"Human language (including writing) can be understood only from the perspective of a society rather than a single individual" (110)

In the article "The Social Perspective and Pedagogy in Technical Communication", Thralls and Blyler suggest that social pedagogy is often problematically considered a uniform concept. Thus, they intend to describe the four distinct categories of social pedagogy, including their disparate ideologies, aims, and classroom practices.

1. The Social Constructionist Pedagogy

Communities shape and determine discourse via "communal norms" (111) 

Aim: Acculturation, participation in community discourse, collaboration

Classroom Practices: case studies (both researching and creating), write in situation (internships), peer review, group writing, computer-supported collaboration

2. The Ideologic Pedagogy

Community norms should be resisted, because they ignore hierarchies/power structures and leave language unquestioned

Aim: emancipation, controlling community norms instead of being controlled

Classroom Practices: Analyzing conventions, problematizing discourse, experimentation with alternative discourse, focus on larger good, teleconferencing, computer lab for breaking traditional relations

3. Social Cognitive Pedagogy

Community norms internalized by individual to determine how they view writing tasks, "doubly social" (118)

Aim: Focus on acculturation to situation, metacognitive awareness

Classroom Practices: reflect on writing through self-study, use experts as models, research large social topics, heuristics, role-play

"...constructionist, ideologic, and social cognitivist pedagogies all embrace the idea that a system of norms enables communication within communities and thus links writers, writing, and culture...paralogic hermeneutic pedagogy thus poses a radical departure from other socially based pedagogies" (119).

4.  Paralogic Hermenuetic Pedagogy

Communication cannot be codified or taught because it is not systematic, occurs instead at the moment conversation takes place as codes are interpreted; external view

Aim: "passing theory"-reach understanding through guesses and assumptions of words' meanings, writing open-ended

Classroom Practices: dialogic discourse, one-on-one student and teacher interaction, no case studies

Implications

Authors suggest that melding these viewpoints is impossible, giving examples. Furthermore, they suggest that the paralogic hermenuetic pedagogy would have drastic institutional implications, including the breakdown of the traditional classroom and a reduction in student-to-teacher ratios.      

Questions

1. Why do the authors leave out the institutional implications for the other three stances? Because they all allow for a technical writing classroom? 

2. Why do social constructionists oppose cognitive principles? Do they disregard social concerns? (124)

3. Are the programs that are mentioned as useful for collaboration in the social constructionist pedagogy (e.g. "word processing, computer conferencing, electronic mail..." (113)) really specific to a certain pedagogy? Can computers aid us no matter what our aim is?

4. What pedagogy do you identify with (or do your objectives identify with)? Were you aware of that when you wrote them?

5. Should students have a say in classroom pedagogy, or should they at least be aware of what the pedagogies are? What would happen if we had a mix of classroom strategies?

Connections

1. The first article by Miller shows how a positivist approach has been replaced (or should be replaced) by a communalist one; this article goes on to describe the differences between these communal approaches.

2. Johnson stresses the importance of comprehension, the differences between historians, sociologists, and philologists, including the 'internalist' and 'externalist' views of historians; the same terminology is used here.

3. Durack discusses how women have been historically underrepresented as technical writers as well as inventors etc. and might agree with the ideologic pedagogy, which resists norms (and dominant way of knowing) and thus offers more power to women.