Both cognitive and social constructionist models of composing must guide pedagogy and research in the composition discipline. A sociocognitive synthesis of these complementary (not competing as Kenneth Bruffee would assert) models derived from the original cognitive Theories of Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, and Jerome Bruner serves as a useful foundation for a collaborative problem-solving Approach to teaching writing Across the curriculum. The sociocognitive model, based on Piaget's model of the equilibration of cognitive structures and several Theories of concept formation, explains the importance of idiosyncratic mixes of knowledge constructs (conceptual hierarchies or networks) held by each individual. While knowledge is socially constructed in communities, each individual belongs to many overlapping communities in a pluralistic modern world. Piaget's model of assimilation and accommodation acknowledges the interaction of individual abstraction processes with the knowledge-making processes of discourse communities. Models of memory and internalization from cognitive Theory expand Piaget's model to help define the relationships between writing and thinking. In addition, research based on social constructionist assumptions and methods helps map the role of community conversations in the construction of specific texts. Looking at student texts in an experimental sociocognitive class from these perspectives combined with methods of literary criticism and text linguistics can provide a more complete Approach to study of the interactions of individuals and communities as they are represented in texts. A combination of three research orientations--ethnographic, cognitive, and textual--offers new insights into the ways communities evolve and elaborate abstract concepts, into the role of cognitive dissonance in knowledge-making processes, and into the relationship between community problem-solving as a collaborative composition pedagogy and the shaping of individual student texts. The linguists' concept of global coherence provides a focus for analyzing this research which seeks to determine how textual elements signal community conversations and shared knowledge. Global coherence, an interaction of texts and contexts, is a suitable object for sociocognitive research agendas, one which illustrates the explanatory power of the sociocognitive model of composing and confirms the value of a pedagogy centered on classroom communities which treat writing as part of the students' ongoing conversation with each other, shared texts, and their instructors.