The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

Social Constructivism in Action
145
Leslie Anglesey
Spring 2011
For some tutors new to the University Reading and Writing Center, the readings on the theoretical
underpinnings for the Center can be a bit daunting. While some of the articles may sound interesting,
even something we may agree with, it can be difficult to find a translation from theory to practice. In
other words, some may find themselves agreeing with the tenets of one theory or another, but leave the
classroom thinking: that’s nice, but what do I do with this? My goal is to help new tutors see possibilities
of how theory can translate into practice.
Social constructivism is built upon the idea that knowledge is created through the process of
interaction between several individuals. No wonder this theory is applied to writing centers! Where else
on campus can you find so many individuals collaborating toward a mutual understanding of a text?
Tutors and student writers are constantly in dialogue toward a negotiated meaning of writing prompts,
student writing, instructor feedback, and the readings students respond to in their classes. Andrea
Lunsford tells us that collaboration is paramount in our understanding of this theory, and that the
movement toward collaboration involves a shift “from viewing knowledge and reality as things exterior to
or outside of us, as immediately accessible, individually knowable, measurable, and shareable—to
viewing knowledge and reality as mediated by or constructed through language in social use, as socially
constructed, contextualized” (48). What does this mean? This definition might be expressed differently as
an equation:
collaboration + context � knowledge
According to social constructivists, knowledge is not a static, singular object, but a nebulous
thing always in flux, always being created, added to, deleted from, and transformed through our
interaction with others. Feeling more confused? Hopefully not, but in the next section I’ll show a small
vignette from a tutoring session that will hopefully help to explain how this might occur in the Center.
Social Constructivism in Practice: A Vignette
One example of social constructivism in the writing center can be seen in a recent session with
Joel i , one of my regularly scheduled student writers. Joel needed help understanding Lord Byron’s poem
Prometheus, one of the readings that had been assigned in his history class. Joel had (half jokingly) asked
if I could just tell him the meaning of the poem, assuming that all English majors are well versed in Lord
Byron. Rather than dispense an analysis of the poem (which would reinforce the early model of the
writing center as a Storehouse of Knowledge, and this model’s inherent hierarchy of power), we began to
negotiate the meaning of the poem through several practices that reinforce social constructivist theory.
After reading the poem several times over (both silently and aloud), we both began to dig out bits of
meaning of the poem. When Joel was stuck on a word, we turned to the dictionary, looked up the
definition and wrote it in the margins of Joel’s text. From there, they began to work out their own
meaning through collaboration. For example, when we reached the line “What was thy pity’s
recompense?” we both began to discuss the difficulty with the language, replace the difficult words (pity
and recompense) with the phrases and definitions that had been negotiated through the use of the
dictionary, through our conversation, our own analogies and examples, and finally started to reconstruct
the sentence. The sentence transformed into a less eloquent, but more understandable question: “What did
Prometheus get in return for feeling bad for humans?”