Education
Communities, Discourse Communities
Teachers, learners, study subjects, practices,
methods, learning theories, cognitive mechanisms, scientific concepts,
reflections and colleges are important issues for developing discourse
communities. The purpose of this piece of writing is to show how some
educational communities work as discourse communities.
A discourse community is a group of people who own the
same values, aims and get together so as to work on knowledge by using the same language
practices. So as to acquire the membership of any discourse community Swales (1990)
establishes some basic requirement criteria to be accomplished. Discourse
communities have common goals, participatory mechanisms, information exchange
community-specific-genres, highly-specialized-terminology and high general
level of expertise.
A Cultural Historical view of Teacher learning as
Praxis emerges suggesting that language occurs in a social context. Hoffman-Kipp,
Artiles and Lopez Torres (2003) have observed:
Whether
through writing, speaking, or simply listening as a peripheral member of the
activity system, teachers are participating in the construction of knowledge as
well as crafting identities within the activity system of this inquiry group. (…)Teachers
function as resources for one another, providing each other with guidance and
assistance on which to build new ideas. As newcomers try on new roles or
develop analytic or reflective dispositions and skills through the assistance
of others, they will eventually attempt on their own to use artifacts (material,
ideal) in novel situations. (p. 4)
Through this example the authors may show how this
community works. This group of teachers gathers with the purpose of studying
their professional practices in their context. They create new knowledge while
interacting by interchanging information, receiving feedback from other members
using specialized terminology and artifacts. The level of expertise is revealed
when new specialists guide apprentices into the community.
According to Kutz (1990, p. 200 as cited in Kelly-Kleese,
2001) in a community college “Its members have, over time, developed a common
discourse that involves shared knowledge, common purposes, common
relationships, similar attitudes and values, shared understandings about how to
communicate their knowledge and achieve their shared purposes, and a flow of
discourse that has a particular structure and style”. (p. 1) Furthermore,
Kelly- Kleese (2001) reports that:
The community
college often adopts language given meaning within the larger higher education
discourse community. For example, the term non-traditional is much more
appropriate in the university discourse community than in that of two-year colleges students who are deemed nontraditional at the
university are, on the contrary, traditional students in the community college
setting. (p. 2)
As the above example illustrates, while the non-traditional term is more
suitable for students at university than from college, each member of a
discourse community is part of an association respectively, where each of them
has common goals, participants know how to communicate among them and have a
shared knowledge of the subject.
A cohort study was carried out among teachers with the
purpose of connecting “what they do in their classrooms to research-informed
practices; immerse teachers in a collaborative culture” (p. 113) according to
Wenzlaff and Wiesemann (2004). They also state that each cohort was “a team
working towards the same goal” (p. 122). In this teachers´ discourse community formed
with the same purpose, not only goals, language, participatory mechanisms and
information were shared but also a sense of collaborative culture was created
among the teachers of the cohort.
So as to conclude, with the purpose of being part of a
discourse community, members must share certain requirements and participate in
the collaborative culture so as to belong to it. In education, discourse
communities overlap because they have fuzzy and flexible boundaries, thus, each
“education discourse community exists within and part from higher education
discourse community” (Porter 1992, as cited
in Kelly- Kleese, 2004 p. 2 Discourse Community Boundaries)
References
Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A. J., & Lopez
Torres, L. (2003). Beyond
reflection: teacher learning as praxis. Theory into Practice. Retrieved
September 2013, from http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/theory_into_practice/v042/42.3hoffman-kipp.html
Kelly-Kleese,
C. (2001). Editor’s Choice: An Open Memo to Community College Faculty and
Administrators. Community College Review. Retrieved September 2013,
from http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/editor-s-choice-an-open-memo-to-community-college-faculty-and-5lPjH3hd0V
Kelly-Kleese,
C. (2004). UCLA community college review: community college scholarship and
discourse. Community College Review. Retrieved September 2013, from
http://www.questia.com/library/1G1-121672231/ucla-community-college-review-community-college-scholarship
Pintos, V.
(2012) Unit 1: Building up a community of teachers and prospective researchers.
Buenos Aires, Argentina: Universidad CAECE. Retrieved September 2013, from
Swales, J M
(1990) Genre Analysis English in Academic and Research Setting. Cambridge (Ed.)
Wenzlaff, T.
L., & Wieseman, K. C. (2004). Teachers Need Teachers To Grow. Teacher
Education Quarterly. Retrieved September 2013, from
