I found a consistent progression in each article. They each started with the idea of language as both a barrier preventing acceptance and an equalizer because once the language was understood, the participants felt a sense of autonomy. This is important for the classroom because you don’t want students to feel as though they are only being acted upon, but that they are an integral member of the community and they in turn will be invested in the class or project. These articles are about how language (Discourse) creates a community.
I really like the vibe Gee generated when he examines language. He isn’t harshly making commentary, but is encouraging as he guides the reader though concepts and new ways of understanding a Discourse we may have thought we already knew.
“All language is meaningful only in and through the contexts in which it is used. All language is meaningful only on the basis of shared experiences and shared information (63).”
It’s because of what we share in the classroom that makes education possible. The meaning will come out of the whole, not the singular assignment, student, project, etc. The teacher continually contextualizes the classroom.
Gee continues, “it is important here to see the word ‘contextualised’ as naming an active process: the process of a person ‘contextualising’, that is, of a person making and doing a context, not just passively registering one. What does it mean to say we humans actively ‘contextualise’ language? ‘Context’ is not just ‘out there’. We do not just ‘reflect’ context when we speak or write. Rather, we always actively create ‘context’. We make the world around us mean certain things (64).”
In Boyd’s analysis of MySpace, she describes the process of creating a profile: “By looking at others’ profiles, teens get a sense of what types of presentations are socially appropriate; others’ profiles provide critical cues about what to present on their own profile. While profiles are constructed through a series of generic forms, there is plenty of room for them to manipulate the profiles to express themselves (127).”
The participant first learns the language, then engages with the community by presenting his or her page. It is only after a learning curve that he or she can fully invest her or himself in the community. The teacher creates those models for the students. Social networking sites are incredibly popular and this is a good example of something educators can learn from them.
There was a similar situation with Goldman’s case study with the student representatives at the local school board. It was technology that helped them first learn the language of the school board and then develop their own voices. It took some time, but they became influential within the context of the school board.
The students’ language and identity are expressed in the context of the classroom or community you are teaching. Allow them to form that identity.
1 comment:
It's interesting that you noticed a progression in the articles, because I'll be honest-I missed some of the connections you made... Perhaps it's because I read the articles in separate sittings, with a least a day in between.
I think that what you say about language here really does encompass a major message that can be taken from the reading in relation to the formation of identity, and I think that we hit on it a bit in class last night. Adding in some of he vocabulary from last week, it is in understanding and participating in specific discourses that students are able to form some of the elements of identity that are so vital in the formation of the self. I mean, is it even possible to articulate the elements of identity found in the Scholastic video without understanding language? I don't think so.
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