My prospectus has gone to committee and I have a hearing on October 27th. I’ve spoken to my committee member and they’re all on board. I am already anticipating one specific question at the hearing:

Where is your technology theory?

It’s a relevant question, really. My prospectus lists specific methodology theorists (Yin; Best and Kahn; Shriver; Connors) and discourse theorists (Bruffee and Bizzell). I talk a bit more in-depth about Bakhtin and Foucault, but I don’t mention specific technology theorists. No, this was not an oversight on my part. This was careful planning.

The If — Then Theory Foundation

I focus the theory in my prospectus on Foucault and Bakhtin because these two theories create a foundation for my investigation and argument. I’m using Foucault’s power structure theory to hypothesize that social bookmarking can flatten the hierarchy of knowledge. Foucault argues that statements that create a discourse follow a pre-designed set of rules. If a person’s statement goes against the accepted belief of the discourse, that statement is muted, deleted, and forgotten. Therefore, Foucault argues that to understand the whole of a discourse, we  must begin by asking ourselves who is not speaking in the discourse and then examining why these voices are omitted. In traditional academic research, students have access to academic databases and are required to use “scholarly” works in their papers. Well, this omits the voices of many members of a discourse–especially when other web resources are not permissible. Even if students are permitted to use web resources, they may not always have the time to sift through the millions of results their search engine provides. Therefore, I hypothesize that social bookmarking can flatten the discourse hierarchy by providing students with access to many perspectives in a more organized way than traditional search engines (via folksonomies).

IF social bookmarking can flatten the hierarchy THEN a relationship between the student/professional/marginalized voices has the potential to become a dialogic relationship.

Bakhtin’s concept of the dialogic relationship then comes into play. Bakhtin discusses relationships between authors and characters that have a dialogic relationship. These relationships place the author and the character on the same ground and the character has as much say in his development as the author. To translate this into a writing and research relationship, the dialogic relationship allows the student to engage in a dialogic relationship with the writings of the professionals and the marginalized voices. The student, then, is not just creating a paper that puts her voice against that of some professionals while using the voice of other professionals to support her argument. Instead, the student becomes an equal with the professionals and raises the voice of the marginalize to the status of equal as well. My hypothesis here is that if students can become equals to the sources, they can take a more active role in constructing their arguments and assert more credibility in their writing.

Discourse Community Theory: The Primary Support

I emphasize the use of discourse community theorists to further the construction of the dialogic relationships. Bruffee and Bizzell, along with many theorists in the academic/professional discourse argument, posit that students who can interact with others in a discourse community can better learn to write in that community. The theories are largely arguing for creating a discourse community inside a classroom setting, but I want to explore the use of real world discourse communities. My hypothesis here is that if students are actively engaging in dialogue with members of professions related to their argument–who may or may not be published in the academic journals they read–can not only gain a new perspective on the argument, but they also have the opportunity to add their voice or questions to a discussion and interact with the audience. This, then would lead to a better ability to specifically write to the audience (Ede and Lunsford; Booth, Colomb and Williams).

Pedagogy, not Technology

So, in the ten pages I was allowed for my prospectus, I omitted technology theory. Sure, I could have talked about specific composition and technology theorists (Eldred, Hawisher and Selfe, or Selber). I could have dropped names (Bolter, Landow, Jenkins). But I didn’t. I specifically chose to omit these theorists because I follow the ideas set forth by Hawisher & Selfe in the early 1990s–technology does not “work” just by putting it into the classroom; pedagogy must drive technology. I am not saying that technology theory will not be a part of my dissertation–both in a general and a composition sense. But I want to place more emphasis on the composition pedagogy that drives my theory. With that emphasis, I can use technology theory to further support the composition theory. I fear that if I tried to use composition theory to support the technology theory I would be treading in shark-infested waters.