Cinnabar and Alabaster

passages
65. defines "coauthoring" as "interchangeabl[e] with the term collaborative writing"; "when students compose together, the writing process itself is foregrounded because so much of the planning, revising, and negotiating occurs aloud….coauthoring influences the writing processes of students writing in school" in part by "socializ[ing]" that process. grounding for the study is "both social constructionism and cognitive studies"; "theory and research in both communities indicate that thought processes have their origin in social interaction. sutdents benefit by internalizing each others' cognitive processes, arrived at by communicating socially. learning to write is a social act, 'a process of identifying and reidentifying ourselves to and with others' (welch 42). for that reason, relationships in a writing classroom are not 'peripheral' to the writing process: 'they are central' (tobin 6). when students coauthor, they function as writers and readers, as authors and audience. these interactions teach cognitive and social aspects of writing"
66. her focus is "on planning and revising" b/c these are critical factors in "differentiating effective from ineffective writers"; "having students write together is one way to emphasize planning for students because by its very nature coauthoring encourages it. in a group, writers do not just start composing. they articulate and discuss ideas before they draft specific text"; it also provides situational opportunity—a "feedback system"—for young writers to make the "difficult" switch from "generating text to reading critically"
67. a perk of establishing groups early is that it's done "before students had developed firm notions of who among them was 'smart'"
68. "because a student's individual contributions and engagement become vitally important in collaboration (myers 169), carol and i modeled our coauthoring process, being sure to make explicit our disagreements and our path to what trimbur calls 'genuine' consensus (612). our goal was to promote a cognitive conflict, defined as a lack of agreement about the form and/or substance of the writing task" to allow students to learn ways that "disagreement could play a positive role."
69. "when students write alone, many tend to worry about whether they have enough to say," "but coathoring engages students in the construction of meaning in a process which resembles the 'energetic' and 'constructive' composing style of more expert writers. in this study, coauthors wrote so recursively that it was often impossible to distinguish between planning and revising"
70. 39% of students' conversational turns were devoted to discussing "elements of the writing process…not directly related to composing" ("the requirements and difficult of the assignment, audience, purpose, and genre" plus "planning and/or revising")
71. "discussions of structure inevitably blend into those of content since students cannot discuss organization without focusing on what is being organized" (although for some groups "the richness of their discourse simply did not find its way onto paper" & next year's groups will be encouraged to take more notes). "what they most remember learning from collaborative writing was that there are different ways to plan"—which they learned from observing/discussing them with each other.
72. seven months later, "seventy-three percent of the students mentioned planning or brainstorming as something they learned about writing by writing together. coauthoring allows students to observe alternative cognitive processes unfold on a shared topic….as writing teachers, we often tell students to show, not tell. coauthors do just that. rather than the instructor explaining planning strategies, students experience them"; "and because students have an immediate audience for writing in process, they learn to take audience into consideration. suggestions for text are discussed, giving students immediate feedback as they talk through the writing. confusions, because they are verbalized, become apparent, so students must revise on the spot"
73. "concepts and phrasing are open to evaluation before they are comitted to paper, it is this aspect of coauthoring that takes so much time. but because students are experiencing both planning and revision, it is time well spent. coauthors keep each other aware of higher order rhetorical concerns such as audience, purpose, and word choice."
75. "revision was embedded throughout the writing process to such an extent that when the students were interviewed, they thought that they had not revised at all. in fact, they revised each time one student challenged another's choice of organization, wording, or example. for coauthors in this study, revising was a recursive process of negotiation and evaluation"; "students who write together can learn first-hand about the social context of writing"
76. "while writing teachers rarely have the time to untangle individual writing processes, coauthors are in a position to focus on each other's writing and model alternative composing strategies."