Ball, A. F., & Alim, H. S. (2006).
Preparation, pedagogy, policy, and power: "Brown," the "King"
case, and the struggle for equal language rights. Yearbook
of the National Society for the Study of Education, 105(2), 104-124.
Author:
Date:
2006 -
Research Questions:
“What needs to happen before the close of another half-century in order for us
to realize the full potential of Brown?”
(p. 105)
Context (need for
study): 50 year anniversary of 1954 Brown v. Board of Education – look again
at successes and failures of court-ordered segregation. Urgency of not subjugating
this generation to unequal educational opportunities. “Revisit 25 years of language
and racial politics since ‘the Martin Luther King Black English case’” (p.
105).
Methods: Researched
essay
Findings:
3 action points for language education: “the development and implementation of
(1) inclusive, comprehensive, systematic reform in language education policy;
(2) critical language pedagogies; and (3) teacher preparation programs in
language and literacy education” (p. 105).
Historically neglected linguistic dimensions
of the Black American tradition:
Ogbu (1978, 1992) notes that Blacks
were involuntary immigrants – their linguistic heritage was cut off (p. 106).
Kept away from others who spoke their home languages – isolation to keep
powerless. “When did speaking black language come to be seen as a problem?” (p.
107) – ALWAYS, but the result of Brown
lead to many sociolinguistic studies of Black language in 1960s. White teachers
were not prepared! Black language discourse is underscored by racism and race
relations discourses.
Legal contexts and consequences of Borwn and King:
For many, desegregation was a SLOW
process.
“Students at the beginning of the 21st
century are once again separated by race and language in U.S. schools, only
this time the segregation is caused by an increasingly complex array of social,
economic, and legal issues (Frankenberg & Lee, 2002)” (p. 109). Wow – “‘Although
only 5% of segregated white schools are in areas of concentrated poverty, over
80% of black and Latino schools are’ (Balkin, 2001, p. 6)” (p. 109). The King case ruled that attitudes (even if unconscious)
that were demeaning to Black students’ home language would be a turn off to
learning and “constituted a language barrier that impeded the students’
educational progress (Memorandum 1381)” (p. 110). How can teachers rationally
take Black language into account when teaching Black students? How do you
prepare teachers to be effective with ALL students?
Educational responses:
Native Hawaiians have a similar
plight to Black Americans, but there is at least some respect and dual language
recognition in schools for the Hawaiians (p. 112). Call for a a united front in
forming a national language policy; look at the Conference on College
Composition and Communication – (1) teach “mainstream academic language varieties”;
(2) home language as legitimate is to be used in teaching alongside academic
language; and (3) promotion of learning a second language (p. 113). Teachers
must have a “critical language awareness” through pedagogical instruction that
invades their planning and fights linguisism, no longer seeing students as
deficient but rather linguistically marginalized (p. 115). New Literacy Studies
and Critical Language Awareness makes visible the invisible, often well-meaning
attempts on behalf of teachers that can silence marginalized voices “in white public
space” (p. 116). As seen in the Linguistic Profiling project at Stanford, when students
see that language can and is used against them, they can consciously “transform
the conditions under which they live” (p. 117). Preservice teachers often are
not able to participate in language diversity courses (if offered) because of rigorous
structure of coursework
Discussion (my
connection):
I appreciated
that on p. 114, the authors quote Baugh (1998) in putting responsibility on
native speakers of Standard English as well: “’They must learn to be tolerant of those who do not speak Standard
English’ (p. 297; emphasis in the original).”
As teachers, we have to change the
way we speak. I think of the intentionality I had to have while cognitively
coaching Intern Teachers and trying to use Peter Johnston’s ideas from Choice Words. It is not enough to demand
more out of our students and try to be a good/nice person in the class, we also
have to live it, to speak it in the classroom!
Chisolm, J. S., & Godley, A. J.. (2011). Learning
about language through inquiry-based discussion: Three bidialectal high school
students’ talk about dialect variation, identity, and power. Journal of
Literacy Research, 43(4), 430-468.
Author:
Date:
2011 -
Research Questions:
How do three bidialectal African American high school students learn about language
variation, identity, and power through their participation in small-group,
inquiry-based discussion? How do students discuss the two dialects they speak? “How
does students’ engagement in an inquiry-based discussion about language
variation, identity, and power support their sociolinguistic content learning?”
(p. 432).
Context (need for
study): Gap in scholarship of empirical studies,
“documenting students’ engagement in classroom activities designed to address”
language diversity and power issues (p. 431). 11th grade,
regular-track English students from mostly Black school on edges of the Rust
Belt. African American Vernacular English/Standard English
Methods:
“Part of a larger, design-based study of inquiry-based grammar and language
instruction” (p. 438). Worked with four
ELA teachers to watch how students respond to new kinds of grammar instruction.
2 year study. “Analyzed audio recordings of classroom talk, field notes, and
students’ writings for features of AAVE and SE” (p. 438). Researcher and
teachers designed, implemented, and revised an inquiry-based unit about
dialects, identity, and power. This study comes from focusing on one
small-group discussion in the second year. Tracked “(a) the frequency and
distribution of argument moves and (b) the level of disciplinary alignment and specificity
of students’ claims and evidence as
students’ collective argumentation developed over time” (p. 441). Created
graphical representation of argument moves for each discussion question.
Conversations coded for language variation, identity, and power as well as how
specific they were in their examples and disciplinary alignment. Interviews
months after the small-group discussion.
Findings:
Students’
argumentation aligned with “current perspectives in the discipline”; discussion
lead to specifics in language variation and identity; and students only focused
on power structures that influenced their own experiences and roadblocks as
bidialectics.
Healthy quality of discussion from teacher
framing disagree/debate against arguing as a way to get at productive
discussions. Teacher questions and specificity are key in guiding the group
talk. Move from getting cliché answers by asking to specify by explaining their
own situations and providing examples. Considering and reconsidering who they
are and what is fair, but when made to disagree with each other, they have to
listen to one another.
Families expect formality when
speaking with elders. Students did not ask why some ways of talking were
considered rude or mannered or why everyone judges other on their language use –
they did not realize the critical language awareness (Janks, 1999) that is essential
in ELA language instruction (Alim, 2005; Delpit, 1988; Godley & Minnici,
2008) (p. 459).
Through inquiry-based instruction,
students were able to evaluate proposed evidence for claims and counter claims,
especially with specificity in the teacher’s question (p. 460).
Discussion (my
connection):
I think that I and other teachers
avoid controversial discussions in the classroom because we don’t want to lose
control. I don’t know what will come out of a student’s mouth, and I do not
think I know how best to deal with what can turn hateful or even just rude, but
I do value discussion based on conflict, and I must get a hold of Johnson and
Johnson (2009) to look at what they call “the instructional power of conflict”
(p. 37) (p. 453).
The students seemed to come away
with a sense that their language is deeply tied to their identity, but fall
back on AAVE as “slang” that would be considered rude or unprofessional – they still
have at least a piece of a deficit view of their own language use. You can see
this again in an interview with one of the students who thought that her
transcribed language looked awful.
A most interesting claim is that “the
students did not fully or primarily identify as speakers of AAVE” (p. 462), and
the resulting remarks are important. It is never safe to assume that students
will identify themselves the way you may want to classify them. You run the
risk of isolating individuals who actually live in a whole, globalized, and multilingual
contexts.
Davila, B. (2012). Indexicality and “Standard”
edited American English: Examining the link between conceptions of standardness
and perceived authorial identity. Written Communication, 29(2), 180-207.
Author:
Date:
2012 -
Research Questions:
What patterns are evident in the association of White students as privileged
with written standardness and simultaneously disassociate the underrepresented
from American English? “As composition instructors read anonymous student
writing, how do they infer details about authorial identity; what aspects of
written language do they perceive as indexical (such as words or phrases, sentence
structures, rhetorical choices, topic); and how do they understand and talk
about the relationship between language and identity?” (p. 182).
Context (need for
study): Linking language and identity =
indexicality. Writing instructors are at conflict – resist Standard Edited
American English as a gatekeeper, but expect that students will be “required”
later on to actually have mastered SEAE. “It is impossible for dialect to be
completely unmarked” (p. 181). Gap in looking “at the ways that particular
language features do or do not signal specific identities” (p. 182).
Methods:
Interviews with composition instructors about readings of anonymous student
texts.
Findings:
“Indexicality and standardness are mutually informative: The non/standard
features of student texts operate as indexicals for student-author identities
just as perceived student-author identities influence the reading of a texas as
non/standard” (p. 180). Student texts are expected to be produced in SEAE and
are received under that light.
Instructors make guesses about
student identity in regards to class, race and gender through particular
language features. Conventions were most common associators with class as well
as tone and diction under the assumption that upper-class students had more
rigor, training, and expectation with high standards in these categories.
Linking better writing to better preparedness, White students are stereotyped
as better writers as receivers of better educations – tied to class. Urban and
inner city are meant to refer to Black students in contrast to middle class
(unspoken White). Race is also tied to grammar, dialect, and diction all on the
sentence-level. Instructors found AAVE to be error, not grammatical difference
of dialect. Gender come through in topic and organization: linear organization to
be male and storytelling through examples to be female.
Discussion (my
connection):
Look at Matsuda (2006) and McArthur
(1992) for ideas about “linguistic
homogeneity” and combating the falsity that SEAE as unmarked and “normal”.
It is tough not to be biased about
papers. I would hold on to student papers that I expected to be good for times
that I felt like I needed a pick-me-up or would save them until the end because
they would “go faster”. Even knowing the name of the student (or if you have
your students turn work in anonymously – the writing workshop teacher knows
what you’re working on anyway) can give benefit or take away from the same
writing depending on the relationship with or expectations from the student.
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