Post-Discussion Reflection

(I'm not sure if I should be posting this post-discussion reflection as a reply to my post or as a new post. I guess a post will work).

I was very pleased with the way discussion went in class on Thursday on Gee’s article. It seemed very lively and really focused on some of limitations of Gee’s theory of Discourse, which was what I wanted to focus on the most. I was not particularly surprised by anything that came up in discussion, and although I’ve read Gee’s article 4-5 times, the discussion helped me think about and understand the article more.

If I could change anything, I think I would like to have taken some more time to closely examine the difference between Discourse and discourse community and discuss Gee more in relation to the other readings. This is what my first question on my blog post was getting at. Also, we never really touched on Gee’s view of literacy in comparison to what we’ve already discussed about literacy in response to other readings. Basically, the main thing I would change about my approach to starting the discussion would be trying to work these in a little, although I realize that time was the biggest limitation in this regard.

Also, although this is beyond what I was doing for choosing the article, I think it would be interesting to examine some of Gee’s wrings since his article was published and see what else he has written and maybe changed in his theory of Discourse. (The article is, after all, over 20 years old). I suppose we can take a look at his Introduction to Discourse Analysis.

I really appreciate everyone’s contribution to the discussion! Thanks everyone!

-Matthew N.