Heath: “the culture children learn as they grow up is, in fact, ways of taking meaning from the environment around them”.
Harris: talks about coming to know the world by way of a subject, the knower and an object (the world to be known).
Paulo Freire: states that the world and men do not exist apart from each other; they exist in constant interaction, hence, the world is the context for existing and knowing.
Guba and Lincoln: talk about individuals attempting to make sense of their experiences through interaction (constructivist approach) where making sense of the interaction (engagement with others) leads to the development improved joint constructions with values providing the basis for ascribing meaning.
Marjorie Siegel: states that learning is a social process in which students actively construct understandings, using multiple ways of creating/demonstrating knowledge and meaning: oral language, music, dance, visual arts (draw, paint, collage).
Étienne Wenger: we are social beings who actively engage in the world (communities of practice) in order to construct meaning.
Britton: “We construct a representation of the world as we experience it … a cumulative record of our own past”.
In keeping with each of these points, all of us have ways of talking, listening, acting, interacting, believing and valuing that are privy to a specific discourse (social identity) as discussed by James Paul Gee in Discourses and Literacies. Our primary discourse (first social identity) is mastered through a combination of scaffolding and interaction with people who have already mastered the Discourse.
“As parents and their children interact in the pre-school years, adults give their children, through modelling and specific instruction, ways of taking from books” (Shirley Brice Heath, What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School, page 258). In some communities “these ways of schools and institutions are very similar to the ways learned at home; in other communities the ways of school are merely an overlay on the home-taught ways and may be in conflict with them” (Shirley Brice Heath, What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School, page 258). Heath speaks to the mainstream where a literate tradition is evident and children succeed in school. She also speaks to the non-mainstream where there exists no literate tradition; hence, these children are not likely to succeed in school.
James Paul Gee (Discourses and Literacies) states that Discourses are ways of being in the world. It is through one’s Discourse that one displays membership to a particular group or network of individuals. It is our primary discourse (first social identity) that is mastered through scaffolding and interaction with people who are Discourse adepts. Generally speaking, it is through exposure to models, trial and error, and practice within our social network groups that we come to control our first language. Gee states that “Discourses are mastered through acquisition, not through learning” (page 138). What happens, then, when one’s primary Discourse is in serious conflict with the secondary Discourse of school, especially as Gee states that “traditional schools/classrooms are poor at facilitating acquisition” (page 146)? I believe this to be connected to what Heath is saying above.
Étienne Wenger states that our personal perspectives on learning matter. Do we believe that knowledge consists solely of information stored in the brain? I, for one, do not. On the other hand, do we believe that the information stored within the brain is but a small part of knowing, and that knowing involves both active participation within one’s social community as well as other communities of practice? This is the perspective that I fully embrace.
I also believe, as Britton states in Language and Experience that we construct (and reconstruct) a representation of the world as we experience it. As experiences change, so does one’s representation of the world. Knowing that we are social beings with differing experiences of the world, we cannot expect that all representations of the world will be the same, for they cannot. “Our world representation is a storehouse of the data of our experience” (page 28).
How can we then, knowing what we know about ourselves as social beings, work toward taking the child from where he/she is to where he/she needs to be?
We speak of the literacy tradition as pertaining to different components; namely, reading, writing and oral language. Each community has “rules for socially interacting and sharing knowledge in literacy events” (Shirley Brice Heath, What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School, page 259).
Mainstream
[1] bedtime story, [2] initiation-reply-evaluation (central feature of classroom lessons),[3] what-explanations (utilized in school),[4] any initiation of a literacy event makes interruption acceptable, [5] success in school
Roadville
[1] bedtime story, [2] adults teach them how to talk, [3] cooperative discourse is practiced, coached, rewarded, [4] adults believe in instilling proper use of words,[5] children introduced to bits and pieces of books,[6] adults use print to entertain, inform, instruct, [7] children introduced to pre-school workbooks, [8] adults do not extend content (habits of literacy) beyond book reading … do not engage in commentary upon seeing an item/event in the real world and making a comparison to a similar item/event in a book, [8] require children to repeat from books and answer questions about contents (nursery rhymes, alphabet books, books about animals, simplified Bible stories), [9] coach children in the re-telling of a story (almost as if pre-composed or pre-scripted in head of adult), [10] perform well in initial schooling stages, [11] if asked to write a creative story, they retell from books and rarely provide emotional/personal commentary, [12] begin to fail rapidly by Grade 4
Trackton
[1] bedtime story, [2] children learn to talk, [3] children go to school with certain expectancies about print,[4] children have a keen sense that reading is something one does to learn something one needs to know, [5] parents do not simplify their language, focus on single-word utterances, label items or features of objects in books or environment, [6] do not decontextualize: heavily contextualize nonverbal and verbal language (they, themselves, must select, practice, determine rules of production and structuring), [7] seem to develop connections between situations/items not by labels and features, but by configuration links, [8] face unfamiliar types of questions when go to school (ask for what-explanations, identify items by name, label features), [9] generally score in the lowest percentile reading readiness tests, [10] do not sit at desks and complete workbook pages, [11] their ability to metaphorically link 2 events/situations are not tapped into, [12] seem not to know how to take meaning from reading, [13] expression of themselves on paper is very limited (oral stories better), [14] continue to collect very low or failing grades and many decide by end of Grade 6 to stop trying
These children, simply because they have learned different methods and degrees of taking from books, respond differently.
Roadville children have less exposure to content of books than do Mainstream children. As they have been trained to be a passive learner, they must “learn to be active information-givers, taking from books and linking that knowledge to other aspects of their environment” (Shirley Brice Heath, What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School, page 280). Trackton children use “narrative skills highly rewarded in upper primary grades” and are able to “distinguish a fictionalized story from a real-life narrative” but they seem to have skipped learning to label, list features, and give what-explanations (Shirley Brice Heath, What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School, page 280). It also appears that reason-explanations and affective comments are the next step in the literacy hierarchy.
In keeping with our social natures, can we not assist in directing our students to acquire these pertinent skills through modelling, trial and error and social practice within the school (secondary) Discourse? After all, Gee states that “Discourses are mastered through acquisition, not through learning” (Discourses and Literacies, page 138). This also reflects the enquiry model, in contrast to the transmission model, as proposed by Marjorie Siegal in More Than Words: The Generative Power of Transmediation For Learning.
Enquiry Model
• learners see themselves as knowledge makers
• learners find problems worth pursuing
• learners frame problems worth pursuing
• learners negotiate interpretations
• learners forge new connections
• learners represent meanings in new ways
Transmission Model
• instructional routines
• no ambiguity in learning
• no risks to be taken
• no new knowledge to be made
• passive learners
“Instructional strategies involving transmediation, the process of translating meaning from one sign system (such as language) into another (such as pictorial representation), are critical to enquiry oriented classrooms because they promote the kind of thinking that goes beyond the display of received meaning to the invention of new connections and meanings” (Marjorie Siegal, More Than Words: The Generative Power of Transmediation For Learning, page 456). Throughout this very course, we have been involved in sketch-to-stretch activities which is clearly representative of transmediation. As an adult, this type of activity can be a very awkward and difficult one to engage in due to the fact that it is unfamiliar. If one were to engage their students in this exercise on a routine basis, one would allow all students (Mainstream, Roadville and Trackton) to display their knowledge/understanding without feeling unworthy. “Learners must actively transform the text to make it their own” (Marjorie Siegal, More Than Words: The Generative Power of Transmediation For Learning, page 463). We, as teachers, must give them both permission and space in order to do just this, as transmediation “promotes generative and reflective thinking” (Marjorie Siegal, More Than Words: The Generative Power of Transmediation For Learning, page 470).
Filed under: Written Response
