CHARLES CROOK AND ROY DYMOTT

98 CHARLES CROOK AND ROY DYMOTT

resist simple formulations that appeal to ‘the effects of ICT on writing’. Yet we are aware that new technologies are deeply implicated in the writing practices of many authors. The nature of that relationship demands some form of rigorous understanding. The challenge, therefore, is to capture as honestly as possible the relevant dynamic.

So far, our analytic preference has been presented in rather abstract terms. It may be useful to invoke a more concrete example offering an accessible analogy. In discussing mediation and its effects, Cole and Griffen (1980) seek a simple parallel for probing the way we speak about the influence of modern technologies that support cognition. They note it is tempting to describe such tools in terms of ‘cognitive amplifiers’. In the present context, some may wish to consider ICT as amplifying the power of writers. However, this may be misleading – both in terms of how it conceptualizes the underlying activity (writing) and how it conceptualizes the impact of the technology (amplifying).

To pursue their concern about amplification, Cole and Griffen offer an analysis (somewhat macabre) of the social practice of hunting and killing. They invite us to imagine a traditional society in which prey are captured and killed with simple weapons. Visitors from some modern society furnish these traditional people with guns – a new mediational means to enter their system of hunting. More animals are killed in shorter periods. Accordingly, we might say that the guns served to ‘amplify’ killing. Just as we might say that computers amplify the more cognitive enterprises of calculating, writing, or whatever. If all we mean by amplifying an activity is an increase in output – for example, more animals getting killed – then this seems an innocent enough way of talking. However, it is less obvious that the hunter’s capacity to kill has been ‘amplified’ when the new weapon is not to hand. What has been changed by the technology is not some property of the individual but the manner in which some activity can be carried out – when the technology is available.

The example sharpens our sensitivity to the three issues at stake here – writing (cf. killing), ICT (cf. guns) and re-mediation (new technologies entering existing cultural practices). First, killing, like writing, is no rigidly defined pattern of behaviour. It involves practices of social coordination, such as gathering, stalking and ambushing as well as recovery, distri- bution, honour and so on. In short, the human action invoked in these relationships has a systemic character. Second, the technologies involved are similarly complex. Guns are not artefacts with some singular nature. They derive whatever properties are ascribed to them from how they enter into cultural practices. A gun is different according to it being a starting pistol, a rescue flare, a fairground challenge, or a hunting weapon. Its identity is constituted by the systems of activity with which it is involved. Finally, the parallel encourages us to notice how the relationship between such activity systems and technologies is itself complex. It is a relationship of re-configuration, not enhancement. Killing is not amplified by new

ICT AND THE LITERACY PRACTICES OF STUDENT WRITING

technology. Re-mediation involves not so much amplification of some activity as changing the manner in which it is organized or exercised. Guns arrive: the hunting is done differently. ICT arrives: the writing is done differently.

This argument, well developed by Bruce (1997), denies the value of conceptualizing writing and technology in terms of ‘separate realms’. Yet examples are needed to reinforce this analysis of writing. We develop a particular example here. We have chosen the case of undergraduate writing. It is authentic, richly-structured and accessible to research. Our aim is to reveal the sense in which it is an activity system: that is, individuals co- ordinating with a variety of cultural supports in the interests of producing text. Our particular interest is in positioning the resource of ICT as a developing influence within such systems of activity. Research on ICT and writing tends to dwell upon word processors: how their design re-mediates composition. Yet increasing use of this one particular technical tool does not suddenly identify writing as being now ‘about’ computer tech- nology or now ‘effected by’ computer technology. Writing has always entailed an activity engaged with technologies: pens and paper but also

a range of other cultural resources that frame up what we do when we say we write. The undergraduate example should illustrate this well. The particular case of ICT represents clearly the richly mediated nature of this activity.

First we provide a general introduction to the circumstances of under- graduate writing as a useful model system. Then we discuss five topics involving the intrusion of ICT into writing. We suggest that each furnishes

a useful focal point for research. Not that this list is intended to be exhaustive. The aim is not to partition the domain of interest into five comprehensive areas identifying five separate independent variables for researchers to study. Any comparative analysis provoked by this con- ceptual organization is not in the spirit of evaluating ‘effects’. Rather, it creates a device for revealing the structure of the underlying practice,

a structure that might otherwise be hidden from view by virtue of its familiarity. We do this

a) in relation to the physicality of writing and text: considering the ICT context of writing on a screen;

b) we consider how writing is shaped by a technology connected to a network of other computers and computer users;

c) we discuss text as traffic within a community infrastructure of ICT;

d) we consider text in relation to audience and the role of ICT in that relationship;

e) writing is located within a social context of appraisal and evaluation.

CHARLES CROOK AND ROY DYMOTT

Studying undergraduate writing

The assumption that writing and ICT describe separate realms encourages

a particular form of experimentation. Teachers and researchers alike ask what effects technologies have on literacy practices which are viewed as skills that might be isolated from the peculiarities of their situation. Accordingly, experiments are conducted that attempt such isolation. An experimental task might be designed to embody a specific literacy skill (or subset of skills). The task then isolates this skill from others, and from the material conditions of everyday literacy, so that technology’s ‘effects’ upon it can be established. This is most clearly seen in the way in which the experimental research literature separates reading and writing. Experimental reading tasks almost never involve participants in any act of writing (see Dillon (1992) for a literature review). And although experimental writing tasks unavoidably involve writers in reading their own texts, the separation between reading and writing is achieved as far as possible by excluding the use of source texts from the task (see Ransdell and Levy (1994) for a partial review). Under this approach attention is heavily focused upon outcomes with relatively little concern for processes. If processes are investigated, it is typically with the aim of establishing how technologies change the frequency and sequence of those with an abstract and immutable quality – such as Hayes and Flower’s (1980) processes of generating, organizing and translating ideas (for example, Kellogg and Mueller 1993). This approach has made only modest progress and generated some inconsistent findings (Bruce 1997).

The assumption that literacy practices are comprised of abstract skills that can be studied in isolation from the peculiarities of the situation (including writing tools) and in isolation from each other is problematic. In a review of the experimental literature comparing reading from paper and reading from VDUs, Dillon (1990: 1322) notes: