Social and functional linguistics

This morning I woke up thinking about all of the literature I 've read and I know I needed to start listening to the recordings of the teaching sessions and apply the ideas I've compiled to the data I've collected. So I pulled up my lit review and my old journal of literature and ideas and started thinking about them again. I am playing the recordings and listening as I review the ideas. I'm listening to a lesson of a teacher presenting a lesson on immunology. I notice that it pretty much fits the description of what we discussed in our focus group lessons. Mostly just questions from the students to clarify what is being taught. I hear the teacher repeatedly asking if the students have any questions and the silence that follows. The teacher then asks how many in the class have done their reading. One person responds. I know from the focus groups that this particular teacher attributes the lack of discursive exchange to the fact that students are not prepared for a discussion. They do not read or do homework so they have nothing to discuss. This makes perfect sense and is true. So now the question becomes - how can we get them to prepare for these discussions? Which keeps bringing us back to the issue of culture. Who in the world is going to prepare for a discussion about immunology in the current culture? I read something that is informative to this scenario.

A sociocultural perspective on science and mathematics education is skeptical and critical. The proposed study adopts the sociocultural perspective. Its most basic belief is that we do not know why we act as we do; we only know a few local reasons on a certain time scale and within a limited range of contexts. In the sociocultural view, what matters to learning and doing science is primarily the socially learned cultural traditions of what kinds of discourses and representations are useful and how to use them, far more than whatever brain mechanisms may be active while we are doing so. Unlike the better known theories of formal linguistics, social and functional linguistics regards our use of language as a socially and culturally contextualized meaning-making, in which language plays the part of a system of resources for meaningful verbal action (Lemke, 2000). In this way, use of language can be viewed as an aspect of a science students’ developing identity.

Lemke used the phrase "socially learned cultural traditions". What a phrase. It really embodies all that I see taking place. The teacher has an understanding of what is socially acceptable and appropriate for a person that seeks to understand immunology. This can be applied to any topic, but I'll go with this because that is the lesson I happen to be listening to. If you want to understand how the immune system works, you read about it before class, you listen to a discussion led my the instructor. You ask questions about any points that were unclear and are still unclear after having listened to the instructor. You write down not only what is on the board, but what is discusses orally, and you complete some sort of questions assigned as a review of the content. From our focus group discussions and countless discussions I've had with students through the years, this way of learning is pretty much obsolete. It is expected that the teachers will assign this work. It is accepted that this is the routine for learning. However - in a bizarre manner - students have made it clear that this method of learning is not something that they will participate in. Reading a science text book is just not going to happen. As a matter of fact, the world outside of science class and the world inside don't seem to touch each other at all. This also showed up in my literature.

What is largely absent from the literature is the experiential perspective of a student who spends most of every day, before and after science class, in other subject-area classes, in social interactions in school but outside the curriculum, and in life outside school. Much of the current conversation about the identity that students develop in the science classroom seems to frame the few minutes of the science lesson as having the ability to somehow create an isolated and nearly autonomous learning universe, ignoring the sociocultural reality that students’ beliefs, attitudes, values, and personal identities-all of which are critical to their achievement in science learning-are formed along trajectories that pass only briefly through our classes (Lemke, 2000). The direction of the thinking about this situation then shifts to connecting the world outside of the science classroom to the world inside. That can only be accomplished by changing the homework to applying what happens inside of the classroom to what is going on outside. So you read the book in order to design a study to apply to the outside world. You redefine homework. I remember taking immunology in grad school and it was pretty tough. Physiology was pretty difficult as well. I think I took that class twice. Animal Physiology in undergrad and Human Physiology in grad school. I know what really got me to learn the stuff was application. But what is the hardest part of it - and what is really challenging is convincing students that the world inside of our classes and the world outside are really one and the same. I think where we fail is bridging those two worlds. It doesn't happen because of time constraints and resistance from students to participate. You can ask them to investigate any number of really interesting diseases and get into the morbidity and mortality weekly report and change the homework to introduce them to the world of disease investigation. But the bottom line is - we became science nerds because we had a certain personality and adopted the culture of science. Embraced it. Competed with each other to see who could be the best at it. We are a world apart from most of our students. I spent a significant amount of time with museum educators and sometimes I wish we had their mindset in the public school system. Make things interactive, give tons and tons of information, but make it participatory. But then again, museums aren't held accountable for state exams. So I suppose I end with this thought. Another key to unlocking discourse is making the outside world and the inside world come in contact with each other. And then striking up a conversation about it all the while encouraging the students to adopt our scientific language and culture.

About codes and discursive identity

I am so glad that I went back into the classroom. This summer is going to be so revealing as I look at myself and my friends. I am actually even more excited about sharing with them what I learned in September. I wonder how they will react when I play back parts of the recordings of their teaching to them. I woke up thinking about this as I have been every morning lately and I was thinking about the whole idea of Bernstein's code theory and Wilson and the little British School Boys and Schooling in Capitalist America by Bowles and Gintis. I thought about all of that stuff and then I thought about how much difference the building administrators make and the huge influence of the culture of the school. I thought about a conversation I had with two educators this past Thursday about culture and how it can trump all of these other factors. I saw it happen at North Star Academy when I taught there. Of course, I know that with a charter school you are really handpicking parents and children who buy in to what you are doing, but that is not the case at Bloomfield High. Educators there saw a change in culture with the change in school administration. I actually saw the same thing happen at Central High when I was there. I just know - as everyone else who is dedicated to educating children knows - that parents are just not around as much anymore - they are working themselves half to death. But again, I wonder if we have become sort or archaic in our definition of parental involvement. I know parents who are living in the projects and working a bunch of different jobs - but they have cell phones and respond to text messages. Maybe we as educational leaders need to open up our minds about how to get people involved. Maybe it won't happen at back to school night or pta meetings, but there are other ways of communicating with people. I was thinking about what would happen if I had a cell phone line dedicated to parents. Of course, you know, I would only answer it during reasonable hours, but they could leave messages whenever they wanted. Anyhow - you just have to be creative about how you reach out I think and have lots of things for them to come to so that they can feel proud of their children. Now - more than ever - community is important. That's where the church comes in. Every church needs to hire teachers to run a program outside of school. And every church needs to have an active prison ministry - but that's a whole other topic.

But I woke up thinking about the whole code thing and wondering what I saw while I was teaching after having read and talked about all of that stuff. I am thinking about the Level 1 students who are supposedly not college bound. Even though most of them said they wanted to go to County College at least. And I guess it's true that they don't really have the language or the interest in the underpinnings of most scientific processes to engage in any heavy discourse about science. But who says they even need it. I mean even the most brilliant minds like Richard P. Feynman used every day concepts and language to describe quantum electrodynamics. Every genius I ever met understood that. So it really all boils down to culture, finding ways to communicate, and getting teachers to develop a "Feynman mindset".

Using the available technology and reversing the order of things

I think getting around the resistance to talk about the details in science could be surmounted by buying into some things that are a integral part of the student culture. I mean, if they spend half their lives on facebook - then make it a requirement for the class and get a dialogue going. All of these things always make you worry because you are afraid that someone will get on there and say or do something really inappropriate and create more work for you. You feel like you need to control every little detail and that really stifles creativity. I'd like to get my friends to try it, though. I wonder what we happened if we tried to make the science class flow into the lives they live outside of our classes.

Another idea which is really being pushed at many of the conferences is the inquiry-based science classroom. My only issue is that we still assess in a traditional manner and most post-secondary education is very traditional. I know I would do an awesome job of creating an inquiry-based class and could probably spend an entire year at lab benches and never do a single lecture - but it would not serve the students well. They do not have the desire to do any of the reading that would be required outside of class to make the experience meaningful.

So my idea in the past was to utilize a program that really takes full advantage of the kids level of comfort with the computer and internet. Which was mostly guided by me - very structured with activities and worksheets that had to be completed as we went along. That actually went pretty well, but they still thought it was dull because they were still reading, thinking about topics they thought were irrelevant and disconnected from life, and being forced to talk about it.

I have experienced success before - but it was because I kept the students active. And they did not get much out of the activities - they were just happy to be active and working at the lab benches. So I was really only successful in peaking their interest about something. What would be incredible is somehow creating a culture of discussion from the activities. So that seems to be driven by competition and rewards. I've done that too, and it works really well. My mistake in the past was that it was not structured enough. Each part of an activity has to be timed and you have to keep students moving along or they just never get motivated to finish anything.

Tangible rewards - food, games. Competition, lots of activity, you have to teach about discussion and note-taking. We have to teach the students how to engage in scientific discourse and what is important to take note of and recall. I think the problem is that we are thinking that they already know how to do this. Why would a person who is not that into science know how to talk and think and write like a scientist? I'll bet our lives would improve if we took the approach of being enthusiastic about teaching students how to communicate. If we really pre-thought classroom comunication and set some ground rules.

Framing and Positioning

Unbelievably, one student showed up today – as they were making final preparations for graduation – to take the final, that I had to talk him through in order for him to pass. Now this particular young man showed up every day and sat quietly in the back, seemingly participating – but flunked just about every quiz. I remember thinking if he had some personal attention, he would do much better. But I never gave him personal attention. I was focused on managing the class – which with this group, took some effort. I was told by another young man that it was unbelievable that I actually got this group to do anything because they had been totally out of control earlier in the year. Another young man told me that the teacher who was facilitating the class just before me had more or les gotten things under control but they were required to do guided reading packets and watch Forensic Files on Fridays while filling out question and answer sheets. I remember saying and thinking that that is a fine approach because it is organized and really helps those who are low level readers. I did not like the approach however because it did not challenge the students to take upon themselves to discern what information is relevant and pertinent and did not encourage discourse. I restructured the class by demanding that they complete 5 fill-ins for warm-ups in which they had to engage me in conversation to fill in the answers and then a brief lecture – around 15 minutes with power point – along with a Discussion sheet that was developed around a weekly quiz to be given on Friday. I set up a place for the old Warm-ups so that everyone was held accountable for making them up. And set up a designated place for old discussion sheets – which were also mandatory. Quizzes had to be made up as well. In this 2^nd period class this approach was initially a disaster. Actually it was a disaster up until the last few weeks when it became quite clear that I was not going to back down and would indeed give those who would not comply, an F – preventing these seniors from graduating if necessary. Now, true accountability would mean that I would not permit students to make up all of the work they missed in the last few weeks of the marking period and would not permit them to copy from each others papers at the end of each week when everything was due. I relented on these things. I came in too late in the year and the battle was truly lost. Because of all of the changes in instructors and issues – they would most likely be permitted to pass and graduate regardless of what I did and did not do. However, I somehow made them believe that I could hold them accountable and accomplished some level of buy-in from even the most difficult of students by the end. I keep coming back to the same idea of the need for a tremendous amount of structure to create a safe space. Along with the need for constant changing activities to encourage motivation. They seem to need super-structured chaos. They should all be cosmologists!

This idea has been labeled as differentiated instruction and project based learning and all kinds of cool buzz names and ideas. Of course the big draw-back is the refusal to read or do anything much outside of class and the abundance of behavioral problems that must be managed. One of my colleagues thinks that to ask them to think deeply about some of the concepts I find fascinating and enjoyable to discuss is really asking too much for their age and maturity level. I really disagree. I think the culture – meaning the academic culture – does not support the kinds of thinking and talking that need to take place during some of these labs and discussions. So framing and positioning are everything. If you want buy in for something like gel electrophoresis or ELISA, you have to frame it within the culture. And you don’t have to use a bunch of slang and bad grammar to do it. It just has to be connected to something that is familiar and clearly identifiable for the students. Gosh, that is an incredible amount of work. I am thinking of my lecture about Internet Forensics. They were quiet and listening to me – fairly intently in the 7^th period which was disgustingly awful. I would like to listen to that recording. But I remember how I related to everyday things like social injustices that we all face – and my dad and the identity theft debacle. I painted hackers in a different light and they seemed to be interested, if just for a moment. It framed the discussion within the context of every day life of every day people and positioned the students and their families and friends as hard-working members of society who should be concerned about this topic. It also posed a humanitarian look at the “bad guys”. That was also the highest scoring quiz for my students. Not because of lecture necessarily – they were just familiar with the terminology because they use the internet and computer so much. Making the unfamiliar into the familiar. That is an art. Then there is the tremendous cultural divide.