By Alexander Landfair
Having actually written the book on collaboration and writing centers, Lunsford must be provoking readers when she asks, essentially, What’s all the fuss about collaboration? Reading further, I expect my misreading to be corrected. Instead, it’s cemented when she calls collaboration, “the latest pedagogical bandwagon.” Then she bemoans writing centers’ “rush to embrace collaboration,” and here I was thinking it was the guiding principle of our work.
Knowing her audience, like me, is rather fond of collaboration, she cedes a few of its merits. Sure, “collaboration aids in problem finding as well as problem solving.” Sure it “aids in learning abstractions.” And yeah, it “leads to higher achievement in general, […] engages the whole student and encourages active learning.”
So, what’s her beef? Well, the problem with collaboration is that it’s really hard. “Damnably difficult,” she says.
A center that strives for collaboration is doomed to fail, Lunsford seems to say. But it’s much more than just that. As an ideal, and one very much worth working toward, collaboration presents conundrums that trouble the very essence of writing center work:
If the consultattion is to be collaborative, writers and consultants must share common goals: is that really possible? And if it is, what should these goals be?
If collaboration means working together on equal footing, how does a writing consultant use her expertise in ways that are ethical and pedagogically sound?
And if collaboration means shared agency and ownership, how do we foster a culture of collaboration within an academic setting that recognizes individual achievement and authorship?
And if collaboration means mutual benefit, we have to ask: Are our consultants getting as much out of sessions as clients? Or are we just paying lipservice to collaboration?
Beyond listing such challenges in the way of meaningful collaboration, Lunsford asks whether collaboration is something we really want anyway…
In its worst form, she explains, collaboration becomes an agent of the status quo, when agreement amounts to a “regression toward the mean.” “Such a pretense of democracy sends badly mixed messages.” Collaboration can also introduce inefficiency, as illustrated by the joke about the difference betweeen a horse and a llama (a: One was designed by a committee).
Lunsford offers no easy answers to these questions, and yet she says she finds herself always drawn still further toward pedagogies that value collaboration.
I’m especially interested in the notion that collaboration requires consultants to get as much from the session as clients do. This equation must take into account more than monetary compensation (but must certainly not ignore the importance of that aspect either). Embracing collaboration means that consultants should approach their consultations with the expectation of advancing their own intellectual and professional development as much as their clients.
Source:
“Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal 12.1 (Fall 1991): 3-10.
Published February 23, 2015
