

In many schools today, the phrase “computer-aided instruction” means making the computer teach the child. One might say the computer is being used to program the child. In my vision, the child programs the computer and in doing so, both acquires a sense of mastery over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and establishes an intimate contact with some of the deepest ideas from science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building. (p. 5)

Papert likened the classroom environment in which he envisioned LOGO being used to the Brazilian samba schools. These are social clubs in which children and adults learn together to dance in an atmosphere both serious and fun. Describing LOGO environments for learning mathematics in relation to the samba schools, he pointed out that in both environments novices and experts are engaged in real activity: “The activity is so varied, so discovery-rich, that even in the first day of programming, the student may do something that is new and exciting to the teacher” (ibid, p. 179). Later, in discussing the way LOGO may facilitate the process of talking about thinking, he says, “in this way the LOGO culture enriches and facilitates the interaction between all participants and offers opportunities for more articulate, effective, and honest teaching relationships” (ibid, p. 180).

In the area of writing, the view of computers as an empowering force has been especially strong. Since computers can be used to foster collaboration and a process approach to teaching and learning, they seem especially well suited to the current emphasis on writing as a process. For example, several projects have explored the use of local area networks to create a new type of writing environment. Many people who have been involved in such projects see the new technology as offering not just better ways to carry out traditional teaching functions, but entirely new forms of teaching and learning. Batson (1988) stated:

Networks create an unusual opportunity for writing teachers to shift away from the traditional writing classroom because they create entirely new pedagogical dynamics. One of the most important is the creation of a written social context, an online discourse community, which presents totally new opportunities for effective instruction in writing. . . .” (p. 32)

Writing about computers as tools to support response to student writing, Sirc (1989) described programs that facilitate interaction among students about the texts they are writing. These programs are designed to empower students by enhancing their control over their own writing and response processes: “The programs . . . allow students’ work to be treated as serious writing, worthy of response. Computer response programs are best when they liberate students to write and talk about their writing” (p. 203). This idea of empowerment or liberation is one element in these new types of learning environments in which the teacher’s role changes from lecturer to coach or facilitator, and the computer becomes a tool that students control, rather than the other way around.

REALIZATIONS IN THE CLASSROOM

Powerful themes run through these visions of computers in education: environments for learning, sensitivity to the social context of learning, collaboration, liberation, taking students seriously, and putting the student in control. Themes such as these play an important role in the development of innovative educational methods. They shape the design of software and activities; they provide reference points during the early stages of development when the innovation is not fully formed; and they are necessary in communicating with others. But for these reasons, the vision is often oversimplified, and as a result, rarely achieved in full, although some classrooms do fulfill many aspects of the ideal.

Regardless of one’s vision, or of one’s claims about how technology might change learning, a crucial question is this: What really happens when an innovation gets used? A serious examination of the ways in which an innovation becomes a functioning part of the classroom is essential to gaining a deep understanding of an innovation in use. It is also a prerequisite to seeing how changes in the innovation or the classroom setting might promote greater learning. Ultimately, it may lead to a rethinking of the original vision, to accord more with the realities of classrooms.

There has now been substantial experience with computers in schools. It is clear that one thing that has not happened is a straightforward, broad-based realization of any single vision. Instead, the diverse visions of ideal computer use have been multiplied by diverse forms of actual use in classrooms.

In many cases, computer-based innovations are reshaped to fit constraints of the existing curriculum or limited classroom resources. In fact, it is precisely those aspects of the innovation that do not challenge established methods of teaching that are incorporated most readily into school practices (Cohen, 1988; Cuban, 1986). In other cases, teachers do adopt the innovation as originally conceived, but then extend it with their own creative ideas or add elements that take advantage of particular local opportunities. Many innovations are designed with such extensions in mind; thus “using the computer as intended” means “using it in ways that cannot be specified in advance.” The answer to the “What really happens. . .?” question is thus likely to be neither that the vision is realized as originally conceived, nor that institutional realities always engulf innovations.

Any study of the use of technology in schools must attend to the social, cultural, economic, and political environments for that use. In the individual classroom, these realities manifest themselves in details of classroom organization, availability of resources, mandated curricula, teacher preparation, the testing system, the ways teachers are evaluated, and so on. These factors shape the possibilities for change in the classroom, even for such a potentially “revolutionary” force as the computer. The impact of an innovation derives from the interaction of the idealized innovation with the real setting. In short, what we must analyze is not the computer as idealized innovation, but the innovation in use in real settings.

THE INNOVATION-IN-USE

This book is a study of the use of QUILL. To a large extent, the study focuses on the use of QUILL by teachers in Alaska. Although the examples we present are quite specific, including accounts of classroom interactions and of writing by teachers and students, the meaning of the examples extends beyond understanding the use of a single piece of software in a particular time and place. The Alaska setting is fascinating in its own right, but it also mirrors the diversity of American public schools in general. The classrooms we studied covered the range from multigrade classrooms in small, village schools to classrooms in urban centers. The students belonged to a variety of ethnic and language groups, and their grade levels ranged from second to eighth grade.

The stories we report show how teachers and students using QUILL and computer networks worked towards developing environments for literacy that involved collaboration, real purposes, and real audiences. In many cases, the teachers found that computer technology afforded special opportunities for enriching the literacy environments of their classrooms. These experiences corroborated our view that the development of facility with written language requires a particular kind of educational environment: one in which people use language to work together toward meaningful goals and where reading and writing served a purpose.

As we observed QUILL in use, we found that parts of our vision were fulfilled, but that other parts were not. For example, students in many classrooms wrote more often and shared their writing with others more than they had before. On the other hand, meaning-centered revision did not occur to the extent we had hoped. We also found that the actual use of QUILL expanded upon ideas that existed in a primitive form in our original vision. For example, collaborative learning among teachers developed in ways we had not anticipated, and the specific varieties of goal-directed writing that emerged were not predictable in the beginning.

While the teachers found that technology was a benefit in their teaching, they also found that it posed new problems. In their attempts to integrate technology into their classrooms, teachers had to recreate the innovation, viewing it as but one element in a complex social setting. Choosing parts that made sense, adapting others, and organizing their use in ways that accorded with their own beliefs and values about teaching, they invented something new. Their creations, the realizations of QUILL, were thus very different from QUILL, the idealization.

Understanding this process of second-order creation of the technology— this re-creation—is essential if we are to have sensible discourse about QUILL, but more generally about technological or, indeed, any innovations in education. The variations in use, or what we would prefer to call the unique realizations, led us to see that “QUILL” had different meanings in different settings; that we were studying the “QUILLS’ that were being created in various classrooms, rather than the fixed entity “QUILL” and its effects on learning. The different ways that QUILL was used in different classrooms led us to adopt the construct of alternate realizations, as a way of focussing initially on differences in use rather than on similarities. Thus, this book is about the many “Electronic QUILLs.”

INNOVATION AND CHANGE

To understand the recreation process we can no longer conceive of an innovation as hard and fixed, with well-defined boundaries specified in terms of hardware and software parameters, but rather as a system representing the intersection of diverse and changing interests, values, social practices, and economic forces. We need to avoid the technocentric fallacy (Papert, 1987b) of seeing technology as a single powerful object, with its effects, its use, and its meaning. Instead, we should realize that the “same technology” or the “same innovation” has different meanings in different settings.

We are interested in questions such as these: How does an innovation, especially one tied to the introduction of new technologies, bring about changes in a social system? How do social systems constrain and direct the uses of innovations? What kinds of control do those affected by an innovation have, could they have, or should they have, over the processes of change?

We are especially concerned with educational innovations, because the educational arena affords a rich context for studying change in both social systems and in the technology per se. It allows us to look at change initiated by the users (teachers and students) of innovations as well as those initiated by the developers. It also allows us to examine in detail the process of change that occurs when an innovation becomes part of a social system. It raises new questions about the role and responsibility of teachers in managing change in their classrooms. These questions are complex; our experience with the use of QUILL in schools provides data only for some preliminary answers.

We came to see that the realization of an innovation could not be predicted from a consideration of its properties outside of the contexts of use. For example, in some classrooms, the computer station became a social meeting ground for groups of students. The existence and nature of these groups in turn influenced what audiences, genres, and amounts of writing were done using QUILL. Thus, the implications of QUILL for learning writing in those classrooms depended on the social structure of classroom groups, which were independent of any specification of QUILL as an innovation per se. These very real and significant properties of some of the realizations of QUILL were in some sense latent in the innovation, but they emerged only through use, and, in fact, did not emerge in some classrooms.

The emergence of classroom social groups was only one example of how the uses of QU...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Contexts for Literacy Development
• Chapter 3 QUILL: A System to Support Literacy Development
• Chapter 4 The Alaskan Context
• Chapter 5 Alternate Realizations of Purposeful Writing
• Chapter 6 Revision
• Chapter 7 The Alaska QUILL Network: Fostering A Teacher Community Through Telecommunication
• Chapter 8 Situated Evaluation
• Chapter 9 Conclusion: What We Have Learned
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index