Practice

The schooling system is in need of a radical transformation, as has long been argued by researchers, teachers, administrators, parents, students, activists, and other stakeholders. One change that has long been needed and has been the focus of much public and scholarly debate (especially as made visible by CCSS-related changes) is related to assessment. As Durán (2014) puts it, the notion that students’ performance on tests (particularly

standardized tests) adequately captures their learning is “misguided and [distorts] what learning and mastery really are for students” (p. 211) since learning and competence “cannot be divorced from their authentic embodied environments” (p. 206). With regard to language and literacy instruction in particular, one implication of this understanding is that more attention needs to be given to students’ development and displays of competence in specific, situated social interactions, including peer interactions. In many ways, Ms. Mayzie was adept at recognizing interactional achievements as such, as exemplified by her positive evaluations of students’ creative and indexically competent use of a range of semiotic resources (see particularly Chapter 1 and Chapter 6). However, other teachers might overlook such displays of competence as merely cute, silly, or simply irrelevant “social” moments (rather than the putative opposite, “academic”). Indeed, even experienced and talented teachers like Ms. Mayzie need greater professional support to understand the importance of interactional and indexical competencies. Providing teachers with these kinds of support implies shifting away from an obsessive focus on standardized written assessments and moving toward recognition of interaction as a key locus for learning and an important site for assessment.

Alongside an increased valorization of students’ interactional and indexical competencies is the need for increased amounts of instructional time to be devoted to interaction, particularly peer interaction. As the findings of this study make clear, students’ interactions with one another—even when they were not directly related to the completion of an academic task or were apparently “off task”—were valuable sites for the appropriation of academic communication norms. Such interactions also served the crucial purpose of

allowing students to metalinguistically discuss and even question these norms. In Room G, Ms. Mayzie sometimes organized language arts instruction around small-group or partner- based interactions, but oftentimes Workshop tasks were to be completed independently, and overall, opportunities for peer interaction were relatively limited due to the number of reading- and writing-oriented must-dos that students were expected to complete. Hence, more regular incorporation of interactional, dialogic activities and conversations grounded in collaborative group work would give learners much-needed time to appropriate academic language in the more meaningful and memorable context of meaning-making exchanges with peers. A range of participation structures, from apparently “off-task” casual peer

conversations to student-directed group work to teacher-mediated interactions, would be valuable. One suggestion would be to make use of role plays to encourage students to take on the language and identities associated with particular academic communities of practice. Such role plays might be introduced by including opportunities for students to use their already strong observation and analysis skills as they watch/listen to audio or video recordings of real linguistic exchanges featuring older groups of students working on academic projects or even scientific or scholarly communities of practice engaging in work. Then the class could discuss the differences as well as the similarities they notice between the kinds of language used in the recording and the kinds of language they use, and students

could then be asked to take up some of these same semiotic resources in group- or partner- based role plays.

Strategies of this kind bring up a much-debated question in the literature on academic language: Do students need explicit instruction in academic language? Ms. Mayzie took such an approach, explicitly focusing on various forms of academic communication (e.g., academic vocabulary, sentence frames, embodied listening practices), often by distinguishing them from home or playground language. Based on the findings of this study, it is evident that this approach helped students not only attend carefully to new semiotic forms and practices, but also appropriate them in their own interactions and engage in metalinguistic discussions about them. Hence, the question is not so much whether teachers should explicitly draw students’ attention to any form of new material—whether that new material is new language, new concepts, or new perspectives—but how and why they should do so. As discussed in preceding chapters, it is important to explicitly acknowledge the predominance of many of the hegemonic ideologies associated with academic language, such as the widespread notion that academic language is more appropriate for school, that it constitutes “smarter” or “better” language than “everyday” language, or that it can easily be distinguished from “everyday” language. At the same time, it is also crucial to guide students in questioning these ideas and in modeling alternative modes of thinking. For example, assessments of particular kinds of language use as (in)appropriate can often be more accurately and more equitably framed as matters of respect for others and/or relevance within a given context or activity. Similarly, rather than reinforcing the idea that academic language is inherently superior to other forms of language and/or indicates superior intelligence, teachers can liken the learning of specific academic language features and forms to the learning of a new language when traveling to a new place (thereby also emphasizing the value of

multilingualism). That is, instead of learning academic language simply to sound smarter, students learn specific academic communication forms and practices in order to communicate with specific communities of practice and to engage in specific activities. Such conversations must also include a deconstruction of the view that academic language is a monolithic set of forms completely distinct from “everyday” language and must shift the emphasis to the diversity and dynamism of any linguistic variety and of the social world itself. If our goal as educators and researchers is to help students expand the set of resources in their semiotic toolboxes, this deep understanding of diversity and dynamism must guide language arts education. By celebrating the poetry of becomingness that is inherent in language and people, teachers can prepare students to become the kinds of leaders who can think freely, creatively, and collaboratively enough to help build the equitable society that is at the heart of the purpose of education in a democratic society.

References

Agha, A. (2003). The social life of cultural value. Language & Communication, 23(3), 231- 273. doi:10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00012-0

Ahearn, L. M. (2001). Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 109-137. Ajayi, L. J. (2005). A sociocultural perspective: Language arts framework, vocabulary

activities and English language learners in a second grade mixed classroom. Journal

of Instructional Psychology, 32(3).

Anderson-Levitt, K. M. (2006). Ethnography. In J. L. Green, G. Camilli, P. B. Elmore, A. Skukauskaite, & E. Grace (Eds.), Handbook of complementary methods in education

research (pp. 279-295). New York, NY: Routledge.

Anstrom, K., DiCerbo, P., Butler, F., Katz, A., Millet, J., & Rivera, C. (2010). A review of

the literature on academic English: Implications for K-12 English language learners. Arlington, VA: The George Washington University Center for Equity and

Excellence in Education. Retrieved from www.ceee.gwu.edu.

Aragón, M. J. (2014, October). Bringing academic concepts to life: Latino students’ experiences within and between ‘communities of practice.’ Paper presented at the politics of race and language in learning contexts: an interdisciplinary collaborative workshop, Santa Barbara, California.

Arendt, H. (1958). What is authority?. Between past and future, 91, 92. Retrieved from http://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/330T/350kPEEArendtWhatIsAuthorityTable.pdf Arya, D. J., Hiebert, E. H., & Pearson, P. D. (2011). The effects of syntactic and lexical

complexity on the comprehension of elementary science texts. International