Comments on Exploring Education: A Fresh Perspective on All Things Education!: Literacy Lecture

Brian I agree with you about culturally relevant p...

2009-03-03T09:07:00.000-08:00

Brian I agree with you about culturally relevant pedagogy, but I also think we might need to think bigger...changing the structure, organization, and administration to reflect the students and communities the schools serve.

Hey Mark. I think I found this blog through a face...

2009-02-18T22:58:00.000-08:00

Hey Mark. I think I found this blog through a facebook status update (I regularly check my friends' status updates), mostly because I'm abroad and have been looking for ways to stay connected to Swatties, both those studying abroad and on campus, while I'm in Japan.

Obviously I didn't go to this lecture, so I can't comment on it very specifically, but I think that even though the ultimate goal that Dr. Wilkenson has in mind for ELL students is legitimate (achieving English profiency by focusing on academic literacy), I understand your criticism. Even if educators are not directly endorsing a "subtractive schooling" model, I wish they would see the value in using these students' experiences, backgrounds and identities, (including their already existent proficiency in their home language) more fundamentally. Though I think that educators do incorporate these students backgrounds within curricula at times, it's not necessarily a mission statement or a main approach of many schools or classrooms to legitimize these students' identities.

It's easy to say that you would be in favor of incorporating students' experiences in the classroom and are in support of culturally relevant pedagogy but it is much more difficult to be an educator or policy maker who proactively instills these values within the everyday curriculum.

Nonetheless, I am glad that Swarthmore brought a lecturer on this topic, since I have a specific interest in ESL/Bilingual Education, as it shows that educators are trying their best to think of ways to improve education for these students.

Marc-I don't think it is fair to say that Dr. Wilk...

2009-02-18T12:22:00.000-08:00

Marc-
I don't think it is fair to say that Dr. Wilkenson's endorsed a deficit model. She is right to hold ELL students to the high expectation of being competent in Tier II and Tier III vocabulary. She is right to point out that many ELLs lack this academic vocabulary. Where I think your "additive" prescription comes into play is when teachers teach vocabulary. I think they should draw on the student background, their past experiences, and their knowledge to engage them in learning vocabulary. If students learn this vocabulary and affirm their unique cultural background, can't ELLs become the cultural navigators Prudence Carter advocates in "Keeping it Real?" All students need to have access to the dominant discourse. My critique of Wilkenson has less to do with her goal (that of academic literacy) and more to do with the process (culturally relevant pedagogy).

it was interesting for me to go to the lecture, be...

2009-02-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

it was interesting for me to go to the lecture, because it wasn't until this year that i studied literacy. i still appreciated the insights that dr. wilkenson shared re: the literacy research out there, but it definitely seemed clear to me that she was operating on kind of old-school approach to literacy, heavily based on technical, scientific research (like the ppvt measure that she critiqued but still used, which made me think about the quantification of knowledge? learning? it's hard but still may have a legit function of standard measures?).

in any case, i totally agree that she did a poor job of talking about ELLs, especially because i came for that twist. i'm also not sure if it's productive to so rigidly separate english language proficiency into social and academic, because it seems to me that it may be more productive to break down the barriers, especially in going forward with improving the learning experiences of ELLs and raising the quality of language use in general. yeah, it helps to make a distinction in the arenas in which students are thriving (social v. academic) but she made no effort to deconstruct or revise that conception in offering a solution, which i'm not sure she even tried to do. i think by treating the two kinds of discourses collectively (though perhaps not unitarily), we can begin to build on some of those strengths that you're pointing out? i'm most concerned about what it means for children to take on this new language of schooling in juxtaposition to not only ELLs' first language, but whatever kind of english they already know and use more frequently. w/ that said, i think this research re: academic language is important.