Community and Individuality

Abstract

How should lecturers teaching postgraduate creative writing in an online master of arts build and maintain e-community to support and socialize learners? The study proposes that such programs need to attend to writers' investments in developing identities while promoting socialization and sense of belonging. Grounded in literature on communities of practice, imagined community, and identity, the study draws on social constructivist and poststructuralist insights and contributes to the relatively unexplored area of pedagogy for teaching writing online. The study uses qualitative descriptive analysis to narrate themes from two datasets in the form of a métissage. Data from lecturer-e-moderators and students indicate that strategic e-moderation encourages collaboration and maximizes pedagogical potential in forums. Strategic e-moderation builds a sense of community by fostering critical friendships. The study emphasizes the need for e-moderators to develop participants' investments in working in communities. The study reveals that although postgraduate writing students come to value learning via critical friendships and communities, they also demand particularized feedback from e-moderators and peers. Findings suggest that students need to develop writing identities and voices can be met by a pedagogical approach that harnesses the potential of community while offering response to individual development. The study concludes that pedagogies of community in teaching writing online need to benefit both collectively and individually. This works when writers apply discipline-specific literacies and professional skills in critiquing peer texts, while responding to feedback from their community of practice, facilitated by e-moderators.

Communities of Practice for Independent Learning Practitioners at Capable NZ, Otago Polytechnic

“…The future potential value of the CoP is to continue to mine information from like-minded teaching practitioners who may not normally be involved in research, providing outputs of research papers and presentations at future symposiums. Building individual identities grounded in joint enterprise through the sharing of activity and repertoire is core capital of successful CoPs (Andrew, 2014).…”

“…In successful CoPs, there is a balance of benefit for both the community and its individuals (Andrew, 2014) and a sense of the more novice members reaching learning goals through legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Lave and Wenger envisage a CoP as a series of concentric circles, with the target knowledge and repertoire situated in an innermost circle, those considered to be the 'experts. '…”

Self-determined Learning as a Response to Disruption in Post-secondary Formal Education

“…In successful CoPs, there is a balance of benefit for both the community and the individuals who make it up (Andrew, 2014), and a sense of the more novice members reaching learning goals through legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Lave and Wenger envisage a CoP as a series of concentric circles, with the target knowledge and repertoire situated in an innermost circle -that of the experts.…”