Ruijie Zhao
Department of Humanities
Parkland College
With a discussion on the importance of reflection and collaboration, this article explores ways that blogs may encourage positive learning during the postwriting stage among developmental writers in community colleges. Bell hooks (1994) states her understanding of teaching with feminist pedagogy: “The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility” and within “that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom” (p. 207). The transition from a possibility to a reality is enabled when minds are open, authorities challenged, and tensions explored. In the end of my first semester, I was happy that I encouraged students’ voices even when my power was threatened. Blogs helped me to maintain a genuine dialogue with my students, allowing me to understand my students’ needs more concretely.
Therefore, blogs themselves do not promise successful teaching of postwriting. They need to be applied from the perspective of feminist pedagogy to maximize their potential for collaborative and reflective learning. When blogs are used during the postwriting stage, the different reflections shared by students need to be treated equally while being commented on, critiqued, and evaluated. As a tool that aims to promote connectivity and democracy, blogs have great potential in academia and should be integrated into composition teaching as a means to transform students into critical, reflective learners.