Marilyn Cooper: "Postmodern Pedagogy in Electronic Conversations"
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| "Electronic writing (e-writing) responds to cultural changes. . . . writing online sets up a different rhetorical situation and encourages different writing strategies than writing for print technology does." (141) |
In this chapter, Cooper argues that changing assumptions about knowledge, power, and responsibility influence the behavior of students in electronic classroom settings. Although most teachers would agree that classroom dynamics change when the class enters an electronic environment, they would disagree as to whether this change is a liberating or repressive one. Cooper sees this environment as a positive place where “students learn how to be open to unassimilated otherness, learn how to take responsibility for others, and learn how paratactic juxtaposition of ideas and perspectives can lead to a better understanding of issues and problems that confront them” (157).
Essential to understanding electronic conversations is the changing perception of knowledge, which is seen as rhetorically and socially constructed, a product of persuasion. There is no unified, stable true knowledge and instead, multiplicity and diversity are valued. Cooper argues that in order to function, “students need to be able to engage in the process of knowledge construction in the classroom” (144).
Related to this is the conceptualization of power as a relationship. When viewed this way, individual acts in an electronic environment can be viewed as “acts taken by individuals in order to establish dominance" and by concentrating on these acts, "individual responsibility in power relationships become visible and available to critique” (145). This makes it even more important to study and analyze conversational strategies and techniques used in electronic settings.
Above all, Cooper calls for increasing student responsibility for their actions, which when viewed in light of changing definitions of knowledge and power, are re/actions that construct situations and knowledge. Although students can accept and use pre-fabricated roles online, they can also find a place between conflicting roles and use their actions to build this new space. In order to do this, teachers must relinquish some control and instead help students prepare for times when they are not policed and are left up to their own sense of ethical actions. In this way, students must rely on their own moral/ethical system and are given “the chance to consciously consider and take responsibility for the effects their actions have on others” (157).
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