LA Calls for Manuscripts

LA Calls for Manuscripts

Storying literacy pedagogies

Rogers, Rebecca. 2004. Storied selves: A Critical Discourse Analysis of adult learners' literate lives. Selber erzählt: Eine kritische Diskursanalyse über das Lese- und Schreiberleben von lernenden Erwachsenen. 39 (3):272-305.

When I was in eighth grade the teacher said I was slow in reading...she just said, "Well, your reading as got to be upgraded. you know, like you're kind of slow in reading."I knew I was but most of the time I was so bored with school and so I didn't care if I read good or not.... Even now, I read too fast, often missing the decimal point, I mean, the punctuation, often missing words that I read. In order for me to become a good reader, I have to sit down, and I have to read over what I'm reading a couple of times, and then read at a slower pace. I'm kind of short when it comes to punctuation. I don't know punctuation too good. (Jerome interviewed discussing  past and present experiences with school)

[About a letter Jerome wrote to a judge] But then they gave me a court date and I wrote this letter to defend yourself. I , Reverend  Jerome, being of sound mind and body tell this story on paper.... I gave it to the lawyers and they dropped my case. And I often have to wind up writing the hospital letters....I think the hospitals should pay part of the person’s bill, be responsible for the first part of the person's b ill, just like I pay, uh, money to have insurance to pay for my part. I think the hospital should pay a part, too.... I write to the accounting department to let them know that they are responsible for some of that bill, too. (Jerome interviewed discussing family and community literacy practices)

Rogers’ (2004) research suggests that adult literacy learners ‘story’ their literate selves differently depending upon which domain they are operating within.  

She offers a richly textured discourse analysis of extended interviews with various students who talk about learning to read and school, at adult education college and within a family domain. It is interesting that she uses these slightly different spatial and temporal frames to analyse their literate lives and this connects to my desire to view literacy as a pedagogic subject and it constructions by teachers as a) classroom practice b) academic subject and c) personal experience – these categories can be more clearly defined.  I also need to be sure that it is literacy as a pedagogic subject as oppose to literacy that I am seeking to explore.

It is to explore how teachers construct their ideas about literacy / language within these different contexts. I am here suggesting that it can be entirely possible to acknowledge that literacy is purposeful in everyday lives, in their own lives, but in the lives of their learners in class – their purposefulness is it of any great significance. In other words, I am here echoing the hint in interview 2 that ‘literacy as social practice’; is a framing that has relevance for literacy outside of college but less relevance for literacy within the college setting. The language and literacy that we learn / teach is ontologically different to the literacy / language that we use on other settings. One is for the purpose of passing an exam – the other is for a range of other purpose that need not connect – or connect on theoretically to what is taught.

The reminder of

·         informational learning: deep  & pervasive shifts in perspective & understanding                   

       

·         transformational learning: acquisition in more skills and knowledge

Literacy, literate selves and literacy learning each constructed differently within and across the domains.    p15

Very helpful analysis of methodology deployed.

Genre:                   

the sort of language (& other semiosis) associated with a particular activity

Discourse:             

ways of representing – systematic clusters of themes, statements, ideas and ideologies

Style:                                      

ways of being – interpersonal choices active / passive voice; modality – affinity, mood – 

questions statement demands, transivity & pronoun use

An analysis of the role of the researcher is vital for this work. Thoroughly entwined. 

webs of association, tangled metaphors, and forgotten referents

‘Meanings tend to be caught up in complex webs of association, tangled metaphors, and forgotten referents.’ Davis & Sumara 2006: 38

The study focuses on a small number of students and this analysis if based on an account of a tutorial with one student. A retired manager – she has decided to develop a career in teaching literacy on a part-time basis. She teaches on a Tuesday evening in a literacy workshop for her local college. This analysis is based on a tutorial in which I am offering advice for her final assignment.

Hawa has been working with a student over the period of a Module and is now writing up her assignment on the work she has done with her learner. She agreed a programme of work with her learner over a summer period that the learners agreed to but did not in the end undertake. Hawa has scored high grades with her assignments and has read about literacy as social practices and as she describes it

Yes.  And I refer to the social aspects of literacy [...] say that I subscribe to her, her little resume of what adult literacy teaching and writing should be, and she talks about providing me with a context.  She talks about interaction between the teacher and the learner, and she talks about feedback and she talks about the value of talk, and I must say that I’ve tried to live by those in this exercise. 

At times in her interview – social practices seems to be synonymous with literacy outside of college. This is where literacy as social practice happens. At other times – as in the quote above – the notion of literacy as social practice seems to be equated to the social relationship that exists between the teacher and student and the need to provide context for writing.  Here context is constructed as a broader frame that provides meaningful impetus for writing.

The relationship between student and teacher is significant her. One of the curiosities Hawa had about her student, was the work agreed but undone during the summer that was in stark contrast to the volume of work this student had undertaken since starting back at college for the autumn term. In part thi non-wrk is equated to lack of confidence, but this is also related to lack of contact with Hawa her teacher. Hawa mentions that she thought of giving the student her private mobile telephone number so that she could offer support during the summer.

If literacy outside college is associated with literacy as a social practice, it is also taken as a strategy. The literacy outside college provides a source of ideas, experiences, resonances that can be drawn upon to inform teaching.  Hawa recounts her student as a cook and a cleaner. She remarks with some surprise and disbelief and how well her student was able to write recipes given to her for homework. Her success with this piece of work was so surprising that Hawa made her do the same work again in class to check that she had not copied it.

In this sense drawing on out-of-college literacy as a strategy leads to great success in teaching and learning. But success is also an ambiguous concept. While an inability to remember previously learned concepts, skills, task is seen as characteristic of this student – she is able to remember this very stylised literacy associated with recipe writing with minimal input from her tutor.  The temporary nature of her accomplishment – may then be related to what she is being asked to remember rather than her capacity to remember as such.

So I’ve given an introduction of how I know her from last term.  I’ve talked about the difficulties and the sticking points that she had.  And then I’ve given a little reflecting on her difficulties and the things that we had tried, and even though she experienced success she wasn’t remembering it.  I go on to say that I’m going to make this work much more personalised and also the more realistic and interesting relevant writing tasks, writing opportunities.

Her out-of-college literacy is seen as a source of materials to inform Hawa’s  pedagogy and make the learning more successful. I the discussion Hawa slips easily from talking about her approach to the assignment and her students approach to written tasks. This is because the student is the subject of the assignment. So – sometimes – she goes meta and talks about her own understandings and approaches as she reflects on her students work and her own approach to analysing what she should be doing next and how successful her activities are.

Her recipe for success: personalised - realistic – interesting: when the task encountered in the literacy class have these qualities – learning is successful.  But there is a fault line here. T connects to the qualification attached to the course and the connection between the national test and functional skills. Hawa seems concerned that with the functional skills test being introduced that her learner will struggle even more, as she is already struggling with the national test at level 2. We did not explore this at all, but the leaner at this stage has been on her course for only 1 year – 2 hours per week – after having passed the level 1. There is a sense that success or otherwise is determined by the students capacity rather then the structural conditions that surround her learning.

Success is also noted for this learner as she writes a letter to a friend.

She also talks in some interesting ways about her own writing – “I’ve given” and “I’ve put some references and theories in”. 

This is based on an initial analysis of a single tutorial.  

What Davis & Sumara (2006) suggest is that qualitative data need not strive for the big hardness of quantitative method. Complexity does not decrease with size but the minutiae of social life is as complex as the entire populations.   The world has as many avenues for exploration whether looked at through a microscope or telescope. 

Complex phenomenon are more fractal-like than Euclidean. They are incompressible, recursively elaborated and often surprising: a challenge to the pervasive assumption of linearity. 

A fractal is scale independent and self-similar as well as 'relentlessly non-linear.'

Complexity

DAVIS, B. & SUMARA, D. 2006. Complexity and Education: Inquiries Into Learning, Teaching, and Research, London, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Ch 1

What is complexity – defined by its subject rather than methodology: a living system?

Features that define the qualities of complex systems include:

·         self-organised,

·         bottom-up emergent,

·         short-range relationships

·         nested structures

·         ambiguously bounded

·         organisationally closed

·         structure-determined

·         far-from equilibrium

Not an explanatory system or meta-discourse. 

Questions that invoke a poetic sensibility and rely on analogy, metaphor and other associative (that is non-representational) functions of language.  (Davis & Sumara 2006:7)

Rules that govern complex system are unpredictable and volatile, subject to change if systems change from one system to another.

‘a learner is a complex unity that is capable of adapting itself to the sorts of new and diverse circumstances that an active agent is likely to encounter in an dynamic world.’  (Davis & Sumara 2006:14)

This cuts across conventions that view learner as isolated & insulated individual.  More and varied entities – social & class groupings bodies of knowledge, organisations &c

Complexity thinking foregrounds the role of the observer.

Complexity thinking ‘rejects scientific objectivity, relativist subjectivity, structuralist or post-structuralist inter-subjectivity as satisfactory foundations for any truth claim’.

The knower’s knowledge necessarily affects the way phenomenon s perceived and how the knower acts in relation to that phenomenon. Complexity theories aim for an: inter-objectivity.

Complexity thinking emphasises the extent to which phenomenon is best understood as an intricate series of systems each embedded in each other and each co-relating to each other as part of a wider overall system.

Complexity thinking repositions the distinction between knowledge as process vs knowledge as product with an analysis of knowledge as stable entity as a subsystem of knowledge as a dynamic fluctuating system that underpins this stability. Knowledge – the canon of what is known & the activities through which knowledge is generated. Accommodates both subjective / objective depending upon the system each is considered part of.

Dichotomy replaced with bifurcation.

Bifurcation highlights not just difference but relationship as each has a centralising genealogy & someone is required to make the distinction.

Traces development from ècorrespondence theory to ècoherence theory to ècomplexity theory

From the separating logic of Aristotle to the evolutionary dynamic of Darwin. Language correspondence tags directly to external objects to language as constructed and inter-subjectively shared. The focus is on internal, pragmatic fit rather than external match.

Both coherence theory and complexity theory argue that the internal dynamics of an organisms are related to the contextual conditions from which it emerges. Complexity theory depart towards a distributed representation. Representations have no meaning in and of themselves, only as part of a wider system of meaning.

As such it is particularly attentive to: metaphor, analogues and images.

The social is always and already embedded in the individual: the individual is constituted by and constitutive of the social. 

learning to read

·         Literacies: this strand of reading explore varying conceptions of literacy and the various ways these dis/connect to practice. The area is vast – there are several different schemata as well as several contrasting and competing distinct constructions. The most significant of these social practices and skills is frequently written about but less often researched. I am here interested in developing visual and metaphorical representations of literacy and language. Kell – the shell & Wilson – 3^rd space. It’s important here be clear about the distinction between language and literacy.

·         Pedagogic implications: my focus is less on exploring the literacies and their pedagogic implications as such. I am more concerned with exploring how trainee teachers construct their ideas about literacy. This is part has include a view of how they construct their own professional and academic identities. I partly want to know what their ideas are, how they manage (identify) the tensions, and how these tensions shape what they do.

·         Research methodology: this is a broad strand that covers situational analysis, grounded theory, qualitative enquiry and complexity theory. Non-representational theory, actor-network-theory are part of the nexus – but what is important here is identifying strands of thought that are helpful, stimulating and help me sift through the messiness of real world research – when the main struggle is time and energy. The advantage of the methodologies I explore is that they enable to recognise myself as deeply implicated within the subject  study.

·         Quality and teacher education: I continue to frame the dilemmas that trainees have to resolve as one of different professional frames between what policy requires ‘ticking the box’ and between meeting the aspirations of their learners. In part the focus on study is on how they connect theory and practice but primarily its based on what sense they make of the terrain.

·         Policy under the coalition: I am conscious of a shifting climate that has become something of a policy vacuum and the need to re-engage with this. The commentary from RaPAL is a good starting point here – for pointers for reading as is what Hodgson and Spours are now writing.  Literacy and language in a cold, hostile climate. Fragmentation. No analysis or skills agenda.

affective or effective teaching: is there a conflict?

Crowther, J., K. Maclachlan, and L. Tett. 2010. Adult literacy, learning identities and pedagogic practice. International Journal of Lifelong Education 29 (6):651-664.

Ecclestone, K., and D. Hayes. 2008. The dangerous rise of therapeutic education: Taylor & Francis.

I recognise much of the pedagogic situation Crowther et al is analysing here.  Given the context this paper emerges from i.e. Scotland with its very different policy framing of literacy – there is a sense in this paper that the tensions that define it are centred almost exclusively around how to help learners.

I have a reluctance when reading it – this may emerge from a sense that ‘this is so familiar to my experience that it does it feel like research or even valuable knowledge’ but  it also has another source. Namely, I draw in Ecclestone’s idea critique of certain educational encounters were learners are constructed as fundamentally human beings in need of help. I suspect that she does not have this sort of encounter in mind – adults of addictions, homelessness and lives that have spiralled out of control. But while the writers evidence damaged learning identities by how learners think and feel about themselves, that lurking suspicion I have that the statement in my experience that many learners utter – ‘I want to feel more confident when reading and writing’ rather than ‘I want to improve reading and writing’, is taken at its word and too much attention is placed on the affective aspects of learning.

There is a sense that perhaps what we explore are affective pedagogies rather than effective pedagogies.

The learners in the text – which resists deficit models and recognises the inherent limitations of literacy as skills, non-the-less offer little insight into the survivalist strengths of their learners.

I am interested in this idea that low literacy does not necessarily translate into incompetence; rather a range of skills (such as social interactions) can be leveraged to meet needs competently. This is an idea of explore.

It maps on the idea if teaching literacies as an example of the role of a teacher as being more that a conveyer of curricular content.  Placing literacies and language in the context of a narrated life history, a community, a sociality changes what is expected of us. This is not to defend therapy (in place of pedagogy) – nor is it to decry therapy (it’s life saving).  It is to ask and answer the question that is raised by one interviewee in Managing Quality:  how much genuine challenge and progression an integral part of the teaching, is this more than cozy and comfortable, a great way to spend time with people. 

Glimpses

READ, B. (n.d.) Chapter Fourteen: Challenging assumptions, changing attitudes, Skills for Life Support Programme, London: Learning and Skills Improvement Service.

GREEN, A. & HOWARD, U. (2007) Insights: Skills and social practices: making common cause an NRDC policy, London: Institute of Education: National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy.



This is a very useful ‘chapter’ (Read, n.d.) that offers valuable advice about how to incorporate an awareness of literacy as social practices within the Level 5 Diploma in Initial Teacher Education. I have a mixed reaction to all of this. On one hand, as a pre-doc I used to find it reassuring when I read something that seemed to have a similar stance to the one I was developing. It gave me the confidence I was on the right track. Or at least a legitimate track. Now of course I find it a little frustrating – as it means I have to question whether and how my contribution to the debate is going to extend what has already been articulated. The more I delve even superficially, the more I realise this is a well trodden terrain.

Where I think my work sits in relation to much of the literature as exemplified by Read’s article and the NRDC’s pamphlet on Skills and Social Practices is: that it is small scale research, it is empirical or perhaps grounded rather than theoretical. I have not adopted a stance that says this is right (social practices) and this is wrong (skills), but am attempting to work out how the ideas relate to each other in practice of trainee teachers - may of whom are very experienced.

I offer (base) the paper on a series of ‘glimpses’ a pulling together a series of disparate fragments. Want I may arrive at is a series of (visual) metaphors that explore how literacy and skills interrelate.

During Skills for Life (1999 – 2010) there was a strong policy thrust that narrowed literacy & language to a series of skills, to the exclusion of all other constructions. Yet parts of that policy machinery – NRDC & LSIS where discussing literacy & language in ways that undermined this view and explored how practitioners may achieve some sort of reconciliation between what ‘is’ in policy and what ‘is’ in lived experience: the abstract and the embodied.

SfL created a detailed infrastructure involving curriculum, teaching resources, schemes of work, qualifications and pedagogic approaches that emerged from a skills based view of literacy & language: other approaches are possible, as the example of Scotland and Ireland make clear. Without the momentum created and sustained by New Labour’s crusade, how has pedagogy changed in this area – are spaces for dissent emerging more fully or does the infrastructure remain in full force?

My main query is how do practitioners – trainee teachers of language and literacy - conceptualise their subject? These thoughts are still entangled and more reading / drafting will straighten them. How do their ideas change over the course of the programme; what do they make of the competing conceptions. I am sure their pedagogic pragmatism and the irrelevance of this consideration when considering a social practices approach is a pivotal point of consideration – perhaps Mary Hamilton, The irrelevance of pedagogy is a response to this – what are their perceptions about its significance (Hamilton, 2006).

I could explore different conceptualisations of literacy with an explicit focus on visual metaphor: third space / shell / wheel / hierarchy – but would need to be clear about why this matters – as another way of exploring thinking.

I then think it might be helpful to consider Literacy as a pedagogic subject. Which then brings me to the hinted at and frustratingly esoteric / incomprehensible / pretentious Actor Network Theory: ontological politics.

Part of this is prescribed by the situation. Hence my interest in ‘situational analysis’ (Clarke, 2005) which enables me to be part of the research terrain rather than an invisible given. I am implicated even of not the focus of attention or indeed the locus of activity. In part the research approach is getting a ‘glimpse’ of ideas almost in passing.



CLARKE, A. 2005. Situational analysis: Grounded theory after the postmodern turn, Sage Publications, Inc.

HAMILTON, M. 2006. Just do it: Literacies, everyday learning and the irrelevance of pedagogy. Studies in the Education of Adults, 38, 125-140.