and attempted to use it) or did not transfer (because
it did not serve her well), we have failed to capture
the salient point about the relationship between this
writer's prior knowledge and the choices she made.
Cases like this, which transfer theorists characterize as "negative transfer," arise because knowledge
is intricately bound up in the social contexts in
which it is developed, shared, and employed. While
it is certainly possible, and sometimes necessary, for
theorists to discuss knowledge as if it were a collection of particles that could be stored up within an
individual mind, the reality for the knower is not
nearly so simple. Knowledge comes colored by circumstances and laden with social and cultural significance. The understanding that "when writing, I
should develop my ideas thoroughly" involves a
concatenation of concepts - about what counts as
writing, about what it means to develop an idea,
about the generation and possession of ideas, about
the relevance of "shoulds" to writing - so complex
that a full portrait of the understanding would have
to include not only a detailing of the situations
where our hypothetical writer has heard and practiced the principle but also a social history of the
principle itself.
In the end, the trouble with transfer is that it
encourages us to think of knowledge as a set of particles to be acquired, transported, and applied rather
than as the consequence of socially-situated learning. Jean Lave (1991) describes the problem in a
memorable metaphor:
The vision of social existence implied by the
notion of transfer...treats life's situations as so
many unconnected lily pads. This view reduces
the organization of everyday practice to the
question of how it is possible to hop from one
lily pad to the next and still bring knowledge to
bear on the fly, so to speak. (p. 79)
As an alternative, Lave offers a view informed by
her own and others' empirical studies of apprenticeship learning. In Situated Learning: Legitimate
Peripheral Participation (1991), Lave and Wenger
characterize apprentices as newcomers to "communities of practice," and they stress that the newcomers gain full membership in the community by
engaging in the practice with the guidance of more
experienced members. In apprenticeship learning,
explicit teaching is rare. Experienced practitioners
frequently do not explain the principles that guide
their practice; in fact, it is not necessary that newcomers and old-timers share the same mental representation of the work. What matters is that apprentices undertake the simultaneous processes of performing an increasing share of the work, participating in the social world in which the work is embed
Lessonsfrom a Study of Community Service Writing
ded, and constructing an appropriate "identity of
mastery."
Situated learning theory, then, differs from transfer theory in several significant respects. It emphasizes the particularity of knowledge, reminding us
that many cognitive skills appear to be context-specific and that even general knowledge "can be
learned only in specific circumstances" and "must
be brought into play in specific circumstances"
(Lave & Wenger, p. 34); it highlights the importance
of activity in learning, de-emphasizing the role of
rules, schemata, and explicit instruction; and it
focuses less on the mind of the individual learner
than on the social world in which learning takes
place, suggesting a complex set of relationships
among the individual, the members of communities
of practice, and the culture as a whole.'
In service-learning programs, we create opportunities for students to move back and forth between
the campus and the community in the hope that each
setting will grant them access to insights that enrich
their experience of the other. As service-learning
research develops, it seems likely that we will frequently face questions about how knowledge is
developed and used across multiple contexts.
Though these may present themselves as questions
about transfer, my experience studying young writers suggests that we are better served by a framework that directs our attention to the social and cultural circumstances in which learning occurs.
Observations of
Community Service Writing
In my observations of the Community Service
Writing program at San Francisco State University,
I found that faculty participants frequently spoke as
if the practice of writing involved wielding a set of
discrete skills and/or understandings that could be
mastered in school and universally applied. Teachers
frequently referred to students as "strong writers" or
"weak writers" based on their performance with
classroom writing tasks. For a few weeks, those of
us who planned the program considered limiting
enrollment to students who had earned high grades
in earlier writing courses. Our plan was predicated
on the assumption that people who earned high
grades in writing courses would write successfully
in community settings as well, while those who
earned low grades might, in one teacher's words,
"embarrass the university" by producing unacceptable papers. In other words, faculty participants in
the Community Service Writing Program expressed
the beliefs that have informed writing instruction for
more than 100 years. As Smagorinsky and Smith
(1992) observe, both the writing-process approach
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