Toward Explaining the Transformative Power of Talk About, Around, and for Writing

This article provides an initial approach for capturing moments of talk about, around, and for writing to explain why writing groups and writing conferences are so often considered “transformative” for the people involved. After describing the widespread and yet disparate transformations so often attributed to collaborative writing talk, I introduce applied conversation analysis (CA) as a method for getting at what is often difficult to identify, document, and explain: the intricacies of moments that underlie, if not directly account for, transformations. At the core of this article, I present a case study of a writer, Susan, and tutor, Kim, and analyze their talk and embodied interactions around writing. In particular, two sequences of their talk—the first an example of “troubles telling,” or attending to a reported trouble (Jefferson, 1981, 1984, 1988) and the second an enactment of humor that names asymmetrical power relations (Holmes, 2000)—illustrate the ways in which building affiliative relationships might allow for naming and poking fun at, if not restructuring, power relations. Further, self-reports from interview data indicate how the occasions of talk between Susan and Kim mark shifts in thinking about themselves, their writing, and their commitments—shifts that can be attributed to their relational, affiliative interactions and that provide supporting evidence for the transformative power of collaborative writing talk

Municipal Representatives’ Accounts of Decision-Making Practices during Geriatric Case Conferences

This article addresses questions of elucidation in talk-in-interaction. How do social actors give accounts of what they are doing? To what degree do actors sustain a taken-for-granted level of reasoning? The analysis is based upon naturally occurring data consisting of a corpus of audio recorded case conferences at various geriatric wards in Danish hospitals. The article elaborates one of the important insights of Harold Garfinkel regarding the relationship between discourse and social interaction: as a general characteristic, people tend to treat their fellow interlocutors’ conversational contributions as adequate for-all-practical-purposes. Specifically, the article investigates how Danish municipal representatives account for their decisions about whether or not senior citizens are to be referred to residential homes. This practice, I demonstrate, is characterized by non-explicitness with regards to rules and regulations. Instead, municipal representatives make use of developmental discourse: a worsened condition is used to justify a referral to a residential home. On the other hand, an improved condition is used to justify that an elderly citizen is not referred to a residential home

Eduphobia – an emerging business?

I READ a book recently that alleges Islamophobia is now a new “business”. There is money to be made by “selling” Islamophobia through literature, talk shows, conferences and the like. There are markets for people who will never get tired speaking about it and hearing of the same. And then get worked up depending on how paranoid they are. This, however, is good for the organisers bent on feeding the frenzy and exploiting such emotions and situations while they laugh all the way to the bank. Looking at developments, it is some kind of a deja vu that “education” is going down the same phobic path. Is “eduphobia” now an emerging business too? – in various disguises. There has been endless talk about it but to no avail. Rather it is becoming even more confusing with voices thrown in almost all directions. The latest seems to be the most telling where some 200 people apparently paid large sums of money to attend a “conversation” on education sponsored by a commercial outfit. This contrasted starkly with the ministry’s public engagement programmes that had similar conversations on education policy issues and quality concepts moving forward. Here is the rub: they are free and moving from location to location to gather input through widespread participation from all walks of life. Not just from those who can afford to pay a hefty fee. It is also not a one-off money-making and publicity exercise; plus the programmes involve veterans known to care about education pro bono. That are just some of the major distinctions to note for those who are genuinely interested to contribute and share but have missed it until now

“Transfer Talk” in Talk about Writing in Progress: Two Propositions about Transfer of Learning

This article tracks the emergence of the concept of “transfer talk”—a concept distinct from transfer of learning—and teases out the implications of transfer talk for theories of transfer of learning. The concept of transfer talk was developed through a systematic examination of 30 writing center transcripts and is defined as “the talk through which individuals make visible their prior learning (in this case, about writing) or try to access the prior learning of someone else.” In addition to including a taxonomy of transfer talk and analysis of which types occur most often in this set of conferences, this article advances two propositions about the nature of transfer of learning: (1) transfer of learning may have an important social, even collaborative, component and (2) although meta-awareness about writing has long been recognized as valuable for transfer of learning, more automatized knowledge may play an important role as well

Reflections on Learning from a Study Leave: One Year Later

Surviving, thriving, and evolving followed by further noticing, reflecting, and acting are some of the stages a teacher-researcher goes through before, during, and after the study leave experience. Having the opportunity to literally remove oneself from the daily concerns, routines, and habits entrenched in one’s local institutional context for an extended period of time（ e.g., six months） is an experience like no other. Blood donation campaigns call giving blood ‘a gift that keeps on giving’. While the majority of people in our profession do carry on with their work quite well without ever going on a study leave （or donating blood）, an important revelation that I have had is: a study leave is also ‘a gift that keeps on giving’