Writing as a Way of Participating in Knowledge Construction in Two Argentine University Classrooms

Abstract

As in other countries, in Argentine universities writing is usually relegated both to the margins of the curriculum (via a general composition course) and to the margins of the courses (in which it is often assigned and then assessed without being explicitly integrated into the instruction). In this context, we explored two singular courses where, on the contrary, teachers have been intertwining writing and disciplinary concepts to mediate meaningful teachers and students’ interactions about contents. This chapter examines how the responsibility towards knowledge construction was managed to increase the participation of students in Linguistics and Biology first-year classrooms. We systematically observed and analyzed classes to identify how writing, whose epistemic potential has been pointed out by numerous investigations, encouraged students’ participation. Following the Theory of Joint Action in Didactics (Sensevy, 2007; 2011), we show that writing served as a way of sharing, constructing and negotiating knowledge. In particular, we found that (a) writing had a different prominent function in each class (as a teaching object in the Linguistics classroom and as a learning tool in the * Post-doctoral fellow with the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (Conicet, Argentina). Assistant Professor at the Universidad Nacional del Sur (Argentina). Member of Giceolem (Group for Educational Quality and Inclusiveness by Taking Care of Reading and Writing in all Subjects). E-mail: elena.molina@uns.edu.ar ** Principal Research Professor with the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (Conicet, Argentina), based at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Full Professor with the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (Argentina). Chair of Giceolem. E-mail: giceolem@gmail.com. [https://sites.google.com/site/giceolem2010/who-are-we]. 236 | María Elena Molina & Paula Carlino Biology course); and (b) these different functions were enabled by the didactic contracts and the milieus that teachers and students shared.