Re-mediating the University: Learning through Sociocritical Literacies

Abstract

The article provides a framework for the development of robust learning ecologies organized around the cultural historical concept of “re-mediation”. In contrast to traditional “remedial” approaches to students from nondominant communities, re-mediation involves a transformation of the learning ecology, including a shift in the way tools and forms of assistance function to incite and facilitate learning. This article elaborates the notion of “re-mediation” in redesigning contexts for learning in which all students can be “smart” through the conscious and strategic use of a range of theoretic and material tools. The key concepts of re-mediation, a historicizing education, and sociocritical literacies are discussed in the context of two cases that illustrate two learning ecologies developed for students historically excluded from robust learning and higher education. A programme that was antecedent to the design of the current project addressed in this special issue is elaborated to emphasize the importance of attending to the historical and conceptual trails of work with students from nondominant communities.

Notes

¹The term “nondominant” is used here instead of more commonly used terms like “minority”, “diverse”, or “students of colour”, as a group of us working in the UCLA MSLI believed this term better addresses issues of power and power relations than traditional terms for this population. The term grew out of a collective discussion about terms used in the first author's AERA Scribner Award Lecture, Montreal, 2005.

²The term “social design experiment” has been used by researchers in information technology (Qvortrup, 1987), sociology (Saxe & Fine, 1981), and cultural historical approaches to learning (Engeström, 1987; 2001). Following Engeström (2004), we use the term “social design experiment” in ways similar to Engeström's (2004) “change laboratory” (Gutiérrez, 2008). In contrast to linear or top down models of design experiments, social design experiments are more open systems that are subject to revision, disruptions, contradictions, and are codesigned; the specific social design experiments we describe in this article also are equity-oriented, and concerned with social consequences and transformative potential.

³Rhetoric and composition scholars including David Bartholomae, Tony Petrosky, Ric Coe, Joe Comprone, Donald Murray, and Mike Rose provided consultation to the programme director and writing staff members. Most of these scholars provided ongoing and substantive assistance.

⁴One of the authors, Gutiérrez, was director of the University of Colorado, Boulder EOP Academic Affairs Office, the EOP writing programme, and all EOP curricular matters referred to in this article, as well as Director of the Writing Center, Arizona State University.

⁵These elements reflected the emergent and dominant understandings of writing processes in the late 1970s and 1980s. Thus, the practices were influenced by cognitive views of writing (Flower, 1979; Flower & Hayes, 1977; Rose, 1985) and social process approaches to composition (Bartholomae, 1985; 1987; Bartholomae & Petrosky, 1986) and the work in basic writing (Bartholomae, 1980; Perl, 1979; Shaughnessy, 1977).

⁶The director left the University of Colorado in 1988 to assume a position in another university; the academic programme was subsequently reorganized.

⁷These included basic arithmetic and high school algebra courses.

⁸This was not a research study but rather an actual instructional programme designed by Gutiérrez and mathematics colleagues for nondominant students enrolled at a large university. The documentation of student success was part of the programme's evaluation. To successfully complete the course, students had to pass an exit exam designed by the Mathematics Department and receive a grade of “C” or better. We are also currently working with high schools interested in re-mediating mathematics learning for students too often placed in tracks within low status math courses.