Developing Learning

CommunitiesLanguage and Learning Style

Chapter Seven

Characteristics of a Learning Community

It is organized for activity.

Everyone in the school participates in this activity-oriented environment.

There is a sense that everyone belongs.

Rationale for Learning Community Classrooms

Need to prepare students to be citizens of a democracyThrough learning to negotiate

differences in the context of a common curriculum

Through learning citizenship by practicing democracy

Old methods with new names:Dialogue (Plato)Discovery learning (Abelard)Critical pedagogy, feminist pedagogy,

collaborative learning (Comenius)

What is new:

That these should exist at the same time and be used by both children and adults

Pedagogies: Old and New

Traditional roles of students and adults are expanded Teacher as “teller” is expanded to

teacher as guide, coach, cheerleader. Other adults assume teaching and

learning roles. Students may be “teachers” as well as

learners.

Roles: Old and New

Disciplinary knowledge serves a dual role:Sometimes it is learned as an end in

itself.Sometimes it serves as a means to

another end, e.g., problem-solving or discovering a new way to see and understand the world.

Place of Content Knowledge: Old and New

There is still a use for paper and pencil testing, standardized or teacher-written.

General use for such tests is diagnostic.

Alternative forms of assessment also play a part:

Peer evaluationPortfoliosGroup testsSelf-evaluation

Assessment: Old and New

Perspectives on Language Acquisition

Language is what makes us human. It is the primary means for socializing us into our families and social groups, and through them, acquiring a cultural identity.

The Family is the First Institution

Introduces us to language

Structures the child’s environment

Gives labels to roles such as Mommy, teacher, priest, extending roles into the wider community

Language objectifies, interprets, and justifies reality for the child.

Language brings the meanings and values of the wider community onto the small state of the immediate family.

Institutional Aspects of Language in the Family

Language has several characteristics in common with other social institutions:It is external.

It is objective.

It has the power of moral authority.

It is historical.

Perspectives on Language Variation

All language sounds have symbolic meaning.

Within any language, however, the meaning of elements may differ widely:VocabularyPronunciationSyntax (grammatical structure)Semantics (the meaning of words)

Verbal Communication

Accents: differ from standard language only in pronunciation

Dialects: differ from standard language in pronunciation, word usage, and syntaxBlack English (ebonics)Rural (or Mountain) EnglishStandard English

Continued…

Black English (ebonics, African American Language [AAL])

Spoken primarily (though not exclusively) by urban African Americans

Derived in part from the languages of west Africa

Ability to code switch (move back and forth from ebonics to standard English) is often a matter of social class

Rural (or Mountain) English

Spoken primarily in Appalachia

Derived from the language of early English settlers in the area

May be the “purest” English spoken in the United States

Has been preserved, in part, because of isolation of mountain people

Standard English

Is also a dialect of English, although it is the dialect usually deemed most “correct”

Is the language of education, commerce, and the arts

May vary from community to community, and from country to country

Bidialectism: the abililty to speak two (or more) dialects and to switch easily between or among them

Sign Language: a non-verbal language of signs spoken by the deaf

Serves instead of a spoken language

American Sign Language (ASL) is considered an “official” language

Nonverbal CommunicationUsed by both hearing and hearing-impaired

individuals

Accounts for 50 to 90 percent of the messages we send and receive

It has several functions:Conveys messagesCan augment verbal communicationCan contradict verbal communicationCan replace verbal communication

Three aspects of nonverbal communication:

Proxemics: sometimes called “social space”; refers to the “normal” distance considered appropriate between two people speaking

Kinesics: body language, e.g., gestures, facial expressions, eye contact

Paralanguage: vocalizations that are not words, e.g., sighs, laughter, crying

Culture, Language, and Learning Style

These three are inextricably intertwined:Language shapes and is shaped by

culture.Culture shapes and is shaped by

language.Learning style originates and accounts for

variations in patterns of learning, and is shaped by both language and culture.

Relation of Language to Culture

Language determines vocabulary, which sets the “right” meaning of words and of cultural ideas.

Language plays a critical role in the maintenance of subgroups within a larger culture.

Language reflects the thought processes of a culture.

Relation of Learning Style to Culture

Learning style is developed in the context of what we attend to (perception) and how we attend to it—culturally shaped adaptations to both the physical and the social environment.

Thus, particular learning styles are often associated with particular cultural groups.

Components of Learning Style

Field dependence: individual perceives globally or holistically; orientation is social; is good at observation

Field independence: individual perceives discrete parts; is good at abstract thought; tends to be individualistic; prefers working alone

Continued…

Additional Components of Learning StylePreferred sensory mode for learning,

e.g., sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, movement

Reponse to immediate environmentEmotionalitySocial preferencesCognitive-psychological orientation

Origins of Learning Style

Still a matter of conjecture

Appear to be a combination ofBiological factorsPsychological factorsSociocultural factors

Multiple Intelligences

The idea, based on brain research and proposed by Howard Gardner, that human beings not only have preferred learning styles, but also preferred ways of expressing intellectual ability, and thus, of thinking

Continued…

Seven kinds of intelligence:

Visual/spatialVerbal/linguisticLogical/mathematicalBodily/kinestheticMusical/rhythmicInterpersonalIntrapersonal

The Significance of Multiple Intelligences and Learning

StylesThe importance of these qualities for

teachers lies in their ability to identify preferred modes of learning and to adapt instruction so that all students get to practice learning in multiple ways.

No one recommends that students learn only in their preferred mode or that teachers teach in only one mode.

Cultural Groups May Differ in Communication Styles

Formal vs. Informal Communication

Emotional vs. Subdued Communication

Direct vs. Indirect Communication

Objective vs. Subjective Communication

Responses to Guilt and Accusations

Ethical Issues Students who speak a dialect of English, or

whose first language is not English, are likely to be stigmatized.

Debates about language in the schools are likely to be as much about issues of cultural domination as they are about language itself.

The assessment of students with limited English proficiency must be done with care.

Continued…

The increasing prevalence of English in world-wide modes of communication—especially television and the Internet—may mean that many languages are disappearing.

Some balance needs to be achieved between protecting “small” languages and encouraging international exchange.

Without diverse languages, diverse cultures may also disappear.

The negative American attitude toward learning more than one language may get in the way of our own international understanding.

Something to Think About

When we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the “human essence,” the distinctive qualities of mind that are, so far as we know, unique to man and that are inseparable from any critical phase of human existence, personal or social.

--Noam Chomsky