In the Heart of a Teacher is a Student

Shifting Stances: The Researcher's Role in Formative Design

2011-10-25T22:33:00.000-07:00

Shifting Stances: The Researcher's Role in Formative Design on Prezi

Share/Listen/Connect: PechaKucha Presentation Night

Date Today, Oct. 26
Time 6-8 p.m.
Location: TITU, Union South
Description: At this PechaKucha-style event, graduate students will get the chance to present to their peers in a relaxed and fun atmosphere. Presentations will be followed by time to discuss, network, and socialize. Food and drinks will be provided. Registration appreciated. If you wish to give a short presentation, or would like more information, please write to gsc@grad.wisc.edu.

Teacher Decision Making and Reflective Practice in Reading Workshop

2011-06-20T16:55:00.000-07:00

Almost a half-century ago, in a seminal study on reading instruction in first grade, Bond and Dykstra (1967) reported that the future in research in reading education needed to focus on the “teacher and learning situation characteristics rather than method and materials” (p.123). They also stated that because of the variety of students in any classroom, “ it is necessary to train better teachers of reading rather than to expect a panacea in the form of materials” (p. 123). This would indicate a need for a focus on the decision making and reflective process of teachers in context not just the implementation of a program or curriculum. As Wold observed, “Deep-level literacy implementation requires strategic decision making and action. The process of becoming an exemplary literacy practitioner requires deliberate, long-term attention to and reflection on practice” (2002, p. 91). Even with a mandated or scripted curriculum, teachers are constantly making decisions about what content to teach, how to structure the lesson, which materials to use, and how to respond to students. Reading workshop teachers make these decisions also, but since one of the advantages of using a reading workshop framework is individualization of curriculum, it also means that teachers are making instructional decisions constantly for each child, each small group, and each day – without a teacher's manual for direction.

“Reflection is an important human activity in which people recapture their experience, think about it, mull over and evaluate it. It is this working with experience that is important in learning” (Boud, Keogh & Walker, 1985, p. 43). Grounded in the work of Dewey (1933), Schön (1983) ties action and reflection together in his reflective practice model. Knowing-in-action is the tacit professional knowledge which produces reflex-like actions in a situation. Experienced teachers often act on this intuitive level with their students. When a situation occurs that can't be immediately, reflexively responded to, then reflection-in-action occurs and a conscious, but not necessarily articulated decision about action is made. After the situation, reflection-on-action may occur, which is deliberate, articulated and possibly recorded in some form. Reflecting-on-action provides an opportunity to examine underlying philosophies, understandings or theories evident in the action and analysis these assumptions in order to plan for similar situations in the future. For a workshop approach to flow smoothly, teachers need to cultivate all three practices – with 20+ students in a classroom, some routines and actions need to be automatic and some need thought, but teachers need to know the difference between the two.

Reflection and reflective practice are considered a cornerstone of teacher education and professional development because “the main objective of reflective practice is to ensure a more accurate and relevant understanding of a situation such that professionally designed action in that situation is more likely to produce effective, relevant action which will facilitate the occurrence of more desired and effective outcomes” (Bright, 1993, p. 177). In short, teacher action influences student learning (Darling-Hammond & Baratz-Snowden, 2005; Levine & Lezotte, 1990; Snow, Griffin & Burns, 2005). Therefore, more effective teaching may result from continued reflective practice.

Reflection is not necessarily a solo endeavor; “Reflective practice, while often confused with reflection, is neither a solitary nor a relaxed meditative process. To the contrary, reflective practice is a challenging, demanding, and often trying process that is most successful as a collaborative effort” (Karen, Osterman & Kott, 1993, p.19). Again, drawing on Vygotskian (1978) social development theory, reflective practice is more often a social, collaborative practice – whether informal (a chat in the teacher's lounge) or formal (literacy coaching model). Besides providing a sounding board for ideas, a reflective partner can provide a different perspective and possible challenge the teacher's ideas which leads to greater depth of reflection (Bright, 1996).

Based on the work of Rogers (2002), Woodcock, Lassonde, and Rutten (2004) provide a model for collaborative reflection, which is rooted in building trusting relationships with the partner or group (Figure 1). In this reflective cycle the practitioner describes the experience and analyzes the experience, but through the conversation with others, the practitioner becomes more aware of her beliefs and theories (meta-awareness of self) which leads to informed action. Baird contends, “Better teaching requires that teachers reflect on themselves and their practice, that this reflection should be set within a process of systematic enquiry, and that both reflection and enquiry should proceed by collaboration among members of a group” (1992, pp. 32-33).

Figure 1: Woodcock, Lassonde, & Rutten (2004) Collaborative Reflective Process

Effectiveness of Reading Workshop

2011-06-16T11:26:00.000-07:00

Many of the components of the reading workshop reflect the ten evidence-based best practices of comprehensive literacy instruction as identified by Gambrell et al. (2007), illustrated in the table below (Table 1).

Evidence-Based Practice (Gambrell et al., 2007, p. 19)	Component of Reading Workshop (Atwell, 1987; Calkins, 2001)
Create a classroom culture that fosters literacy motivation.	Student choice of text; positive teacher attitude; large classroom library; book clubs
Teach reading for meaning-making literacy experiences, for pleasure, to be informed, and to perform a task	Authentic literature; mini-lesson topics; book clubs
Provide students with scaffolded instruction in phonemic awareness, phonic, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension to promote independent reading	Workshop time; individual conferences; small group instruction; mini-lessons
Give students plenty of time to read in class.	Workshop time
High quality literature	Authentic literature; large classroom library
Use multiple texts to link and expand vocabulary and concepts	Mini-lessons; small groups
Build a whole-class community that emphasizes important concepts and build upon prior knowledge	Mini-lessons; sharing time
Balance teacher- and student-led discussions	Small groups; book club
Use technologies to link and expand concepts	Mini-lessons
Use a variety of assessment techniques to inform instruction	Individual conferences; small groups; reading responses; sharing time
Table 1: Linking Reading Workshop to Effective Practices

The reading workshop approach to teaching reading combines many of the practices known to create better readers. Atwell (1987), Calkins (2001), and Rief (1994) all report that their students become more interested, engaged, motivated and better readers within the context of their classroom reading workshops. However, there have been few large sample or longitudinal empirical studies documenting the effectiveness of the reading workshop approach specifically. A few teachers and researchers report from their own classrooms or case studies that a reading workshop approach is effective in creating opportunities for more flexible teaching and individualization (Reutzel & Cooter, 1991; Towle, 2000), increasing student engagement in and motivation to read (Greer, 1994; Reutzel & Cooter, 1991) and instilling a love of reading (Lause, 2004). In addition, some studies report on the effectiveness of a reading workshop with targeted population such as improving attitude toward reading for students classified as learning disabled (Oberlin & Shurgarman, 1989), supporting adolescent at-risk students in constructing meaning from reading and developing an identity as a reader (Mueller, 2001; Taylor & Nesheim, 2000) and increasing comprehension for struggling readers (Williams, 2001).

Reading Workshop

2011-06-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

According to Serafini (2001), the reading workshop is a “single block of time dedicated to the exploration of literature and the development of children’s reading processes” (p. 4). Although several authors have advanced their own version of the reading workshop (Atwell 1987/1998; Calkins; 2001; Keene & Zimmermann, 1997; Rief, 1992; Serafini, 2001), there are several components that are common: read aloud, mini-lesson, workshop time, and sharing time. Each component will be discussed further.

Read Aloud

Many authors advocate for reading aloud to students, even at the secondary level. One of the most well-known advocates has been Jim Trelease with his The Read-Aloud Handbook published in 1982. As a general practice in any literacy classroom, it has been supported by research to build success in reading (Allen, 2000; Anderson, Hiebert, Scott & Wilkinson, 1985; Harvey & Goudvis, 2005), Atwell observed, “Everyone is enthralled by a good read-aloud. Hearing language brings it to life and fills the classroom with an author's language. The teachers' voice become a bridge for kids, taking them into territories they might never have explored” (1998, p. 144). Besides bring the words to life, a good read aloud will provide a model of fluent reading, a shared reading experience and text, an opportunity to model literate thinking, and build background knowledge (Allen, 2000; Atwell, 1998; Beers & Samuels, 1998; Combs, 1996; Rief, 1992). Although referring to read alouds between parents and their children, the findings from Becoming a Nation of Readers (Anderson et al, 1985) state, “The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children (p. 23)” and “It is a practice that should continue throughout the grades” (p. 51). Since that report was published, research continues to show that effective read alouds promote vocabulary acquisition and comprehension skills (Beck & McKeown, 2001; Brabham & Lynch-Brown, 2002).

Mini-lesson

A mini-lesson is a short (5-10 minutes), focused lesson on a skill, strategy, or routine that will help students become better readers and work within the format of a workshop that will be immediately applicable to the students' individual work (Angelillo, 2008; Calkins, & Tolan, 2010; Combs, 1996). Calkins stated that “minilessons are the best forum teachers have for pulling the classroom community together to take on a problem” (2001, p. 82). The topic for mini-lessons could be a routine for the workshop such as how to select a book, or a specific skill or strategy in reading such as figuring out a work from context or how to visualize a scene. Generally, in the beginning of the year, the topics of the mini-lessons focus on structures and routines of the workshop. As students settle into the structure, the mini-lesson topics tend to become more responsive to the specific needs of the group of students.

Many authors and teachers (Angelillo, 2008; Atwell, 1987; Calkins, 1986; Orehovec & Alley, 2003) have written about the components of a mini-lesson, but they tend to have a similar structure. In synthesizing the a fore mentioned authors, the typical mini-lesson would include most of the following components:

Invitation - The teacher draws the students together to focus introduce the topic or concept.
Connection – The teacher locates the topic within the group's current work through reviewing previous lessons and setting a purpose for learning the topic of concept.
Teaching – The teacher demonstrates the routine, skill or strategy through the use of a think aloud while reading or modeling the skill or strategy through the teacher's own reading and response.
Practice – The students practices the routine, skill or strategy, through active involvement, often with a partner, as the teacher assesses for understanding.
Revisit – The teacher reinforces or reteaches the concept through sharing of what student practiced or what the teacher observed.
Charge to the class – The teacher reminds students what they should be doing during workshop time and links the mini-lesson concept to their own work.

Once the mini-lesson is completed, the students are sent off to work independently. When Atwell (1987) originally wrote about the mini-lesson, she emphasized the brevity of the mini-lesson, 10-15 minutes. However, since that time, she has revised her opinion on the length of the mini-lesson. After having relied on individual conferences to move students forward in their thinking and reading, Atwell (1998) realized that through thoughtful, interactive mini-lessons, students would be able to share their thinking and work and expand their perspectives. She felt that the extra time needed to provide students with opportunities to talk and share during the mini-lesson was worth an additional ten minutes - it reduced the pressure she felt to confer with every student, every day during workshop time. Robb agreed, referring to the the mini-lessons she models in her book Teaching Reading in the Middle School, “Many of the mini-lessons, which I call Strategy Lessons . . . will last 15-25 minutes, especially when you reserve time for students' questions and exchange of ideas” (2000, p. 67). Whether the mini-lesson is five minutes, or twenty five, the point is to allow students the opportunity to see and experience the concept in practice, before applying it to their independent work – which should happen within the same class period.

The topics of the mini-lessons can focus on a variety of issues. Although there are numerous texts giving suggestions for mini-lessons, Calkins states, “the minilesson is not a free-standing structure. Instead, the topic of the minilesson weaves its way into much of the community's reading work” (2001, p. 83). Atwell organized the topics she uses into four broad categories: procedural aspects of the workshop, the crafting of literature, the conventions of language, and strategies of good readers. According to Reutzel & Cooter (1991) mini-lesson topics can be drawn from the needs of the students found during individual conferences, teacher-selected skills taken from the mandated curriculum or preparation for new books or genres.

Workshop Time

The largest block of time in the reading workshop is devoted to students' independent reading. During this time, students read authentic literature of their own choice and may respond to their reading in a variety of methods such as reading response logs or placing sticky notes in the book. In addition, during workshop time, the teacher can conference with students individually or pull small groups together to work on specific skills or strategies the group needs.

Independent, student-selected reading is a fundamental of the workshop approach, which contrasts sharply with the traditional whole-class model of reading. According to Anderson et al. “independent reading, whether in school or out of school, is associated with gains in reading achievement” (1985, p. 119). In addition, student self-selection of texts promotes positive attitudes toward reading and motivation to read (Palmer, Codling & Gambrell, 1994;Wood & Jones, 1997; Worthy,1998). According to Atwell, "If we want our adolescent students to grow to appreciate literature, another first step is allowing them to exert ownership and choose the literature they will read" (1987, p. 161). Some teachers may ask students to respond to their independent reading through reading logs, a daily reading record, or independent projects.

Small groups, in the reading workshop, can be flexible in both purpose, length and structure. Groups of students may be brought together to work on skills together. In the elementary years, this small group work may resemble Guided Reading (Fountas & Pinnell, 1991) though Calkins (2010) recommends developing “a more expensive repertoire of ways of working with small groups” (p. 73) because, according to Calkins “the whole point is to be personal, to be intimate, and to be responsive” (p. 72). In many ways, the small group instruction preparation and structure resembles the mini-lesson, just with a targeted, small group of students. The teacher begins with a topic of instruction, provides a model and time for practice, revisits the topic and sends the students off to work independently (Calkins, 2010). Literature discussion groups may also be scheduled during workshop time to give students the opportunity to respond to their reading with others. There are various formats for discussions such as Grand Conversations (Eeds & Well, 1989), Book Clubs (Raphael & McMahon, 1994), and Literature Circles (Daniels, 1994) which all model how to have conversations about books.

Individualized feedback is the keystone of conferencing with students during their workshop time (Allen, 2009). In Atwell's (1987) workshop, much of the individual feedback occurs through reading response letters exchanged between the teacher and student. Acknowledging the tremendous paper load this created, she has also supported exchanging response letters between students, under her supervision (1998), and more recently, she has incorporated reading conferences rooted in her experiences with writing conferences (2007). This bears out Allen's (2009) observation that “teachers were talking to children about their writing, but not always taking the time to have the short, meaningful types of reading conferences” which he feels is “one of the most important and beneficial instructional moves I make with my students” (p. 8). He goes on to elaborate the multiple purposes for his conferences with students which include getting to know them as readers, strategy instruction, building rapport, assessment of student strategy use, goal setting, highlighting progress, and challenging students to move forward in their reading. In an individual conference, Calkins (2010) believes the teacher should act as a coach, drawing on the assessment of the student in previous conferences and small groups, recognition of the demands of the particular genre and level of text, and an understanding of the student as a person and a reader.

Having a predictable structure to the conference can help the conference be more effective, efficient and enjoyable (Allen, 2009; Calkins, 2001; Miller, 2005). RIP is the memorable acronym Allen (2009) suggests which stands for: R – review, read aloud, record; I – instruction, insights, intrigue; P – plan, progress, purpose. Research-Decide-Teach is Calkins (2010) architecture for a conference which includes researching the child's needs before the conference, deciding on a helpful lesson for the child, build on the child's strengths and teaching the child something new. Whatever the structure of the conference, “your primary purpose is to listen to what students can teach you about the way they think and make meaning. You may focus the talk or probe for more information, but you cannot learn from them unless you listen” (Combs, 1996, p. 42).

Share Time

Quite often the reading workshop time will end with a sharing time in which students can share what they accomplished and learned. Building on Vygotsky's notion of social development, “Share time provides a social context for students to share their work with their teachers and peers” (Dorn & Soffos, 2005, p. 67). In addition, this is an opportunity for the teacher to revisit the mini-lesson concept and assess students' understanding and application (Calkins, 2010). By setting a purpose during the mini-lesson such as “Bring an example of … to share time”, students who need more direction will have a focus during independent reading (Orehovec & Alley, 2003). It may also be an opportunity for small groups to present projects on their book club books or individual students to give book talks about completed reading.

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. - Thomas Carruthers

2011-05-10T16:55:00.000-07:00

I taught the class, Introduction to Literature, which was an adult accelerated class with a institutionalized syllabus. This meant that a typical semester-long class was condensed into only four weeks – with the expectation that the students complete approximately 20 hours a week of study outside of class and consolidate their learning in a 4 hour face to face class. It was a fast-paced survey course of short stories, poetry, Greek drama and modern drama. The lesson in the first week of class was focused on short stories. The students were required to read ten different short stories and be prepared to discussion them. Recognizing that the students would need support in both analyzing and discussing the stories, I decided to use the Jigsaw Technique to give the students the opportunity to gain confidence in leading the discussion of a particular story through their expert group and then discuss five of the stories through the jigsaw group. After a break, the students completed the final five stories using the same procedure.

Instructions to Students

Discussing the Stories

Expert Groups

Talk through the assigned story, focusing on the literary elements
Prepare to lead the discussion on your assigned story in small groups
Write down some topics/questions for the group
Approximately 15 minutes

Jigsaw Groups

Each person is a leader for one story
One person should be a “secretary” for each story
Write down important ideas, comments and/or questions
Post the page under the story title on the wall
Have your books and notes open
All members should participate when discussing each story
Approximately 10-15 minutes/story

Reflection

Reading ten short stories in a week and attempting to discuss all ten is a Herculean task, yet in this course, it was required. Since the students were also required to turn in their notes from reading the short stories, I thought most students would have completed the reading of each of the stories, but probably didn't spend much time analyzing the stories for their literary elements, which was an objective of the course.

I choose the Jigsaw Technique for several reasons. First, it focused the activity on the students, not me, the teacher. I believe that in a class discussion, the students should be doing most of the questioning and responding. With small groups, more students have the opportunity to discuss, especially compared to a whole class discussion. Second, it provided support for the students to gain confidence in leading the discussion. Recognizing that most students probably completed a cursory reading of the stories, the expert groups provided an opportunity for the students to clarify their understanding and create good discussion questions which would increase their confidence in leading a small group discussion. Finally, it is an efficient method to discuss a large amount of readings.

By including a written component, where each jigsaw group had to produce a summary of each discussion of each short story, I could quickly assess each group's progress and understanding. In addition, by consolidating all groups' summarizes, as a whole class we could gauge the major points of each story at the end of all the discussions.

After working all day, sitting in a four hour class can be daunting. However, students commented at the end of class that they were surprised how quickly the time flew by. One student said that he was dreading this class because he was anticipating having to sit and listen to a lecture for hours, but with the groupings there was a lot of activity and mental engagement so it “wasn't so bad.”

The Jigsaw Technique -Barbara Tewksbury, Hamilton College - http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/coursedesign/tutorial/jigsaw.html

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Proposition 2: Teachers Know the Subjects They Teach and How to Teach Those Subjects to Students.

2011-05-01T04:49:00.000-07:00

How do literacy coaches think about and perform their jobs?

Years ago, I was introduced to the concept of Teaching for Understanding (TfU), which has been the cornerstone of my classroom instruction. In using a TfU framework, I ask four major questions 1) What topics are worth understanding? (Generative Topic) 2)What about these topics needs to be understood? (Understanding goals) 3) How can I foster understanding in my students? (Performances of understanding) 4) How can I tell what students understand? (Ongoing assessment)

As I moved into higher education, I found that the framework continued to apply to adult learners. In building my curriculum for the master level course Supervision of Instruction, I began with a generative topic of – How do literacy coaches think about and perform their work? In other words, I wanted my students to think and act like a literacy coach during the class.

To accomplish this, I needed to create authentic experiences for the student that embodied the major tasks of a literacy coach. In brief, a literacy coach's job is to help support teaching and learning in a school through finding solutions to problems or needs. For the culminating project of the course, each student created a needs assessment for their school and identified an area of need. After identifying the need, the student conducted a literature review to identify possible solutions and the positive and negatives of each solution. Formulating an action plan, they wrote a position paper, written as the literacy coach, and presented it to class as if it were a presentation to a school board. This is a realistic simulation of the work of actual literacy coaches. Therefore, the major understanding goals were:

How do literacy coaches identify needs within their schools?
How do literacy coaches critically read and use research?

How do literacy coaches create a plan of action?
How do literacy coaches cultivate support?

Throughout the semester, each understanding goal was addressed through different activities. The first weeks I provided models of needs assessments and students worked together to create and implement a needs assessment for their own school. Students then generate a list of needs, prioritized the importance of each and made both short term and long term plans for improvement. From this list, the students chose one topic to advocate for in a position paper. Having been accustomed to just summarizing research articles, I provided models and activities to support more critical reading of published research, which were incorporated into the position paper. Each performance of understanding (activity) helped students gain the skills and thinking processes needed to complete the full project and provided for ongoing assessment.

In summary, I would describe my approach to curriculum planning in a two short phrases – “begin with the end in mind” and “set students up for success”.

Dr. L. Dee Fink - www.wcu.edu/WebFiles/PDFs/facultycenter_SignificantLearning.pdf

Presidential Invited Address: Intervening to Shape the Future

2011-04-09T18:19:00.000-07:00

These are very rough notes from the session.

Scheduled Time: Sat, Apr 9 - 4:05pm - 6:05pm Building/Room: Sheraton, Floor Third Level

Session Participants:

Participant: Yrjö H. Engeström (University of Helsinki)

Discussant: Jan Derry (Institute of Education - London)

Chair: Barbara Rogoff (University of California - Santa Cruz)

Discussant: James G. Greeno (University of Pittsburgh)

Discussant: Hugh Mehan (University of California - San Diego)

Dewey – 1927 Experimental thinking vs absolutist thinking

Systematic knowledge is shaped and tested as tools of inquiry
social action is a working hypothesis.
Much of the problems that ppl are facing now, it that fact that we try to have complete control – which we can't. We need to accept that our actions have unexpected consequences – and figure out what that may be. We can not push thru complete designs – without adaptation.
Cultivate tentative solutions by means fo experimentation, first locally and then generalizing them through dialogue and further experimentation

Bronfenbrenner 1977

Naturalistic studies are limited by presently located systems
In the USSR, we are looking to see what children can become. (rather then in the US, where we look at what he come from).
Transforming experiments – how to change what a child is

Formative interventions (trans-formative experiments) – not micro study of a few subjects, but entire schools or organizations.

Why intervention research?

All research intervenes anyway – we should be transparent about this
Interventions are going on anyway – not just the researchers
Intervening deliberately and methodically generates possibility knowledge, so we need to stop being satisfied with categorical knowledge about what already exists.

These ideas come from Newman 1990 and Cobb et al 2003, Long 2001.

The actors in our interventions, influence the intervention, sometimes works against. We need to recognize the agency of the actors/participants.

Two Vygotskian Principles – leads to agency

Volitional action
Double stimulation

A thought experiment of Vygotsky's – bring a subject into a room, and then leave. Do not interact. What do the subjects do? If there is a clock, the subject can make deals – when it gets to be 2pm, I'll leave. Without a clock, they don't know how long to wait, or if they are waiting. First stimulus, the contradictory task of waiting for an experiment. Second stimulus, the clock. Give agency, or action to the subject. Volitional action is not simple 1) Preparation (fan take a long time 2) Execution is smooth. Looks like a conditioned response.

Agency must be built through the creation of double stimulation

Learning activity – starts with sensory concrete experience and builds up to expanding conceptual concreteness. There are demanding learning actions in the process. 7 learning actions – which looks linear in the model, but it isn't.

Questioning
Analysis
Modeling the new solution
Examining and testing the new model
Implementing the new model
Reflecting on the model
Consolidating the new model

This is called expensive learning. Used in Engstrom's learning

1^st stimulus – mirror, recurring roles

2^nd stimulus – Model or vision

In between, the participants move between the past, present and future.

Used within situations that are facing contradictions and crisis without a clear directions for the future.

Discussant

Location of work – experimental and naturalistic work. All research, is reflexively related to the context and the people within it. Even the act of setting up a clean experiment, that too is an intervention. We need to make this recognition clear – no matter what type of research we do.

In defense of design research. In relation to formative intervention.

There are many of the same qualities.
Design research, does have agency in it, as the practitioner/researcher relationship. This is in response to the researcher designing a program, and the teacher implementing, which has been the traditional paradigm. This is shifting to a joint construction of research – the goals, the problems etc. Results should be jointly prepared and presented. Not only should research build knowledge, but also be useful.
This is deep ethnographic work – in it for the long term, which gives us the insights we need.
Yes, knowledge is distributed, but also concentrated
Collaborative work is not a smooth research design. There are personalities, conflict of goals etc. When the results are not positive, it makes many people uncomfortable.
Through the process of working with researchers, teachers learn new ways of viewing and articulating their practices, which can help them in their work.
At the same time, researchers become more sensitive to the realities of teaching. Yet, to be careful of “going native” and becoming to assertive and supportive of the work as to lose credibility.

Beyond New London: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures

2011-04-09T12:15:00.000-07:00

These are very rough notes based on the symposium.

Discussant: Brian V. Street (Kings College, London)
The New London Agenda in Retrospect
*Mary Kalantzis (University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign)
Learning and Knowing: Issues and Principles
*Gunther Kress (Institute of Education - London)
Language and Learning and Digital Media
*James Paul Gee (Arizona State University)
Appropriating Students’ Multilingual Strengths and Multimodal Interests as Resources For Learning
*Courtney B. Cazden (Harvard University), *Gail Heather Cawkwell (University of Waikato)
Multiliteracies in Australia: Educational and Economic Reforms?
*Allan A.J. Luke (Queensland University of Technology)
Teacher Orchestration of Talk in a Pedagogy of Multiliteracies
*Sarah Michaels (Clark University), *Catherine O'Connor (Boston University), *Richard Sohmer (Investigators Club)
Future Agendas for Multiliteracies
*William Cope (University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign)
Chair: William Cope (University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign)

Mary Kalantzis
1994 – Multi-literacies project – the issues haven't changes much since then. Why, despite all the knowledge and work we've done, there is still a huge gap in achievement? New London groups was named after the inn and city they met in. What brought them together was the question about what to do about the gap? Invented the word multi-literacies. Meaning making is essential across contexts and cultures. Effect of the new communication medias were potentially powerful. It wasn't just literacy, but meaning making in any communication media. The purpose was political – as all teaching is, and must be connected to each local context – what does it mean to be a citizen, worker, etc. Mission was performance – alphabetical literacy was not doing it – those who could read, did and those who couldn't didn't. So, a new language was needed – meaning making rather than literacy, design rather than grammar.

Diversity – race, gender, class etc influence the meaning making process
Multi-modality – having a repertoire of skills for learners for across context.
Pedagogy – needed to handled by professionals with choices, not just programmatic linear lessons.

Also recognized that employment was shifting, citizenship meant something new. Identity was a fluid this and multi – no matter how much govt. wanted to create a singular.

People were born into designed meaning making contexts, yet were also influencing that context.

Wanted to create a new vocabulary to talk about this – and to be able to leave our individual identities and co-construct this – therefore, the New London groups was without names, and a manifesto was written (and published) and there was agreement amongst the group.

Gunther Kress

Generosity – marked the bringing together of the group. Each person had very different backgrounds, yet the common goal kept the group together. With the world, going at a faster pace, we need to be even more generous. And recognition is one way of doing this – to see and recognize was people can do, which is the only way we can accord the dignity and respect for them.

Learning and Knowing

What and where is learning? We tend not to recognize learning within everyday contexts. A child showing another child something they found – frames the object, shows the object, and the person is engaged in the object. In profession work – doctors in surgery, through their actions, others are learnig. A multi-model approach to learning allows us to see this. By pointing (framing) and drawing attention, it is an indication of learning. By doing, and showing – this is learning too. Increasing, as practices at work is changing, this type of learning will be more common. Implicit vs explicit knowledge – people working together, though unspoken understanding. What is known, can be expressed through doing, drawing. This knowledge comes through communities – knowing depends on community. But, equally important is giving recognition to how people are engaging in the world. As a researchers, we need to do more than transcription – but rather simulations and recreations.

Jim Gee

Gaps – literacy, digital, knowledge, innovation, 21st century skills. We've been talking a lot of about gaps – and the gaps have multiplied. In addition, something else happened since the fist group meeting. A new school system has arisen - one outside of school, that of digital technologies, to get a community of learners (or affinity spaces). As people become passionate about their games, they are apply to explicitly describe the uses of the game – which otherwise is implicit. The ability for humans to see meaning – patterns, is great than a computer.

Through games, people are achieving professional levels of knowledge in science e(protein folds) social science (Sims:Nickel and Dime challenge)

Passionate Affinity Space

There is no limit on age, experience or time. Leadership changes frequestion, experts and newbies are in the same space. Often, experts don't recognize themselves as experts because expertise resides in community

Courtney Cazden

Multilingual – in multi-literacy - how students make meaning in multiple contexts across languages and dialects. Humans have made meanings visually long before writing – children show us this too.

Gail Cawkwell

Appropriating students multilingual strengths and multi-model interests as resources for learning

When children are encouraged to use their own representations of stories, these resources can be used to achieve more traditional literacy. Relationships are important to achieve this – to be interested and engaged with each other. Though, communication media has, in many cases, replace literature. This is now more of a learned skills.

Julie-ann – a case study of a classroom. Diverse learners – used drawing of read alouds. To talk about interpretation. They used graffiti journals. When they went to watch the video, they discussed their differences.

Alan Luke

We need to overcome our negativity or fear of trying to overcome politics, egos, etc. The new London Group shows that, as a group (community) we can effect change. In asking gee how to do this, replied, “Just make stuff up,” In other words, be imaginative – and don't rely on only others.

We need to “get our hands dirty” and work in and with children, not just theorize about what can happen, but make it happen. We need to be more than just a public intellectual, we need to be doing, not just saying. “what good is another citation in literacy going to do?”

We know that the same groups are continually being marginalized and lagging behind in education. The arguments that we are hearing (and did) does not help this. It just splits the community.. we wanted to come up with a new language, one that was inclusive, to break through this. Knowing how real teachers work, we needed to focus on the dialectical of the arguments Teachers weave between them throughout the day – direct instruction and open, phonic and novels.The group did not specifically define and dictate what multi-literacies was – to allow the teachers to be the professionals they are and interpret as needed within context.

Some problems:
1) Training – How do teachers learn about multi-literacies and multi-modalities Trying to commodify the ideas – it can't be programmatic.
2) Transfer – how can multi-literacies produce achievement in traditional litearcies – ie. What good does Garage band etc, support standardized test. Modal validity. Can video training be used across contexts? Mutli-model to pencil
3) In school and out of school – when things are working out of school, can it be transferred to in school? Does it lose it's power
4) Supply and demand – Add on all the new stuff – collaboration, technology etc, is laid over the top of current standards and curriculum. The stuff that is valued is tested, and so the othe stuff (new age literacies) are not taught. Creative industries (fashion, design, computers) are about 11% of US GDP. New world order – will the old stratification be reproduced?

Sarah Michaels, Catherine O'Connor

Classroom talk – will serve as a pedagogical tool. But, this means that some will still be more privileged than others. How might teachers orchestrate talk in ways that support Mutli-literacies?
*Can not be scripted
*Can not be free form
*Classrooms are densely populated, noisy social spaces, and this must be managed.
*IRE is a proxy for real discussion – it looks like it
*Cultural tools that can scaffold academically productive and inclusive discussion
*Discussion phrases for teachers – Can you say more about that?
*Re-voicing – when teachers restate a student response to check for understanding of the response.
How do we train teachers learn to use this?
These are new tools – a new identity – and the tool won't do the work for you
sometimes teachers feel it is fake or scripted
Hard to see them at work in real content, goes by too fast in real life
Integrated within content
Framework of shared goals, integrated with content, and with videos
helping individual students to externalize their thinking – to share their reasoning out loud
Helping students to orient to others and listen to what others say
Helping students to deepen their reasoning
Helping students work with and engage with the thinking of others

Student don't do this automatically – teachers must scaffold this. Teachers work in small groups, with focused view guides and the videos.

Bill Cope

Testing – we found that testing is all important in US. My background (from the UK) had a curriculum that was highly regulated and not in the least transparent. In the US – NCLB focused on testing, even though there is no national curriculum. Standardize testing is poor as it reduces the raw material of knowledge (what can be tested), depends on process of inference (how this shows what kids know), and is an at-the-end managerial process.

What if we were really interested in knowing what kids know and learn?
Formative assessment and feedback, in such a way that would help students learn better.

U-Author
Ubiquitous authoring – it is available on any communication medium.

“The work” - (semantic editor) whatever text one is working on, integrates photo, video etc.
“About the Work” - social comments and feedback – machine supported.
Review
suggest
Check
Survey
map
Tag
Compare
Beta testing in schools (2nd iteration). Used in 2 different school - 1 that was highly successful and the other in a collapsing town. The poverty kids had more access to digital literacies than the university supported school.
Infinities of meaning – we can't standardize meaning making, computability dilemma,

Brian Street – respondent

What is new about New Literacies studies?
Many think it has to do what in new in literacy (computer etc) – but we meant it as finding new ways of seeing, looking, and understanding literacies
Newness – there were so much new in the group – meet in the New world, in New Hampshire, in New London – why do we continue to have old and new
Literacy – what does literacy refer too
Reading, writing, Reading/writing – but we mean other modes
muti-literacy, assumes that everything else is a literacy – oral, visual,
Is the old determinism (modes) in the new? It is the mode that determines what we do – ie schooling. Much of the framing of literacy in schooling, uses this. That the technology, or new thing, will fix society, the child,
Group – we were from all different backgrounds, camps and expertize and went off to meet with other groups to spread what they learned. Each group brings their own idea. We now have the New Orleans group
Multiplicity of meaning making – is it so new and are some of the claims being made problematic. From the Guardian, about the revolutions in N. Africa. Twitter/facebook revolutions – this is new phenomenon and the technologies are driving the revolution. Is it a means to power, not power itself. It can have different consequences. The media seems to relate that Twitter supports – but it is just a social practice, which could just as easily be used for oppression.
So – how is there change? Is is the new mode? Technologies?
We use literacy – but other groups are addressing the same issues without calling it literacy. IE super-diversity – how do we connect with related groups?
Literacy with a big L and a small single y (why)

Knowledge Building

2011-04-06T15:01:00.000-07:00

A major aspect of affinity spaces is the sharing of knowledge – but not in the traditional consumption model in which the learner is presented with a body of knowledge to commit to memory or master a set of skills. Scardamalia and Bereiter propose (2003) that knowledge building is “the production and continual improvements of ideas of value to a community, through means that increase the likelihood that what the community accomplishes will be greater than the sum of individual contributions and part of the broader cultural efforts” (p. 1370). To have environments that build knowledge, ideas need to be addresses as “objects of inquiry and improvement” (p. 1371) and be made available to the community to dissected, connected and discussed. Therefore a shared work space is needed along with an organized method of interactions with the ideas. It is through this interaction that the ideas themselves are improved, but also the participants are able to engage in the discussion as their own level and make individual connections to the ideas. Knowledge building is a form of constructivist learning, in which the learner constructs his or her own meaning of the ideas through connecting the new experiences to previous experiences. However, deep constructivism requires that “people are advancing the frontiers of knowledge in their community” (p. 1372). To do so, the learners must identify their own problems and goals, gather and report information, make conclusions and theories, and refine the ideas, which Scardamalia (2002) calls collective cognitive responsibility. In other words, all members of a group have an individual responsibility to contribute to the joint creation of knowledge, which is distributed across the group, not concentrated in a leader.

In a 2002 article, Scardamalia delineated the principles of knowledge building:

Real ideas and authentic problems
Improvable ideas
Idea diversity
Rise above (forming theories or principles)
Epistemic agency
Community knowledge, collective responsibility
Democratizing knowledge
Symmetric knowledge advancement
Pervasive knowledge building
Constructive uses of authoritative sources
Knowledge building discourse
Concurrent, embedded, and trans-formative assessment

Affinity spaces seem to be good places to see knowledge building in action. Since affinity spaces are created based on the shared interest in content, or ideas, the building of knowledge within this space is a primary goal, plus the goals or problems are defined by the people inhabiting the space. In addition, according to the characteristics of an affinity space, as defined by Gee, status and leadership is porous or constantly changing – novices and experts work side-by-side.

References

Scardamalia, M. (2002) Collective cognitive responsibility for the advancement of knowledge. In B. Smith (Ed.), Liberal education in a knowledge society (pp.67-98). Chicago: Open Court.

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2003). Knowledge Building. In Encyclopedia of Education, (2^nd ed. pp. 1370-1373). New York: Macmillan Reference, USA.

Affinity Space

2011-04-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

Gee builds on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) concept of communities of practice, but focuses more on the space, rather than membership. He proposes that the assumption of community is a false one, as people can participate in the same community, yet not feel a sense of belonging or membership. Gee defines affinity spaces as a “place, or set of places where people can affiliate with others, based primarily on shared activities, interests, and goals” (2004, p.73). With online communication becoming more prevalent, Gee believes that this re-conceptualization of communities of practice is needed because “if we start by talking about spaces rather than “communities” we can then go on and ask to what extent the people interacting within a space, or some subgroup of them, do or do not actually form community” (2004, p. 78). Using the term “community” indicates closer social ties, that of belongingness and membership with similar goals, which aren't always present in online communication. It may be easier to delineate the boundaries of the space and then look at how different sorts of people use that space - what they do there and what they get from that space.

To define the space, especially online where there are no physical or geographical boundaries, Gee (2004) suggests content and interaction as a way of defining the space. The things that give the space content and meaning, he titles the generator. The entry into the space he titles the portal which isn't another person, but rather a tool (textbook), activity (small group discussion), or generation of content (posting a lesson plan). For an affinity space, people choose to enter the space because of an interest in the content, not the people occupying the space, which is a significant shift from Lave and Wenger’s (1991) community of practice where the apprenticeship model and relationships are key. In an affinity space, there is little designation of apprentice or master. Gee’s (2004) defining characteristics of an affinity space include:

A common endeavor (interests, goals or practices)
People with varying levels of experience and skill share the same space
Ways of entering the space can also generate content
Content is organized and transformed by the users
Intensive and extensive knowledge is encouraged
Individual and distributed knowledge is encouraged
Dispersed knowledge (not in the space) is highlighted
Tacit knowledge is modeled and articulated
Many forms and routes to participation
Many routes to status
Leadership is porous and leaders are resources

Much of Gee's work, and others, focus on affinity spaces online and mostly through massive multi-player online role playing games or fan-fiction sites (Gee, 2003; Squire & Steinkuehler, 2005; Squire, Giovanetto, Devane, & Durga, 2005; Black, 2007 ). However, the characteristics Gee describes are evident in many other online spaces, such as a collaborative wiki or Ning.

References

Black, R.W. (2007). Fanfiction writing and the construction of space. E-Learning, 4(4), 384–397. Retrieved from dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2007.4.4.384

Gee, J.P. (2003) What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. New York: Routledge.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Squire, K., Giovanetto, L., Devane, B., & Durga, S. (2005). From users to designers: building a self-organizing game-based learning environment. TechTrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning, 49(5), 34-74.

Squire, K., & Steinkuehler, C. (2005). Meet the gamers. Library Journal 130(7), 38–42

Communities of Practice

2011-04-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

Communities of practice, as a concept has been around since the beginning of civilization when humans gathered together to support each other's survival. The more experiences members of the community would mentor and model the needed skills and ways of thinking to the less experienced members through storytelling, direct instruction and observation of practice. However, the term “communities of practice” (CoP) was coined as a research term by anthropologists Lave and Wegner (1991) to understand how apprenticeships help people learn. Through their study of multiple apprenticeship models in various careers, they recognized that the learning was situated, in other word, it was located within the practice and participation of the activities of the job. As novices, the apprentice was mentored into the community through a process of legitimate peripheral participation. Accordingly, the novices were given low-risk tasks, observed the masters, and in some cases, encourage to discuss the work. This legitimate peripheral participant advances the goals of the community while at the same time, provided the novices hands-on training in the work. The more directly involved with the work of the masters, the more deeply the novice is able to understand the activities and ways of thinking. As the novices gain experience, their own work moves toward the central activities of the community and they, in turn, become mentors to other novices.

In brief, Wenger defines communities of practice as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (Communities of Practice: An Introduction, 2006). There are three characteristics which define them: domain, community and practice. The domain is what distinguishes the group from just a network of people. Membership in the community is based on a commitment to the shared interest or concern. However, the only way to form community is through interaction – the sharing of information, activities, discussions, help and support. The interaction does not need to be face-to-face, asynchronous or daily; but consistent and dependable. Although the community is formed around a shared interest or concern, it is more than just a fan club. As McDermott observes, “communities of practice are not just celebrations of common interests. They focus on practical aspects of a practice, everyday problems, new tools, developments in the field, things that work and don't” (10 Critical Success Factors, 2000). The members of the community are practitioners of the activity – whether that activity is nursing, snow boarding, or engineering. The members, individual, engage in similar practice and therefore have common experiences or stories, but when working together as a community, they are able to extend or refine their practices.

Although the concept of communities of practice has been around for thousands of year, the language initial defined by Lave and Wenger (1991) has allowed researches, companies, organization and educational institutions to look closer at the mechanisms that interact to make successful or less successful communities of practice. Much of the application of communities of practice has been in the workplace such as Xerox service repairers (Brown & Duguid, 2000), insurance claim operators (Wenger, 1998), and innovation in cancer treatment (Swan, Scarbrough & Robertson, 2002). However, the concept seemed to transfer well to online communities with case studies (Ardichvili, Page & Wentling, 2003; Pan & Leidner, 2003) of companies moving to on-line communities of practice and recommendations on how to design communities of practice online (Kim, 2000; Wenger, McDermott and Snyder, 2002). However, many of the studies of communities of practice in online contexts have been based on mandated use by the practitioner, as illustrated in the case studies mentioned above. There has been some study on a pre-designed communities, such as TappedIn – a professional teaching network (Schlager & Fusco, 2004). But, what about the online spaces that are created voluntarily by the practitioners and evolve with the needs of the practitioners, rather then the needs of an administrator?

Social Presence

2011-04-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

Before computers became ubiquitous, Short, Williams, and Christie (1976) developed the theory of social presence to explain how people use telecommunications and the effect the medium could have on the communication process. They defined social presence as the "degree of salience of the other person in a mediated communication and the consequent salience of their interpersonal interactions" (p. 65). Salience, meaning the awareness of another person, can be created through the social context, which includes the task, process of the task, privacy and topics involved; perceived proficiency using the mediated communication; and interactivity of the communicators (Tu & McIsaac, 2002). Early researchers posited that social presence was an attribute of the communication medium (Daft & Lengel, 1986; Walther 1996), however, more recent research indicates that social process can be cultivated (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997).

Whiteside and Garret Dikkers (2011) argue that social presence is really about the level of connectedness of person feels when engaging in computer mediated communication and is a factor in how active a role the person takes in constructing knowledge for both themselves and their peers. To support identification of evidence of social presence in online learning environments, Whiteside (2007) proposed a five element model:

Affective association – words indicating emotional connections
Community cohesion – words that indicate the participants see the group as a community such as greetings and group references
Interaction intensity – questions, references and answers to each other's questions
Knowledge and experiences – relaying personal knowledge and experiences to the group
Instructor investment – the instructor participates consistently to guide and extend the discussion

References

Daft, R. L., & Lengel, R. H. (1986). Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design. Management Science, 32(5), 554-571.

Gunawardena, C. N., & Zittle, F. (1997). Social presence as a predictor of satisfaction within a computer mediated conferencing environment. American Journal of Distance Education, 11(3), 8-26.

Short, J., Williams, E., & Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. London: John Wiley & Sons

Tu, C.-H., & McIsaac, M. (2002). The relationship of social presence and interaction in online classes. The American Journal of Distance Education, 16(3), 131-150.

Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 23(1), 3-43.

Whiteside, A. & Garrett Dikkers, A. (2011). Using the social presence model to maximize interactions in online environments. In St. Amant, K. & Kelsey, S (Eds.) Computer-mediated communication across cultures: International interactions in online environment. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Social Media and Teacher Learning

2011-03-29T10:09:00.000-07:00

I'm currently working on a proposal about teaching learning through social media. Here is a Prezi of my initial thoughts.
Social Media and Teacher Learning

Social Media and Teacher Learning on Prezi

A Beginning Research Statement

2011-02-05T10:47:00.000-08:00

The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” ~ Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

Broadly defined, my research interests focus on how adolescent students make meaning from text and how teachers can help foster both skillful reading and an interest in becoming a life-long reader. I am particularly – though not exclusively - interested in the reading response writing students are often assigned to guide their reading and prepare for small group discussions of the literature. Part of my research involves helping teachers articulate the purpose of implementing small group discussions of literature and aligning their pedagogical choices to their purpose and philosophy.

Having spent over a decade in the classroom, and loving every moment of it, I have high respect for practitioners, which figures into my research agenda and methodology. I want to be a partner with teachers in researching the issues they find imperative and listen closely to their voices. Formative design research is a central part of my research philosophy which focuses on collaboratively investigating pedagogical designs and goals in the context of real classrooms. My dissertation topic is the refinement of implementing peer-led small group literature discussions at the middle school level. At the same time, I am conducting a case study of the professional development of teachers in a suburban middle school who have chosen to implement literature circles in their classrooms. In addition, using a classical grounded theory approach, I investigated the characteristics of expatriate teachers who successfully adapt to living and teaching internationally.

Small Groups Literature Discussions as Seen Through CHAT

2010-11-26T09:55:00.000-08:00

When I was a child, my dad was a mechanic and I remember him using the common proverb, “Use the right tool for the right job.” I know that it is nearly impossible to get a SAE (American standard) bolt tightened with a metric wrench, therefore I have to identify the job I want done and find the appropriate tool. In schools, matching the right tool to the right job is just as important, whether that tool is in curriculum, pedagogy, or materials. However, sometimes, when a new tool is developed, it tends to be applied to multiple jobs, with varying results.

In response to calls for more student-centered instruction in the late 1980s and early 1990s, one tool that has been applied indiscriminately in schools is small group literature discussion groups. Several different structures for small groups literature discussions were developed such as Daniel's (1994) Literature Circles; Peterson & Eeds' Grand Conversations; Beck, McKeown, Hamilton, & Kugan's (1997) Questioning the Author; and Raphael & McMahon's Book Clubs. Each of these models guide students to take a distinct stance toward literature, often through pre-discussion written preparation of questions, notes or role sheets. Stance, originally theorized by Rosenblatt (1978), means the purpose for reading the text and she identified a continuum of two stances – aesthetic, or the experience lived through the literature and efferent, or the information the reader can take from the text. Chinn, Anderson, & Waggoner (2001) add a third stance, that of critical/analytical in which the reader questions the text for its argument,bias, or worldview. Each stance requires a particular type of thinking and privileges a particular style of discussion.

Currently, language arts teachers are encouraged to use a generic form of small group literature discussions as this embodies many of the tenants of Best Practice as defined by Daniels & Bizar (2005) such as cooperative, student-centered, active learning with an emphasis on higher-order thinking skills. Often teachers select a defined model, like those named above, and implement it by-the-book. Yet, without interrogating the purposes and structures of the small group discussions, from the perspectives of both teachers and students, there is a good chance that fulfilling the method becomes more important than the impact on learning. In other words, both teachers and students need to identify the job that needs to be done before the right tool can be chosen rather than choosing a tool for an unspecified job. As the old adage goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT)

Originating in the social-cultural theories of Vygotsky, cultural historical activity theory attempts to understand human learning as it takes place through activity, mediated by physical and psychological tools, in contexts and with practices that have cultural, social and historical groundings. Vygotsky (1978) theorized that higher mental functions (thinking) in an individual develops from the social processes that the individual is involved in and can only be understood through the tools or signs used to mediate the process. Since humans can not directly interact with the world, the psychological tools or signs (such as language) and physical/technical tools (such as a pencil) mediate human thinking and action. These mediational tools are shaped by the cultural, social and historical context, yet they also shape the context (Wertsch, 1991). Vygotsky tended to focus on individual action and thinking, whereas Leont'ev believed that activity is a collection formation of the person(s), world and the activity itself, therefore focusing on the whole activity, with multiple participants moving toward a group outcome or motive, is more important than the individual action and that the individual action can only be understood in the context of the activity. Engestrom moved the unit of analysis to encompass the entire activity system, which would then account for tools use, distributed action among members and the evolving social, cultural, and historical results of action over time. In this model, the system is a dialectical relationship in which people influence and are influenced by the context of the activity. Engstrom identified the major component of the system as: subject (person), instruments (tools), object(ive), outcome, division of labor, community and rules (See Figure 1). The activity system is being constantly constructed and renewed by the interactions of the components, which, over time can develop contradictions within the system. These contradictions motive change to new forms of activity

Contradictions are the core of activity system analysis. By using cultural historical activity theory, an activity system can be analyzed at multiple levels. Primary level contradictions are those that occurs within the components of a system. For example, the understanding of how to use a tool differs between people, so although the same tool is used, it is used differently. Secondary contradictions occurs between components of the system. For example, then the rules of the context does not allow for the outcome to occurs – otherwise known as a Catch-22. Finally, a tertiary contradiction occurs when activity systems intersect such as the activity system of school district policy collides with the activity system of the classroom.

Small Group Literature Discussion

In the past, literature discussions in the secondary classroom were specifically teacher-led and generally focused on textual, surface level comprehension or one-sided, lecture format. This led to a pattern of interaction known as IRE – Initiation by teacher, Response by student, and Evaluation by teacher (Mehan, 1979; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). With this staccato rhythm, students generally did not originate or extend the conversation. This has been the model classroom for almost 100 years – teacher firmly in control of covering the curriculum, while students obediently follow. In other words, a strong focus on what Rosenblatt (1978) called an “efferent” stance to the literature, or information gathering.

However, with the development of reading response theory (Rosenblatt, 1978) and an understanding of the power of discussion based approaches, many teachers began experiment with instruction that was more responsive to student interests. Often these led to discussions that lie within the “aesthetic” stance (Rosenblatt, 1978) or an “expressive” stance (Jakobson, as cited in Soter et al, 2009) such as Eeds & Wells' (1998) Grand Conversations, in which students took a more active role in the generation of discussion. This precipitated a move toward peer-led discussions such as Daniel's (1994) Literature Circles, and Raphael & McMahon's (1994)Book Clubs. Both forms emphasize student generated response to create authentic conversations about text, not just answering questions.

Most of the models of student-led discussion use some form of pre-discussion writing based on the text. This may take the form of Role Sheets (Daniels, 1994), reader response logs, double entry journals, or sticky-notes on the page. Some of these techniques have been researched individually and separate from their use in discussions and have been shown to provide opportunities for students to actively make meaning from the text. However, there has been anecdotal evidence of mechanic, stilted conversations when using Role Sheets, or reading response logs within a student-led discussion of literature. This sometimes leads teachers to abandon student-led discussions because they feel the discussion lacks depth and meaning. However, multiple researchers have shown that discussion based approaches leads to better understanding of the text. (Applebee et al, 2003; Murphy, et al, 2009).

Teachers Taking Charge of Their Own Professional Development

2010-11-18T09:46:00.000-08:00

Too often, professional development programs in schools use a “drive-by” or “shot-gun” method of in-service. In the drive-by, teachers are herded to an auditorium to hear an expert explain how to use a new method or technique and the teachers are expected to implement it in their own classrooms without any support or follow-up. The shot-gun approach provides teachers with a variety of choices, but no focus for the school or student learning. It is clear neither approach is effective in changing teachers' daily practice, yet it continues ( Loucks-Horsley, Hewson, Love, & Stiles, 1998). So, what should schools and program directors consider when approaching the professional development of its teachers?

When designing professional development programs, Ball & Cohen, (1999) encourage a systematic approach for designers which asks the following questions: “First, what would teachers have to know, and know how to do, in order to offer instruction that would support much deeper and more complex learning for their students? Second, what sort of professional education would be most likely to help teachers to learn those things? Third, what do these ideas imply for the content, method, and structure of professional development?” (p. 7). Rather than focusing on bringing in a new method or technique, this approach encourages teachers to investigate their own work, determine their own needs and time-frames and provide scheduled time to allow teachers to meet, talk and document their investigations.

This follows the theory of andragogy - the methods and techniques used to teach adults - as schools must also take into account that the “students” of the instruction are adult learners with unique needs. Malcom Knowles (1984) considered the adult learner to be a different type of learner than a child. He reintroduced the term andragogy, as compared to pedagogy, to help distinguish the characteristics of working with adult learners from those used with children. These characteristics include: 1) Being more self-directed 2) Having a reservoir of experiences as resource for learning 3) Needing immediate relevance to learning 4) Having clear purposes for learning 5) Being internally motivated 6) Wanting problem-focused learning experiences. Ball & Cohen's (1999) recommendations address most of these principals.

Schools must also help teachers embrace the identity of a lifelong learner. Each year brings new students, materials, technology, standards and policy changes. Hammerness, Darling-Hammond, Bransford, Berliner, Cochran-Smith, McDonald, & Zeichner, (2005) contend that teachers need to be “adaptive experts” (p. 360) who are able to balance efficiency and innovation to effectively respond to complex classroom needs. To become an expert, a teacher must be motivated to deeply reflect about his/her own teaching practices. The authors also recognize that innovation can be challenging and even threatening, as teachers must “re-think key ideas, practices and even values in order to change what they are doing” (p.361). This may at times led to decreased efficiency, as teachers learn new ways of thinking; yet by abandoning some ineffective practices and adopting new ones, teachers become more expert. In other words, we should expect a learning curve when teachers try new materials, methods or techniques and support the struggle teachers must endure in order to better their practice. This support is best found in communities of practice – working side-by-side with other teachers to improve teaching. In addition, coordinated time is needed to allow teachers to meet and discuss their work.

Traditionally schools tend to look to the principal, curriculum director or other specialists to provide the leadership and direction for professional development. However, by accepting the principles of adult learning we can change this paradigm. More teachers are becoming informal teacher-leaders in their schools, especially when the formal processes of leadership have been ineffective. According to Whitaker (1995), “These [informal teaching] relationships often determine the degree to which the beliefs of faculty members can be changed on a schoolwide basis” (p. 356). When teachers learn something new that is effective with students, they often want to share the results of their learning. “A powerful relationship exists between learning and leading. The most salient learning for most of us comes when we don’t know how to do it, when we want to do it, and when our responsibility for doing it will affect the lives of many others. This is where teacher leadership and professional development intersect . . . only when teachers learn will their students learn” (Barth, p.445.) Effective principal leadership, and long-term change, can be enhanced by identifying and supporting these informal leaders (Zepeda, Mayers, & Benson, 2003).

Recently, teacher improvement has been a fodder for politicians and Hollywood producers, with a range of solutions proposed from pay for performance to alternative certifications. Yet the real issue is not teacher improvement, but rather teacher learning. If we recognize that teachers are learners, with unique needs and issues, we can eliminate the deficit model of professional development and instead, focus on the strengths and expertise already embedded in our schools with a goal of supporting the continued learning of all teachers, which will then result in increased student learning and achievement.

References

Ball, D. L. & Cohen, D. K. (1999). Developing practice, developing practitioners: Toward a practice-based theory of professional education. In G. Sykes and L. Darling-Hammond (Eds.), Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of policy and practice (pp. 3-32). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Barth, R. (2001). Teacher leader. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(6), 443-500.

Hammerness, K., Darling-Hammond, L., Bransford, J., Berliner, D., Cochran-Smith, M., McDonald, M., & Zeichner, K. (2005). How teachers learn and develop. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.) Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 358-389). Jossey-Bass: San Francisco.

Knowles, M. (1984). Andragogy in action: Applying modern principles of adult education. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Knowles, M. (1984). The adult learner: A neglected species. (3rd ed.), Houston: Gulf Publishing.

Loucks-Horsley, S., Hewson, P. W., Love, N., & Stiles, K. E. (1998). Designing professional development for teachers of science and mathematics. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Whitaker, T. (1995). Accomplishing change in schools: The importance of informal teacher leaders. Clearing House, 68(6), pp. 356-357.

Zepeda, S. J., Mayers, R. S., & Benson, B., N. (2003). The call to teacher leadership. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

An Educational Philosophy Acrostic

2010-11-15T10:57:00.000-08:00

Cultural Historical Activity Theory as Applied to Literature Discussion Groups

2010-10-29T12:02:00.000-07:00

"Well," said Pooh, "we keep looking for Home and not finding it, so I thought that if we looked for this Pit, we'd be sure not to find it, which would be a Good Thing, because then we might find something that we weren't looking for, which might be just what we were looking for, really." (Milne, 1928, p. 121)

What makes an effective literature discussion? What place does gender have in small group discussions? How can teachers best support student discussion of literature? What is the role of the teacher in literature discussions? Questions like these tend to be focus of research on the use of small group literature discussions. Investigators have tallied and analyzed the content of discussions, traced the changing roles of students and teacher, and created taxonomies of the type of talk that happens in literature discussions. However, by using these approaches, which are too narrow to address the scope of the entire activity as it is occurs in a cultural, historical, and social setting with complex and sometimes competing goals and purposes, we loose sight of the forest for the trees . I propose that, by using a different theoretical framework for studying small group literature discussions than has been used thus far, we can achieve a broader understanding of both student and teacher development within this context. By using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) we can understand how the individuals within the activity setting influence and are influenced by the other individuals, contexts, and tools used to achieve a learning objective. “Because then we might find something that we weren't looking for, which might be just what we were looking for, really.”

Although book clubs have existed before, in the late 1980s adult book clubs became a hot commodity for libraries and bookstores and women across the country began publicly acknowledging the importance of book clubs in their lives. Researchers jumped on the band wagon to investigate the social and cultural meaning of book clubs and generally found positive results – in both generating personal and emotional support through the group and in encouraging adults to read more. Educators, many who were in book clubs themselves, attempted to translate that same atmosphere into their classrooms.

In the early 1990s, several models of literature discussions were published, including Daniel's (1994) Literature Circles using role sheets, Peterson & Eeds' Grand Conversations, Beck, McKeown, Hamilton, & Kugan's (1997), Questioning the Author and Raphael & McMahon's Book Clubs. Most of these models focus on student choice of text, preparing for reading through some form of note-taking, having discussions generated through student questions, and supporting collaborative meaning making from text. In a educational culture of “best practices”, language arts teachers have now encouraged to use small group literature discussions as it embodies many of the tenants of Best Practice (Daniels & Bizar) such as cooperative, student-centered, active learning with an emphasis on higher-order thinking skills.

Each model has a specific purpose and structure that guides the development of the discussion. In Literature Circles, the goal is to help students generate personal responses to the text – or an expressive stance. In Collaborative Reasoning, students are guided to take a critical or analytic stance on the text. Using Questioning the Author strategies, students search the text for for information and take an efferent stance toward text. Each of these models support a specific type of inquiry and purpose to the discussion. Without a clear articulation of one's purpose to the discussion, teachers may find themselves implementing a structure that runs counter to the vision they have for the discussion.

This is where cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) can help us understanding the complex environment of a literature group discussion. “Activity theory (Cole, 1996; Leont'ev, 1981; Tulviste, 1991; Wertsch, 1981) is predicated on the assumption that a person's frameworks for thinking are developed through problem-solving action carried out in specific settings whose social structures have been developed through historical, culturally-grounded actions. . . Activity theory also calls attention to the goals of development (telos) and the ways in which environments are structured to promote development toward these goals (prolepsis) . . . A central concern of activity theory, then, is to understand the kinds of culturally defined futures that motivate people's activity and the sorts of tools they develop in order to help mediate one another's progress toward those futures.” (Grossman, Smagorinsky, Valencia, 1999, pp.4-5 ).

Literature discussion groups are nebulous creatures to understand. There is a tangled interaction of teacher, students, texts and context, where most of the meaning-making is invisible. In this paper, I will attempt to apply the theory of CHAT to better untangle the interactions and reweave the various aspects of literature discussions in the attempt to better understand how the teacher directed use of tools, such as pre-discussion note-taking, influences the process of meaning-making from text at both the individual and group level.

My Life in Seven Stories

2010-10-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Life is like a patchwork quilt, with experiences being stitched together to create the quilt as a whole. Here is a small part of my life’s quilt.

The Green Sheet

The Green Sheet was the 4-page comic strip section of the Milwaukee Journals when I was a child. Before I could read, I would be able to find the Green Sheet in the stack of news and pull it out before my parents would read the events of the day. Lying in the sunshine on the floor of the living room, I would follow the panels and try to figure out the story. But, I couldn't read the words. I would ask my older brother, but he wouldn't be interested in reading to me. When my dad was home on Saturdays, he would sit in the arm chair and read to me. Although I loved the comfort of being on my dad's lap, I couldn't wait to be able to read the comics to myself. To this day, Dad and I continue to discuss Prince Valiant, even when hundreds of miles apart.

Lucky

Being a farm girl, I would sometime invite my friends to a sleepover in the hay mow of the barn. It was filled with the scent of fresh cut alfalfa and the chirp of crickets. Yet, one night, it was punctured by the bleat of a lost kitten. In the light of day, my brother and I searched the loft until we found a very small, very lost kitten – all white except for his gray tail and one gray ear. Fitting in one hand, we carried him home and pleaded with our parents to allow us to keep him – in the house. After several days of bottle feeding and mid-night comforting, it seemed the poor creature would live. Like many other rescued animals before him, he became Lucky and part of our household for 18 years. Furry critters remain an important part of my life with my shetland sheepdog, Rasa, and as a Feline Friend at the humane society.

Where the Buffalo Roam

One of the stereo-typical family trips for Mid-westerners is a car trip out to the Blackhills of South Dakota, with a stops at Wall Drugs, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, and Custer State Park. After years of hearing about the massive herds of the majestic American bison, I was determined to be in the midst of the herd. My family drove around the park for three hours, but couldn't find a single buffalo – nor did we see any for the entire 7-day trip. Once home, my mother wrote to the tourism board and requested a small buffalo stuffed animal to fulfill my desire for a Dakotan buffalo. Hence, my obsession with the American bison – the symbol of abundance – and I have been abundantly blessed.

My First Classroom

My first team meeting was frightening. One teacher told me he was just hoping to survive the two years before retirement. Another told me I was hired because I was in the army and therefore would bring discipline to my classroom. The third one told me she was very happy with what she was doing and didn't want to change anything – all the new technology seemed a waste of time. Like many first year teachers, I had dreams of changing the world and making a difference in the lives of the children - this wasn't the way it was supposed to go. I faced a very traditional school and curriculum and choose to make small changes, such as purchasing a class set of novels and approaching my team about doing some interdisciplinary work. I exchanged classes with the science teacher and taught his least favorite unit – rocks and minerals. He taught his favorite story to my English classes – “Rip Van Winkle”. The other team saw some of the unique lessons we were doing and decided to try some new things too. I learned that leadership and change didn't need to come from mandates, but rather from strong relationships with colleagues and a focus on student learning.

I'm a Medic. I can help.

A passenger airplane crashed in a corn field in Wisconsin and I was part of the team called to triage the injured. The scene was chaotic and scary – even knowing it was a training exercise. People cried out in pain and their moulage makeup wept bright red blood and certainly looked real. The fast pace of making potentially life altering decisions was both exhilarating and sobering and I liked it. As a medic in the Army National Guard, I not only learned medical skills but confidence and resilience.

Road Trip in Brazil

Part of the thrill of being an international teacher is the chance to live in a different country and see the things only locals tend to see. The Itiquira Waterfall was just a few hours north of Brasilia, Brazil, yet few non-Brazilian have the opportunity to see it. My husband and I had been teaching at the American school for just over a year when a group of friends decided to take a road-trip to the Falls. We packed a cooler full of sandwiches and homemade brownies (as ready made foods were not available) and made the trek to the largest free falling waterfall in Brazil. The roar of the falls could be heard before the entrance of the park. The rainbows generated by the spray was not damped by the chilliness of the water. Although there were many challenges living overseas, both personally and professionally, experiences like this highlight the reason I choose the adventure.

Connection to the Past

“Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." - Winston Churchill

When other kids spent their summer vacations swimming or going to the park, I spent it at museums, historic sites or reading about the Ancient Egyptians or inspirational historic women such as Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Elizabeth Blackwell and Sacagawea. Growing up in my family meant growing up immersed in stories of the past – family, local, state, nation and the world's stories. Oral histories gave flesh to the written histories I read. I've walked the school aisle where Clara Barton first taught. I've crept through the dark corridors of the Giza Pyramids to the sarcophagus of the kings. I've knelt in the battlefield of Gettysburg which ran red with the blood of the soldiers. These tangible remnants of the past inspire me to remember the lessons of the past, treasure my present moments and think deeply about the future.

My Favorite Resources for Supporting Active Learning

2010-09-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

Books

Burke, J. (2000). Reading reminders: Tools, tips, and techniques. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.

Burke, J. (2003). Writing reminders: Tools, tips, and techniques. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.

As the titles indicates, each book is a reminder of the things we know are good instruction for readers and writers, yet sometimes forget. Burke is a practicing teacher and writes for teachers. Each book includes 100 tips, techniques, and tools to help secondary teachers teach reading or writing. Both are easy to read and use, as each tip is about 2 pages long and often includes a template and student examples. Especially nice is his explicit link between theory and practice, as he sites the support for each idea. My favorites include his section on vocabulary development and vocabulary squares (reading) and how to create a culture of writing and explanation of the genres of writing. You can find sample chapters of each books here: http://www.heinemann.com/authors/1334.aspx

Buehl, D. (2009). Classroom strategies for interactive learning (3rd ed.). Newark, DE: International Reading Association

I have purchased each edition of this book and worn out my old ones. Buehl was a social studies teacher and reading specialist at Madison East High School and compiled this compendium of content area reading/writing strategies over the course of his time working with students. The third edition has expanded to include recent understandings of comprehension and how to teach for comprehension. The second half of the book includes 45 strategies which focus on instructional strategies, ways of thinking and characteristics of effective readers. Each strategy is explained, modeled, and has a template for student use. My favorites include: Discussion Web, Magnet Summaries, and RAFT.

Tompkins, G. (2008). 50 Literacy Strategies: Step-by-Step (3rd Edition). Prentice Hall.

Like Buehl's book, I have bought and worn out each edition of this book. Although geared more for elementary students, I have found the ideas to be highly adaptable for middle school and a few for high school. Like others, Tompkins explains, models and provides student examples of each of the 50 strategies. I especially like the Open-Mind portraits, in which students draw a portrait of the character and then, using a second paper, draw and/or write about the feelings and thoughts of the character, which can be revealed by opening the portrait. Another favorite is Plot Profiles, in which students graph the important events of a book and rate them for excitement/tension.

Wilhelm, J. D. (2002). Action strategies for deepening comprehension: Role plays, text-structure tableaux, talking statues, and other enactment techniques that engage students with text. New York: Scholastic.

This is one of the books in Scholastic's Theory and Practice series, which are all great books that link theory to practice in a clear and concise manner. This particular book encourages teachers to help students literally embody text through drama, tableaux and other enactment techniques. Each chapter focuses on a technique and gives a little of the theory, but really expands on the practical aspects of the technique such as how to plan for and introduce it to students, assessment and multiple ways to adapt the technique. With the addition of real life examples and voices from the field, this book truly achieves praxis.

Burke, J. (2002). Tools for thought: Graphic organizers for your classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.

Yes, another Burke book – but so worth it! This is a great complement to Buehl's Classroom Strategies. As the title suggests, this is all about graphic organizers for content area reading and writing at the secondary-level. Although most of the examples come from English classes, most can be adapted for other content areas. The “tools” he provides are graphic organizers that are generic enough to be adaptable to many situations and are more about the thinking processes than the particular reading or writing task. Having introduced many of these tools to my students, over time, I saw their independent use of the strategies to help organize their thinking outside of my classroom. Some favorites include: Episodic Notes (story-boarding), Target Notes (identifying the main point of inquiry and elaborate on it), and Think in Threes (to expand diametric thinking).

Bromley, K. DeVities, L.I. & Modlo, M. (1999) 50 Graphic organizers for reading, writing and more. New York: Scholastic.

Targeted at grades 4-8, this book provides templates and examples of typical graphic organizers for Language Arts such as T-Charts, KWL Chart, Coat of Arms, and Venn Diagrams. This is great for making large posters (laminated) for the classroom as there is ample space to write. Although the templates are elementary looking, I have adapted many of the ideas for high school. One of my favorites is Getting Into Character Map, in which students draw the character and label the body with the various thoughts, feelings and actions of the character (located by the eyes, ears, mouth, heart, hands and feet).

Cerveny, C. & LaCotti, M. (2003). 35 Learning tools for practicing essential reading and writing strategies: Mini-lessons with reproducible bookmarks, checklists, strategy cards, trifolds and more. New York: Scholastic.

Geared toward grades 4-8, this book provides many templates for creating posters or handouts to remind students of important strategies when reading/writing. I've photocopies the Discussion Starters bookmarks on card stock and was amazed at how many of my middle-schoolers requested them. There are bookmarks for writing also, but I found they were more helpful enlarged into posters to develop a consistent language about responding to reading through writing, such as the RARE answer to a question that Restates, Answers, Revists for examples, and Explains.

Silberman, M. (1996). Active learning: 101 strategies to teach any subject. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

The author begins with a very brief overview of the theories behind active learning and moves quickly into the strategies, which cover all aspects of a lesson from grouping, team-building, assessment, discussion, and reviewing. Grounded in practicalities, each strategy gives an overview, a bullet procedure list, and variations. Some of my favorites include Jigsaw Learning (helping students teach students), Bumper Stickers (summary of learning), and Lecture Bingo. Many of these strategies can be adapted to any age level, including college, and especially useful for teachers moving to a block schedule.

Websites

Instructional Strategies for Engaging Learners – Guilford

http://its.guilford.k12.nc.us/act/strategies/

This site has three links: Activating Strategies, Cognitive Strategies (comprehension and retention), and Summarizing Strategies. Each link has about a dozen strategies and each strategy includes a description, procedures and examples. My favorite summarizing strategies include Final Countdown and Shaping Up Review, which I have used from middle-school to college level.

Glossary of Instructional Strategies

http://glossary.plasmalink.com/glossary.html

Being a glossary, there isn't much of an explanation, but there are 1271 strategies or methods listed with brief definitions and some have links to more information.

Teacher Professional Development Resources

2010-08-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

Adult Learning

Knowles, M. (1984). The adult learner: A neglected species. (3rd ed.), Houston: Gulf Publishing.

Knowles, M. (1984). Andragogy in action: Applying modern principles of adult education. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Knowles created the foundation of the modern concept of andragogy, or teaching theory and strategies which focus on the adult learner. He proses several key characteristics of working with adult learners: 1) They need a purpose for learning 2) They need to make their own choices in the learning process 3) Their experiences should be central to the learning process 4) Learning need to be relevant to their needs 5) Self-motivation is greater than external motivators 6) Learning should be problem-focused, not content focused.

Teacher Learning

Although this chapter focuses on pre-service and novice teachers, there are many ideas that can be applied to teachers who are learning new techniques or methods. The authors contend that teachers need to be “adaptive experts” (p. 360) who are able to balance efficiency and innovation to effectively respond to complex classroom needs. To become an expert, a teacher must be motivated to be a lifelong learner, which requires deep reflection about teaching practices. The balance between efficiency, with routines and procedures, and innovation to adapt to individual learning needs is best supported through collegial work with more expert teachers. This allows the novice to address preconceptions, see the work in action, and be more meta-cognitive about the practice.

Professional Development

“Any design for improved professional learning must be grounded in the cornerstones of education: what needs to be learned (content), the nature of that content and what that implies about how it might be learned (theories of learning), curriculum and pedagogy (with what material and in what ways the learners can be helped to learn that content, given who they are, the nature of what there is to be learned, and theories of how it is best learned)” (p. 6) [Bold mine]. Although it sounds obvious, much of the professional development that teachers endure don't address the fundamentals of good pedagogy. The author break down each area with questions that professional development programs should ask before implementation.

Teaching and Learning Symposium 2010 - Day 2

2010-05-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

When Bad Things Happen to Good Classes – James Wells & Eileen Callahan

Case Study discussions of ethical issues in higher education.

Letters of Recommendation –

Much of these issues have to do with relationship building. Undergrads especially need to know that part of their job as a student is to get to know the professors and, although the onus may be on the student to do this, the professor needs to create a positive and open environment that invites students into this academic relationship. Student need to be interacting with faculty early in their career and not wait until the last year.

However, if an average or mediocre student asks for a letter, how can a professor handle it? In writing a letter, one must be honest about the student in a respectful way as this is an issue of credibility. In addition, this opens the opportunity to have an honest conversation about the student's characteristics.

Group Work -

The most important issue to address in using group work is the pedagogical reason for it. Does group work provide a better avenue to accomplish the task compared to individual assignments? In addition, there is a difference between cooperative work and collaborative work, therefore the task set needs to match the structure. Cooperative work means that students just need to work together, whereas collaboration requires student to depend on each other's work to accomplish the task.

Once a teacher decides on group work, it is the teacher's responsibility to provide the training and tools for students to be successful in the group work. Too often teachers assume students know how to work together, yet few have had the opportunity to participate in or observe positive group work. (Almost all students have stories of horrible experiences.) Various supports could include having students create group contracts which address deadlines, responsibilities and conflict; periodic reflective writing; peer assessment; and practice within class.

Connectedness of Faculty -

How connected should professors be? 24/7? Set times? Part of the advantage of technology is that people are available at all times, yet that can create unrealistic expectations. Instructors need to be especially clear with how and when they expect to be contacted. Face-to-face office hours are typical, which can be translated to on-line chat.

Student Write to Learn: How instructors are engaging their students through online quizzing, writing, and feedback – Robert Jeanne, Lillian Tong, Amber Smith

We know that writing increases thinking, especially when the writing is exploratory and reflective, Yet in large classes, there is little opportunity for writing and instructor feedback.

Feedback Manager, done in Moodle quizzing module, allows for large scale responses from students. The instructor asks an open-ended question online, the students answer. The instructor reads the responses. The instructor creates generic “tags” - ie, Didn't follow directions. Excellent thinking. Did you think about . . . In addition, the instructor can add individual comments. All students then receive comments via email. This is very similar to computerized report cards with a list of about 50 comments. However, the instructor sets the comments for the assignment – which makes it more relevant.

Even though the responses are semi-personalized, students found it useful to know that instructors were reading and commenting on their work. Plus, with more, but smaller writing assignments, student understanding was better developed and assessed. There were multiple examples of how various instructors implemented this Feedback Manager in large classes (150+) in chemistry, biology, and ecology.

Teaching and Learning Symposium 2010

2010-05-19T12:34:00.001-07:00

Learning Partnerships that Promote Learning and Self-Authorship - Marcia Baxter Magolda

What is the purpose of higher education? There are several possible responses to this: to get a good paying job, to create well-rounded individuals, and/or to train someone for a particular job/career. Yet, Magolda has a slightly different perspective – to help young adults through the process of self-authorship for their adult lives. Self-authorship is the ability to personally define a set of beliefs and identity in which to guide interaction with other people and the world. However, according to her research, some people (in all age groups) stagnate at the developmental stage of “Following External Formulas”. In other words, depending on experts or authority to define the facts, beliefs and requirements. This is the student who happily and diligently takes notes in class and can parrot back the information. It is an easy form of “learning” as it is just information consumption. When students/people get to the point of questioning experts and authority, they are at the “Crossroads” stage. As the apt metaphors implies, the person stands in the midst of several possible pathways/beliefs and must consider each. There is a recognition that no single way is the only way, yet as a student, this becomes frustrating. It is not easy learning, but rather, mentally exhausting. Through testing out ideas and sometimes making false starts and back tracking, students are able to articulate their own ideas, beliefs and opinions, yet at the same time, be open enough to truly listen to others. This, in Magolda’s terms is “Self-Authoring”. Is higher education the only way to achieve self-authorship? Certainly not, but it should be a place where this is a major goal.

To reach this goal, teacher/mentors need to build developmental bridges at the leading edge of the person’s developmental phase and, as a partner, walk along side them on the bridge. This metaphor is quite compatible with constructivist pedagogy. Rather than pulling students kicking and screaming into new understandings, guidance is provided to lead them through the content and processes needed. Meeting students where they are, knowing where they want/should go, and providing opportunities for them to achieve this is a tremendous task for teachers/mentors.

Magolda has developed these ideas through a 24 year study. Quite impressively, the group began with 101 college freshman, then 80 graduating seniors, and just recently, follow-up with 36 of the original group. Her study has been reported in various books including: Authoring Your Life, Making Their Own Way, and Knowing and Reasoning in College. The application of these ideas can be found in Creating Contexts for Learning and Self-Authorship: Constructive-Developmental Pedagogy and Learning Partnerships.

I am interested in seeing more about the “Bridges”. How do I guide students through the various phases of reasoning, and especially when there would be students of all phases within one class? In a traditional sense, this would be called differentiation of curriculum, but it is more than a focus on ability or skill, but a recognition of individual reasoning and identity formation.

AERA 2010 - Graduate Student Council

2010-05-02T23:39:00.000-07:00

As I am making the transition from student to scholar, I especially appreciate the work of the Graduate Student Council (GSC) at AERA. The graduate student room is an amazing place to meet people, gather your thoughts, and gear up for the next session. In addition, the sessions that the GSC sponsor are some of the best at the conference, with a focus on interactivity and mentoring the graduate student. I enjoyed the orientation session on Friday night, as it gave me the opportunity to get to know fellow grad students who I continued to bump into throughout the conference. This helps me connect to the conference; when I can walk into a session and wave to someone I know and afterwards have a confidant to talk with about the session.

Throughout the conference, I targeted the Fireside Chats, sponsored by the GSC and specific divisions. These sessions are improvisational, filled with timely advice, and interactive. The session GSC Division E Fireside Chat: The In Between: How to Use My Time Wisely was filled with practical and inspirational advice for the student-scholar transition. The panel was responsive to the immediate questions of the audience and clearly take the role of mentor seriously. Here are some of the highlights:

Know your own personal path and make choices to keep you on the path.
Focus on filling the gaps in your CV – teaching, research, publishing, etc. It may be useful to delay graduation to fill the gap, but don't delay too long.
Get published – the sooner the better, even if it is in smaller journals
Get on committees (but not ones that are too time consuming).
Do a post-doc only if it will advance your personal path.
Be able to articulate not only your past work, but clearly know your future research agenda.

Another interesting point made was about creating support systems. It is fairly obvious that to make it through graduate school, then as an junior scholar, then through tenure, support is needed. However, one of the panelists had a nice way of identifying the people in her life as supports and recommended evaluating the reciprocity of the relationships. If the relationship isn't working, then it might be time to “prune” the person.

3 Tiers of Support

People who help you get the job done.
People who are steps ahead of you and can mentor you.
People who are social supports – need work/life balance.

Two Bumper Sticker Phrases:

Rejection is a part of academia. Get used to it. Move on.

Define success for yourself and move towards it. Don't buy into the institution's view of success.

AERA 2010 Day 1 - Part 2

2010-05-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

A National Study of Writing Across the Curriculum in Middle and High Schools

Background to the Study *Arthur Applebee

A Case Study of the Influence of Kentucky State Testing on Student Writing *Linda L. Baker

English-Language Learners and Writing Across the Disciplines *Kristen C. Wilcox

Science and Mathematics Writing *Marc Nachowitz

The Teaching of Writing Today *Judith A. Langer

Appleebee and Langer are major figures in my review of literature, so I was quite excited to be able to see them in person. The study they and their colleagues presented is a massive undertaking involving middle and high schools in five states and in multiple subject areas (hence, “writing across the curriculum” WAC). Data collection includes observations, interviews, and student artifacts and has generated thousands of pieces of work to look at. Langer mentioned that this was an update to studies Applebee completed in the late 1970s.

Baker specifically looked at Kentucky and discussed some of the negative effects of the portfolios introduced a few years ago, which have since been repealed. During the time of the data collection, the researchers found teachers were instructing in limited genres to have student produce writing for the portfolios. In addition, there seemed to be a lack of authentic writing, again, because of the desire to produce for the portfolios. To me, this doesn't seem too shocking. Once a school, district, or state mandates a certain type of portfolio structure, it will create standardized forms of work. If the goal is to compare students against one another, then the forms of writing will be dictated. In contrast, if the goal is to help improve writing, then students need to be actively involved in the creation of their own portfolio – to show growth and revision, best pieces, and reflection on their individual writing process. This can't be standardized.

Nachowitz discussed the ways content area teachers tend to approach the writing tasks required: 1) emphasis on content 2) Domain specific 3) Genre based. For those schools in which WAC was deeply embedded, students were working within domain specific and genre based writing. Writing was used as a means of learning, not just assessing learning and writing. (Writing as a heuristic – how to think like a mathematician, scientist, geographer etc.) In addition, the content area teachers believed writing was an integral part of their subjects, not just as a favor to the ELA teachers. From this, Langer mentioned that the direction for research may be a need to look at what is appropriate writing instruction for the disciplines, rather than a universal recommendation for all teachers.

For more information about the study, go to: The National Study of Writing Instruction,

http://www.albany.edu/cela/

AERA 2010 Day 1

2010-05-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

I was shocked to find so few blogs about the experience of AERA 2010. I'm used to NECC (now ISTE) which lists the bloggers on the home page of the conference. This allows for attendees to catch up on the sessions they missed. There are so many interesting topics here in Denver, and no one can see them all. I appreciate the effort AERA is making to create a paper repository, but it would be nice to see more blogging, webcasting and/or podcasting of sessions.

The first session I attended was tremendous - Reciprocity and Collaboration in Qualitative Research

Building a Stance of Reciprocity Into Research Designs *Audrey A. Trainor *Katherine Bouchard

Creative Nonfiction as an Experiment in Reflexivity, Vulnerability, and Meaning Making *Danielle M. Cowley

Developing Participant-Centered Research Methodologies *Heeral Mehta-Parekh

In Pursuit of Reciprocity: Researchers, Teachers, and School Reformers Engaged in Collaborative Analysis of Video Records *Marnie Curry

Reflective Processes in Qualitative Data Analysis *Luigina Mortari *Chiara Sita

Discussant: Hillevi Lenz Taguchi

Trainor and Bouchard discussed a stance of reciprocity – which means a shared design and implementation of research. Bouchard expounded on several ways of looking at providing reciprocity: as an economic negotiation, as a service/labor exchange, as a collaboration, or as giving back to the profession in general. They both challenge the idea that just disseminating results isn't a fair exchange. In addition, reciprocity should be part of the entire design, not just a part of the recruitment of participants. However, it is also a negotiation, as not all participants wish to be fully or actively involved in the project. Cowley discusses using creative non-fiction as a way to better connect or situate one's self in the research context. Although she confessed she had no idea why she was scheduled with the reciprocity group, her creative story of her as a researcher reaching back to her middle school days, did tie nicely with Mehta's idea of participant centered research. Mehta used several ways to invite active participation in generating ideas, rather than just interviews. She tried using reflexive photography and artifact centered conversations with her participants. Then, to capture the adolescents real words, she created “found poems” of their conversations. Curry provided examples of co-construction of analysis of videos of lesson studies. Not only did the participants look at the video data, but they were invited to view the researchers coding the video data, which opened the process of the research to the participants.

This session brought out a lot of interesting questions for me, when entering a research site. Should researchers strive for reciprocity? Do participants really want it? How does it change the relationship of researcher and participant? Is it really possible to have a balanced reciprocal relationship? Do and/or can both parties get what they want? What are the ethics of reciprocity?

I think this is a sign of a really great session – when one walks out with more ideas to ponder than when one walked in.

Democratic Schools a book by Michael Apple & James Beane

2009-12-03T18:52:00.000-08:00

For most people, democracy has been defined as a governmental system, not as the foundational values and principles of a society, such as the concern for rights and dignity of others, being informed and active about social and political issues, with a focus on being critical citizens. I don't remember civics in high school and only vaguely remember it in college, but the focus was on the governmental structures and voting. Trying to image democratic schools is even more difficult, which is the point of this book – to give models of classrooms and schools that embody more than just student voice, but that the whole design of the curriculum, environment, and personal relationships is based on balancing the rights and dignity of individuals with the needs of the collective good.

One of the most powerful quotes, that I think should be at the front of every school building, is that education must “never forget it is dealing with Souls and not Dollars” (p. 23). I think this imperative has become reversed – with too many schools focusing on the dollars generated by test scores and grants, rather than the children being served. This has led to “the feelings of frustration and sometimes cynicism that many educators and community members experience [as] the result of not hearing each others stories” (p. 24).

LaEscuela was a clear example of how a grass-roots movement can make change within a seemingly unchangeable system. The list of problems they faced, on page 32, is the reality of most reforms – resistance from many fronts including administrator, teachers, parents and the public, plus money, materials and time. However, it is clear that with determination and vision, LaEscuela was able to accomplish its goals and continues to support democratic methods. What I found interesting was the recognition that the process of developing LaEscuela is on-going to continually regenerate the understanding of the uniting philosophy that founded the school. As some of the other examples in the book show, if the founding team leaves and the philosophy isn't continually renewed, the school disintegrates. Also, LaEscuela uses many ideas that are often touted as “best practices” such as cooperative learning, thematic units, cross age tutoring, whole language, and common planning time. However, what makes LaEscuela unique is using so many of these practices to compliment each other and as a foundation of its philosophy. Each of these practices, individually, has little impact on student learning – but together are very powerful. Reflection is also built into most of what happens in the school – and not just for the students, but the teachers, administrative team and parents.

Cabrini Green shows what happens when kids are asked real questions without preordained answers -the students became active participants in their own learning and were able to read and write well above their grade level when the motivation was intrinsic. In addition, test scores went up without specific focus on test prep. This doesn't surprise me, but I certainly understand how scary releasing that much control is for teachers and I've heard the types of criticisms he heard. But, it ties well with the classroom described at O'Keefe, where students were actively involved in planning, assessing and participating in curriculum development. I was able to do similar things at my school in Lithuania, which was fostered by several factors (some of which Barbara Brodhagen mentions): a supportive but uninvolved administrator, small class size, interdisciplinary block scheduling, lack of textbooks, and creative students and teacher. The two years in which I taught 6/7 grade social studies, language arts and science was the most challenging, yet productive time in my teaching career, and quite rewarding. I provided overview of topics such as Ancient Egypt or China and the students created questions, gathered materials, designed products and assessments and performed for authentic audiences. I was also able to have student-led parent conferences, which were a joy to watch.

I love the quote from CityWorks, “You can't learn to be good at something you've never experienced” (p. 133) and schools are good places to learn real democratic principles. I would whole heartily agree – and this should also be the basis of our teacher training. However, as it later states, “Until we understand what it takes to nourish the successful innovations and their offspring, we will always be starting over from scratch” (p. 147). This, I think, is one of the major take-aways from this book. Good things are happening in schools around the country, however, they are not being published nor sustained. Most people can sprint 100 yards – but it is those who plan, train and have a supportive team that can finish the marathon. This should be our goal!

Apple, M. W., & Beane, J. A. (Eds.) (1995). Democratic Schools. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Multiculturalism - Whatever that is . . .

2009-11-11T21:08:00.000-08:00

At the end of last week's class, the professor said, “We'll be reading about multiculturalism, whatever that means...” which is a true assessment of my experience of this model of curriculum theorizing. As an undergraduate, I had a class in Multiculturalism, which focused on a representational model – make sure all students are represented in the textbooks, choose novels with diverse characters, and allow students to bring their home cultures in to the classroom. However, as the readings for this week show – there is a lot more to it than just an add-on in the curriculum, it is a way of thinking about the world.

One of the more recent theories about race and culture is critical race theory (CRT). Ladson-Billings' (2009) article states that there are three themes to CRT: although laws guide actions, often other factors influence decisions just as much; politics and the law are imperfect; politics and the law serve the interests of those in power; and the law is inherently contradictory as it tries to serve the individual and the society. It is clear that laws, throughout history, have enforced the power for those with power. For example, the Greek definition of citizenship narrowed the definition to male adults of citizens. Immigrants could not be citizens, and by that token, nor could their children. As the US was formed, citizenship was defined by landownership, family holdings, and gender. It denied voting rights to women and non-whites. Thomas Jefferson (1787) feared massive immigrations and stated, “They [emigrants] will infuse into it [government] their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass” (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 8). It seems this fear has become an integral part of American government, as only laws have forced voting rights for non-male/white people and tried to negate the importance of property. However, like Ladson-Billings & Tates (1995) original article on CRT in Education stated, race continues to be a significant factor in inequality in the US and societal relationships continue to be based on property rights – and both shape how schooling and education happens. Most of school funding still comes from property taxes – which is inherently unequal. It seems a no-brainer to understand that well-funded schools tend to have more materials, higher paid teachers (which tend to be better and are retained longer), and higher achieving students. Understanding the effects of race means looking systemically at not just schools, but neighborhoods and politics – which is the point of CRT.

Geneva Gay (2004) returns to the school to look at the importance of multicultural education. She supports curriculum development that not only equitably represents the diversity of American society but is also presented in a relevant manner to students – not just as an add-on or token, but as an integral part of teaching and learning. I find that my student teachers are very good at representing diverse voices, but struggle much more with making content relevant. Most come from solidly middle-class white backgrounds and they succeeded with traditional methods of teaching. Pushing them to think beyond their own experiences is tough, and they tend to default to the discourse of “it is the kid's responsibility to be motivated and ready to learn” or to the discourse of dumbing-down the content. As I have mentioned before, there are not a lot of positive models of culturally relevant pedagogy around here.

I agree that school climate is a major factor in a child's successful journey through the system. When students are bullied and harassed, for whatever reason (race, sex, religion, sexual orientation) the physical and mental energy that should go to learning is rallied to protect themselves. Our school system, with the implicit assumptions that go with the factory model of teaching, doesn't recognize or give time and space to the affective component of learning. Bullying is usually dealt with using a zero-tolerance punishment model, rather than looking at the root causes. Like any other band-aid on a deep wound, it will still bleed through.

References

Gay, G. (2004). The importance of multicultural education. Educational Leadership, 61(4), 30-35.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2009). Race still matters: Critical race theory in education. In Apple, M.W., Au, W. & Gandin, L.A. (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of critical education. New York: Routledge.

Schools, Tools and Other Such Things

2009-10-15T23:49:00.000-07:00

Tyack (1974) shows that the one, best system, as founded by the social engineers for education in the mid to late 1800s was the factory model, in which education became a function, not a cause. The function was to create modern workers for an industrialized society. The self-sufficient household and village was becoming an interdependent, specialized municipality. The larger, more crowded cities demanded regulatory institutions, such as police, health service, and education. Educational leaders used data (such as standardized tests) to promote the creation of bureaucracies to regulate and assess schools, based on efficiency references from the military, factory, and railroad. This lead to the creation and use of textbooks, grade levels, and multiple forms of data collection, including attendance and test scores. The purpose of education became only marginally about knowledge acquisition. Instead, it was used to teach the control of body, promote competition, enforce order/discipline, train workers, and impose a common culture in a diverse population.

In general, teachers are slow adopters of new technology, unless the technology improves a specific, teacher identified problem and the technology is flexible, versatile and portable and supports teacher authority. However,Cuban (1986) states, there are many other reasons given for the slow adoption of technology (specifically of radio, TV and film) such as: the lack of accessibility and reliability of the technology: authoritative mandates to use the technology, often by non-educators; the conflicting demands of the teaching environment; and a traditional culture of teaching that is reinforced by experience. Teachers who willingly adopt new technologies tend to do it not because of the technology itself, but because they may have non-traditional philosophies of education, use the technology to solve a specific problem, or have different expectations of the educational process. After looking at the failure to adopt radio, TV, and film technologies, Cuban moves on to questioning the implementation of computers in schools. He posits that more fundamental questions need to be asked when implementing a technology into schools such as: What is the nature of teaching and learning? What is the purpose of teaching and learning? How do people learn and teachers teach? Without asking these questions, the question of how or why a technology is or is not adopted in schools is very one-dimensional. As, Latour seems to indicate, we can not study people without studying the interactions of humans and non-humans.

Although schools tends to be an individual task, we need to take a broader view of how the school impacts and reflects the larger society. Dewey (1900)`confirms Tyack's later conclusion that schools at the turn of the century had reflected the industrialization of America. Dewey traces the education of the home/farm/village, which tended to be cooperative, necessary, and intrinsically motivating to the urban schools of competition, inauthentic subjects, and extrinsic motivation. Even the introduction of manual training in schools, which mimics home education, according to Dewey, shows that the “real” education has been supplanted by schooling. Dewey then describes his ideal school based on the study and investigation of occupations, which supports an integration of history, science and social understanding in an authentic and constructivist manner.

Since the theme of these readings is “School as a Tool” I read each of the authors with that in mind. Since no single tool can do everything for everyone, and is dependent on context and purpose, these authors try to define or explain how school can be a tool to achieve certain purposes. The purpose of the tool influences the design of the tool, but the design of the tool also influences the use of the tool. Since the tool is in constant use, it would be difficult to radically change it (as in, a moving part is hard to fix). Therefore, the current (traditional) forms of schooling tend to be the dominant method, rather than a radical transformation like Dewey envisioned or the adoption of new technology (and resultant revolution), as Cuban describes.

References

Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and machines: The classroom use of technology since 1920. New York: Teachers College Press.

Dewey, J. (1900). The school and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Tyack, DB (1974). The one best system. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Cognition and Tool Use

2009-10-07T21:21:00.000-07:00

“A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.” – Emo Philips

In tracing the development of the modern mind, Donald and Shaffer/Kaput highlight the major cognitive transformations which allowed for new ways of remembering, retrieving and ultimately, defining human culture. What makes humans unique from animals is the ability to represent ideas through symbols or other representations. These symbols can be creatively designed, voluntarily retrieved and, taught, often through imitation. The whole body can be used to represent an idea or event, either remembered or created. In addition, human ability to speak allows for faster and more efficient transference of information, but isn't the only form of communication available. This allowed for things like tool making and expression of the past to be taught, which included the need to remember. However, this, in turn, created more complexity in social life, as longer memory was needed to coordinate daily and communal life. Therefore external memory forms were needed, such as graphic representations and text. This then forced the human brain to develop more abstract ways of thinking, remembering, and recalling information. However, Shaffer/Kaput argue further that the computer allows for much deeper cognition, as it performs lower level processing (so the person doesn't have to), which allows the person to focus more on the representation of thinking, not just the process of thinking.

Donald states, “This suggests that high levels of literacy skill may entail considerable costs, as indeed has been suggested by literature comparing the cognitive competences of oral cultures with those of literate. Oral memory and visual imagery are often listed among the skills that may have been traded off against literacy.” (p.746) My question – Is this truly a cognitive difference or is it a socially created difference? In other words – nature vs nurture?

I also find it a little ironic that Donald uses the metaphor of the human brain as a computational machine with external memory and processing capabilities, whereas Turkle is playing down the computational and processing capabilities of the computer in order to highlight the human-like abilities of simulation and interaction within computer.

Which leads to Turkle's discussion of identity in the age of the internet. She believes that the computer has gone beyond just being a tool or mirror of humans, but rather a place people go to create new identities and communities. As this is happening, the space between “real” life and virtual life is slowly diminishing. Many Multi-User Domains(MUD) users believe their virtual lives are as real and important as their “real” lives. From the earliest paper and dice games like Dungeons and Dragons, MUD allow people to be more than players; they become authors, who can create an identical persona or wildly different one. And, with anonymity, they can try out several different identities. “Windows have become a powerful metaphor for thinking about the self as a multiple, distributed system” (p. 14). These identities are formed by choice and my the identity inflicted on the user by the environment and other users – which makes it fluid and constantly changing. At times, it is difficult to see the difference between a person created character or a machine created character. The form and function of the computer has and is changing rapidly, and with it, brings a sense of “instability of meanings and the lack of universal and knowable truths” (p. 18)

At one time, people with multiple personalities were consider to be possessed my demons or mentally ill. However, Turkle sites that some MUD users who have multiple characters, often with extremely different personalities and goals. Is this self-medication of sorts for people who feel splintered by modern life? Or, does acting out these lives make if more difficult to accept “real” life? Will it become the norm to have a real life and multiple cyberlives? And those who choose not to partake, will they be the ones considered mentally ill?

“Mathematics is not about calculations . . . [it] is about understanding a problem, representing it in an external processing system and being able to use the information produced . . . in a meaningful way.” (Shaffer/Kaput, p. 111). For as much as computers are accepted at home, I am still amazed at the arguments and recriminations for using calculators in the math classroom and audio books in English. How can we help people see that this isn't just taking shortcuts, but just the tools that they are, which allow students to think more deeply about topics, rather than focus on basic skills?

References

Donald, M., (1993). Precis of Origins of the Modern Mind with multiple reviews and author's response. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16:4, pp. 737-91

Shaffer, D., & Kaput, J. (1999). Mathematics and virtual culture: An evolutionary perspective on technology and mathematics education. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 37, 97–119.
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster

Intersection of Tools and Culture

2009-10-05T19:37:00.000-07:00

Pea (2004 ) believes that intelligence is not an individual, solitary thing – though in our modern society, we try to measure it as such. Instead, proposes Pea, intelligence/knowledge is multiple and distributed across people and environments. In using intelligence, humans have desires (4 types), in which they create and use tools to achieve these desires. Each tool has accordances – that is the “perceives and actual properties of the ting, primarily those functional properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used”(p. 51). The tools can also be said to be “intelligent” itself, as the tool defines its purpose and the task. But, as tools become accepted, the intelligence within is less evident. Tools can amplify human intelligence, but Pea posits that they are more reorganizers of mental functioning – that people change what they do, not just how they do it. However, education seems to be unaware of this, and continues to adopt technologies without considering the trade-offs, or does not adopt the tool, even though it is part of everyday life.

Postman (1993) has a lot to say, but it basically boils down to this – all technologies have both blessings and burdens. Too often, people either fully embrace or fully reject a technology. In doing so, the complex relationship of the cultural, social and systematic change borne from the technology is not fully examined.

Illich (1973) proposes a new society – one that he names a convivial society, in which the tools people use allow for autonomy and creative interactions between people and their environments. In doing so, three values would be protected; survival, justice, and self-defined work. In our current society, too often, people become slaves to the tools – whether it is an institution (like school) or a machine (like an airplane). In our modern society, the use of industrial tools has spawned a world-wide homogenization of culture, in which people are trying to fit in. (ie – schools look about the same, factories look about the same). “A convivial society should be designed to allow all its members the most autonomous action by means of tools least controlled by others” (p.21). He goes on to define tools as “ all rationally designed devices, by they artifacts or rules, codes or operators, and to distinguish all these planned and engineered instrumentalities from other things such as basic food or implements, which in a given culture are not deemed to be subject to rationalization” (p. 22). He believes that hand tools, those that adapt a person's metabolic energy to a specific tacks, tend to be more convivial, as almost anyone can use for his/her own purposes, as compared to power tools, which often subsume the users to a mere operator. However, manipulative tools (those in which create gaps between have/have not) can not be fully abolished, instead, a balance between manipulative and empowering tools is necessary. Which leads to the definition of work (satisfying, creative and independent), labor (doing for the benefit of a master/exploitive), operative ( earned through consumption and privileged experience). In modern society, technological progress tends to widen the gap between rich and poor. Often the “progress” is only for individual gain, not societal good. And, in doing so, deprives the majority of further independence, self-worth, and efficacy.

Johnson (1988) argues that as we delegate more of human activity to tools/technology, the general public tends to humanize the technologies and apply human characteristics to them. If a person's perception is their reality, then non-human technologies, designated as human, must be an important factor in society, and by extension, in sociology.

It seems to me that Illich (1973) is suggesting that specialized knowledge has little place in his convivial society, as we should be able to heal ourselves etc. I struggle to imagine his ideal convivial society in the context of our modern technologies and societal demands – would it even be possible? Which, is maybe his point – we would have to have a radical revolution in order for this to happen. I couldn't help but think of Stephan King's The Stand while reading. When 75% of the world's population dies, how do the survivors re-engineer society when many of the specialists are dead? Well, new people become specialists, but with more of a focus of committees. (That on the “good” side – the bad side is just a dictator.) Postman's (1993) predictions are scarily accurate in many cases. What frustrates me is that he warns, but doesn't have alternatives. Though, Illich's alternative seems unrealistic, at least he has a vision. Pea (2004) begins to indicate the implications of a new definition of intelligence on education.

References

Illich, I. (1973). Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper and Row.

Johnson, J (aka Latour, B.) (1988). Mixing humans and nonhumans together: the sociology of

a door-closer. Social Problems, Vol. 35 No.3, pp.298-310.

Pea, R. D. (2004) Practices of distributed intelligences and designs for education. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed Cognitions. (pp. 88-110).

Postman, N. (1993). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. NewYork: Vintage Books.

Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction ~ Ralph Tyler

2009-09-08T17:34:00.000-07:00

I was very sad while reading this book. It would seem that if Tyler's assertions were basic principles then most people should know them – especially as it is 60 years later and should be well developed. But, it seems, his thoughts have been buried with other great ideas like the library at Alexandria.

When I first began teaching, I was handed a curriculum guide that achieved its effects like “water dripping upon a stone” (p. 83) wearing away at the children. The guide was clearly designed by “experts” - mostly, the textbooks available and the former teachers. Although the objectives were clear, it was based strictly on knowledge and skill, not developing “modes of thinking or critical interpretation, emotional reaction, interests and the like” (p. 29). It was so detailed that it indicated the number of days to spend on each unit. With all the fragmented lessoning (it wasn't learning) going on, it seemed, as Tyler also stated, “Many educational programs do not have clearly defined purposes” (p.3). I don't think I've ever taught in a school that did have a clearly defined purpose. Of course, they all had philosophy statements and curriculum guides, but what actually happened in the classrooms was frequently inconsistent and incongruent.

If education is, as Tyler states, “a process of changing behavior patterns . . . includ[ing] thinking and feeling as well as overt action” (p. 5-6) then an understanding of the students, the standard, the expectations of society etc. would be necessary. However, I am a little uncomfortable with this definition, because it would seem to indicate indoctrination, which, if the uproar over Obama's education speech to students is any indication, is a poor choice of words. But, looking at his treatment of the word “need” in education, I relaxed a bit. In the first definition, it means taking the information about a learner and comparing it to a standard with the difference being the space for educational need. The second definition has a more psychological slant – that being that all people have physical, social and integrative needs and education should help satisfy and balance these needs. I believe I will have to ponder this a while longer, as I, myself, do not have a ready definition for “education”.

I have been in two schools in which the philosophy and mission statements were “updated” yet neither school really addressed defining what they believed was the purpose of education. Tyler mentions the various tensions that can be raised between the “essentialists” and “progressives”, the subject area specialist and the child-centered teacher etc. I think this tension exists in every school, but there is very little opportunity to address the tension and build a shared vision of the school's purpose and philosophy. At the beginning of the year, too many schools rush teachers through multiple in-services on multiple topics, without considering this basic question – what is our purpose.

One of the most significant influences on my teaching was when I came to understand, as Tyler states, “a smaller number of consistent highly important objectives need to be selected” (p.33). I attended Harvard's Project Zero one summer and was introduced to the idea of Thoroughline, or more commonly called, Essential Questions. This made me seriously consider the design of my own curriculum – taking in account the school's mandates, my own professional knowledge, the various needs of the students, and a need to balance preparing students for was is and what will be. When I work with student teachers, this is one of the most complicated areas to explain. Tyler suggests that objectives can be attained from at least five areas of information, with multiple forms of data within each area. To be able to synthesize all that information and create “objectives in a form to be helpful in selecting learning experiences and in guiding teaching” (p. 43) is a major undertaking. One of my former colleagues, who just began her tenth year of teaching stated incredulously, “It seems that my teaching is smooth and fluid – what am I doing differently this year?” I replied, “Practice and experience. Now, go teach that to novice teachers!”

Reference

Tyler, R. (1951) Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Globalization, Global Citizenship, and International Schools

2009-05-12T18:43:00.000-07:00

Globalization is not new – though the current form is probably the most well-documented and researched. Tilly (2004) talks about the three forms of globalization – migration of population; spread of ideas, techniques and forms of organization; and increased coordination of activities at a world scale. Throughout history, people have always felt the “grass was greener” somewhere else, from the first humans who left Africa to find more verdant lands to the post-WWII flight from Eastern Europe to escape crushing memories and destruction. Each time, the immigrants brought with them their traditions, culture and way of life and, even when pressured to conform, the two (or more) cultures melded – or as Bhabha (1994) would say, created hybridization. Throughout the middle ages, kingdoms and fiefdoms fought each other and gained power through mutual alliances. In Cleopatra's time, she formed an alliance with Julius Caesar in order to promote Egypt's place in the Roman Empire. Within the last 60 years, the United States has become a world power - meaning that the ideas, fads, fashions, commerce and businesses of the US were replicated, extended, and adopted by other people and countries.

As a backlash to the “Americanization” of the world, new forms of organization are becoming the ruling class of the world – World Bank, European Union, and the World Trade Organization,and the International Monetary Fund. The increased coordination of activities at a world scale is what is new with this current incarnation of globalization. In the past, the conqueror would determine how activities were organized with in the empire – and generally the conquered would be forced to adopt most of the conqueror's ways. The Roman Empire built extensive roads in order to better administrate their lands. The Islamic Empire was united through religion. The British Empire dominated through colonization and conversion. However, today, the coordination is through economic means, and is not confined to a single country or government. Multi-national companies and international cooperatives are determining the day-to-day activities of a major chunk of the world. According to Newsweek, the top ten global companies are Wal-Mart Stores,Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP,Toyota Motor ,Chevron, ING Group, Total, General Motors, and ConocoPhillips. The world power is whoever controls “power” - most of the top 10 companies control gas and oil. Although OPEC still controls the land where most oil is found, these international companies are improving technologies to get more oil from other fields and produce alternative forms of energy. On a more personal level, Appiah (2008) believes that globalization is not only having access to knowledge of the lives and ways of other people, but also, having the power to affect other people.

McKenzie (2004) gives a checklist for a global citizen, which includes: global appreciation, supports sustainable living and development, being epistemologically nomadic, multilingual, multicultural, being prepared to stand up for others who are very different or far away, be empathetic, and radically challenge those ideas that seem unquestionable or inevitable.

Globalization and Education

World culture theory, as developed by John Meyer, Francisco Ramirez, John Boli and colleagues, argues that the culture of schooling is converging toward a single global model, based on evidence of broad similarities among schooling systems across nations, including common ideals, institutional forms and practices, organizational features, curricula and instructional methods. For many American international schools, much of the unwritten curriculum is an enculturation of American values and educational priorities. The school has to educate both parents and students how to “do school” the American way, which includes projects, group work, disagreeing with the teacher and others and supporting opinion. Often schools give workshops and handouts about homework, reading practices and bullying. By doing this, the school feels it is preparing students to fit into American universities and international universities. But, is that creating global citizens? In actuality, like the Romans did as they conquered other peoples, the schools are creating citizens that could fit into American society. And yet, the local community and culture, along with the tertiary school culture (made up of locals, third country nationals, and Americans), had a strong influence on how American education is interpreted in that context. As Lee and LiPuma (2002) said, “these interpretive communities determine lines of interpretation, found institutions, and set boundaries based principally on their own internal dynamic.”

Bauman (1998) cites Dunlap's principle of the company belonging to the shareholders, not the workers or locality. This is true in a lot of schools, yet more evident in American international schools – especially in the schools where the student population is overwhelmingly foreign as opposed to local. Generally, the school board is elected of and by the parents. This board sets policy, approves hiring, budget etc. Often, the parents will only be in-country for 2-5 years, so their agendas are short term - “what's best for my kid.” It is difficult to get long-term programs and ideas to move forward, because the student body and faculty turn over every 2-5 years. There can be a sense of “freedom from the duty to contribute to daily life and the perpetuation of the community”(p. 9) along with “no need to engage, if avoidance will do.” (p.11) Often American or third country national students will not become involved in local sports or hang out with neighborhood kids because the students knew they would move away eventually. With a high turnover rate for foreign hire teachers, many outreach programs that are started, such as visits to a local orphanage and offering professional development to local teachers, ended as soon as sponsoring teacher leaves.

Within a country, an international school often has unique ties to the local government. Often, the government has to sanction the formation of an international school, which for developing countries, means creating and passing new laws. Implicitly, this means the ruling body agrees with the fundamentals of having foreigners educating the youth in the country. Which, conversely, indicates that the local educational system could not handle the demands of the foreigners in the local schools. By creating separate schools, the nomadic foreigners are insulated from the context of local society, which does, (in many cases) create resentment. In some schools, students are bussed directly to the school, with only a few students, who spoke the local language, taking public buses. However, these students may cover up or take off their uniforms because they would be harassed by local students about being “Preppies” or the rich kids who go to the school that anyone can buy their way into. The American international schools are generally better funded, are able to import supplies and materials easily, sometimes get special treatment from the government (taxes, educational requirements etc), can hire more educated faculty and the students come from a higher socioeconomic class than the local population.

To combat this resentment and to create “globally aware citizens,” many American international school require community service projects for the students, which, in theory, gives back to the local community. However, at times, it creates a greater sense of superiority in students and faculty, rather than empathy. As Bauman (1998) says, “Globalization divides as much as it unites; it divides as it unites.” (p. 2) When shopping for gifts for the poorer local kids, some students would buy inferior gifts than if buying for their own friends, assuming that since the local kids had little, any gift would be appreciated.

But what does it mean to educate for global citizenship? Appiah (2008) states that there are three ideals for global citizenship: 1) No single world government 2) Caring for the fate of all fellow citizens 3) Engagement in real conversation between people. He looks back to the Greek sense of education which was to shape the citizen for their common, communal life. However, now, that community is not just the polis, or city/local area. It has expanded to include a global common life – the cosmos. So, schools should be educating for cosmopolitanism – “universality plus difference” (p. 92) which recognizes the fallibility of knowledge and the right for each person to live their own life, as long as that way only effects his/her own fate, even if someone else thinks that way is wrong. Which means, that as a global citizen, a person should spend more time listening and learning from other people, rather than imposing their own will or pointing out their differences. Becoming a global citizen, in Ebbeck's view (2008), should be more about gaining a future-oriented perspective, one that envisions not only a personal future, but a world future with less violence and more tolerance, which is sometimes called a “peace curriculum.” Mckenzie (2004) echoes Ebbeck's concern about the extreme violence in the world, but he believes that the primary purpose of schools should be builders of community – one that cooperates, not confronts; builds interdependence, teamwork and patience. And, through the strength of the school's community, promote community outside the school grounds.

Examples of Global Citizenship Education

Often, the job of teaching “global citizenship” is put on the social studies teachers and curriculum, rather than being infused into the core beliefs of the school. However, even within that context, there are obstacles to effective global citizenship pedagogy. First, there is no single definition of global citizenship education. It is often subsumed under other frameworks, such as multicultural education or even economic education. Even when it is placed within citizenship education, there are significant differences in the requirements of local verse global citizenship. Finally, many people fear that a focus on global citizenship undermines local citizenship (Rapaport, 2008).

Global Learning is a specific pedagogical approach in which learners of different cultures use technologies to improve their global perspective through contact and cooperation with people of other cultures (Gibson, Rimmington, & Landwehr-Brown, 2008). In this model, the instructor creates a set of necessary conditions: 1) Cultural contrasts between participants (ideally in different countries) 2) Modern communication technologies such as Internet and web-based communication applications 3) Substantive and authentic goal 4) Designed to require teamwork. Once these conditions are met, the learners must use a range of attributes/dispositions and processes/skills which may need to be explicitly taught. By engaging with others, especially with those who may be different, on a project with a mutual goal, learners come to understand how interconnected and interdependent the world is, in spite of cultural diversity. However, more influential, the authors found, was the fact that the instructor also becomes more globally conscious through the contacts made in the design of the project.

In Singapore, Lim (2008) documents a unique fusing of content area knowledge and multiuser virtual environments to create a role playing game in which the player must work together with other players, to solve social, ecological and cultural problems reminiscent of current problems. Through “quests” players must define the problem, research possible solutions using examples from other cultures, and design a policy paper describing their solution. The underlying design of the game supports student agency, tolerance and diversity, while at the same time, removing the barriers between school and non-school knowledges. In replicating the global issues currently being faced, and engaging the students as citizens, they realistically practiced the skills needed for responsible adult global citizenship.

References

Appiah, K. (2008, April). Education for global citizenship. Yearbook of the national society for the study of education. 107(1), pp. 83-99.

Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. New York: Routledge.

Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalization: The human consequences. Cambridge, Polity.

Ebbeck, M. (2006). The challenges of global citizenship: Some issues for policy and practice in early childhood education. Childhood Education, 82(6). p. 353-357.

Gibson, K.L., Rimmington, G.M., & Landwehr-Brown, M. (2008). Developing global awareness and responsible world citizenship with global learning. Roeper Review, 30(1). p. 11-23.

Lee, B. & LiPuma, E. (2002) Cultures of circulation: The imaginations of modernity. Public Culture 14(1): 191-213.

Lim, C. P., (2007). Global citizenship education, school curriculum and games: Learning mathematics, English and science as a global citizen. Computers & Education, 51. p.1073–1093.

McKenzie, M. (2004). Sense of community and the emerging global citizen. Independent School, 63 (3), p. 10-16

Newsweek. (2008, July 21). Global 500. Fortune magazine. Retrieved December 26, 2008 from http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2008/full_list/

Rapoport, A. (2008). A forgotten concept: Global citizenship education and state social studies standards. Journal of Social Studies Research 33(1), p. 75-93.

Radical Possibilities - Jean Anyon

2009-04-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

You know when you have a small shard of fiberglass in your finger and it only hurts when you move it a certain way – but then you keep moving it to see where it is and then it really hurts? That's how I felt reading this book. Many of the issues Jean Anyon (2005) brings up have been issues I've railed about before, but when looking at the complexities of bureaucracy, it always seemed impossible to change – poverty, transportation, incarceration etc. However, what I really appreciated in Anyon was she also gives hope – through the analysis of past social movements and the expectation of future collaboration, there seems to be, as she titles it – possibilities!

For most of my teenage years, I remember always hearing about the food shortages in Africa. Then as an adult, I found out that it wasn't so much a lack of food, but a lack of secure, transparent distribution of food, water and supplies that caused such terrible famine. This was caused, in many cases, by the countries' own governments, though sometimes by civil war. It was so frustrating to know that food etc. was available yet wasting away or resold for profit, rather than benefiting the people it was intended for. Currently, the food crisis has been prompted by large corporate farms and the desire for cash crops over food production. Again, governmental policy has allowed this to happen. So, why talk about food as compared to this book? Well, it seems to parallel a lot of what Anyon talks about – few problems are like waffles, with neat little squares, cordoned off from one another. Most problems are like a bowl of spaghetti – intertwined and messy.

Communism seems the way to go – to simplify all the problems of Western society. With a democratic, classless, stateless society with common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general, no religious fervor to divide people and no recognition of race to segregate. But wait, hasn't that been tried and failed? Why? “Communism . . . these alternate beliefs systems [to capitalism] flew in the face of human nature. Of even common sense. Anyone who has ever tried to share pizza with roommates knows that Communism cannot ever work. If Lenin and Marx had just shared an apartment, perhaps a hundred million lives might have been spared and put to productive use...” (Suarez, 2009, p. 289). So, if a truly classless society isn't a reality, what is?

In the 1993 movie Dave, Kevin Kline plays an ordinary man, Dave, who looks a lot like the American president. When the president has a stroke, Dave is asked to fill in for the president for a few days in order for the Chief of Staff to continue to hold power. However, this ordinary man begins to make changes, which drastically improve the lives of ordinary people, rather than just the rich. He diplomatically, forces the various departments to balance the budget while refunding public service projects and pushes through an employment program. However, the corrupt actions of the real president are revealed, and Dave, takes the blame stating:

“And while we're setting the record straight, I'd also like to apologize to the American people. I forgot that I was hired to do a job for you and that it was just a temp job at that. I forgot that I had two hundred and fifty million people who were paying me to make their lives a little better and I didn't live up to my part of the bargain. See, there are certain things you should expect from a President. I ought to care more about you than I do about me... I ought to care more about what's right than I do about what's popular...I ought to be willing to give this whole thing up for something I believe in...”

This, I think, gets to the core of why Communism and social reform has had a difficult time making positive changes for the whole of society. Too many people, including me, are more concerned about the immediate welfare of themselves and their own family, to look beyond and see the need to extend their caring to others. Anyon gives numerous statistics of how the wealthy have continued to protect their wealth, while the poor have continued to get poorer.

I know there is a mythology of the good ol' days, yet there was tremendous value in the need to depend on neighbors to share their thrashing machine, combine or other equipment. Neighbors and towns had to trust and work together to survive. Now, each household buys its own snowblower or lawnmower because no one trusts others to treat the equipment right or bring it back. I think Anyon (2005) has a good point that any social movement must start locally, with building connections and trust between the people involved before it can make connections to larger organizations. And this trust and connection building takes time and effort. In our mobile world of constant change, it is difficult to envision the future and commit to a plan.

How can teachers create a new social order? Although I totally agree that Anyon's multi-pronged approach is the only way to radically alter the way schooling and society runs, I think teachers can begin with building trusting, caring, and, dare I say, loving, relationships with their students and foster the same type of relationships between students, staff, parents and the local community. As Jackie DeShannon sang in 1968:

Think of your fellow man

Lend him a helping hand

Put a little love in your heart

You see it's getting late, so please don't hesitate

Put a little love in your heart

And the world...

Will be a better place

And the world will be a better place for you...

And me

References

Anyon, Jean. (2005). Radical possibilities: Public policy, urban education, and a new social movement. New York: Routledge.

DeShannon, J., Holiday, J. & Myers, R. (1968). Put a little love in your heart. Put a Little Love in Your Heart. MCA Records.

Reitman, I. (Director). (1993). Dave. [Motion Picture].Warner Bros. Pictures.

Suarez, D. (2009). Daemon. Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Should schools support class mobility? Can there be a classless society?

2009-03-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

The first fact Bourdieu (1986) claims is that people's cultural practices are linked to, first, their level of education and secondarily, to their social origin. As Dr. Seuss (1978) said, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” So, in theory, the more education a person has, the more aware he/she will be about what legitimate culture is, how to legitimately respond to it, and how to find/get it. However, if Bourdieu is correct, a person's social origin will also influence their desire for the knowledge of or attitude toward legitimate culture. So, a working class person, by virtue of their habitus will reject legitimate culture and a middle class person will either revere it or pretend they know more then they actually do (pretentiousness).

In my reading, I get the feeling that Bourdieu thinks that working class rejects legitimate culture, because they assume they will never be accepted into the upper/dominant class, so why bother. The middle class is conflicted – they want to be accepted, but don't have the money to do it. Assuming that access to upper class/dominant class, is the goal of people's lives (which I'm not sure about, but seems to be), then there should be a way to climb the cultural/social/economic ladder. (I find it difficult to truly separate the three.)

This being the case, what is the role of school? If the school teaches legitimate culture (which it mostly does), it would be in an attempt to give access to legitimate culture through education, for those who don't come with the legitimate cultural capital. However, in doing so, the school illegitimates the student's cultural experience. (Would this be cultural debt?) Now, according to Bourdieu, a student from a working class background may very well reject legitimate culture – having a taste for necessity rather than luxury. So, should the school be working more to “develop a taste” for legitimate culture and then the knowledge – and in doing so, does the student have to reject their family's taste? To continue, it would seem that the middle class would embrace this form of education, because they have the aspiration to become upper class. Since there is already a reverence or pretentiousness for legitimate culture, the education should be fairly easy. As for the upper class – well, they attend the private upper class school which is teaching legitimate culture anyway. Overall, this does seem to explain the current state of schooling.

So, what is the alternative? Should schools legitimize other forms of knowledge - which is a phrase I hear often, but don't exactly understand what it means. If, for example, mariachi music is a cultural practice in most of the students' backgrounds, should this become part of the school's curriculum? If so, what does it leave out? If students are using mariachi music to learn other things, ie parts of speech, it is really legitimizing the cultural practice? If learning all about mariachi music – the people, history etc. leaves out learning about classical music, a legitimate cultural practice, is it a service or disservice to the students? Can knowledge of mariachi help them succeed?

I can think of a few examples of something similar being enacted in schools. The ebonics debate in schools – the idea that teachers should use and support the use of African-American vernacular English, (AAVE). Some people believe it is the home language of students, and that teacher knowledge and use supports their learning of standard English. Which, in a similar debate, also supports Spanish bilingual education. However, the opposition believes that by supporting the use of non-standard English in the school, the students will not become proficient in standard English, which will limit their access to other opportunities. When I taught in Brazil, at an international school, the majority of students were Portuguese speakers. At the middle and high school level, we were constantly asking them to use English in the classroom because it was easier for them to converse in Portuguese, understandably. However, as a consequence, by not using and struggling with the English academic language, they did not become proficient with it, and their Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) scores were low, which limited their opportunities to apply for prestigious colleges and universities. In trying to “force” them to speak English, rather than valuing their home language, I've been accused of being a colonial power – which has been applied to my broader choice of working within international school settings.

Is it possible to have a classless society? Is is possible to have a classless school in a classist society? Since our society is formed around notions of class and learning how to maneuver (through education) in a higher class than which one was born in allows a person to earn more power, prestige and money – is education, which supports a white, middle class mentality a bad thing? Should schools be shooting for teaching upper class mentality?

In looking at science fiction and fantasy stories, the only way to achieve classlessness is to take things away from people. In “"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, people are made to look and perform at the lowest possible level by attaching “handicaps” to limit their physical appearance or abilities. Athletic people receive heavy weights, beautiful people wear ugly masks, smart people receive electric shocks to interrupt their thinking. Yet, still, there is a rule class of the people who determine the “handicaps.” In The Giver by Lois Lowry, people are assigned jobs, marriage partners, children and housing by a central authority. They are taught to be polite and unquestioning and even have the ability to see color taken way – all in the name of sameness. In the The Twilight Zone episode “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” (1964) when people reach adulthood, they are encouraged /pressured into choose a new body form from the dozen or so approved, beautiful bodies, which means no one is more beautiful or ugly than another. In Wall-E, all of the “work” of daily life is taken away from humans and given to robots – even walking. As a result, humans become fat, lazy and ignorant. All of these images of a classless society are pretty grim.

So, what is the alternative? If there is no working class, how will “dirty” jobs get done? Without monetary and prestige awards, who will choose to devote themselves to long hours of study and practice to become a doctor?

References

Bourdieu, P. (1986). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Seuss, (1978). I Can Read with My Eyes Shut! Random House Children's Books.

Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end. ~ Sid Caesar

2009-03-03T06:39:00.000-08:00

Like any good comedy, the humor in Teachers (Russo & Hiller, 1984) is based on some truth, with some exaggeration. The stereotypical portraits of teacher-types - the lackadaisical, the authoritarian, the crazy (literally and figurative), and the incompetent – can be seen in most large schools, which is what makes them so funny. Yet, the message of the film, that in an urban school, education is reduced to “ get as many through with what we've got,” is quite serious.

Although slightly exaggerated, I've met teachers who could be the origin of the movie's stereotypical teachers. Mr. Stiles, also known as Ditto because of the massive amounts of worksheets he copies, has a clockwork-like atmosphere in which the students are trained to preform to the bell, without teacher interference. In my first year of teaching, the social studies teacher, Mr. S., who had been teaching for twenty years, made a point to tell me that he had made enough purple ditto copies to last until he retired. It seems he didn't like the new-fangled xerox machines and planned ahead. He showed me his lesson plan book, which was planned out from the first day of school and looked remarkably like the year before. “Students look forward to this unit every year,” he explained when showing me the geography unit based on planning a family trip. Even though the students generally liked him, there was little incorporation of student interest and experience and he was on a strict schedule – snow days were a great interference. This is the type of teacher who values the content over the students, and probably looks at teaching as just a job, not a professional calling. Ayers (2004) believes that teaching is an ethical practice. Ditto's version of the classroom removes any ethical decision – just a factory model of input/output. Many students do well in this classroom because it is predictable and routine, yet, there is little room for creativity and critical thinking. Lamentably, this is what many schools apply to student populations who are considered at-risk. Kylene Beers, a teacher and current president of the National Council of Teachers of English, reported on one urban school she visited. The principal reminded teachers and students that they were supposed to stay in their seats and do their work:

He stared at me and, with no hint of a smile, not even a grin, explained, “Some kids—those out there heading to class right this minute so they aren’t late” he said, nodding toward the bus lot now filled with kids streaming into school, “learn best with rules. Rules and structure. We give it to them.” And then he walked away. He didn’t say it unkindly, that comment about “those” kids. With reflection, I realized he said it with sincerity, perhaps concern, and certainly with conviction. Somehow along the way, he had concluded that those kids, those kids whose lives are lived in the gaps—the poverty gap, the health care gap, the nutrition gap, to name but a few. . . those kids will do better if we just require that they stay in their seats. Those kids just need some structure. And we do them a service, a good service, by giving it to them.(Foster & Nosol, 2008, p. x)

When most children play school, this is the image they strive for and the quiet, dutiful stuffed-animals fulfill the role of passive students happily. However, in the twenty-first century, real students are messy bodies of hopes, fears and insecurities with great potential that shouldn't be limited by drill-&-kill activities. Eventually, Ditto has a heart-attack and each class period runs like a well-oiled machine. His body is not discovered until the end of the day. If only the rosy-image of the silent classroom could die as easily.

Returning to the film, Carl Rosenberg is a well-meaning but inept teacher who can't control his classroom and has his desk stolen as a joke. Unfortunately, I've had and met too many teachers who fit this description. Starting in fourth grade, Miss H. would regularly give us “the talk” which was a guilt-trip wrapped in her tears and would inspire good behavior for a few hours. In eighth grade, Mrs. S. had a short-temper and it became a class challenge to make her walk out on the class. As a teacher, I heard a music teacher shout, “Shut up!” at the top of his lungs frequently to attempt to get students' attention, which was quite disruptive to me since my classroom was right next door. This type of teacher is also immortalized in the children's book, Miss Nelson Is Missing! in which the nice teacher, Miss Nelson, resorts to becoming Miss Viola Swamp, a mean and ugly teacher, in order to get the children to behave (Allard, 1985). The basic message to the movie-goer, the student in the classroom and the reader is that nice teachers can't control a classroom. The myth of “don't smile until Christmas” has been repeated to many new teachers since before my aunt began her teaching career in the early 1940s. How terribly disheartening for the prospective teacher!

In the movie, the most engaging teacher was Herbert Gower, a mental patient who is mistakenly hired as a substitute. He uses role-playing, costuming and drama to help students “see” history. Unfortunately, he is found out and taken away by men in white suits. Regrettably, I have not personally seen this type of teacher in any school I've been in, but I was trained in the Teachers' Curriculum Institute's History Alive program, which incorporates many of these ideas. I've asked my students to form a tableau of scenes from history or literature and take the perspective of the person/character they are portraying. Sometimes, I read or see news pieces about teachers like this, usually couched in terms like “outstanding.” I would agree, that getting student attention is an important part of teaching, yet what a teacher can do with it then is the grunt-work of teaching. Anyone can tap dance for five minutes. Activity based learning, for the sake of the theme (teddy bears) or activity (salt dough maps) is meaningless without solid content, critical thinking, and continuous assessment. It is the marathon dancer who wins the prize.

The protagonist of the film, Alex Jurel, is a burnt-out social studies teacher with a idealist past. The system – too many kids, too many problems, too many administrative demands, and too little support – has turned him into a teacher with frequent absences, few lesson plans, and little enthusiasm for his job. The students like him, because he is the most “real” person in the school, and, I would guess, an easy grader. RateMyTeacher.com was built for students to find teachers like this – the ones who will give the A without much work. The teachers I've known like this tend to be very personable – bringing their passions (sports, music, movies) into the classroom, but without much thought about content or pedagogy. One social studies teacher I taught with had CNN running all the time in his classroom, claiming “current event” studies. His tests were easy, reading was done in class, there was no homework, and most of the grade was based on class discussion. Students generally liked him, and like in the movie, the students in trouble gravitated toward him when needing help, which also got him into trouble (Nancy Grace, a CNN tabloid court reporter, stalked him for a while for comments.) On the positive side, when school was over, he left it at school – which is something more dedicated teachers could learn from. On the negative side, I've also seen this type of teacher get too friendly with students and become drinking buddies or sexual partners. At the end of the film, Alex Jural finds a cause he thinks is worth fighting for – his job. However, he redefines his role as an advocate for the troubled students.

Early in the film, Alex Jural hangs out with a former teacher, now vice-principal, Roger Rubell. They lament to each other how the kids don't care, the system is overwhelmed and they aren't paid enough. When Jural shows signs of trying to change the system, Rubell says, “Your job is to get them through school and keep them out of trouble.” (Russo & Hiller, 1984) The pessimistic message of the movie is that in an urban school, there are no individuals, no great aspirations, just the basics and babysitting. Even though the end of the film is seemingly optimistic, Jural finds inspiration again in teaching, in anticipating the next possible actions, it really isn't. His fiery lecture to the board of education would most likely lead to suspension, then a lengthy mediation, and possible trial – none allowing him to teach. His involvement in taking a minor to an abortion clinic could result in other charges. Ultimately, nothing in the school would change. That, I think, is the more subtle message. Urban schools have grown in size and problems, but because of the student population, lack of parent support, and inner-city location, nothing can be done. In the end, it is a fairly depressing conclusion, one that isn't necessarily true. However, the counterpoint doesn't make good cinema.

References

Allard, H. (1985). Miss Nelson is missing! Sandpiper.

Ayers, W. (2004). Teaching the personal and the political: Essays on hope and justice. Teachers College Press.

Foster, H. & Nosol, M. (2008). America’s unseen kids: Teaching English/Language Arts in today’s forgotten high schools. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Russo, A. (Producer), & Hiller, A. (Director). (1984). Teachers [Motion picture]. United States: MGM/UA Entertainment Company.

Class, Codes and Control Vol. 3 ~ Basil Bernstein

2009-02-22T10:00:00.000-08:00

Whole language vs. Phonics. Teacher-centered vs. Student-centered instruction. Uniforms vs. No dress code. Back to basics vs. Project based instruction. When Counts (1932) proposed the idea that teachers could be the foundation of major social change, he didn't really address the conflicting pedagogical debates that have been major battlegrounds in the last half-century. Teachers are expected to identify themselves within a certain “camp” in these debates, and the real victim are the students, especially those of low socioeconomic status. As Bernstein, says, “Conflicting pedagogies have their origins within the fraction of the middle class and so an unreflecting institutionalizing of either pedagogy will not be to the advantage of the lower working class.” (1975, p. 19) I experienced this at one of my schools, when we attempted to update the curriculum guides. Between six teachers, we couldn't even agree on the basic language of categorizing English/Language Arts instruction, so no progress was made on the revisions. Therefore, the next year, a curriculum coordinator was hired and standards and benchmarks were “borrowed” from other districts and imposed on us and our students. What should have been a congenial, reflective conversation between professionals, turned into a dictate from administration. In the end, very little changed within instruction, as teachers continued to do what they always did, the curriculum guides were made “pretty” for accreditation, and the victims were the students.

Basing his observations in the 1970s in the UK, Bernstein seemed very optimistic when he pronounced that, in his view, schools were moving toward a more integrated type of curriculum in which students and teachers had more control over the type, timing, and form of instruction. However, I disagree, viewing the current movement, both in the US and UK. Sure, in some schools, or some classrooms, this may be happening, but on the whole, with NCLB the US is moving to almost a national, standardized curriculum, and the UK already has it with explicit Key Stages. At one of my schools, we had student teachers from the UK who were stymied by our lack of “curriculum guides” which would spell out what, how and how long to teach subjects. The idea of “lesson planning” was so foreign to them, much less the idea of being able to choose topics, materials, and methodology. When I first began teaching middle school English, the curriculum guide specified what books to use and how many days to spend on each topic – which corresponded to the 180 days allotted (not allowing for assemblies, snow days and other interruptions). My mentor teacher happily handed me the grammar book, vocabulary book (don't write in it, have the students copy out the answers), literature anthology, and spelling book. The goal was to keep the kids in their desks, occupied and under control. When I look at Berstein's model of “Types of involvement in the role of pupil” (1975, p. 44) as applied to teachers, I think I fell into another category. I did not accept the means of the instrumental, nor did I accept the means of the expressive order – but I did accept the ends of both, as was officially stated in the handbook.

Thus, I made it my goal to rebel/reform. I asked for real novels to read and instituted writer's workshop. The school was moving to a more “middle school model” which Bernstein would define as “integrated curricula,” and I guess I was the vanguard. I switched classes with the science teacher for a unit. Spearheaded an interdisciplinary week in which all content areas teachers sat together the plan the curriculum, materials, and activities of the week and all teachers taught something that was not their specialty. The students, previously in tracked classes, were assembled into heterogeneous small groups to complete research of their own choosing. Although I think I made in-roads in changing the “that's the way we've always done it” mindset, I was not there long enough to see it to its full fruition.

Unfortunately, as I am supervising student teachers, I seem to see more of the traditional, “collection type” of curriculum being fostered, especially in schools where the majority of students are of low socioeconomic status. Bernstein (1975) states that the task of the school is to get students to a position where the family accepts and supports the means and ends of the school and the student becomes fully involved in the school. I would guess that many of the parents were either detached or estranged during their schooling, which would promote the same, or alienation in their own children. I've heard several responses to this, such as the one cited by teachers interviewed by Kylene Beers:

Those kids, well, they live in such turmoil at home that we provide structure, quiet, orderliness, here at school . . . . Students here need to get the basics; we don’t have much time with them when you look at all they need to learn, so we must drill the basics into them. They do better with strong discipline . . . . Some kids can handle the higher-level thinking discussions you might see in other schools, but not the kids here; the kids here haven’t had anyone show them how to act and so we do. We demand they sit still and answer questions and they learn how to do that. (Foster & Nosol, 2008, p. x)

I've actually had teachers say to me, “Well, if the kid doesn't want to do his work, what can I do about it? I have 20 other students who want to learn, so if he want to put his head down on the desk, I'll let him, at least he isn't disruptive.” Or, “None of these kids complete their homework. I can't lower my standards, so they get zeros. If they were motivated, they'd get the work in, I give them more than enough time to do it in class.” From my experience, too many teachers were the fully committed students when they went to school, and can't wrap their minds around the idea that a student might be detached, estranged or alienated by the school. And, there isn't enough pre-service attention to how to work with kids that don't fit into the current system of education. In fact, some teachers express relief at having a “problem child” truant, as it is easier to conduct the rest of the class. (Which, although it seems I am pointing fingers – as the old adage says, “When you point your finger at someone, three fingers are pointing back at you.” I'm as guilty as any other teacher.)

However, Berstein (1975) does give some hope:

In pluralistic societies like ours, where there are many and conflicting images of conduct, character and manner, and where technological change is rapid the school system is subject to many pressures. These pressures are translated to the pupil in terms of the character of his role involvement. The external pressures of the society as a whole are crystallized out and felt and experienced by the child in terms of each of these five roles he moves towards. The school system need not necessarily be a passive mediator or, at worst, an amplifier for these general social pressures. (p. 49)

If the school does not need to be a mediator, nor an amplifier of societal pressures, what then can it be and should it be? Returning to Counts, what is the new social order in which the teachers should be uniting to form? Is it possible to have a truly classless society in the modern era? And should schools be the catalyst?

References

Bernstein, B.(1975). Class, codes and control, vol 3. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Counts, GS (1932). Dare the school build a new social order. New York: John Day.

Foster, H. & Nosol, M. (2008). America’s unseen kids: Teaching English/Language Arts in today’s forgotten high schools. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Imperial Colonialism through Literature and Schools for Everyone

2009-02-10T07:20:00.000-08:00

In a small way, I sympathized with McCarthy's (2005) experience of Anglo-American Culture War through “imposed canonical literature . . . imperial symbolic” (p. 9) Several years ago, I taught at an international in which most of my students were from European countries. Within my tenure there, the school moved from a mostly American curriculum to mostly British. It seems the reason was budgetary – it was cheaper getting supplies from Britain than from the US. So, we instituted The International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) program, which is an international qualification test/curriculum, developed by University of Cambridge International Examinations and is equivalent to Britain's GCSE.

As an American teacher, I was a bit uncomfortable with the narrowness of the novels, poetry and drama selected for study. Although the list is revised each year, and this current incarnation does include famous American authors such as Harper Lee, Lorraine Hansberry , the nod to non-British authors is just in passing, through Chinua Achebe and Anita Desai, and certainly nothing contemporary. To score well on the IGCSE test (5 essay questions in about 3 ½ hours) one must be able to read and interpret for literal meaning, context and deeper themes in the literature. These tests are than sent to Cambridge to be scored. As McCarthy said, “Power as exercised in culture takes devious routes.” (p. 8) As I look back at that experience now, I realize that the IGCSE is just another form of British colonization. Cambridge, “one of the world's premier universities” is dictating curriculum to hundreds of schools around the world, and mostly in the name of “getting ahead.” According to the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) website, “CIE qualifications are recognised [sic] throughout the world. At CIE we are committed to ensuring that university admission offices, colleges, employers and professional bodies around the world understand the value of CIE qualifications.” (www.cie.org.uk/qualifications/recognition )

I had one American student resist this imposition, by writing nonsense sentences on the test rather than attempting it. As I read Lee (2005), I recognized many of the issues she addresses in local schools - minority students resisting the values of a middle-class education through passivity, absenteeism, or blatant rebellion. But, I wonder how schools can use “the opportunity to (re)construct definitions of America and Americans to reflect the diversity of the United States” (p. 144). This means much more than multicultural education and having African-American month. Although countries outside of the US have definite ideas of what makes an American an American (overweight, rude, naive) , this conversation has not been had within the US. I think that the view of the US as a melting pot has changed to be a patchwork quilt, with each group (racial, gendered, political) taking its own square and defending it – THIS is what it means to be an American! Again, as Lee (2005) said, “In an increasingly diverse society, it is imperative that schools teach all students that there are multiple ways of being American” (p. 144).

However, here is my dilemma, how do we create schools that work for everyone? This phrase is bantered around, meaning different things in different contexts. For some, it means provide technical education programs; but I mean it as an educational system that will genuinely allow everyone to discover their true potential and then be able to achieve it. Another problem, as worded by Tabachnick and Bloch (1995), “there is difficulty determining which features of “culture” are significant and should be changed in school” (p. 205) And, if something is changed to support a few, would this change not impact a few others, maybe negatively?

"The task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everyone sees" - Arthur Schopenhauer (1818) – German philosopher

References

Lee, S. J. (2005). Learning about race, learning about America. In L. Weis & M. Fine (Eds.), Beyond silenced voices: Class, race, and gender in United States schools (Rev. ed, pp. 133-146). Albany: State University of New York Press.

McCarthy, C. (2005) English Rustic in Black Skin: post-colonial education, cultural hybridity and racial identity in the new century. Policy Futures in Education, 3, 4 413-422.

Tabachnick, BR, & Bloch, MN (1995). Learning in and out of school: Critical perspectives on the theory of cultural compatibility. In BB Swadener & S. Lubeck (Eds.). Children and families “at promise:”Deconstructing the discourse of risk. Albany: State University of New York Press

Education and Power – Michael Apple

2009-02-06T08:43:00.000-08:00

According to Apple (1995), the process of education is both a reflection and producer of the dominant culture, in which the goal is to sort and select people in order to maintain the current system of unequal distribution of power in the society. Looking at education through this lens makes me almost embarrassed to be a part of it. Since the school is an arm of the state, that would make me a complicit lackey of state sponsored indoctrination and segregation. As I was reading, I was reminded of The Simpson's episode in which Homer becomes a member of the Stonecutters and finds that this secret society is responsible for controlling everything from the British pound to the Oscars. If education is so totally controlled and controlling, what's the point of trying to change anything – the “secret society” will just make sure it doesn't happen?

Throughout Apple's (1995) book, practices that I have engaged in came to mind which illustrate the market-driven aspects of education. I have purchased and used “school to work” materials in order to make school seem “relevant” to students who are not “college bound”. In making this statement, there are so many embedded assumptions that I've never examined. Why must I prepare students for the work world? Who determines what skills are needed and relevant? How did the student become a “not college bound” kid? How did I determine that I needed to choose materials to help them on this path? Another time, I assigned an interview and report in which students selected a person working in a job they hoped to get eventually and find out what types of literacy was required. Again, in an effort to make English class “relevant” I turned to the world of work, essentially saying, “This is what school is preparing you for.” Again, I was unconsciously a lackey for the state.

So, I am led to ask, is there any school system that does not support the government/culture in which it operates? Is there really a “better” way of doing school? As Counts (1932) determined, all schools indoctrinate or “influence” their students. He suggests that as educators, we need to be more aware of what influence we are expending. One way to do that is to look at how the students are resisting our influence – which points to areas of conflict between the expectations of the dominant culture and the needs of the minority culture. But then, what do we do with this knowledge? Can school truly serve the needs of everyone? And should it try?

Although the actors within the educational system, both students and teachers, have supposed agency and the ability to resist, during this reading, I didn't feel very hopeful. Even the length of chapter 6 indicates this – at only 12 pages, it recognizes that “neither vision nor strategy is possible, on a mass basis, unless the cynicism about social change that now pervades American politics and culture can be overcome” (Peter Dreier, as cited by Apple, 1995, p. 157). This would entail not only reforming the educational system, but taking on the working world – to encourage and education people and companies to institute truly democratic policies. As was stated early in the book, we don't need democratic schools (which most schools profess to be, yet are actually autocratic) but rather centers of democratic engineering – where the democratic process (rule by and for the people) is the goal. It is clear that in America capitalism has overcome the ideals of democracy, and this is where the transformation must start. But, there is the question of the chicken or the egg? Does the transformation begin in the school to affect the culture, or in the culture to affect the school?

References

Apple, M. W. (1995) Education and Power, 2nd edn.New York, Routledge.

Counts, G. (1932). Dare the school build a new social order? New York: Arno Press & The New York Times.

Position on Literacy

2008-12-18T06:18:00.000-08:00

What is literacy? The basic definition is reading and writing and a hundred years ago that would have been true. However, literacy has changed in the 21st century. To be successful in the modern world, a literate person needs to do more – they need to evaluate, interpret, analyze, synthesize, and respond – not just to words – but numbers, images, video and graphics, and in a variety of contexts. In addition, the amount of information available increases exponential every year. There is no longer a single expert, but a community of experts. Knowledge is no longer something to be attained, but instead, found to be used in practical purposes. A silent classroom indicates teacher control and rote learning, but the job world demands active, independent and collaborative participants who can manipulate information and communicate it clearly. With a changing definition of literacy, classroom instruction need to adapt to reflect the new demands of literacy.

Reading and writing are social events. Teachers need to create opportunities for students to actively interact with text and each other.

Piaget believed that when individuals cooperate, socio-cognitive conflict occurs that creates cognitive disequilibrium, which prompts new perspective-taking and advances cognitive development. Vygotsky showed that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the process of cognitive development through the teaching of a More Knowledgeable Other (MKO), often an adult, and learning occurs when the task is within the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). To extend the idea of Vygotsky's more knowledgeable other, Blatchford et al. (2003) feel that, “pupil-pupil or ‘peer’ relations, as developmental psychology has shown (Pellegrini & Blatchford, 2000), can be an inherently motivating context for action and learning. In contrast to adult child relations, they are more horizontally organized and power is more likely to be evenly shared.” (p. 159) In addition, peers understand each other more directly, which may help them achieve intersubjectivity,which, according to Vygotsky, is the shared understanding of something.

Conversation is an important part of learning. Students need opportunities to discuss what they are learning. One example of this is Literature Circles. Harvey Daniels(1994) pioneered the use of Literature Circles in his book of the same name. Small groups of students read the same text and each student receives a specific role, such as Discussion Director, Passage Picker, Word Wizard, Connector, and Summarizer. When the students get together to discuss the text, each student presents their role and encourages discussion from the rest of the group. Students end up discussing the same ideas that the teacher would assign as questions, though since it is student generated, they feel more ownership for the work. Eventually, students are weaned off of the roles to more book club-like conversations. Through conversation, students are able to gain different perspectives of the text and each other.

Writing and reading are about making meaning from and with text in relation to personal and cultural goals and experiences. The goal of the literacy teacher is to help students clearly communicate their ideas and understand the ideas of others.

Gallagher (2003) gives nine reasons for reading, and none of them have to do with standardized tests or isolated phonic skills. Reading is: emotionally and intellectually rewarding, builds vocabulary, makes you a better writer, makes you smarter, prepares you for the world of work, financially rewarding, opens the doors to college and beyond, arms you against oppression and is hard reading is a good challenge. In the past, the illiterate person was one who physically could not sign their name or read a document. In the future, an illiterate person will be one who can, but chooses not to read or write.

In order to be literate, people need to be able to teach themselves. Not the old version of literacy of just reading, writing, and arithmetic. The new forms of literacy includes evaluation and research skills plus understanding graphics and video. Students will be doing most of their reading online, so they will need to know how to evaluation the bias and information presented on the pages. They'll need to know how to backtrack on a webpage to find the author or organization of the webpage. Our current model of education assumes there is an authority with the correct information – often a writer, teacher, professor, researcher, or encyclopedia. However, that is no longer true. Although books continue to be published, much of the information that students encounter comes from the internet and anyone can put up a website.

What does it mean to be a reader in the 21st century? It isn't just reading the text, but also finding information, decoding text, images and multimedia, critically evaluate the information and organize the information. Mitchell Kapor, a computer engineer and developer of Lotus, said, “Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” People can make and share websites and bookmarks. They are also using arrogators that automatically find information based on a personalized list of topics. To be a skilled reader, a student must be able to wade through reams of information to find the specific information needed and apply it to a new situation.

Writing will always be an important skill, however the genre of writing is changing. Blogging, wikis, emailing, and other forms of writing are emerging. Communication is becoming more multimedia and not just text. The successful pieces of information are those that get the reader's attention. Therefore schools need to be teaching students how to work with images and video with the images, text, and music working together to create powerful messages.

Graphic organizers can help students not only take better notes from their reading or to organize their writing, but they also organize those notes, present information in an orderly manner, and structure their thinking process. The general definition of graphic organizers is “a visual representation of knowledge that structures information by arranging important aspects of a concept or topic into a pattern using a label (Bromley, et al. p. 6).” Graphic organizers can be used before studying a topic to activate prior knowledge. During a study of a topic, students can use graphic organizers to order their notes, compare characteristics, find relationships, or learn new vocabulary. After studying a topic, graphic organizers can also help students demonstrate their learning. The same graphic organizer format can be used before, during and after studying a topic with just only a slight change in the focus.

Reading and writing are both cognitive processes with several recursive stages.

In the past, teachers would assign an essay and expect the students to intuitively know how to get a finished product. During the 1970s, writing was seen as a process and teachers were encouraged to treat it as such, with pre-writing, drafting, revision, editing and publishing as a linear progression. However, professional writers see the process as a more nebulous operation, which changes based on the type of writing, subject, and even personal events. Although it is important to teach students different forms of pre-writing and planning and how to revise and edit, teachers need to recognize that the process is different for each student and possibly, for each writing task. Tony Romano (2005), teacher and author of several books, believes that language has tremendous power: writing describes the world, argues for what we believe, frames our thinking, and changes how we think. Believing that you can fill the empty page takes faith and fearlessness. The choice of words determine how we think about things. All writing is creative – even forming an argument and describing a chemistry lab. The creativity is in the choice and arrangement of words. Language is the mother, not the handmaiden of thought. Schools need to help students understand the power of language and develop fearlessness in using it.

Being able to accurately decode text is only the first step in truly being able to read. The reading process is quite similar to the writing process and requires actively engagement of the mind. The reader plans to read through setting a purpose, previewing the text and activating their prior knowledge and then begins to read. While reading, the reader visualizes, questions, tests hypotheses, and makes connections to the content of the text. During and after reading, the reader gets confirmation of his/her ideas and then may share ideas and responses with other people. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Tis the good reader that makes the book good.”

Reading and writing are intimately entwined – one informs the other. Francine Prose, an American writer with over a dozen novels, a half-dozen non-fiction book and three collections of short stories, wrote a book Reading Like a Writer. “Like most, maybe all, writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, from books.” (2006, p. 2) Writing during reading helps the reader become more cognizant of their own understanding of the text and their connections to it. After reading, writing helps cement the story in the reader's mind. For many writers, reading good literature helps them find solutions to their own writing struggles.

Speaking, listening and collaboration are essential aspects of literacy and must be modeled, taught and practiced.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills was formed in 2002 by leading technology businesses such as: AOL Time Warner Foundation, Apple Computer, Inc., Cable in the Classroom, Cisco Systems, Inc., Dell Computer Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, along with the US Department of Education and National Education Association. Since that time they have added over three dozen large companies, businesses and educational organizations. The goal of the group is to “serve as a catalyst to position 21st century skills at the center of US K-12 education by building collaborative partnerships among education, business, community and government leaders” and it has “developed a unified, collective vision for 21st century learning that can be used to strengthen American education.” Within this context, the Partnership has identified communication and collaboration as part of the “skills, knowledge and expertise students should master to succeed in work and life in the 21st century.” This is defined as:

Articulating thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively through speaking and writing.
Demonstrating ability to work effectively with diverse teams.
Exercising flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal.
Assuming shared responsibility for collaborative work (Partnership, 2004)

Often speaking and listening get cursory attention in the curriculum and are lumped in with giving presentations and read alouds, but good speaking and active listening takes skill and practice. Coming into the classroom, students are primed and pumped to talk, but are not often aware of how they present themselves and view listening as a passive activity. Students need to have the opportunity to present themselves in a variety of situations – large and small group, form and informal, different genres of speeches, and including the teaching of techniques of body awareness and voice projection. It is estimated that people retain only 25-50% of what they hear, which means most people lose 50-75% of the content of any conversation – which would include classroom discussion and lecture. Learning active listening skills will have an impact on students' personal life, scholarly pursuits and career achievement.

Conclusion

"Our doctors don't treat patients using 19th-century medicines, and our teachers shouldn't educate students using 19th-century learning models...Today's students need to demonstrate knowledge of core subjects such as reading, math, and science—but they also must learn additional skills, including critical thinking, decision making, problem solving and communication, and the ability to adapt to a changing world." (The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2004)

Ian Jukes (2000), author of Windows on the Future : Education in the Age of Technology and NetSavvy : Building Information Literacy in the Classroom, stresses the need to reform teaching and learning to reflect the profound changes happening in society. He describes seven exponential trends and how these trends effect culture and education. He believes that 21st century learners need to be effective problem solvers and information fluent. A successful problem solver: 1) Defines a problem 2) Designs a solution 3) Does the task with the appropriate tools 4) Debriefs to see if the solution corrected the problem. A fluent information user: 1) Asks the right questions 2) Accesses the data 3) Analyzes the information 4) Applies what has been learned 5) Assesses both the process and the product.

Recognizing these social, cultural and informational changes, the modern classroom MUST adapt to give students the skills and attitudes which will be demanded in their future. It is estimated that the current generation of workers will change careers ( not just jobs) at least a dozen times. That means that the traditional goal of education – filling minds with content – is truly irrelevant. Schools need to teach and encourage students to be thinkers, planners, researchers, visionaries, and their own teachers.

References

Blatchford, P., Kutnick, P., Baines, E., and Galton, M. (2003) Toward a social pedagogy of classroom group work. In Blatchford, P., and Kutnick, P. (Eds.) Special Edition of International Journal of Educational Research, 39, 153-172.

Bromley, K., Irwin-Devitis, L., and Modlo, M. (1999). 50 graphic organizers for reading, writing, and more. New York: Scholastic Professional Books.

Daniels, H. (1994). Literature circles: Voice and choice in the student-centered classroom. Stenhouse Publishers.

Jukes, I. & McCain, T. (2000). Windows on the future : Education in the age of technology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Partnership for 21^st Century Skills. (2004). Retrieved November 15, 2008, from: http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/

Prose, F. (2006). Reading like a writer: A guide for people who love books and for those who want to write them. New York: Harper Collins.

Romano, T. (2005, November). Middle school mosaic presentation. National Council of Teachers of English Convention 2005. Pittsburgh, PA.

Hollywood, Education and Globalization

2008-11-17T17:00:00.000-08:00

In the 1999 film The Matrix, the main characters have ports in the back of heir heads in which information can be downloaded. Within seconds, they can access information like jujitsu fighting or flying a helicopter. Yet in this world in which anything is possible and everything is learnable, the characters are still seeking “The One” who will set them free and they use a Oracle to find it. In many ways, this describes our current educational system. We continue to try and download information into kids, but we are looking for “The One Way” which will make education fair, equitable and accessible to all.

I've been pondering the idea of paideia for quite some time, though I may not have called it that. As a novice teacher, I was concerned about the content I was teaching. My assigned mentor was very traditional – with grammar, vocabulary, literature, and spelling all scheduled out each week. Yet I knew there should be more. I stumbled on Harvard's Project Zero and the idea of Teaching for Understanding, which, in brief, “ says that understanding a topic of study is a matter of being able to perform in a variety of thought-demanding ways with the topic, for instance to: explain, muster evidence, find examples, generalize, apply concepts, analogize, represent in a new way, and so on.” (Perkins, 1993). While attending the 2002 Project Zero Summer institute, I heard a lecture by Howard Gardner based on his work on The Disciplined Mind:What All Students Should Understand. He proposed that schools are dehumanizing education through the focus on standards and teaching. Instead, study should focus on the ideas of truth, beauty and goodness. When I returned to my classroom, I began planning backwards – What major understandings did I want my students to demonstrate at the end of a unit? Then, more importantly, how would these understandings make them better people? At a time that affective education was antithetic, I was embracing it.

“Paideia - In ancient Greek, the word paideia (παιδεία) means "education" or "instruction." Paideia was the process of educating humans into their true form, the real and genuine human nature. Since self-government was important to the Greeks, paideia, combined with ethos (habits), made a man good and made him capable as a citizen or a king. This education was not about learning a trade or an art—which the Greeks called banausos, and which were considered mechanical tasks unworthy of a learned citizen—but was about training for liberty (freedom) and nobility (the beautiful).” (Paideia, 2008)

When I look at Hollywood, the directors have already embraced this trend. Dead Poets Society (1989) encouraged students to "suck the marrow out of life" and throw away the institutional format of reading poetry. Dangerous Minds (1995), Freedom Writers (2007) and The Ron Clark Story (2006) showed that students need to see meaning and purpose to their education – but also, part of education should be about becoming fully human – empathetic, creative and purposeful.

According to Vavrus, education in Tanzania is moving toward social constructivism in order to foster a more democratic society. She quotes Richard Tabulawa who states that too often classrooms in Third World countries are authoritarian, which does not support development of democracies. Yet in her research, Vavrus found a disconnect between what the system says it values and what it actually values. The skill and drill form of instruction dominates because skill in isolation is the focus of test. When pre-service teachers were confronted with the idea of student centered teaching, they mostly rejected it on the basis of “What's going to be tested?” This argument is not unfamiliar in the United States. As wonderful as the student-centered, constructivist, humanistic paideia idea of theorists and thinkers sound, the reality is that teachers/schools are being judged by the test performance of their students. Until the system goals match the system's evaluation method, there will be this struggle.

Hollywood even understands this disconnect. In the 2006 release Accepted, the main character, Bartleby is rejected for every college, although his grades were good. To forestall disappointing his parents, he creates a fictional, South Harmon Institute of Technology. However, when his parents actually want to see the campus, he is forces to really create a school from an old building. With the help of his friends, they fix up the building, create a website, and enlist the help of a burn-out drifter to be the director. When “opening day” arrives, they find themselves with hundreds of students (all rejected from other schools) at the door. Although it is a comedy, the important part of the story is how the curriculum is developed. The students write on a large board what skills and ideas they have and what skills and ideas they would like to have. On the board they find their own teachers and classes and learn from each other. In the end, the school receives a provisional license to try their experiment in education.

If Hollywood is articulating our society's desire for change, and making money off of it too, why aren't we listening?

References

“Paideia.” (2008, November 2). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 13, 2008 from

Perkins, D (1993, Fall). “Teaching for Understanding,” American Educator: The Professional Journal of the American Federation of Teachers; v17 n3, pp. 8,28-35.

Vavrus, F., The cultural politics of constructivist pedagogies: Teacher education reform in the United
Republic of Tanzania. Int. J. Educ. Dev. (2008), doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2008.05.002

Literature Review for a Metaphor Analysis of a Teacher's E-mail Correspondence with Parents About a Student

2008-05-01T15:00:00.000-07:00

Introduction

People use metaphors, consciously or unconsciously, to make sense of the world around them. The choice of metaphors indicates how the person perceives a situation. In teaching, a teacher may profess a particular ideology or philosophy, yet the metaphors the teacher uses in his/her daily discourse may contradict the conscious declaration. In this study, metaphor analysis is used with a teacher's email parent correspondence to see how her beliefs about education are enacted in written text to parents. The literature review will focus on an overview of metaphor analysis, metaphors in education, and how teacher's express their beliefs through metaphors.

Metaphor Analysis

Metaphors are Embedded in Language

Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) seminal work, Metaphors We Live By, changed the paradigm of how we think about metaphors. They say that the most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structures of the most fundamental concepts of the culture. However, the metaphorical structures are often under the surface of thought and action. Metaphor is primarily a matter of thought and action and only secondarily a matter of language. There are different categories of metaphors in language. Orientational metaphors organizes a whole system of concepts with respect to one another. For example, UP = HAPPY or MORE. Therefore, if something is cheerful, we say it is “uplifting” or a good day in the stock market would be called an “up trend.” Ontological metaphors show ways of viewing events, which casts the event as a thing.

Many researchers agree with Lakoff and Johnson. William Taylor states, “Far from being a mere linguistic decoration, metaphor comes to be seen as a ubiquitous feature of our thinking and our discourse, the basis of the conceptual systems by means of which we understand and act within our worlds” (p. 5). Therefore the study of the use of metaphors is an important aspect of not only linguists, but anthropologists, philosophers, sociologists, historians, psychologists, counselors, and educators. Schmitt (2000) states, “The employment and linking of these metaphors is not a matter of chance, but an indication that patterns of thought, perception, communication and action that are consistent in themselves are here coming into play.”

Influence of Metaphorical Thinking

Not only are metaphors embedded in language and mostly unconscious, the way we use metaphors shape the way we think. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) state:

Many of our activities are metaphorical in nature. The metaphorical concepts that characterize those activities structure our present reality. New metaphors have the power to create new reality. This can begin to happen when we start to comprehend out experience in terms of a metaphor and it becomes a deeper reality when we begin to act in terms of it . . . much of cultural change arises from the introduction of new metaphorical concepts and the loss of old ones. (p. 145)

Therefore, recognition of the metaphor in use will lead to a better understanding of the person's reality. In attempting to change, a person need to imagine and articulate a new metaphor for him/herself.

Sfard (1998) agrees, “Different metaphors may lead to different ways of thinking and to different activities. We may say, therefore, that we live by the metaphors we use.” However, she goes on to contend that metaphors can have both favorable and unfavorable consequences. Metaphors allow abstract thinking to be possible, yet the same metaphor can also confine thinking.

Dominant Metaphors of Education

Metaphors have a strong influence on everyday thinking and action. It is no surprise that the metaphors used in education influence policy, curriculum, and classroom interaction. It is important to recognize the metaphors applied in order to understand the underlying belief and philosophies. Eilliott states:

Metaphors are widely used in educational discussion and fulfil a variety of functions, such as introducing fresh perspectives, making illuminating comparisons and contrasts, picking out kinds of phenomena not yet names, emphasis, illustration, enlivening dull writing, and many others. The vast majority of such metaphors are only transient waves in the sea of everyday educational reflection. (p. 39)

Marshall (1988), Aspin (1984) and Bullough (1994b) contend that the dominant educational metaphor in American education is that of the school as a workplace or factory. In this context, the student is the worker, the teacher the manager, and the principal the boss. Students are rewarded with grades for work completed and the focus of the school is on discipline and management of students, rather then learning. Both researchers site the historical basis of this metaphor in the Industrial Revolution and the stress on productivity.

Education as growth is another dominant metaphor for education, according to Elliot (1984). However he goes on to explain that in the 1960s a new metaphor of education as initiation was introduced by R. S. Peters in his inaugural lecture at the University of London and became one of the dominant metaphors through the seventies, though it no longer has the following it used to.

In addition, Sfard (1998) believes that education is currently caught between two prevalent, yet seemingly confliction metaphors - acquisition verses participation. Under the acquisition metaphor, knowledge can be acquired and transferred or shared with others; its possession is highly prized. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) would view this under the metaphor MIND IS A CONTAINER, which can be filled. Learning as participation suggests a focus on process and knowing, activities and practice. However, each metaphor has something to offer education and to choose one over the other would create exclusivity and extremism. According to Sfard, neither metaphor can fully explain the complexities of learning and education must learn how to blend the two.

Teachers' Metaphors and Sense of Self

A teacher's personal teaching metaphor, whether it is conscious or unconscious, guides the teacher's curriculum choices, interactions with students and parents, and sense of effectiveness as a teacher. Many researchers believe that a person's belief about education is based on personal experience and is well established before entering preservice training, though often unspoken (Munby & Russell, 1996; Martinez, A.M, Sauleda, N., & Huber, L.G., 2001). Prawat recommends that teachers not only understand their own metaphors of teaching but also how their metaphors are embodied in the classroom (Prawat, 1999, as cited by Martinez et al, 2001).

Robert Bullough, a Professor of Teacher Education at Brigham Young University, has done extensive studies of pre-service teacher's personal teaching metaphors. When a teacher's personal teaching metaphor is in contrast to the institutional metaphor, the teacher must learn how to negotiate the conflict. In his 1991 initial study of fifteen preservice teachers, he asked the preservice teachers to articulate their beliefs of teaching through identifying a metaphor to describe the role of the teacher. However, once they began student teaching, he found that many students' metaphors were in conflict with dominant metaphors of the students, the cooperating teacher and/or the school environment. All had to negotiate their personal metaphors and the metaphors of the environment, which caused distress as their metaphors were being supplanted. Yet, others found ways to consciously build small experiences that matched their metaphors and felt more satisfied. Bullough (1992) continued to follow two of these teachers into their first year of teaching. One teacher, who had a strongly established teaching metaphor, searched for opportunities to express his true teaching self in a traditional setting, and, having rationalized his compromise, he ended the year feeling positive about himself and his profession. The other teacher was torn between her personal teaching metaphor and the perceived requirements of the situation and ended the year questioning her choice of profession.

Carol Briscoe (1991) proposes that before a teacher can make significant pedagogical changes, the teacher must recognize the unconscious beliefs he/she hold and how these beliefs have been constructed from past experiences. In her study, the teacher wanted to make some significant changed to the way he taught, but found it difficult to embrace cooperative and constructivist learning. The teacher's actions often contradicted his professed goals in changing his teaching. Briscoe found that he had difficulty reconstructing his metaphors and underlying beliefs to match these new practices, therefore little change happened.

References

Briscoe, C. (1991). The dynamic interactions among beliefs, role metaphors, and teaching practices: A case study of teacher change. Science Education, 75(2), 185-199.

Bullough, R. V. (1991) Exploring personal teaching metaphors in preservice teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 42(1), 43-51.

Bullough, R. V. (1992) Beginning teacher curriculum decision making, personal teaching metaphors, and teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 8(3), 239-252.

Bullough, R. V. (1994b) Digging at the roots: discipline, management and metaphor, Action in Teacher Education, 16(1), 1-10.

Elliott, R. (1984). Metaphor, imagination and conceptions of education. In W. Taylor (ed.) Metaphors of Education. London: Heinemann.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Marshall, H. (1988). Work or learning, implications of classroom metaphors. Educational Researcher, 17, 9-16.

Martinez, A.M, Sauleda, N., & Huber, L.G. (2001). Metaphors as blueprints of thinking about teaching and learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17, 965-977

Munby, H. & Russell, T. (1996). Theory follows practice in learning to teach and in tesearch on teaching. Retrieved April 24, 2008 from http://educ.queensu.ca/~russellt/forum/1996a.htm

Provenzo, E.F., McCloskey, G.N., Kottkamp, R.B. & Cohn, M.M. (1989). Metaphor and meaning in the language of teachers. Teachers College Record, 90 (4), 551-73.

Schmitt, Rudolf (2000, January). Notes towards the analysis of metaphor [16 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [On-line Journal], 1(1). Available at: http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/1-00/1-00schmitt-e.htm [Date of Access: April 24, 2008].

Sfard, A. (1998). On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one. Educational Researcher, 27(2) 4-13.

Tobin, K. (1990). Changing metaphors and beliefs: A master switch for teaching? Theory into Practice, 29(2),122-127.

Personal Response to The Ethnographic I by Carol Ellis

2008-04-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

I was interested in reading The Ethnographic I by Carolyn Ellis for several reasons. First, I am beginning some research, which may turn into my dissertation about Americans teaching in international schools. I've been an international teacher for the past ten years, so I am a member of the group I am researching, though at this time, not as a participate. However, I am using my friends and colleagues as part of my research. This is potentially both advantageous and problematic. First, I have already built relationships with the participants, yet since these relationships are as a friend or colleague, it may be difficult to transition to researcher. I am partially guided by the old adage, “Write what you know” in doing this research. But, I struggle with the objective/subjective part of the research. As an English teacher and bibliophile I have been immersed in narrative for most of my life. When I took the Myers-Brigg Personality Indicator, I had strong tendencies to ENFP – Extraversion, iNtuition, Feeling, and Perceiving. This personality type seems tailor-made for ethnography, “Words, ideas and possibilities spew effortlessly from them. Words are their best friends. . . They use metaphors, stories, images and analogies to make their point” (Myers-Briggs Personality Type, 1997-2006).

From the beginning, it is clear this will be a different sort of methodology book. The cast of characters sets it up to be a play or drama of some sort. It is interesting to note that some characters are based on real people and others on composites. This brings up the question of truth in storytelling, yet the author makes her intentions transparent in the Preface. Ellis says, “In this work, I intentionally combine fictional and ethnographic scenes . . . Combining literary and ethnographic techniques allows me to create a story to engage readers in methodological concerns in the same way a novel engages readers in its plot.” (xx) Which, in beginning the book, I would agree with. The introductory dialogue was certainly a lot more interesting than the typical preface. So, the major question throughout my reading will be, can a piece of research be both ethnography and a novel? If so, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages in writing in this genre as a researcher?

I had to check the character of Jack. He is the model of science in which Ellis has to defend herself, though she say that she isn't defending herself. He is the voice in my head that says the same things – that challenges the methodology.

I am very interested in seeing the Ellis's insecurities as a professor. As a new graduate student, I have the impression that everyone is a little bit smarter and better equipped than I, and to think that a professor would be so concerned about how things are going and afraid of messing up is revealing.

On page 110, the class brought up an interesting point, “Do you have to be emotional to do autoethnography?” Ellis's response is that the subject matter and process is inherently emotional. Plus, emotionality helps the researcher connect with the participants. However, being too emotional clouds the researcher and may inhibit the researcher's ability to write. Then a question, which I have, is asked, “Does it have to center on pain?” (pg. 110) Ellis feels that pain makes the most evocative writing, which, in her mind, should be a goal of an autoethnographer. However, Art Bochner says, “sometimes the impetus for writing autoethnography is something other than pain. Sometimes it comes from the desire to remember and honor the past. We write to find the truths of our experiences, some painful, some not.” (pg. 111)

One of the issues we've struggled in class is the truth in storytelling. It isn't surprising that Ellis addresses this issue through the voice of Jack. I can relate to Jack, because he asks the questions I would ask in this class, he asks, “How would I make sure that what I said was truthful?” Ellis says, “The 'truth' is that we can never fully capture experience. What we tell is always a story about the past. Gregory Bateson says stories are true in the present though not in the past . . . If you viewed your project as closer to art than science, then your goal would be not so much to portray the facts of what happened to you accurately but instead to convey the meanings you attached to the experience.” (pg. 116) Like Jack, I wonder if this sort of research is respected in education. I feel a connection to the method, but fear not being taken seriously.

Another issue, related to truth is the validity of the research. Being a new grad student, I just went through the Human Subjects Protection Tutorial. In these modules, there were strong warnings and threats about accurately reporting results. Ellis says,
“[The students] ask how we know when our social inquiries are faithful enough to some human construction that we and those we study feel safe to act on what we find. In seeking to redefine validity, these authors turn to criteria for judging the processes and outcomes of research projects rather than the methods by which outcomes are produced. A standard of fairness judges whether all stakeholder views are reflected in the text. Ontological and educative authenticity assesses whether these is a raised awareness in the research participants. Catalytic authenticity and tactical authenticity evaluate actions by participants and researchers to prompt social and political action if that is desired. In autoethnographic work, I look at valisity in terms of what happens to readers as well as to research participants and researchers. To me, validity means that our work seeks verisimilitude; it evokes in readers a feeling that the experiences described is lifelike, believable, and possible.” (pg. 123-124)

This type of research seems to have a lot of ambiguity. Ellis addresses the use of composite characters, which is not reporting on what “actually happened” but “to protect the privacy or a research participant ... you might use composites or change some identifying information. Or you might collapse events to write a more engaging story, which might be more truthful in a narrative sense though not in a historical one.” (pg.125) Again, there is the part of me, trained in scientific method, that criticizes this seemingly lackadaisical attitude about reporting the truth and the responsibility of a researcher.

The story that Ellis shares about taking care of her mother really touches a cord in me. I'm in that stage of life where my parents are also needing more help. However, the issue that really interests me is about getting permission of family members to write about them. We began to explore this issue in class, and really didn't come up with a solid answer. Ellis shares her fear, at first, about embarrassing her mother about the physical details, yet when she finally shared the story, her mother was not upset and it seems to draw them closer. Ellis's conclusion is similar to our class's conclusion, it depends, “Each decision requires assessment of the local circumstances and a desire to avoid doing harm. . . I think you should make decisions in research the same way you make them in your personal life, only with more consideration of the impact on others since usually the research is for your own gain.” (pg. 153)

References

“Myers-Briggs Personality Type, Your Best Fit Type, and an introduction
to the 16 types.” (1997 - 2006 ). Personality Pathways. Ross Reinhold & Reinhold Development. http://www.personalitypathways.com/type_inventory2.html.

Ellis, C. (2004). The Ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut
Creek: AltaMira Press.

The Beginning of Grounded Theory

2008-02-14T05:47:00.000-08:00

I found it unusual, yet helpful to read the results of using the method (Awareness of Dying) before truly understanding the method. Being a certified nursing assistant and working in nursing homes for several years, I could certainly identify with the conceptual categories Glaser/Strauss identified. Through personal experience, I saw the awareness contexts – and saw them shift. Yet, before reading Discovery, I didn't have a full appreciation of how the data was generated or analyzed.

In the early part of the twentieth century, sociologists believed that the “great men” of sociology has generated enough theory and now the task was to verify these theories, which meant collecting data to support the proposed theories. At the same time was a growing support for quantitative data rather than qualitative as the feeling was that quantitative data was more accurate and easier to verify. As a result, qualitative researchers began writing like quantitative researchers. But, Glaser/Strauss contend that “there is no fundamental clash between the purposes and capacities of qualitative and quantitative methods or data. What clash there is concerns the primacy of emphasis on verification or generation of theory . . .We believe that each form of data is useful for both verification and generation of theory . . . In many instances, both forms of data are necessary.” (pgs. 17-18).

Although this summary of the qualitative verses quantitative conflict did not surprise me, I found it interesting that people, at one time, could have thought there were no new theories to generate. That's like Thomas Watson's (the chairman of IBM in 1943) comment, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." How could sociologists of the time be so arrogant as to think that everything had been thought of? The early 1900s was a time of great change – both technologically and socially. Women were becoming more liberated and a whole new era of conflict between countries began. I can't imagine how old theories would fit the new times, which, I guess is part of Glaser/Strauss's argument. To parallel their contention that quantitative methods gained prominence was the advent of the IQ test. It was a nice, neat number that seemed to explain everything, yet in reality just forced evidence into a preconceived notion of intelligence, which was later disputed by Howard Gardner and his theory of multiple intelligences, which don't fit into a numbers based test.

In grounded theory, the researcher will generating “conceptual categories” - or general statements concerning the situation - like labeling a file. From this category, predications can be made. If something fails the predication, it leads to more questions about the category, not a failure of the category. The categories stay the same, but the evidence filed under each may change. This evidence gives each category its properties. However, sometimes, in comparing data, new categories and/or properties may emerge. In this way, comparative analysis is both verifying and generating theory. Therefore, grounded theory is “theory as process” (pg. 32). This recognizes the need for a theory to change and develop more fully, encouraging more research and questioning.

The section on describing grounded theory methods was a difficult one for me to read. I think a lot of it has to do with the continued prominence of the scientific method. It was a major paradigm shift for me. Throughout my schooling, it was ingrained that I had to have a research question before researching, and the goal was to prove or disprove it. The notion that I could ask, “What's going on here?” was ridiculous – how would I know if my answer was right? Since it is human nature (or nurture) to predict or hypothesize, I would imagine that a grounded theory researcher has to constantly remind herself not to anticipate the data. At this point, I think this would be one of the most difficult aspects for me, having been in the habit of hypothesizing.
The idea of emerging theory blurs the line between collecting and analyzing data. As a researcher collects data he/she may begin to form some hypotheses, which, unlike the scientific method's hypothesis, is more of a suggestion than a testable question. Several hypotheses come together to form the core of emerging theory, which, again, leaves room for flexibility as it encourages continued refinement. “Theoretical sampling is the process of data collection for generating theory whereby the analyst jointly collects, codes, and analyzes his data and decides what data to collect nest and where to find them, in order to develop his theory as it emerges” (pg. 45). When deciding which group to study, the group to be studied is chosen for its “theoretical relevance” (pg. 49). This limits the researcher's ability to pre-plan the numbers and types, but allows for flexibility as the concepts emerge. To begin with, a researcher will compare different groups of the same substantive types. Then, to expand the theory, the researcher will need to compare different types of groups within larger groups or external groups. When a researcher moves to discovering formal theory, she will then select dissimilar groups within the larger class. “Since the basis of comparison between substantively non-comparable groups is not readily apparent, it must be explained on a higher conceptual level” (pg.53). “Theoretical saturation” is the point where a category's properties are defined and no additional data will modify the properties. At that point, new groups should be sought to saturate other categories. As for the method of data collection, multiple methods are encouraged, as it gives a fuller picture of the situation studied. One difficulty in this type of research is the time-line. Since the selection of groups happens as the research indicates, along with how much data and of what kind, a pre-planned, static time-line is impossible.
Flexibility seems to be the key to grounded theory. First, the data collecting is not as straightforward as a scientific experiment. The types of data can't be only qualitative, because numbers don't tell the whole story when people interact with people. Narrative, interviews and observations are messy, yet important. The participant group must also be flexible, as one narrative may lead the researcher to another person or group.

After working through the IRB form in class, I can imagine that this is one of the most frustrating parts of being a grounded theorist. Finally, being flexible with your emerging theory would be a challenge. I think most people like seeing a clear-cut answer – which the scientific method offers, but grounded theory does not.

A substantive theory is one that emerges from the research of a particular group. In developing a good formal grounded theory, researchers refer to the substantive theory as a starting point. Many formal grounded theories are rewritten substantive theories – with the group wording taken out. However, this type of formal theory generation needs more comparative analysis to be taken seriously as a good formal grounded theory. In contrast, by comparative analysis of diverse groups, “exceedingly complex and well-grounded theory can be developed” (pg. 85).

The thing that really struck me as Glaser/Strauss was describing the process of grounded theory was the amount of time it would take. Even researching a substantive theory would take years – and it took six for Awareness of Dying. Trying to get to a solid formal grounded theory I would think would take a life-time. Especially since, as Glaser/Strauss indicates, there aren't a lot of substitutive grounded theories to build off of.
“Because grounded formal theory fits and works, we see its use in research and teaching as more trustworthy than logico-deductive theory, for the simple reasons that the latter often requires forcing of data into categories of dubious relevance to the data's meaning.” (pg. 98)

It seems that a lot of The Discovery of Grounded Theory is really a call to action and a support group. Glaser/Strauss stated many of the objections grounded theory researchers would face and calls for veteran researchers to instill confidence in new researchers. I would agree with their statement that logico-deductive theory research will led the researcher to see evidence of his/her theory to the exclusion of other evidence. No one likes being proven wrong. Yet, the ambiguity of grounded theory may make researchers hesitate in its use. However, so far, I see many appealing aspects to this method such as the ability to really “see” the situation from all angles, following where the data leads, and not trying to prove or disprove something.

*Glaser B, Strauss A. (1965). Awareness of dying. Chicago: Aldine.
*Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company.

Books

2007-12-28T07:13:00.000-08:00

A room without books is like a body without a soul - Cicero

What goes up, must come down

2007-12-06T18:56:00.000-08:00

I was so elated, only to receive my National Board results. I missed it by 17 points. I'm disappointed and not sure what I will do. I have two years to redo the sections, but at $350 a section, I'm not sure if I will want to. Plus, I don't have my own classroom and don't anticipate teaching full time in the near future. Maybe I can borrow someone's?

I met with my grad advisor and who offered me a TA position supervising student teachers. That's quite exciting. I love working with other teachers and look forward to seeing other people's classrooms. In the schools I've worked in, I've been the English department and haven't had the opportunity to look in other classrooms. I've often felt isolated and missed talking with other English teachers about our craft. Jim Burke's books have been a source of inspiration and comfort, but not as good as talking, in person, with someone about lessons. So, I'm eagerly awaiting the new year!

Update

2007-11-20T18:16:00.000-08:00

Major update. We have jobs – strangely enough at the same company, a retirement community. I have also been officially accepted into the graduate program. Wow – so many things are falling into place. You know how sometimes you question decisions – was it right? Well, as I see it (retroactively) each little part has given way to the next which reassures me that our decision to return to the US was at the right time.

Teachers have class

2007-09-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting on my deck, enjoying a cup of tea, dog at my feet and Canada geese flying overhead. There were two and I could hear the wind through the flapping of their wings. It is a beautiful morning – a very comfortable mid-70s and sunny. The morning glories are in full purple bloom as they climb up the railing of the deck.

We're diligently working on the house – cleaning, painting and making updates. But, reality of life sets in and we soon need to find jobs. It has felt like an extended summer vacation, though I did feel a pang of nostalgia when the back to school ads came out. We didn't have to buy or pack anything for school this year. You know the old bumper sticker, “Teachers have class.” What about teachers without a classroom? Are they still teachers? I still feel like a teacher – I read teacher magazines, still get my professional magazines and journals, and think like a teacher. Do I still have class?

Spoiled Americans

2007-09-10T16:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the first Packer game of the season. It was very exciting – we were able to watch it, with other Packer fans! Living overseas, this didn't happen much. In Brazil, we sometimes got the game a few hours later, but commentary in Portuguese. In Europe, the game didn't come on until 3 am or later – if at all. In Aruba, we had to go to Champions to watch it – which was always filled with East Coast tourists cheering on the Eagles or Patriots. Though, the food was good, we were definitely in the minority of fans. This time, we went to a sports bar that had prizes for certain plays. It was exciting cheering with others, and even better – the Packers won!

We're beginning to get to know our new town. Looking for a church, found the farmer's market and love our local grocery store. We are in a great location – every time we think of a store we'd like to go to, we find it is within a 10 minute drive. Everything is so convenient. Gone are the days of driving 45 minutes to get to a grocery store or restaurant. We're going to get spoiled. And, to even imagine the store hours – open 8 am – 9 pm (or later) and on Sundays! Again, the things that Americans take for granted!

Settling in here in the USA

2007-08-13T15:00:00.000-07:00

Okay – this has nothing to do with teaching, but it is an important milestone in my life. We are homeowners for the first time. After about a month of looking – we found a house we liked in our price range. This is the beginning of a very different, settled life. We have a garage, basement, backyard, and soon, a picket fence. After 10 years of being global nomads, it will be very different staying in one place and putting down roots. And, we have a library within walking distance – with English books! I know, that doesn't sound amazing to most, but I really value the ability to checkout books, request books, and read something in English anytime I want – for free! This really is an amazing privilege that Americans often take for granted.

Statement of Purpose for Graduate School

2007-07-31T20:32:00.000-07:00

I am about to embark on a new journey - graduate school. I struggled about the statement of purpose, but here it is!

One of my earliest memories is sitting beside my older brother, listening to him read the comics in the newspaper to me and being extremely frustrated that I couldn't decipher the squiggly marks myself. I couldn't wait to go to school and learn the mysteries of reading. When I received my first library card, I checked out Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter for almost a year until I could read it to myself. This began a life-long interest in literacy and the process of literacy. With over a decade of experience teaching middle and high school English, I strive to impart not only the skills of literacy, but also a life-long enthusiasm for reading, writing, speaking, listening and thinking to my students.

I've struggled with witty and interesting ways to write my statement of purpose for graduate study, but my purpose is actually very simple and direct. As a pre-service teacher, I had some great professors and teachers, along with some mediocre and poor ones. Like most first-year teachers, I had my share of challenges and successes, but I made a mental note of the things I wish I had been taught and exposed to before entering the classroom. Since that time, I have mentored teachers, written several articles, and given numerous workshops, but realized that one of the best way to influence the future of education is to become a teacher of future teachers and a researcher of best methods. I wish to pursue my Ph.D in Curriculum and Instruction in order to be qualified to work with pre-service teachers, research best practices and contribute to the future policies and methods of education, especially in the area of literacy.

From my first book, Peter Rabbit, reading has always been a passion of mine. I was surrounded by books as a child, since my mother was a school librarian and later a bookseller. My parents encouraged and required summer reading and writing, with one of my first poems being, “Parents are nice – They eat rice.” Considering this kind of background, it seemed natural to specialize in English/Language Arts as a teacher, and later become a certified Reading Teacher. Yet, as a first-year teacher in a very traditional school district, I balked at the idea of English class being focused on spelling, grammar, vocabulary and short stories. Real reading involved thinking, and thinking could only be articulated through speaking and writing. This was when my philosophy of teaching really materialized. I believe that learning should not be compartmentalized into subjects nor rigid by grade level and growth in one area can be used to encourage growth in other areas. I developed several interdisciplinary units and encouraged my fellow, more traditional, colleagues to consider a more holistic approach. I then entered the world of overseas teaching. My first contract was with the American School of Brasilia, Brazil. Each class consisted of 85-95% non-native English speakers. I became fascinated with the process of acquiring language, which reinforced my philosophy of learning – skills are important, but without context and motivation, learning only skills will plateau. Later, at the International School of Vilnius, Lithuania, I had the opportunity to become involved in the European League for Middle Level Education. Through this organization, I wrote and published several articles and gave presentations at the annual conferences. Each topic I researched focused on an area of literacy such as literature circles, graphic organizers, and the use of technology. My research was practical and personal and designed for in-service teachers.

How do I know I will succeed in a demanding doctoral program? I am reminded of a quote by Robert M. Pirsig, in his book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, “A person filled with gumption doesn't sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He's at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what's up the track and meeting it when it comes. That's gumption.” I've got “gumption” which, according to the Dictionary.com means, “1. initiative; aggressiveness; resourcefulness 2. courage; spunk; guts 3. common sense; shrewdness.” This gumption has enabled me to pursue and succeed in several eclectic jobs in my life. Each job I have held gave me the opportunity to rehearse the roles that make me a great teacher, well-rounded person, and student of life. Directly out of high school, I joined the Army National Guard. Basic training was arduous; especially the physical demands; though through this I learned the importance of team work. I helped the women in my platoon with the academics and they pushed and cajoled me to success in running, push-ups and sit-ups. Without each other, none of us would have succeeded. Then I attended my Military Occupational Specialty (MOS), which was paramedics. During the training, I learned basic life-saving skills, but more importantly - how to think quickly, make decisions and calmly direct other people in the midst of crisis. In my unit, I quickly became a training non-commissioned officer and directed the training of not only my platoon, but the entire company. Because of my positive experiences as a medic, as a college student, I was first interested in seeking a career in nursing. However, my poor scores in my science classes led me to consider other options, which has led me to my true vocation in life – teaching. The first unit I taught during practicum was a unit on stars, in which I integrated science, math, social studies, and language arts. Besides learning the how and why of stars, the students discovered the wonder and the tales. Their excited chatter and enthusiastic research and observation was contagious and I knew this was what I wanted to do with my life. Throughout my teaching career, I have sought excellence; constantly updating and refreshing my skills as a teacher through classes, workshops, and my own research. For the past ten years, I taught in three different overseas schools. Each country has presented its own challenges such as culture shock, bureaucracy, lack of supplies, and different views of education. Yet through this, I have learned to be patient, yet persistent; flexible, yet determined. At the International School of Aruba, I became the Curriculum Coordinator. In this capacity, I introduced the concept of curriculum mapping and guided the staff in a two year process of writing maps for all subjects and levels. In addition, I oversaw the creation of class syllabi throughout the school. This past year I completed the portfolio for National Board Certification for Adolescence and Young Adulthood/English Language Arts; although my scores will not be posted until December 2007. The reflection, documentation and writing required for the portfolio has shown my strong commitment and dedication to becoming a better teacher and contributor to the educational community.

Although I have been out of school and the country for over a decade, my real life experiences make me a solid candidate for doctoral work. As my transcript shows, I had excellent grades throughout my masters program. After twelve years of teaching, I have strong experience in both the theoretical and practical aspects of education. I've given numerous presentations for a variety of audiences and written articles for teacher journals and newspapers. Having taught overseas, I have proven that I can handle difficult situations and persevere, plus I have learned to be culturally sensitive in my dealings with others. I have directed my own professional development and continue to update my knowledge through online listserves, journals, and conferences. Personally, I am enthusiastic about education, determined to succeed in whatever endeavor I undertake, creative, organized and resourceful. I currently write a blog entitled “In the Heart of a Teacher is a Student.” I truly believe that the best teachers are always students themselves and I look forward to learning more, not only about teaching and learning, but about myself.

Good Readers Practice

2007-07-13T14:28:00.000-07:00

I'm sure your parents have reminded you that “Practice makes perfect.” And the old joke says, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The answer, “Practice, practice, practice.” There are many other proverbs and quotations that support the importance of practicing, but it is common sense – the more you do an activity, the better you become at it. This is true not only in music, dance, and sports, but in learning languages too. One of the best ways to become fluent in a language is to read extensively in the language.

According to Warwick B. Elley, in a study of 9,073 schools from 32 countries, there is a steady increase in academic achievement in student populations who have the greatest amount of voluntary free reading. However, not only does extensive reading correlate with higher academic achievement, it raises the IQ (as measured by standardized tests), improves creativity, and increases the potential job salary earning, according to numerous research studies conducted by the National Institute for Literacy in the United States. In addition, several studies show that reading in a target language increases vocabulary learning and retention.

Aside from these serious academic reasons to read, there are several other benefits to reading. It provides relaxation and an escape from the tensions of life. It can be fun, stimulating and rejuvenating. Several early studies are showing that the habit of reading, well into old age, can help keep the mind active and slow down the onset of senility, which is common in sedentary elderly people.

So the next time you reach for the remote control, hit the “Off” button, turn the pages of a book and exercise your brain cells with a good story.

End of Year 07

2007-06-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

This year the end of school snuck up on me. I was busy getting exams prepared, organizing my classroom for my replacement and packing. I didn't really clear my room until the last moment. I like it looking “lived in” up until the end of the year. I think the students “check out” more we they think the teacher has. But, I also think part of it was that reality hadn't sunk in. As I was going through books, I constantly asked if I was going to use this in the next 5 years. If not, it stayed behind. I felt a little sad giving up classroom teaching. Although my colleagues were excited to receive a bunch of free books and materials.

The Seniors also asked me to be the commencement speaker. I struggled for a while on the theme, but I finally adopted a “past, present, future” outlook. Though graduation was full of other people speaking, so I felt a little rushed.

The Sunshine Committee decided to have a farewell dinner on the last day of school. I thought it was very nice, as it allowed everyone to say goodbye. In the past, it was a rush to the end of the year with kids and then the teachers slowing scattered. It seemed like such a let down – or as they say, “No closure.” This kind of tied the ribbon on the year and I knew it was over.

ISA Class of 2007 Commencement Address

2007-06-06T12:40:00.000-07:00

I was honored to be asked by the Class of 2007 to speak at their graduation. Here is the text of that speech.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then, the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part.

Yes, I'm the English teacher – therefore it is almost required to quote a little Shakespeare. In As You Like It, Jacques compares the world to a stage and life to a play, and catalogues the seven stages of a man's life: infant, school-boy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon, and second childhood, "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything". Shakespeare means that the world is nothing but a theatrical stage where we humans are actors. From our birth we enter the stage and keep on acting true to our age, until old age when we act the last scene. It is one of Shakespeare's most frequently-quoted passages. And very appropriate for tonight, when we celebrate the end of one stage of life and the moving on to another for these Seniors.

In taking my cue from Shakespeare, lets examine a little of the first stage of life for these students. They were born in 1988 or 89. Let's put this in perspective, using the Beliot College Mindset List. Each August since 1998, as faculty prepare for the academic year, Beloit College in Wisconsin has released the Beloit College Mindset List. This is a creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it looks at the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of today’s first-year students. which is is used by educators and clergy and by the military and business in their efforts to connect with the new generation. Beloit creates the list to share with its faculty in anticipation of the first-year seminars and orientation.

The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.
For most of their lives, major U.S. airlines have been bankrupt.
There has always been only one Germany.
They have never heard anyone actually "ring it up" on a cash register.
They are wireless, yet always connected.
Thanks to pervasive headphones in the back seat, parents have always been able to speak freely in the front.
Coffee has always taken longer to make than a milkshake.
Smoking has never been permitted on U.S. airlines.
"Google" has always been a verb.
Text messaging is their email.
Bar codes have always been on everything, from library cards and snail mail to retail items.
Carbon copies are oddities found in their grandparents' attics.
Reality shows have always been on television.
They have always been able to watch wars and revolutions live on television.
They have always had access to their own credit cards.
They have never put their money in a "Savings & Loan."
Bad behavior has always been getting captured on amateur videos.
Disneyland has always been in Europe and Asia.
Dolphin-free canned tuna has always been on sale.
Disposable contact lenses have always been available.
The U.S. has always been studying global warming to confirm its existence.
They grew up with virtual pets to feed, water, and play games with, lest they die.

Isn't is amazing how things change!

Then these children entered school. Hopefully, the lessons they have learned will go beyond the languages, math, sciences, and history, because, even though I am a teacher, I can admit that there is a lot more important things to life then the academics. I'd like to remind you of some of these lessons, as so eloquently written by Robert Fulghum, in his book All I Really Needed to Learn, I Learned in Kindergarten. And, even though you will be in college, these lessons are still important.

"All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.
These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
[Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum. See his web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com/ ]

The next age, according to Shakespeare – is the lover. Or, what we would call -the adolescent. A time full of changes and challenges – choices and often, mistakes. A young teenager named Mai, wrote a wonderful poem summing up the importance of this time of “growing up”. Which, many of you are still “enduring.” Hopefully, you will take your own knowledge and experience to share with others on your same path.

Growing Up by Mai
www.netpoets.com
Paths we take

Choices we make

Paths we take alone

Choices we make on our own

We all grow up and learnWe all take different turns

Turns in our path of life

Turns that may lead to strife

Problems we go through

Problems exists in other lives too

Having problems are not wrong

Having problems do not stay forever long

Conflicts causes growth in many ways

Lessons we learn will always stay

Conflicts we gain as years go on

Lessons we learn, makes us more strong

According to Shakespeare – the next age is the soldier - Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation.

Sounds a little like a college student's life – full of the new, different and strange. A time to build your reputation, character, and knowledge.
I'd like to give you a few down to earth tips for surviving and thriving in the next few years. Many we've talked about before. And for those of you who aren't college students yet – these tips work well in high school too!

Seniors, you don't have to take notes, as I have provided a copy of this for you!
Ten Tips You Need to Survive College
http://www.mtsu.edu/~studskl/10tips.html
1. Begin the first day of class. Know what's expected of you. Take notes from the first day even if it's routine stuff you think you already know.

2. Establish a routine time to study for each class. For every hour you spend in class, you will probably need to study two hours outside class. Studying for each subject should be at the same time, same place, if possible. Study includes more than just doing your homework. You will need to go over your notes from by class, labeling, editing, and making sure you understand them. Study your syllabus daily to see where you are going and where you have been. Be sure to do reading assignments. (Don't put them off just because there's not a written assignment.) Read ahead whenever possible. Prepare for each class as if there will be a pop quiz.

3. Establish a place to study. Your place should have a desk, comfortable chair, good lighting, all the supplies you need, etc., and of course, should be as free of distractions as possible. It should not be a place where you routinely do other things. It should be only your study place.

4. Do as much of your studying in the daytime as you can. What takes you an hour to do during the day may take you an hour and a half at night.

5. Schedule breaks. Take a ten minute break after every hour of study. If possible, avoid long blocks of time for studying. Spread out several short study sessions during the day.

6. Make use of study resources on campus. Find out about and use labs, tutors, videos, computer programs, and alternate texts. Sign up for an orientation session in the campus library and computer facilities. Get to know your professors and advisors. Ask questions. "I didn't know," or "I didn't understand" is never an excuse.

7. Find at least one or two students in each class to study with. Studies show that students who study with someone routinely make better grades. You will probably find yourself more motivated if you know someone else cares about what you are doing in the class. Teaching a concept or new idea to someone else is a sure way for you to understand it. Studying in a group or with a partner can sometimes become too social. It is important to stay focused.

8. Study the hardest subject first. Work on your hardest subjects at a time when you are fresh. Putting them off until you're tired compounds the problem.

9. Be good to yourself. Studying on four hours of sleep and an empty stomach or junk-food diet is a waste of time. Avoid food and drink containing caffeine just before or just after studying.

The next age is that of justice – or what we would consider settling into adulthood.

Right now, you all are really focused on college. The goal has been to get into a good college, and now you are thinking about doing well, so you can get the job you want. But, one of the earmarks of being part of Generation Y is the rapid change going on around you, and you have the opportunity to take advantage of this – your working life will be much different from your parents. According to Ian Jukes, a futurist, teacher and writer, there some massive changes happening in the working world.

“How many of you had a parent that worked for the same company for more than 20 years? How many of you remember a time when people were expected to have a single career in their lifetime? Things certainly have changed. A US Department of Labor report in 2004 indicated that 1 out of 2 workers today has been working for the company that they are currently employed by for less than one year and that two in three have been working for the same company for less than five years. Former Secretary of Education Richard Riley was quoted in a recent speech as saying that the top ten in demands jobs for the year 2010 do not exist today – that as a result, we are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems that they’ve never been introduced to. Most people assume that the estimate of 4 to 7 careers in a lifetime still applies today – this is wrong – the US Department of Labor now estimates that today’s learners can expect to have 10 to 14 career – not 10 to 14 jobs, but careers.

The new workplace requires lifelong learning. Just a few years ago, a university degree was a seeming guarantee of a job for life. Today a 4-year degree is just the beginning of a lifelong process. Today people can’t just earn a living, they must learn a living. So even though most of educational dollars and efforts seem to be focused on K-12 and undergraduate students, in reality, they are only a minority of the educational clientele. In the past ten years working adults have become the fastest growing group clients, measuring more than 50% of those seeking further training beyond high school.”

Yes – this means that you will NEVER be finished with your education!
Although Shakespeare goes on to discuss mature adults and the “second childhood” of old age, I think I will leave that to another time, as our time is short and your attention is wandering. But I would like to return to the first lines:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and entrances...

Some of you have been at ISA for most of your school careers, others just joined us this year. But now it is time for your exits. It has been a joy and pleasure working with you and an honor to be chosen as your commencement speaker. I'd like to close with some words from the great philosopher and writer Dr. Seuss and one of the most common poems used in graduations as it has such heartfelt emotions:
Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.
You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care.
About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.
And you may not find any
you'll want to go down.
In that case, of course,
you'll head straight out of town.
It's opener there
in the wide open air.
Out there things can happen
and frequently do
to people as brainy
and footsy as you.
And when things start to happen,
don't worry. Don't stew.
Just go right along.
You'll start happening too.
You'll be on your way up!
You'll be seeing great sights!
You'll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.
You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed.
You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you'll be the best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.
Congratulations and good luck!

Gumption

2007-05-13T18:08:00.000-07:00

Currently I am reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. I've been meaning to read this book since I worked at Waldenbooks in Southridge and every Christmas, people would come in to buy it for a nephew or grandson because it was such a meaningful book to them. I am currently reading it with a student of mine who has been a difficult student to reach. He is smart, articulate and intuitive but doesn't want to “fit in” or “play the system.” However, his strong need to be different and independent is going to cost him in some lost opportunities. I'm hoping this book will touch a part of him and help him figure out his direction in life.

The book is very complex, as the subtitle says, “An Inquiry into Values.” The author uses the physical journey of a motorcycle trip across the US to set up his premise of a Chautauqua – an ongoing lecture about various topics which all revolve around the idea of Quality. The story weaves between the past ( his early years as a searching/seeking philosopher Phaedrus), the present (his journey on the motorcycle with his son, Chris) and the future (what really is Quality?)

One idea that has captured my interest is the discussion of “gumption.” Pirsig says, “A person filled with gumption doesn't sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He's at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what's up the track and meeting it when it comes. That's gumption.” pg 310 Harper Perennial edition. According to Dictionary.com gumption is:

“1. initiative; aggressiveness; resourcefulness: With his gumption he'll make a success of himself.
2. courage; spunk; guts: It takes gumption to quit a high-paying job.
3. common sense; shrewdness. “

This idea of gumption has stuck with me because I see a serious lack of it in my students. When something gets tough, many of my students quit or complain that the task was too hard or they don't know how to do it. There isn't enough of the initiative, aggressiveness and resourcefulness in students, which will take them past the difficult and into confidence. This brings to mind several questions. Why don't students have gumption? How can students gain gumption? Can gumption be taught?

Pirsig continues with a listing of “gumption traps.” The first is category are those traps caused by external circumstances or “setbacks” and the second is “primarily within yourself . . hang-ups.” pg 312. Both types of traps drain gumption and create anger and frustration. Although Pirsig relates this ideas specifically to the maintenance of a motorcycle, many of the ideas have applications to other areas of life.

One type of setback is “out-of-sequence-reassembly.” When we do things to quickly, or without thought, a step of the task may be left out, which ruins the entire task. I've done this often in cooking, when I think I've used an ingredient, yet when the cake is baked, it is only ½ inch think and heavier than lead. I missed a set. As my dad says, “Haste makes waste.” To prevent this, Pirisig explains two of his techniques – taking good notes and laying everything out.

Another setback is intermittent failure. This is when something works some of the time, but not always. When it works, you think you have the problem fixed, but then, it doesn't work again. To understand what was really wrong, you have to recreate the environment of the failure. Or, look at the pattern of the failure – what other factors figure into the failure and try to eliminate them.

Finally, parts problems. In this setback, you know what part needs replacing but can't get the part – either it is out of stock and needs to be ordered, the part is misnamed/labeled so you don't get the right one, or the quality of the new part doesn't match the original. Pirsig's solution to this problem is learning to create his own parts.

The internal traps, or hang-ups, Pirsig says, come from values, truth and muscle. If someone has a rigid view of the problem and the world, and he/she can't see from another point of view, then the solutions may not be found. When we expect a certain outcome, and it doesn't happen, it is difficult to see beyond our expectations. This also applies to making judgements – when we judge something or someone quickly, it is hard to see past our first impression to see the reality of the situation. But, ego also forces us to not truly see a situation. With a large ego, it is hard to admit mistake or failure, therefore many people prefer dishonesty with themselves rather than the reality. Yet the opposite of ego is anxiety, which will paralyze people just as easily as ego. If a person is to anxious they will do nothing. Finally, boredom often goes hand in hand with ego, but is a step further. With boredom, there is no attention to the task and mistakes – big and small are made, which may lead to impatience. This is caused by “an underestimation of the amount of time a job will take. . . Impatience is the first reaction against a setback and can soon turn to anger if you're not careful.” pg 325

I think it is important for students to recognize their own setbacks and hang-ups and before they begin blaming the task or the material, address the setback or hang-up. As Pirsig says, “You're bound to discover plenty of them [setbacks or hang-ups] for yourself on almost every job. Perhaps the best single thing to learn is to recognize a value trap when you're in it and work on that before you continue on the machine.” pg 325-326.