Developing Learning Communities

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Developing Learning Communities
Chapter Seven

• Language and Learning Style

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Characteristics of a Learning Community

• It is organized for activity.
• Everyone in the school participates in this
  activity-oriented environment.
• There is a sense that everyone belongs.

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Rationale for Learning Community Classrooms

• Need to prepare students to be citizens of a
  democracy
• Through learning to negotiate differences in the
  context of a common curriculum
• Through learning citizenship by practicing
  democracy

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?Pedagogies Old and New

• ?Old methods with new names
• Dialogue (Plato)
• Discovery learning (Abelard)
• Critical pedagogy, feminist pedagogy,
  collaborative learning (Comenius)

?What is new ?That these should exist at the
same time and be used by both children and adults
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?Roles Old and New

• ?Traditional roles of students and adults are
  expanded
• Teacher as teller is expanded to teacher as
  guide, coach, cheerleader.
• Other adults assume teaching and learning roles.
• Students may be teachers as well as learners.

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?Place of Content Knowledge Old and New

• Disciplinary knowledge serves a dual role
• Sometimes it is learned as an end in itself.
• Sometimes it serves as a means to another end,
  e.g., problem-solving or discovering a new way to
  see and understand the world.

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?Assessment Old and New

• There is still a use for paper and pencil
  testing, standardized or teacher-written.
• General use for such tests is diagnostic.
• Alternative forms of assessment also play a part
• Peer evaluation
• Portfolios
• Group tests
• Self-evaluation

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Perspectives on Language Acquisition

• ?Language is what makes us human. It is the
  primary means for socializing us into our
  families and social groups, and through them,
  acquiring a cultural identity.

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The Family is the First Institution

• Introduces us to language
• Structures the childs environment
• Gives labels to roles such as Mommy, teacher,
  priest, extending roles into the wider community

• Language objectifies, interprets, and justifies
  reality for the child.
• Language brings the meanings and values of the
  wider community onto the small state of the
  immediate family.

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Institutional Aspects of Language in the Family

• ?Language has several characteristics in common
  with other social institutions
• ?It is external.
• ?It is objective.
• ?It has the power of moral authority.
• ?It is historical.

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Perspectives on Language Variation

• All language sounds have symbolic meaning.
• Within any language, however, the meaning of
  elements may differ widely
• Vocabulary
• Pronunciation
• Syntax (grammatical structure)
• Semantics (the meaning of words)

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Verbal Communication

• Accents differ from standard language only in
  pronunciation
• Dialects differ from standard language in
  pronunciation, word usage, and syntax
• Black English (ebonics)
• Rural (or Mountain) English
• Standard English

Continued
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• Black English (ebonics, African American Language
  AAL)
• Spoken primarily (though not exclusively) by
  urban African Americans
• Derived in part from the languages of west Africa
• Ability to code switch (move back and forth from
  ebonics to standard English) is often a matter of
  social class

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• Rural (or Mountain) English
• Spoken primarily in Appalachia
• Derived from the language of early English
  settlers in the area
• May be the purest English spoken in the United
  States
• Has been preserved, in part, because of isolation
  of mountain people

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• Standard English
• Is also a dialect of English, although it is the
  dialect usually deemed most correct
• Is the language of education, commerce, and the
  arts
• May vary from community to community, and from
  country to country

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• Bidialectism the abililty to speak two (or more)
  dialects and to switch easily between or among
  them
• Sign Language a non-verbal language of signs
  spoken by the deaf
• Serves instead of a spoken language
• American Sign Language (ASL) is considered an
  official language

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Nonverbal Communication

• ?Used by both hearing and hearing-impaired
  individuals
• ?Accounts for 50 to 90 percent of the messages we
  send and receive
• ?It has several functions
• ?Conveys messages
• ?Can augment verbal communication
• ?Can contradict verbal communication
• ?Can replace verbal communication

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• Three aspects of nonverbal communication
• Proxemics sometimes called social space
  refers to the normal distance considered
  appropriate between two people speaking
• Kinesics body language, e.g., gestures, facial
  expressions, eye contact
• Paralanguage vocalizations that are not words,
  e.g., sighs, laughter, crying

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Culture, Language, and Learning Style

• These three are inextricably intertwined
• Language shapes and is shaped by culture.
• Culture shapes and is shaped by language.
• Learning style originates and accounts for
  variations in patterns of learning, and is shaped
  by both language and culture.

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Relation of Language to Culture

• ?Language determines vocabulary, which sets the
  right meaning of words and of cultural ideas.
• ?Language plays a critical role in the
  maintenance of subgroups within a larger culture.
• ?Language reflects the thought processes of a
  culture.

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Relation of Learning Style to Culture

• ?Learning style is developed in the context of
  what we attend to (perception) and how we attend
  to itculturally shaped adaptations to both the
  physical and the social environment.
• ?Thus, particular learning styles are often
  associated with particular cultural groups.

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Components of Learning Style

• Field dependence individual perceives globally
  or holistically orientation is social is good
  at observation
• Field independence individual perceives
  discrete parts is good at abstract thought
  tends to be individualistic prefers working alone

Continued
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Additional Components of Learning Style

• Preferred sensory mode for learning, e.g., sight,
  sound, smell, touch, taste, movement
• Reponse to immediate environment
• Emotionality
• Social preferences
• Cognitive-psychological orientation

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Origins of Learning Style

• ?Still a matter of conjecture
• ?Appear to be a combination of
• ?Biological factors
• ?Psychological factors
• ?Sociocultural factors

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Multiple Intelligences

• ?The idea, based on brain research and proposed
  by Howard Gardner, that human beings not only
  have preferred learning styles, but also
  preferred ways of expressing intellectual
  ability, and thus, of thinking

Continued
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Seven kinds of intelligence

• Visual/spatial
• Verbal/linguistic
• Logical/mathematical
• Bodily/kinesthetic
• Musical/rhythmic
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal

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The Significance of Multiple Intelligences and
Learning Styles

• The importance of these qualities for teachers
  lies in their ability to identify preferred modes
  of learning and to adapt instruction so that all
  students get to practice learning in multiple
  ways.
• No one recommends that students learn only in
  their preferred mode or that teachers teach in
  only one mode.

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Cultural Groups May Differ in Communication Styles

• Formal vs. Informal Communication
• Emotional vs. Subdued Communication
• Direct vs. Indirect Communication
• Objective vs. Subjective Communication
• Responses to Guilt and Accusations

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Ethical Issues

• Students who speak a dialect of English, or whose
  first language is not English, are likely to be
  stigmatized.
• Debates about language in the schools are likely
  to be as much about issues of cultural domination
  as they are about language itself.
• The assessment of students with limited English
  proficiency must be done with care.

Continued
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• The increasing prevalence of English in
  world-wide modes of communicationespecially
  television and the Internetmay mean that many
  languages are disappearing.
• Some balance needs to be achieved between
  protecting small languages and encouraging
  international exchange.
• Without diverse languages, diverse cultures may
  also disappear.
• The negative American attitude toward learning
  more than one language may get in the way of our
  own international understanding.

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Something to Think About

• When we study human language, we are approaching
  what some might call the human essence, the
  distinctive qualities of mind that are, so far as
  we know, unique to man and that are inseparable
  from any critical phase of human existence,
  personal or social.
• --Noam Chomsky