Describes "collectivist composing" where the social relations enacted by the class, while writing together, are shaped by the students who are both writing together and studying the relations they make. Suggests teachers open their classrooms so that they become places for communal meaning making and collectivist writing. (RS)

An analysis of the interaction between self and other in the one-to-one writing conference, informed by theories of Louis Althusser, Jurgen Habermas, Mikhail Bakhtin, and others, can help tutors view one-to-one conferences as a dynamic meaning-making process occurring within an integral social context. Bakhtin/Medvedev's discussion of discourse…