International
Journal of
Educational
Technology

Literacy Development in Network-Based Classrooms: Innovation and Realizations

Bertram "Chip" Bruce, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Joy Kreeft Peyton, Ph.D., Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC

Abstract

New approaches to fostering literacydevelopment appear regularly in classrooms. These innovations--ideas, teachingstrategies, methods, materials, assessment procedures, software--are reportedat conferences and in journals, often being hailed as the better way toaddress some long-standing challenge in literacy education. Many of theseinnovations do represent valuable contributions to educational theory andpractice. Others appear to be new packages for old ideas. Some seem tohave little evidence to support their use. Regardless of the worth of anyparticular innovation, one thing that seems clear is that much of our energyis devoted to introducing, promoting, criticizing, comparing, examining,evaluating, and otherwise discussing these innovations.

When an innovation is discussed or evaluated,some people focus on its strengths and others focus on its weaknesses.In either case, left unsaid is the assumption that the innovation has areality independent of its realization in practice. It is, of course, acknowledgedthat not every teacher uses any approach in the same way. But this acknowledgmentusually enters the discussion in the form of an explanation about why certainpractices occurred or why certain outcomes were achieved; e.g., "ClassroomB was not really a writing process classroom" or "Teacher X did not teachthe reading strategies as they were intended." Such an explanation presupposesthat the innovation has an existence prior to, and independent of, itsmanifestations in social practices.

There are good reasons to challenge theassumption that innovations are independent from practice and to recognizethe transactional relationship between innovations and the social settingsin which they are used (Bruce, 1997; Dewey & Bentley, 1949). Takingthis stance foregrounds the creative aspect of the adoption of innovationsrather than seeing innovations as completed, well-bounded, fixed entities.

In order to ground this challenge, we discusshere an approach to literacy instruction that would appear to make ourargument difficult to support. The particular approach is built upon specificnew technologies, specifically, computers and local area networks; it hasbeen described and defined in numerous articles; and it has been implementedby a group of people working together in a consortium with frequent meetingsand communications. Thus, it serves as a paradigm case of the well-definedliteracy innovation, more finely specified in some ways than ideas suchas dialogue journals (Staten, Shuy, Peyton, & Reed, 1998, writing workshop(Atwell, 1987; Calkins, 1986), or collaborative learning (Johnson, Johnson,Holubec, & Roy, 1994).

We focus on an approach that involves usingelectronic communication software on a local area network to converse inwriting. It is called ENFI (Electronic Networks for Interaction) by itsdevelopers and many of its early users. Because ENFI was developed andfirst used at Gallaudet University for deaf and hard of hearing students,the initials originally stood for English Natural Form Instruction (a wayfor deaf students to use English naturally, in interaction with others).As the idea caught on, so did the name. ENFI was retained, but with a newmeaning that made sense to hearing users as well. Because the term ENFIwas used widely at the time we conducted this research, we use it throughoutthis article. The goal of ENFI is to improve students' abilities to write,read, and engage in collaborative problem solving by immersing them ina writing environment. We consider here the effect of the ENFI environmenton students' and teachers' understanding of literacy and their approachesto literacy development. Throughout the discussion, several questions areconsidered:

• To what extent does it make sense to thinkof ENFI as an independent innovation?
• Why does even a carefully and finely specifiedinnovation like ENFI become realized in such diverse ways?
• What can we learn from this study about therelationship between innovations and contexts of use?
• How might these observations alter our discourseabout literacy development and change?

Background

Technologies for Literacy Development

Technologies can also facilitate more functionalways of teaching writing. Writing across the curriculum may become morefeasible with the support of computers. By means of computer networking,communities of student writers can be established. Real audiences and meaningfulgoals can enhance motivation to write and stimulate the development ofcompetence in written communication.

Computer technology has opened up dynamicnew possibilities for using written language. Among these are the manyways for students to share written text. Students across the country andeven around the world send can messages to each other, write newsletterstogether, and participate in collaborative science and social studies projects(Cummins & Sayers, 1995; Gaer, 1999). University students can takeclasses at a distance by communicating with their professor and other studentsthrough electronic mail and computer conferences (Hilz, 1986; Kaye, 1987;Quinn, Mehan, Levin, & Black, 1983). Computer networks allow studentsand teachers to read and comment on-line on each other's texts in progress,share data files for collaborative research, and, as they are writing,display portions of their texts to others in the class to observe theirreactions (Egbert & Hanson-Smith, 1999).

Network-Based Classrooms

In most ENFI classrooms, the students andthe teacher sit at individual computer terminals and compose messages ina private window at the bottom of the screen. When they press a key, theirmessage is immediately transmitted to all the screens in the class. Asusers type and send messages, their messages scroll up the screen in acontinuous dialogue tagged with the name of the sender (or with whatevername the sender logged on), as in the script of a play. While individualsare composing, the messages of the other class members continue to scrollvisibly up the screen. Participants can scroll back to read previous messagesthey might have missed, but new messages continue to be received at thesame time. [3]

The computer stores the entire discussion,which can be reviewed at any point during the class session or printedout in its entirety at the end. Discussions occur on different networkchannels, each of which can carry discussions between two participantsor among the entire class. The teacher can, at any time, view the writingof an individual student or of a group of students on a channel, or candisplay the writing or revising of one student or the teacher to the entireclass.

Figure 1 shows a student screen duringa discussion at Gallaudet University. [4]Thebottom window shows the student's draft message ("responsibility to deafstudents... "). This message is private until the student sends it to therest of the class. In the example shown here, the student has misspellingsthat may or may not be corrected before the message is sent. The upperwindow shows teacher and student messages as they have been produced overa span of perhaps a minute. This window is the same on all screens.

Figure 1. ENFI computer screen at Gallaudet.

This particular use of a local areanetwork was developed to improve the literacy skills of deaf students.Because deaf people have limited opportunities to use English for day-to-daycommunication and to interact with others, they often encounter difficultiesreading and writing in English. Interactive writing on a computer networkallows deaf students to use written English to communicate spontaneouslytheir ideas to a community of other writers. When a competent English user(such as the teacher) writes as well, students can observe models of correctwriting in the context of genuine communication.

New Ways of Writing in the Classroom

First, ENFI would create new socialdimensions in the writing classroom, involving "entirely new pedagogicaldynamics" (Batson, 1988, p. 32). The role of the writing teacher wouldshift from lecturer and director of discussion to that of collaboratorin writing. Student participation would be more equally distributed. Itwas hoped that traditional classroom interaction patterns would be radicallyaltered when classes began to communicate in writing on a network. AlthoughENFI relied upon a particular technology to achieve this goal, the ENFIvision resonates with much other recent work on the teaching of writing.

Second, students would write for authenticpurposes and for real audiences. Whereas previously their sole purposein writing was to be evaluated, it would now include all the purposes ofspeech: "to inform and persuade, to entertain and enlighten, to developsocial relationships, to explain experience, and to create and developideas" (Batson, 1988, p. 15). Writing, therefore, would come alive forstudents; they would use writing for their own purposes and see it as animportant means of lively communication, and not simply as an evaluatedperformance for others (Peyton & Batson, 1986). In this context, writingwould become less formal and more conversational, and students would moveeasily in writing from one type of communication to another. Conversationand composed text would, in a sense, become merged (Langston & Batson,1990).

Third, students would be immersed ina writing community. The original goal of ENFI at Gallaudet was toimmerse deaf students in the English language. As ENFI practice expandedto include hearing students, the goal was to immerse them in writing: theirown, the teacher's, and other students'. The classroom would become notjust a speech community, but a writing community as well.

Fourth, students would write collaboratively."Most collaborative learning classes stop short of actual group writing.[Students] may think together and plan together and then, after they writeindividually, critique their writing together, but they probably won'twrite together. They don't observe each other's writing process. ENFI makesthis last step possible" (Batson, 1987, p. 26). As with the other goals,ENFI provided a technology to enhance and extend practices widely advocatedwithin current writing research and practice.

Finally, students would write acrossthe curriculum. English class would not be the only site for processwriting. Although ENFI was first implemented in English classes, it washoped that it could be used to accomplish a range of purposes in othersubject areas, such as history, literature, mathematics, or science. Anyarea in which students might have difficulty expressing their ideas wouldbe helped by collaboration in writing with the teacher and other students.Again, the goal of writing across the curriculum was not unique to ENFI,but it was a goal that the technology seemed able to support.

Studies of Innovation and Change

But in education, new technologies, whichmay come in the form of computer hardware and software, curriculum materials,or new instructional practices, are often hailed as the solution to persistentproblems--as if the technology alone would cause change to occur. In manycases, little thought is given to the influence of the social setting--theclassroom, the school, the district--in which the innovation is to operate,despite compelling evidence that new practices are rarely adopted to thedegree or in the manner that the originators of those practices envisioned.

Technologies in use take diverse formsin part because when they are designed to bring about significant socialchanges, they necessarily challenge established beliefs, values, and practices.In response to these challenges, people create new practices that reflectcomplex and situation-specific compromises between the old ways of doingthings and the new. Often, these new practices were not even envisionedin the original conception of the innovation. This property of the implementationprocess raises serious questions for models of educational change (seeCuban, 1986; Fullan & Stiegelbauer, 1991), for the evaluation of innovations(see Cronbach, 1982; Walberg & Haertel, 1990), for understanding therole of teachers in implementing innovations (see Hord, Rutherford, Huling-Austin,& Hall, 1987), and even the basic notion of what an innovation is (seeBruce, 1993).

These issues are relevant to diverse approachesto school-based literacy, including writing process, writing across thecurriculum, reading recovery, whole language, phonics, basal reading programs,interactive video, and integrated curriculum programs. As we begin to examinespecific cases, it becomes clear that the change process cannot be easilycircumscribed or described in a mechanistic fashion. The independence assumption--thatany broad-based literacy approach can be productively conceptualized separatefrom its specific contexts of use--appears problematicand unlikely to lead to improved theory or practice.

Evaluating ENFI

Methodology

To get a broader view of network use andthe ongoing reactions to ENFI of students and teachers in all of the classesinvolved, we collected questionnaire data each semester, which includedopen-ended teacher reports of strengths and limitations of ENFI (the basisfor many of the teacher quotes in this article). We also collected theconference papers, reports, and articles written by consortium teachers,administrators, and researchers, and participated in an electronic mailconference set up for ENFI teachers and site directors in the consortiumin which activities, successes, problems, and solutions associated withENFI use were regularly discussed. Finally, we circulated drafts of ourown reports and articles about ENFI for feedback from consortium members.By soliciting the concerns, issues, and critiques of participants in thestudy, we have attempted to conduct a "responsive" evaluation in the sensedefined by Stake (1990).

ENFI Realizations

The realizations differed along dimensionssuch as room layout, hardware and software features, physical proximityof participants (varying literally from campuses to shared chairs), discussion-groupsize, degree and manner of teacher involvement, roles of participants inthe interactions, degree and nature of network interaction, purpose forthe network activity, discussion topics, formality of the discourse, andrelation of network discourse to other activities and texts. In many cases,they also differed considerably from the original visions for ENFI, articulatedabove.

Thus, we were faced with a key definitionalproblem: "What is ENFI?" This question arose because as ENFI was interpretedand realized in diverse settings, it appeared as a collection of socialpractices, rather than as a well-defined innovation that could be evaluated,measured, and compared to other approaches. This result undermines anyanswer to the question: "How well does ENFI does work?"

Identifying Common Themes

Institutional Goals, Practices, and Gateposts

First, instead of one author, there aremany "authors," each expressing ideas and building on or completely ignoringthe ideas of others. Langston and Batson (1990) argue that network writingabolishes the notion of the original thinker, the solitary author producinga text, and gives rise instead to the image of "a precipitating solid ina supersaturated solution . . . the speck of dust around which crystalsform" (p. 153). The individual is suspended in ideas and concepts thatcrystallize in a community. Sirc and Reynolds (1993) describe network interactionas "bricolage," a construction of meaning built from "a blend of one'sown ideas, others' ideas, and material one has read or heard in discussion"(p. 140).

Second, the writing does not result ina product in the traditional sense--a story, an essay, a term paper, ora dissertation. As DiMatteo (1990) points out, "The product of such writingis a text that reaches no conclusion . . . Not only does no one have thefinal say, but even the notion of a final say is brought into doubt. Thetext, traditionally understood as a stable place of organized and fixedlanguage, disappears" (p. 76).

Third, the quality of students' networkdiscussions often does not approximate what is normally considered literatediscourse. In fact, students' network discourse has disappointed and shockedmany teachers. The interactions are sometimes confused, focusing on everythingbut the topic at hand. Rather than writing complex thoughts or extended,logical, thoughtful prose, students trying to keep up with the constantflow of language scrolling up their screens, and suddenly in linguisticcompetition with their classmates, may fire off humorous zingers and "graffiti-likemessages" (Kremers, 1990, p. 40) or vulgar wisecracks (Miller, 1993). Thosewho take the time to think and compose may be laughed at, criticized, orignored and left behind.

Finally, network interaction seems to createan urge to engage in language play, to show off one's wit, to display one'sverbal audacity. This dynamic can be valuable for students who are generallyreticent to express themselves in writing. In the early days of ENFI atGallaudet, this was an unexpected, but welcome occurrence. At the sametime, the result can be flaming, the use of confrontational and insultinglanguage (Sproull & Kiesler, 1991). A professor at NYIT, for example,found that students using the network for the first time began "to curseobsessively" in "a tidal wave of obscenity and puerility" (DiMatteo, 1990,pp. 79, 80). Another described her students' initial network behavior asa "combination of unbridled bigotry and heady power" that produced exchanges"less interactive than interinsultive" (George, 1990, p. 49).

Among consortium members, these qualitiesof network interaction have raised serious questions about its role inthe writing classroom and its viability as a way to help students do thekinds of writing expected of them:

These qualities of network writing alsoraise questions about evaluation of student writing. How is network writingto be evaluated if there is no single author, and measures of writing competenceare based on individual performance? If network writing itself does notyield a text that can be evaluated, do the skills acquired in network interactiontransport in any effective way to the essay and research writing that studentsmust be able to do and for which they are evaluated?

The responses to these questions and theresulting ENFI practices that were developed are very different. At CMU,a strong theory-based writing curriculum was already in place for freshmanstudents, with the goal of promoting critical thinking, critical responseto texts, and collaborative work. Thus, the CMU staff working on the ENFIproject asked bluntly, "How will the practice of writing concurrently ona computer network facilitate the goals we already have in place?" It wasclear from the beginning of the ENFI experimentation at CMU that if ENFIactivities didn't facilitate those goals, ENFI would have no place in theprogram. The result of the work at CMU was a highly structured ENFI practice,with paired interactions and carefully delineated tasks. At this institution,ENFI was adapted to fit the writing theory and curriculum already in place.

At Gallaudet, the primary goal of ENFIclasses was that students become proficient with written English, as demonstratedby performance on out-of-class essays and on a departmental exit exam atthe end of the semester. Doug Miller, one of the first teachers to implementENFI, had spent years developing curricula, materials, and activities toaccomplish this goal in his freshman and sophomore English courses. Hisfirst use of ENFI was an attempt to transfer those activities, primarilystructured writing exercises and drills, to the network. When he foundthat those activities did not seem to facilitate his goals, but ratherseemed to hamper them, he stopped using the network entirely for a time.When he returned to ENFI, it was in a completely different form, for dramaticproductions in a more loosely structured summer course that had no pre-establishedcurriculum and no exit exam. He then decided to design a course specificallyto exploit the potential of network interaction. Thus, in Miller's case,ENFI was eventually transported to a course that would benefit from itsqualities rather than adapted to an already existing course.

At the University of Minnesota, the deanand two professors set up an ENFI lab to facilitate the writing curriculumalready in place in their department. This curriculum revolved around writingrelatively brief texts about personal experiences. Through network conversationsamong students about their compositions, they hoped to make visible thecontinual drafting and revising of text necessary to good writing and toencourage students to take greater ownership of their own and others' writing.In short, they hoped to create a community of authors. However, as theyworked with the students on the network and began to study the networktranscripts, flaws in the curriculum became visible. Their past writingcurriculum was no longer appropriate for their students, so they completelyrevamped it. In this case, ENFI brought to light problems with the establishedcurriculum and turned out to be an ideal medium for accomplishing the goalsof the new curriculum (see Sirc & Reynolds, 1993).

Although at these three institutions ENFIcame to have different relationships to the writing curriculum, in eachcase its basic nature remained the same--it consisted of real-time writteninteraction within the classroom. At NVCC, even these basic features werealtered. Diane Thompson believed that the institutional goal for her students,who were basic writers from working-class communities, was to teach themto "do school"--to function effectively within an academic environmentand pass the school's required exit tests. She began her ENFI work by replicatingas closely as possible what she had seen of ENFI at Gallaudet (Thompson,1993). But the apparently similar real-time interaction on the networkassumed a new meaning in her context. Writing to each other within theclassroom seemed both cumbersome and unnecessary when the students andteacher could speak and hear. Thus, the faithful replication of ENFI seemedliterally impossible.

Extending the interaction to include aclass at a distant NVCC campus made more sense intuitively, but it waseven more difficult to orchestrate, and both teachers questioned ENFI'svalue for accomplishing institutional and their own objectives. Ultimately,Thompson stopped conducting any real-time network conversations, eitherwithin the class or across a distance, and developed practices involvingthe non-real-time sharing of extended texts: orally-negotiated paragraphssent from group to group within the class; a common text file to whichstudents could contribute when writing a research report; and an asynchronouspublic journal in a distance learning course. In Thompson's case, the basicfeatures of ENFI were changed, and "ENFI" came to mean something very general--computercommunications that encourage writing for one another (Thompson, 1993).

The professors in each of these four settingsstarted with the same body of information about ENFI conveyed at conferences,in papers, and in conversations with ENFI's developers at Gallaudet. ButENFI took four very different paths when it was merged with the constraintsof their institutions.

Teacher Theories, Personalities, and Established Practices

All teachers work within a theory or aset of theories about teaching and learning (Harste & Burke, 1977;Richardson, Anders, Tidwell, & Lloyd, 1991). The shape that ENFI tookat the consortium sites was clearly influenced by the theories of thoseimplementing it. For example, the original model of ENFI at Gallaudet grewout of language acquisition theory and the understanding that language--oral,signed, or written--is acquired through purposeful interaction with peersand more proficient language users (see Peyton & Batson, 1986; Peyton& Mackinson, 1989). This orientation shaped the initial goals for ENFI,understandings of what the teachers at Gallaudet were doing with ENFI,and, ultimately, the kinds of teachers who chose to work with ENFI. Thosewho shared this theoretical orientation became enthusiastic ENFI users;others, who followed more structural approaches to language acquisition(involving drill and practice, the desire for perfect performance andthe need for constant correction, or the desire to deliver lectures) quicklybecame frustrated with ENFI and stopped using the network. This theoreticalorientation also shaped understandings of what ENFI interactions were:They were considered conversations, and ENFI's "success" was determinedon the basis of whether a successful conversation had taken place.

When the ENFI project expanded to includeinstitutions with hearing students, new theoretical perspectives were introduced.For example, project staff at CMU implemented ENFI and asked their questionsabout its effectiveness from the perspective of writing process theory(e.g., Flower & Hayes, 1981). They hoped that ENFI would promote theproduction of "reader-based" prose (Flower, 1979) and facilitate the useof peer-response groups (Freedman, 1987). In short, the goal of networkactivities at CMU was to help individual writers produce better compositions.

For Fred Kemp (1993) and his colleaguesat the University of Texas, ENFI made sense within the collaborative theoriesof writing development espoused by Bizzell (1982), Bruffee (1984), Elbow(Elbow & Benaloff, 1989), Ruggles-Gere (1987), and others therefore,ENFI practices at Texas focused on the power of collaboration and groupwork in the development of students' writing and on the ability of thenetwork to promote text sharing.

At the same time that teachers' implementationsof new technologies are influenced by their theories, they are also influencedby their personalities and the educational practices they have worked yearsto develop. Doug Miller at Gallaudet, for example, had always assumed therole of a showman, an actor, in his composition classes. He was used tostanding at the front of the room, signing dynamically, walking around,using his body, and working with the blackboard and overhead projectorin a kind of choreographed dance (Peyton, 1990). Over the years, he haddeveloped a set of overhead slides, handouts, and exercises that he likedto use. When he started using ENFI, he felt deprived of the ability toorchestrate the class with his physical presence. He was stuck behind acomputer, where he had to capture and maintain students' attention throughprint. He also found that his carefully prepared materials had become useless:"What I've been doing is taking the materials for my regular freshmancomposition class and running to my ENFI class in the afternoon. I getthem there and I think, 'What am I going to do with these things?' I realizeI can't even pass them out, because then the students will have to lookat something else other than the computer screen." (p. 18). The versionof ENFI that Miller eventually developed involved creating dramatic productionson the network, in which participants adopted roles in plays they had read(such as The Cherry Orchard) or in plays they wrote themselves.This version of ENFI grew out of Miller's desire for showmanship, but nowhe shared the stage with his students, as a fellow actor in or directorof their network scripts. He and his students together strutted on thestage, and he once again had the power to lead and influence the directionof the interactions.

When Diane Thompson tried to replicateTrent Batson's teaching style in her ENFI classes at NVCC, she discoveredthat her own preferred style was very different from his: "I began to realizethat whereas Trent was able to focus on the topic of the discussion, Iwas constantly trying to make sure that each and every student felt includedand responded to. My personality and teaching style made it harder forme to facilitate ENFI discussions." (Thompson, 1993, p. 216)

After several frustrating attempts to conductwritten discussions, both within her class and between classes at two differentcampuses, Thompson discontinued written discussion entirely and began havingstudents send composed text to each other on the network, which they thendiscussed orally.

When Marshall Kremers first used ENFI atNYIT, he had to struggle seriously with issues of teacher authority andstudent power. His traditional, authoritative classroom style was challengedwhen his students took control of the network discussions and pushed himto the sidelines (Kremers, 1988). He was forced either to stop using thenetwork entirely to maintain his authority, or to alter radically his teachingstyle to accommodate the new power the network interaction gave his students.He chose to do the latter, and has developed a series of ENFI activitiesin which students adopt roles and discuss current events, working in groupswithout teacher intervention. The version of ENFI that Kremers (1993) developedinvolved completely relinquishing the authority he had been so comfortablewith for years and sharing it with his students.

Student Characteristics and Expectations

Some of the students at CMU did not seea connection between the informal ENFI interactions and the high-levelacademic papers they needed to write (Neuwirth et al., 1993 p. 194):

In interviews and written reports, teachersat all the consortium sites have reported that at least some of their studentsfelt they were not doing real work:

Features of the Technology

The different interfaces, for example,influenced decisions about group size and changed the quality of classdiscussions. At the sites with a private composing window and group scrollingtext, as described above, whole classes could communicate on the network.It was found early on at Gallaudet, however, that some teachers had problemsmanaging more than eight or ten students, so early ENFI classes at Minnesotaand NVCC were limited to ten students. At NYIT, where class sizes werelarger, students were grouped on separate channels.

At some of the sites, where participantswere limited to ten lines of text and had to enter their contributionsinto a continually scrolling text stream to which many participants werecontributing, messages tended to be short so they did not exceed the spacelimit and the writer did not lose the thread of the discussion. At CMU,where the CECE Talk software make available unlimited writing space andallowed students to see each others' messages as they were being composed,only two or three students communicated at a time. They tended to taketurns, waiting until their partner was finished before they began to write.Thus, they tended to write longer messages.

In some settings, the Interchange softwarefrom the Daedalus Group in Texas tended to function more like non-real-timeor email writing. It encouraged writers to leave the continually buildingstream of discourse, to write within an unlimited composing space, andto publish the text (enter it in the electronic discourse stream) beforereturning to the public screen. This was especially so for an early versionof the software in which text did not automatically scroll up the screen,and participants examined the group-written file at their own pace. Thiscreated the impression that there was more time for reflection, and messagestended to be longer.

Since the manner of network interactiondiffered with different software, it is not surprising to see differentevaluations from network users as to its effectiveness as a learning tool.For example, whereas Diane Thompson stopped using synchronous written discussionentirely, Fred Kemp described it as "the most notable classroom actionin network theory" (Kemp, 1993, p. 174). These contrasting evaluationswere tempered by all of the factors discussed here, of course, but thesoftware used certainly played a role.

The layout of the lab also influenced howENFI was implemented (see also vanLier, 1998). When the ENFI lab was setup at Minnesota, great care was taken to create an environment in whichit made more sense to write than talk to each other. The ten student stationswere placed in carrels separated by walls. In contrast, NVCC students werecrammed into a room that initially did not even have enough computers foreach student. Thus, students were grouped at the computers, sometimes (ifa relationship made it desirable) even sitting on each others' laps. Inthat situation, it didn't make a lot of sense to communicate in writing.

The layout of ENFI labs influenced theextent to which the original vision for ENFI, that the role of the teacheras authority figure be diminished (Batson, 1988; 1993), was realized. AtTexas, the computers faced the front of the room and the teacher sat atthe back of the room. At Gallaudet, NVCC, and Minnesota, the teacher satat a computer station which looked no different from the students' stationsand, in most cases, was not set apart in any way. At NYIT, however, theteacher sat on a raised platform at the front of the room. It is not surprising,therefore, that the most serious issues surrounding teacher authority wereraised at NYIT (see for example Kremers, 1988, 1993; George, 1990).

Room layout may even have affected thesuccess of ENFI, in terms of student perceptions and performance. TerryCollins, the initiator of ENFI in the General College at Minnesota, attributesmuch of ENFI's success there to the fact that the students, basic writerswho had experienced failure throughout their high school and college careersand who were used to second-rate treatment at school, were placed in abeautiful room (well-lit, with one wall consisting mostly of windows overlookinga tree-filled park) full of state-of-the art computer technology. Theyfelt they were being taken seriously, and they reacted accordingly.

Available Resources

In the ENFI consortium, the resources availablefor implementing and maintaining the program had an impact on what ENFIbecame at each institution, as well as on perceptions of its success. WhenENFI was introduced at CMU, a campus-wide network and sophisticated, fullyequipped computer labs were already in place. ENFI software was simplyadded to the existing network links and other writing software alreadyavailable. The activities that took place on the network and in the labwere a crucial and respected part of the work of the writing program atCMU, and ENFI easily became part of the package.

In contrast, at the University of Texas,the 50 computers available to the English department were relegated totwo small, windowless rooms in the basement of the undergraduate libraryand ignored by most of the department faculty. ENFI was discovered andshaped by a group of graduate students who were far-sighted enough to seeits importance and technically sophisticated enough to carve a place forit in the curriculum, but this work was initially ignored and unsupported.Therefore, while at CMU teachers and researchers carefully thought throughthe place of ENFI in the curriculum and wrote supporting manuals, the ENFIproject staff at the University of Texas finally left the university toform their own company and develop their ENFI software and practice fromthe outside.

Adequate and appropriate space and computersto support ENFI work was another crucial, but often challenging, factorin the shape and success of the program. While ENFI instructors at theUniversity of Minnesota were blessed with a supportive dean who developeda sheltered environment for ENFI (a carefully designed lab and classesthat were half the size that was customary in the department), instructorsat other sites had to piece together a lab with minimal institutional support.At NVCC, Cathy Simpson began her ENFI practice with four computers in thecorner of a library, and Diane Thompson began with seven networked computersfor a class of 18 students. She had to divide the class into two sections,thus doubling her teaching load, and still the students had to work twoto a computer.

A factor often not taken into considerationwhen implementing innovations involving computer technology is the technicalsupport necessary to maintain the technology once it is set up. When ENFIwas implemented at CMU, the computer lab already had highly trained technicalstaff who printed and distributed transcripts of class discussions, maintainedthe computers, and helped the teachers when they had problems. When NVCCdecided to set up networks at three of their five campuses, they did notrealize the challenge they were undertaking and the demand for technicalsupport they had created, "because we did not know that networks are complexand skittish, existing in a universe far beyond our technical capabilities"(Thompson, 1993, p. 212). It quickly became evident that the one computerperson on the entire NVCC staff, who was responsible for supporting allof the computer work on all five campuses, could not possibly provide thekind of support that was needed. The two teachers collaborating to developENFI practices were continually frustrated by the lack of technical expertiseneeded to implement their plans. Likewise, the decision to install eightcomputer classrooms at NYIT, without careful coordination and without considerationof the tremendous technical support needed to maintain the complex technologyon that scale, "led to a host of problems" (Spitzer, 1993, p. 229), andresulted in NYIT's inability to conduct ENFI classes or research for ayear after they had intended to begin. In the end, NYIT's original plansfor implementing ENFI were cut back significantly.

Finally, teachers need time to create newcurricula appropriate for the technology. At some institutions time andfinancial support for teachers to work closely with project administratorsand researchers was built in. The result (at CMU, for example), was a carefullydeveloped and well-understood practice, with supporting materials. At others,teachers had to find the time beyond their regular teaching load, and theresult (at NVCC, for example, in the development of distance networkingbetween two campuses) was frustration and, eventually, a decision to discontinuethe practice.

Conclusion

Instead, once an innovation enters a communityof practice it takes many different forms, depending on the situation.The principles or tenets in its original conception may have little todo with its realizations. We found that the forms that ENFI took were shapedby powerful institutional, technological, philosophical, personal, andeconomic factors, as we have described here. These forms did not remainfixed once they were in place, but evolved in a continual process of creationand recreation.

Administrators and teachers embraced ENFIbecause they believed in the values and practices related to developingstudents' literacy that it claimed to promote, but they were already workingwithin a well-established set of values and practices. They started withwhat they understood about ENFI and believed to be its strengths for theirstudents, and then inserted it into the program they had in place, sometimeswith minor and sometimes with major changes. In most cases, their firstversion of ENFI was not completely satisfactory: The existing curriculumdid not promote the kinds of interactions they wanted; they could not makethe connection between ENFI and the requirements of their institution,or the other reading and writing their students were doing; ENFI use conflictedwith their own teaching styles; or one of the basic features of ENFI--real-timewritten interaction within a classroom--did not seem reasonable for theirstudent population or for their goals for the class. This diversity,which applies to any innovation, has serious implications for all aspectsof the implementation process, from deciding what the implementation isto designing an evaluation of it.

In deciding what an innovation is, we mustconsider the developers' vision for the innovation, not as an independentagent that acts upon the users or the setting, but as only one aspect ofa complex and dynamic set of literacy practices. It is perhaps more meaningfulto say that through these practices, students and teachers act upon theinnovation, shaping it to fit their beliefs, values, and goals. Of course,in the process of shaping the innovation, the users may themselves change,and their changes, as well as those to the innovation, need to be understoodas part of the evolving system.

In our study of ENFI, we saw an elaborateset of activities, expectations, values, and assumed knowledge associatedwith the new technology. This conforms with current definitions of technology(e.g., MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1985) as referring to physical objectsor artifacts, activities or processes, and to associated knowledge. Thebroad conception of ENFI as including these values and practices makesit easy to see why ENFI was realized in so many different ways. There wasoften a disparity between accepted and well-established values and practicesand the values and practices embodied in the innovation; a disparity thatpresented a challenge for those who decided to adopt ENFI.

The question, "What is ENFI?" has significantramifications for teacher preparation, institutional support, and curriculumdevelopment associated with ENFI. If this were an issue that concernedENFI alone, it might deserve only a footnote in current educational debates,but we believe that the what-is-it question could reasonably be asked aboutvirtually any current approach to literacy development. The transactionalrelationship between an innovation and a social setting cannot be meaningfullyparceled out into a passive setting and active innovation, or even theother way around. Nor should it be viewed as a distortion, corruption,or misapplication of the idealized innovation.

If we hope to understand how change occurs,or could occur, we need to move beyond a conception of literacy innovationsas fixed, causal agents to one that reflects the dynamic complexity ofsocial relations in living classrooms. Such a move would call for a differentsort of discourse about educational innovation and change. It would requireus to ask how changes arise, what they mean for different participants,and how they relate to other aspects in the life of a classroom. That kindof analysis is not easy, but it promises results more meaningful than thosetied to an idealized conception of innovations.

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Notes