Literacy Theory, the Young Child and

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Literacy Theory, the Young Child and
Incommensurable Understandings.

• Dory Lightfoot
• University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)

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What do I mean by incommensurate?

• As Bhabha (1994) points out, policies are a type
  of cultural artifact that represent the truths
  of part but not all of a community.
• How do strategies of representation come to be
  formulated in the competing claims of communities
  where the exchange of values, meanings, and
  priorities may not be collaborative and
  dialogical, but may be profoundly antagonistic,
  conflictual and even incommensurable?(Bhabha,
  1994, 2)

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Why this paper?

• This paper looks at the use of scientific
  discourse to create the universal child.
• Science, alone, is insufficient to make
  educational decisions.
• Metaphorical analysis shows that competing
  educational methodologies reflect conflicting
  values and moral beliefs. These beliefs are
  culturally and historically specific.
• Best practice decisions based on scientific
  studies can paper over incommensurate educational
  values but cannot make them disappear.

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The Young Child as Universal Learner

• Much current educational research works on the
  assumption that science can identify cognitive
  universals in young children and identify
  neutral, value-free best practices for
  providing education for all.
• In this paper, literacy theory in the United
  States shows how the apparently neutral
  language of science hides deep cultural
  differences in values and understandings of young
  children.
• The language of scientific neutrality obscures
  but does not resolve incommensurable (Bhabha,
  1994)differences.
• The use of science to set up one understanding of
  the young child always has power implications.
  Science sets up and enforces a particular regime
  of truth.

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Why is this the language of science problematic?

• Universalizing terms such as children subsume
  all children into knowable and calculable
  category.
• These terms lead us to ignore culturally
  constructed elements of understandings of young
  children and their relationships with adults.
• A look at different metaphors concerning parents
  and children in the U.S. give us an example of
  how problematic such universalizing assumptions
  are.This exemplifies a turn to universals taking
  place globally.

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Two theoretical underpinnings to discussion

• Poststructuralist/postcolonial theory-- knowledge
  is power.
• Theory of metaphor-- here emphasizing Lakoff and
  Johnsons (1980)idea of conceptual metaphors
  linking together wide, and superficially
  unrelated areas of experience through a shared,
  underlying metaphor.

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Foucault, (1980) Truth and Power.

• Truth produces regular effects of power. Each
  society has its régime of truth its 'general
  politics" of truth that is the types of
  discourse which it accepts and makes function as
  true the mechanisms and instances which enable
  one to distinguish true and false statements, the
  means by which each is sanctioned the techniques
  and procedures accorded value in the acquisition
  of truth the status of those charged with saying
  what counts as true. (131)
• Metaphors allowing us to understand and calculate
  the young child are particular regimes of
  truth.

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Lakoff and Johnson (1980) Conceptual Metaphors

• A conceptual metaphor is a conventional way of
  conceptualizing one domain of experience in terms
  of another. (Lakoff, 1996, 4-5)
• People conceptualize a great many things in terms
  of metaphor-- morality among them. (Lakoff, 1996,
  374)

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Lakoffs two metaphors of family.

• In U.S. culture there are two strong competing
  metaphors of the good family.
• These metaphors extend beyond the home to
  influence our understandings of good and
  appropriate social institutions, and have
  strong moral overtones.
• Contrasting family metaphors provide an example
  of how social/cultural understandings of
  education are shaped by factors that lie
  outside of science.

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Metaphor 1 Nurturant family.

• The primal experience is one of being cared for
  and cared about, having ones desires for loving
  interactions met, living as happily as possible,
  and deriving meaning from mutual interaction and
  care. (Lakoff, 1996, 108)
• Nurturant families de-emphasize top-down
  authority relations. They are characterized by
  shared decision making, parental modeling of
  moral values, and child-centered family discourse
  patterns.
• Encouraging children to figure out important
  concepts on their own with adult support is
  caring and promotes intellectual and moral
  development.

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Metaphor 2Strict father model.

• The model is a traditional nuclear family, with
  the father having primary responsibility for
  supporting and protecting the family as well as
  the authority to set overall family policy. He
  teaches children right from wrong by setting
  strict rules and enforcing them through
  punishment. (Lakoff, 1996, 66)
• In strict father families strong authority
  relations, and explicit rules enforced by
  sanctions and punishment are caring, and
  promote development and correct behavior in young
  children.
• Family discourse is adult-centered.
• Leaving children to figure out important topics
  on their own is uncaring and leads to poor
  behavior.

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Literacy methods as family models.

• Our understandings of the young child learning to
  read have strong ties to metaphors of the family.
• Whole language instruction has elements of the
  nurturant family model. It seems naturally
  good and appropriate to people using this
  metaphor to understand the young child.
• Phonics instruction has many elements of the
  strict father metaphor.

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Literacy methods seen through textual analysis.

• This presentation gives a brief look at how
  metaphorical understandings run through texts and
  reflect values not measurable by scientific
  comparisons of methods.
• The samples are from apparently non-political,
  scientific discourse, drawn from a handbook of
  literacy research.

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Text 1 Nurturant family understandings in
scientific text.

• I am not focusing on written language as a code
  but as a symbolic tool that mediates human
  experience and interaction.(126)Childrens words
  are always used words they are part of the
  dynamics of society Like all learners, children
  must use familiar frames of reference to
  recontextualize salient aspects of new activities
  (new concepts, new symbolic tools and new social
  practices). This allows children a sense of
  competence and agency In a dialectic fashion,
  children also recontextualize aspects of their
  worlds within the frameworks of new activities
  and thus potentially gain new reflective angles
  on experiences. (134) (Dyson, 2002)

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First text Subtle metaphorical links to
nurturant family metaphor.

• Children participating in communicative
  events-- engaging in conversation with adults as
  part of learning process.
• Literacy learning as means of children gaining
  agency and competence.
• Children learn actively-- structuring their own
  recontextualization.

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Phonics advocates write about learning

• I describe the development of childrens
  abilities to recognize and categorize different
  phonological units in spoken words I argue that
  we need to understand more about the relative
  weight that needs to be given to the different
  phonological units of syllable, rhyme and phoneme
  (111) 60 children who had performed poorly
  were trained in grouping words in terms of
  sound... At the end of the second year children
  in the experimental group were 8 months further
  in reading than the semantic control group, and a
  year further in spelling. (122). (Goswami, 2002)

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Second text has elements of strict father
metaphor.

• Reading consists of acquiring a set of specific
  skills (e.g. phonological units) as determined
  by adults.
• No mention of childrens input into learning
  process.No dialogue.
• Skill recognition process referred to as
  training in recognition of adult-centered
  discourse process in classroom.

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Question How can incommensurate educational
understandings be settled using science alone?

• Scientific discourse avoids moral issues and
  value discussions/conflicts in search of
  neutrality.
• Science is reductionstic and seeks to find most
  economical possible solution that fits all
  situations.
• Scientific discourse inclines us to look for
  universal models of learning and teaching.
• Science cannot be eliminated from decisions about
  policy or methodology, but it cannot be the only
  voice.

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Conclusions Can educators find a language that
recognizes different cultural understandings of
the young child?.

• Education is about culturally and historically
  contingent values-- not just best practice.
• Metaphorically laden values have strong overtones
  of moral rightness/wrongness and cannot be easily
  overturned by a new set scientific studies or
  policy decisions.
• We need to highlight different metaphorical
  values in order to understand them.
• Policy decisions are negotiations between parties
  with different and even incommensurate values--
  not just searches for a universal, scientifically
  proven solution.
• Scientificallydriven best practice models
  will always be more acceptable to some groups in
  society than others, as they are consonant with
  the understandings of some groups and not others.

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For comments, or for a paper, write to Dory
Lightfoot at doryl_at_uic.edu University of
Illinois at Chicago (UIC)