Gee Units 3 & 4

Unit 3: Building Things in the World

Speaking reflects context and context reflects (is shaped by) speaking (what was said). (85)

I loved the discussion of the chicken and egg scenario in terms of context and language.  ‘When we speak we build and design what we have to say to fit the context in which we are communicating.  But, at the same time, how we speak—what we say and how we say it—helps create that very context. usage to a context that our language, in turn, helps to create context in the first place (84).’  It is true.  Gee later goes onto discuss identity and how we choose our identity based on the context that we are in.  In response to the readings, I thought about the identities that have for myself…mother, wife, dog owner, home owner, Jeep driver, vegetarian, Democrat, Southern Baptist, Tennessean, Southerner, teacher, ESL teacher, Spanish learner, student, divorcee, orphan, rap fan…to name a few.  So many of those identities have specific characteristics of language that are specific to those individual identities.  Things I would talk about or ways that I would talk about them in one context I would never talk about in another.  Others seem more fluid or cohesive. ‘We build an identity here and now as we speak.  We act out different identities in our lives in different contexts.  Each of these identities can influence the others when any one of them is being performed (106).‘

‘I will call this identity our “live word identity”.  The life world is all those contexts in which we speak and act as everyday people (107).’  Something that I wondered about here that doesn’t really fit or wasn’t something that I read about here concerned what I am referring to ‘portrayed’ vs. ‘perceived’ identities.  I am sure that somewhere there is a label that I am missing, but I think you will understand what I am getting at.  There is a professor here at UT (not you) that portrays him or herself as wanting to have a classroom community.  This person consistently talks about the openness and low risk environments that he or she is working to establish in their classrooms.  However, actions do not match this person’s words.  As time passes, this is increasingly the case.  In research, how much of that is presented in your study if identity isn’t the focus of your study?  If I were looking at classroom discourse, would this be something that I was concerned with since it is one of the seven areas of reality?  Is there a label for these identities that I am missing?

“Face” is the sense of worth or dignity each of us has and wants to be honored by others in society.  Face is something that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced (119).’  There are a ton of examples that I could give for this, but I related this concept/issue to an occurrence in my life that I am ashamed of on some level.  A few summers back, my husband and I had a yard sale in which another ESL teacher came.  Based on things that I had put in the yard sale, she initiated a discussion on teaching and we learned that we were both ESL teachers.  We had a great conversation and shared contact information.  A few short weeks later, our new ‘relationship’ was challenged. 

‘Making a request of someone can be “face threatening,” that is, seen as an imposition or a form of over-involvement (119).’  I came home from work and there was an older car parked in my driveway.  I was terrified.  I wouldn’t go into my house for fear there was an intruder.  I called my husband and while I was waiting on him, a man pulled up in another car and started to explain to me that his wife was an ESL teacher.  I cut him off and ordered him to get both vehicles off of my property immediately.  I went inside and locked it up tight.  My house wasn’t a junkyard or car repair store.  The man moved his car and rolled the other car into the subdivision road.  When my husband came home, he talked to the man and learned that he was the wife of the teacher that had come to our yard sale.  She was having trouble with her car and thought our house would be a safe place to park it until he could work on it that evening after work.  What those people didn’t know was that our house had been broken into and the people who did it drove a very similar car to the one that belonged to the wife.  Our relationship experienced a ‘face threatening’ situation because she exhibited what I felt like was an imposition.  Now, every time that I see her at a conference, I run in the opposite direction.

I had one of those random moments when I felt smart in the reading.  In this unit, started thinking about the view of bilingual education as a pro or con based on the person’s perspective of its use.  For TPTE 617, I looked at bilingual education and found two distinct views on language learning.  If the researchers were talking about Spanish instruction to supplement home language, the support wasn’t there.  If the researchers were talking about Spanish instruction for mainstream classroom students to teach a second language, there was much support for Spanish instruction.  As Gee put it, ‘We humans contest the value of different languages and other sorts of sign systems.  We context, as well, different ways of knowing the world…We can build privilege or prestige for one sign system over others (136).’  Later, he used the example of Arizona’s Proposition 203 mandating English-only instruction (141).  I was simply excited that I was on the same line of thinking as Gee.

Gee Unit 4

I know that we are supposed to read this with an invested interest in how it will help us with our data analysis, which I did.  A lot of the reading that I have been doing for my mini-literature review had ties to the five theoretical frameworks that Unit 4 opened with, such as situated meanings and figured worlds. However, I mentioned in my blog post for last week that I found this reading relevant for ESL teachers either at the onset of their careers or as a refresher to grammar elements.  This section also seemed to tie to the current state of education form, especially in regards to TN’s interpretation of CCSS and Knox County School System’s recent implantation of the standards in the middle school grades.  The interpretation and plan has been for teachers to avoid working with students on building prior knowledge in their reading of texts or using what they know about a subject to interpret a text.  Instead, everything is supposed to be text-based.  The problem with this view is connected to an element expressed by Gee:

What is in our heads is probably a combination of the following things:  images or prototypes of what is typical of the things the word refers to; information and facts we know about; and typical uses of the word and the typical range of contexts in which the word is normally used (151).

This is in relation to the idea of situated meanings.  As humans, we bring with us knowledge that influences what we understand or how we interpret things.  We cannot help it.  It is who we are.  It ties back to an earlier concept that we discussed in our readings about the view of a word or concept in terms of a net.  On the basic or initial level, you have a word and it has a dictionary meaning.  With every step or move away from that, the meaning changes based on other connected elements.  So the context changes our understanding of the word. I think the example that was given was the word ‘dog’.  There is a dictionary definition of what a dog is that guides understanding of what the speaker means by the word ‘dog’ in an interaction.  Based on my past experiences with dogs, I create a different picture in my mind of what is meant by the word ‘dog’.  If I have had a positive experience with a ‘dog’ or owned ‘dogs’, the meaning that is attached to that word.  If I have had a negative experiences with a ‘dog’ or haven’t never had previous experiences with ‘dogs’, my interpretation of the concept/word ‘dog’ will be different than others.

Another example from this reading that I tie to my experience as an ESL teacher comes from the section 4.10 The Big D Discourse Tool:

Children acquire a secondary Discourse when they go to school that involves the identity of being a student of a certain kind and using certain kinds of “school language.”  This identity and these forms of language can, at points, conflict with the identities, values, and ways with words some children have learned at home as part of their primary Discourse.  For other children there is a much better fit or match (180).

The text gave the example of Native Americans experience transitioning between the home-school environments. According to Gee, these children have been taught at home to respect authority figures and teachers are authority figures.  It is hard for the children to participate/speak out in the classroom setting, which can go against the expectations or needs of the school setting.  This has come up in my classroom as well.  I am used to working predominantly with Hispanic students from only a handful of Central American countries. These students typically are very collaborative in nature and construct their understanding of classroom instruction by working with the teacher and their peers.  However, I have also worked with students who come from African and Asian countries and their participation resembles that which was described for the Native Americans only for different reasons. These students have been taught that women are lesser and that they don’t have to acknowledge them.  It takes a lot of time to help the students overcome this bias and fully participate in the classroom setting.  I can really understand the importance of identity in these examples and how important context is in understanding participant perspectives. 

Reading Notes…

Gee Unit 4.1 Five Theoretical Tools

1. Theory from Cognitive Psychology:  “situated meanings”-humans actively build meanings “on line” when we use language in specific contexts

2. Theory from Sociolinguistics: about how different styles or varieties of using language work to allow humans to carry out different types of social work and enact differently socially situated identities; social language-any language is composed of a great many different social languages where each is connected to meanings and activities associated with particular social and cultural groups

3. Theories from Literary Criticism: “intertextuality”-when anyone speaks or writes they often make reference to what other people or various texts or media have said or meant; they may quote or just allude to what others have said, which means one “text” refers to or points to another “text”

4. Theory from Psychological Anthropology: about how humans form and use theories to give language meaning and understand each other and the world; notion of “figured words”, which are narratives and images that different social and cultural groups of people use to make sense of the world

5. Theories from Various Areas: about how meaning goes well beyond human minds and language to involve objects tools, technologies, and networks people collaborating with each other (150)

Gee Unit 4.2 The Situated Meaning Tool

Any word or structure in language has a certain “meaning potential”, that is, a range of possible meanings that the word or structure can take on in different contexts of use (151)

No one knows exactly how definitions work in our heads (151).

In actual situations of use words and structures take on much more specific meanings within the range of their meaning potentials.  This is what I will call “situated meanings” (152).

People must in context actively “make up” (guess) the meanings of the words and phrases they hear.  Often this is fairly routine, since they have shared meanings like this before.  But sometimes they must do more work and actively seek to ask what people must mean here and now, if they have said what they said in the context in which they have said it (152-153).

Meaning-making is not a “look up” process.  It is an active process (153).

All utterances make assumptions about people’s previous experiences and knowledge.  They assume certain experiences and knowledge in order to be understood (153-154).

Gee Unit 4.3 Working with the Situated Meaning Tool

The Situated Meaning Tool tells us to ask what words and phrases mean in specific contexts (154).

Gee Unit 4.4 The Social Languages Tool

People do not speak any language “in general”.  They always speak a specific variety of a language and they use different varieties in different contexts (156)

To understand what a speaker says, a listener needs to know who is speaking.  But it is not enough to know, for example, that Mary Smith is the speaker.  I need to know what identity Mary is speaking (156).

Social languages are what we learn and what we speak (156).

To know a particular social language is either to be able to “do” a particular identity or to be able to recognize such an identity when we do not want to or cannot actively participate (156).

Gee Unit 4.8 The Figured Worlds Tool

What counts as a typical story for people differs by their social and culture groups (169).

A figured world is a picture of a simplified world that captures what is taken to be typical or normal.  What is taken to be typical or normal, as we have said, varies by context and by people’s social and cultural group (170). 

Gee Unit 4.9 Working with the Figured Worlds Tool

We all have a myriad of such figured worlds.  We all use them so that we do not have to consciously to think about everything before we talk and act.  The best way to get at what figured worlds a speaker is assuming in a given context is to ask the following question:  What must this speaker assume about the world—take to be typical or normal—in order to have spoken this way to have said these things in the way they were said?  Often interviewing people is a good way to uncover figured worlds (173).

Gee Unit 4.10 The Big “D” Discourse Tool

People talk and act not just as individuals, but as members of various sorts of social and cultural groups.  We do not invent our language, we inherit it from others.  We understand each other because we share conventions about how to use and interpret language (176). 

When we enact an identity in the world, we do not just use language all by itself to do this.  We use language, but we also use distinctive ways of acting, interacting with others, believing valuing dressing and using various sorts of objects and tools in various sorts of distinctive environments (177).

The whole points of talking about Discourses is to focus on the fact that when people mean things to each other, there is always more than language at stake.  To mean anything to someone else (or even to myself), I have to communicate who I am. I also have to communicate what I am doing in terms of what socially situated activity I am seeking to carry out, since Discourses exist in part to allow people to carry out certain distinctive activities (178).

Gee Conclusion

Validity is never “once and for all.”  All analyses are open to further discussion and dispute, and their status can go up or down with time as work goes on in the field.  Validity for discourse analysis is based on the following four elements:

1. Convergence

2. Agreement

3. Coverage

4. Linguistic Details (185-186)

Syllabus:-)

I was looking at the syllabus to see what was do in the next few weeks, and I saw that the topic in a couple of weeks is Online Data.  I am so excited.  I think that I picked my topic for my dissertation and I am hoping to use online data as a piece, especially at the onset of my study.  I AM SO EXCITED! I am just struggling with how to get started.  I have pulled some articles to read on using the internet as a research tool and specifically using FB.  I cannot wait to talk to you about and learn what all I don't know.

Facebook Pages as Data?

Hello.  I think I have found the area that I want to investigate further for my dissertation.  I will talk more about particulars in a non-public format, but I wanted to put this out there so that you would know that I need to talk with you.  Are we ever allowed to use data from FB for studies?  What are the steps that I need to take besides reading the FB guidelines?  Is it always off limits or can participants agree to allow you to use their comments, ideas, etc.

Gee's Language and Context

Gee: How to Do Discourse Analysis

Humans are creatures of language (3).

Languages change all the time (4).

Unit 1:  Language and Context

As an ESL teacher, I really enjoyed this reading.  I think that for anyone working with language either with learners or research that this is a nice book to help you understand how we use language and what we do with it.  I think that its important for people to understand the dialects that people have and they manners that they construct their identities.  I will also admit that it is like what you have talked about before in class.  I am one of those people that like to have a plan and I like ‘instructional’ manuals.  As you will see later in my blog, a portion of the reading gave me a little bit of a heart attack.  I’m not even going to lie.  There was also a point in the reading that I thought, ‘Trena has been keeping this from me all along, so that I would have to come to this discovery on my own.’  You’ll see what I mean later.

‘We discourse analysts have to learn to make what we take for granted new and strange. This is why it is sometimes good, when doing discourse analysis, for an insider and outsider to study the same data together (19).’ Gee later goes onto explain that ‘The outsider can help the insider see old things as new and strange again.  The insider can help the outsider use context more deeply to correct judgments about meaning and purposes being pursued (20).’  In class, you have talked about DART and Elizabeth discussed how it has helped her in the analysis of her data.  Is this the role of DART?  Is it helping researchers in a manner similar to ‘The Frame Problem’, which is ‘a way to keep us honest (37).’

An element that I found interesting was the brief discussion on ASL.  ‘American Sign Language counts as “oral language,” even though it is signed, since it is acquired as a native language by some children and used for face-to-face communication (4).’  I understand why Gee says this and I am sure that there is basis for it.  I know that it is it’s own language and it provides a means of communication for those using it.  I just have a hard time counting it has oral language.

As you know me increasingly well at this point, context is important to me.  During the summer, I struggled to understand the role of context in DP studies, but as we have went through this semester I am starting to see how DA addresses context or how it is important in qualitative studies:

Context includes the physical setting in which the communication takes place and everything in it; the bodies, eye gaze, gestures, and movements of those present; what have previously been said and done by those involved in the communication; any shared knowledge those involved have, including shared cultural knowledge (5).

‘There is always the possibility of considering other and additional aspects of the contexts, and these new considerations may change how we interpret the utterance (31).’  Did you know this all along and have been holding back from me so I could learn this aspect from Gee?  For me, context is very important and adds so much to the information that is studied concerning the interactions that people have.  I know you have pointed out before that there are so many everyday interactions that people have in which we don’t have all of the context that we could have, like body language, gestures, etc., such as telephone conversations and yet we somehow manage to understand those we are having a conversation with.  I guess I have just been worrying that when you are trying to study the everyday language or conversations and interactions that people have that it would be very misleading to think you know something about what they are doing with their language if you don’t have a really detailed understanding of the context.  But, then here was the answer.

‘We will always be willing to push context a bit further than we would in everyday life to see if we can falsify our claims about meaning (32).’  Another concern that I have, however, is how is this accomplished with audio recordings.  Is it accomplished by continuing to study multiple sessions, multiple encounters, multiple conversations?

Absolutely loved this example along with the following equation.  ‘Communication and culture are like icebergs.  Only a small “tip” is stated overtly.  A vast amount lies under the surface, not said, but assumed to be known or inferable from the context in which the communication is occurring (8).’

WHAT THE SPEAKER SAYS + CONTEXT = WHAT THE SPEAKER MEANS (11)

‘We can never be completely sure of people’s intentions and purposes.  There is much that goes on in people’s minds that is unconscious(13). ‘ I think this is where the example of Sara and Karen’s project really hits home for me and ties together the idea of insider/outsider, shared culture, and taken for granted information.  If you are apart of the group, it is easy to understand things that are being said, but not said if you know the context that it is being said in.  If you have a shared culture and are an insider, you have knowledge that helps you understand what is not being said.  If you are an outsider, you can help identify elements of taken for granted information that is occurring that you don’t understand and can help the insider see those moments.

This is quite the most terrifying thing that I have ever read in one of your classes.  ‘We seek to make a claim and then see if we or others can falsify it.  If it is falsified, we learn something.  The field, as a whole, moves forward. We look to our colleagues to help us by trying to falsify our claims (29).’  Oh my gosh.  Don’t get me wrong.  I have learned more from the mistakes in my life than I have learned from instances being right.  As a novice researcher, everything that I do feels wrong and feels off track.  However, Gee is saying that we need to shoot for manners in which we can be questioned and refine what we have done.  I feel as if I am always wrong. I feel as if you are always going to be able to falsify my claims unless I stick to the known. But then, how am I going to grow as a researcher if I do that?

Unit 2: Saying, Doing, and Designing

Anything we say performs some sort of action (44).

Each way of combining words has a meaning (50).

I think that this points to the manipulation element of human discourse that we have discussed before.  ‘In our everyday lives, even when we are conveying information to someone, we are also trying to do other things as well.  Not only do we use language to do many things, but any one utterance is often meant simultaneously to carry out more than one action (42).’  I guess I am still having a hard time with this, because so much of what we say is unconscious.  We don’t think about it.  We say it.  It is why we get in trouble so much with our speech.  We respond.  The grammar aspect of unit to helped me to see the basic elements of what we are doing with our language.  We use a noun and verb together to convey a thought.  We select the subject and object of our sentence and thus something has been done with our language.  Again, are we, as researchers, saying that our participants accomplished this or that with their language even though we don’t actually know if this was their intent.  ‘It is always useful to ask of any communication: What is the speaker trying to DO and not just what is the speaker trying to SAY (42)?’  How do you ever know that what you think the speaker is trying to do is what they are trying to?  I do think that I have a pretty good example of this though.  When I was sixteen, I got my first car and it was back in the day of cheap gas.  We had absolutely nothing to do, so we would cruise town.  I had a little Ford Escort.  One night while riding around with my best friend she made the following comment, ‘This car sure has a great heater.’ I responded with a side ways smile and scrunched forehead something like, ‘Ugh, yeah. I guess.’  A few minutes later, my best friend started pushing random buttons and ripping off layers of clothes.  She was burning up.  Instead of asking to turn the heater off, she made a comment that I totally missed the point of.  Almost 20 years later, I am still like, ‘Why didn’t she just ask to turn off the heater?’

‘Each design choice you make about building language structures determines certain aspects of what you mean; we have already seen that some meaning is determined, not by what you say, but by the context in which you say it. (51).’ For this, Gee gave the example of using the terms beef vs. cow and how one implies and object and the other implies a living being.  This made me think of our discussions in DP about how the media chooses to refer to things and how most of the time they can be traced to the agenda of the network.  I think that it would be interesting to look at just the headlines right now that pertain to the government shutdown and whether there seems to be a slant this or that way depending on which network was covering the story.

The Why This Way and Not That Way Tool tells us always to ask why something was said the way it was and not some other way.  One way to operate with this tool is to ask yourself the ways in which any data you are analyzing could have been said differently.  Then ask why it was said the way it was and not the other ways (62).

‘The picture you form in your mind is determined, as we know, not just by what was said, but by the context in which it was said (72).’ I know that this is specifically tied to research from Gee’s perspective and the language that individuals use.  This was interesting and for me it can be tied to the education reform right now that involves students working to provide ‘text-based’ evidence and not bring in their own background knowledge, but how can we possibly expect students to do this. Who we are determines what language does in our interactions. All language has an action and context matters. I would think background knowledge would be a huge piece of the ‘context’.

Random Notes of Interest for Me

Each person learns a certain variety—called a “dialect”—of their native language, the variety their ancestors have passed down to them (2). Dialects can vary in terms of vocabulary, syntax, and pronunciation (2). Dialects can vary by region, social class, and by cultural group (2).

To do discourse analysis on our own languages in our own culture requires a special skill.  We have to make things new and strange that we usually see as completely “normal” and “natural” (6).

In order to do things with language, including informing, we use grammar to build and design structures and meanings (48). 

Using language is all about making choices about what and how to build (design choices) so that we can mean what we want to mean (52).

Tier 1-3 words (53) huge concept in education that keeps getting played around with in how the concept is labeled, but with each reform it ends up being the same thing with a different name.

Whenever we speak or write, we always and simultaneously build one of seven things or seven areas of “reality”:

• Significance
• Activities
• Identities
• Relationships
• Politics (distribution of goods)
• Connections
• Sign Systems and Knowledge (88-91)

Visiting Previous Readings and New Information...Plus Icky Sanders...

The readings for this week could not have been placed in a more appropriate spot for the outline of the semester in terms of where we are at this week currently as a state and my personal experiences.  Several of the articles were refreshers from our readings in DP this summer and I have included my notes and thoughts from our previous time together.  My responses to Elizabeth and Josh’s articles were written as if writing to them and my questions were typed in bold to help you identify them.  As I was reflecting on the information that they shared with us previously in DP, the only thing that I am still wondering about is what elements in their study of participants’ discourse (Elizabeth’s work in IEP meetings and Josh’s work with new teachers) has surprised them the most during their analysis and perhaps, how has their work changed their line of personal line of thinking during their study.  As you have reflected before, a lot of the work that I do with my ESL families involves me seeing them in meetings with teachers in which I see teachers starting by killing parents with kindness only to pull the rug out from underneath them to uncover the agenda that they had along.  There have also been times in which I see teachers using the language barrier to hide their unprofessional behavior.  Comments that would never be made in front of Anglo-English-speaking parents are made in meetings with what appears to be no second thought.  Although both studies were written completely different, as an educator, I enjoyed them both.  Elizabeth’s more closely related to my line of work at this stage of my career, but Josh’s work was interesting to me as teacher who struggled (and sometimes, still struggles) a lot in the beginning to find her identity in the school.  I enjoyed reading them both and I can see the relevance for both of them in the current educational climate.

The Gabriel & Lester article regarding TVAAS was my favorite reading during DP.  I loved the style that it was written in and appreciated the literature format of the piece.  I also loved that UT graduates were being given the respect that they deserve.  This week, FB has been blowing up with an article from Classroom Chronicles ‘The Man Behind the Numbers’ giving Sanders accolades for his development of the TVAAS system and how its use has spread across districts throughout the United States.  This quote taken from the article ‘He hopes that TVAAS will continue to curb what he calls one of the most ineffective resources in the world’ points to a lack of respect for all of the different elements that teachers face in their classroom from year to year. He says that you can look at student achievement in 5^th grade and track how well a student will be doing years later or look at a high school student and know at what point in their academic career they veered off the correct path based on teacher TVAAS scores.  What about all of those students who came to school worried about their next meal or whose native language isn’t English or who are severely delayed in their learning for various reasons?  What about those schools that were struck with by a natural disaster just before testing that the school wouldn’t allow an extension on the testing window?  A bad year’s test scores can effect a teacher’s TVAAS data or a school’s rating for may years to come and yet that is going to be used to determine teacher effectiveness or teacher pay.  A test designed for the measurement of corn.  I call bunk!  As did another FB post flying around this week regarding the fact that 20 years of TVAAS data hasn’t proved anything and certainly hasn’t improved anything in TN education.  Another reason why it was so perfectly timed is the teachers in my district had to sign their agreement forms today in what data they wanted collected for 50% of the teacher evaluations.  As a non-classroom teacher, my TVAAS and teacher evaluation is mandated to be determined by school-wide TVAAS data.

I have to say that the Ladegaard article may have been one of the most shocking articles that I have read and I think that it points to the gender bias that I have regarding men and women in leadership roles.  I mean this quote doesn’t surprise me: ‘Gender may move to the foreground or retreat to the background at different points in an interaction, but it is an omnipresent influence, and always potentially relevant to the interpretation of the meaning of an interaction (15).’ I would agree that it is always there.  It is like a movie that I watched that said that men and women can’t be friends, because ‘sex’ is always an issue.  Well, I would agree that gender is always an issue, because we are humans.  We react to situations based on who we are and our previous experiences.  I was raised by an independent, Southern lady who was married to the same man for over 40 years that encouraged me to do anything that I set my mind to do.  I think that I was raised to expect that I can do anything that a man can do, but why would I want to?  How do you as the researcher identify an innate bias that you have when it is so finely grained into who you are as an individual?

I have worked with both male and female bosses.  I have had positive and negative experiences with both, but in general I have had a more negative experiences with females. I feel that they tend to be more emotional and more reactive than their male counterparts.  However, something that I found interesting was ‘This study suggests that female leaders should not employ an exclusively feminine management style’ it is probably equally true, however that they should also do their best to escape the Pit-Bull-Terrier image that some female leaders seem to think is an asset for a female leader (18).’  I agree with it in that there is not perfect balance.  If a woman is ‘too female’, respect is probably not going to be given by certain people, but if a woman is ‘too Pit-Bull-Terrier’, she may be judged as trying to hard to be one of the boys and not receive the respect that she is trying to get. It is my personal preference to work with male bosses.  I think that the women that I have worked for tend to have an ‘emotional-I’m-your-friend’ leadership style and have a really hard time knowing where the line needs to be drawn until it is too late, which sort of mirrors the research by Odgaard and Jorgensen.  (Plus, I don’t just don’t personally trust women.)  With my male bosses, there has tended to be more of a ‘what you see is what you get’ style of leadership.  They let you know their expectations and as long as you meet them, you are fine.  

Another aspect from this article that I personally tied to regarded their discussion on Communities of Practice for their framework.  I used communities of practice for my study on professional development book clubs as an alternative to traditional professional development models offered in schools.  For that study, I was even more of a novice, so I had so much to learn. I made so many mistakes or assumptions.  I wish that I had known more about DA and how it could have better helped me understand the language of my participants and how we constructed the learning environment of our endeavor.

Ladegaard, H. J. (2011).  ‘Doing power’ at work: Responding to male and female management styles in a global business corporation.  Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 4-19.

Previous research:

• ·         Case (1988): ‘the men in her study used a more direct, action-oriented style which allowed them to establish dominance in the group, and most of the women uses a more accommodating style which emphasized interpersonal relationship (6)’
• ·         Odgaard and Jorgensen (2003): Male-more factual, to-the-point, no small talk, unemotional; Female-lots of small talk, more emotional approach (6)
• ·         Mullany (2007): both men and women use masculine and feminine speech, favor feminine strategies when they are exercising power and authority (6)

Community of Practice (CoP): ‘This framework focuses on how people construct membership of certain groups through their language use’…’an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations—in short practices—emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor’ (8).

‘The most significant difference found in this study is the way employees respond to their male and female leaders.  The male leaders do not seem to have any problems when it comes to ‘doing’ power, claiming authority, and accomplishing their transactional goals, whereas the female leaders are often struggling—not only in the excerpts we have analyzed but in many other situations as well (16).’

Other notes of interest:

• ·       ‘the paucity of women in management positions, including cultural, social, and educational factors’ and ‘infamous ‘glass ceiling’ are the main reasons why it is usually difficult for women to climb to the top of an organization’ (4)
• ·        ‘overwhelmingly male (4)
• ·         good leadership qualities: authoritative, strong-minded, decisive, aggressive, competitive, and goal-oriented—qualities normally associated with men rather than women (5)

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) ‘aims to identify connections between language, power, and ideology and discourse analysts favoring this approach are trying to describe how power and dominance are produced and reproduced in social practice through the discourse structures of everyday text and talk (7).’

Elizabeth…

Price, E. Dissertation proposal: A discourse analysis of individualized transition planning meetings.

First of all, I loved the opening addendum.  I think that it made the process that you are going through very real for me and I could sense the struggle that you are having in regards to gaining access to the data that you need for your study.  For someone at the beginning of this doctoral process, it helped me to appreciate the complexity that goes into the type of work that you are doing.  Thank you for your honesty and openness. 

I am a K-4 ESL teacher, so I have limited experience with IEP meetings.  I wasn’t aware that students were expected to participate in their instructional planning at the age of 14.  That seems like such a crucial age in a child’s development while at the same time very difficult to get them to participate in a matter such as this.  I understand that theoretically they should have a vested interest in the planning of their transition or continued services, but we don’t always know what should be important, especially at the age of 14.  I think that the premise of your study in looking at the discourse of special education students in the IEP conversation/meeting is a very interesting premise and one worthy of study.  At this stage of the reading, I am wondering how you plan to compare the IEP’s with students present vs. IEP’s where students aren’t present.

In your section on the ‘Challenges Associated with Participation in IEP and ITP Meetings’, you share a variety of points regarding issues that come up with IEP’s involving students, families, and educators.  Something that I was curious about was your discussion on the litigations or disputes that occur over special education services. Did you come across research that indicated why there was a disparity between the number of disputes that arise at the secondary level versus the number of disputes at the younger grade levels? Are you thinking that more student participation could eliminate or reverse this statistic?

A quote that I took from your paper and found pertinent was ‘As such, IEP meetings may be seen as a school institutional concern by participants rather than a place for all participants to share knowledge and make decisions together (Lo, 2008).’  I think that this has very much been the case in the IEP’s that I have attended.  They seem to be held in rudimentary fashion and little parent involvement is really sought out or deemed necessary.  They ask all of the right questions of the parents, but in a manner that really seems kind of rhetorical.  It seems as if they are holding a mandated meeting with ‘x’ amount of stuff to wade through and the parents there to be seen not really heard.  It would be very interesting to attend meetings in which children are expected to be active participants in the process. 

I have brought this up before, but what is your experience with meetings pertaining to LEP students.  Would these students, if they had a SPED label also, have been excluded from participation in your study?  Why or why not?

Well done on the theoretical framework section. Best description of DP that I have read thus far. I actually understood it.  This quote especially held direct me in my understanding of the process: ‘Without question, the discursive features I will choose to focus upon emanate from my background, interests, and research questions (33).’

I LOVED THE FOLLOWING QUOTE…’The stated membership categories listed above cannot reveal the complexity of my emotions, reactions, thoughts, and questions about a system in which I am deeply connected as both an insider and an outsider (31).’ I think that you write beautifully.  Your emotion was felt and I think that is one of the things that I like about reading what I think of as real qualitative research.  It is raw.  It is real.  It is connectable. 

‘Whatever participants are doing with language in the situation takes precedence over the attempts to identify the inner motives and intentions of the participant. Since the inner workings of someone else’s thoughts are usually not on display, the concern is with what participants say and do (34).’ In regards to DAM element 1, I think this is one my biggest struggles that I am having in regards to understanding DP.  How do you know what you are finding with your analysis is accurate or valid if you don’t know more about what is behind the participants’ message?  I am not saying in your study, but DP work in general. 

Thank you very much for sharing your work with us.  It is overwhelming to me at times to put myself out there.  As a public educator working with diverse learners, it was a very interesting study for me to read and learn how DP work can be used in an educational setting that is familiar to me.  As a future researcher (hopefully), it was an accessible study for me to learn from.  Much like Gabriel and Lester’s study on TVAAS data, it was written in UT (forget that APA nonsense, wink wink) style.  It was familiar to me.  It was written in a format that I have been taught and could almost utilize a checklist to say you modeled everything that I have been taught.  I look forward to reading your finished work.

Josh…

Johnston, J. Dissertation proposal: A discourse analysis of beginning teachers’ identity negotiation during a student-teaching internship.

‘As I use identity, it is a socially negotiated and contextually occasioned understanding of what an individual stands for in a given interaction (3).‘ This was the first time that I really have read and understood the concept of identity in DP.  Your writing on this point was very readable and understandable.  Another quote that I appreciated was, ‘Though these changes may not occur knowingly (Goffman, 1959), people move among multiple identities that are temporary and malleable (4).’ In DP, we have been talking a lot about this just recently.  It is a concept that I firmly believe.  Potter and Edwards talked about the self and how it is not fully represented as it was in the past, as it is now, or how it will be (not a direct quote, but the gist).  It is ever evolving and each version is just as ‘true’ as another one. 

‘DP analysts simply offer one interpretation of what they understand discourse to be doing and try to make their own thinking behind that analysis transparent. What the participants meant, felt, or believed is not important because is not at all accessible to analysts from a discourse analytic perspective (21-22).’  I asked this of Elizabeth, too.  How do you accept the realm where you are taking emotion and the participant’s thoughts out of the equation?  How does this not drive you crazy?  How does it not affect the validity or accuracy of the study?

‘In my approach to the data, I will attempt to stay aware of common failures of discourse analysis: (1) summarizing, (2) taking sides, (3) over quoting or under quoting, (4) reasoning circularly, (5) attributing to membership categories (6) spotting features (Antaki, Billig, Edwards, & Potter, 2003)(37)’. I LOVED THIS SECTION.  But, could you provide me a little more background or examples as to what they mean?  I haven’t taken DA yet.

As part of course requirements, I looked at professional learning communities and used a theoretical framework related to communities of practice.  In your discussion of how the meetings were set and your role, you mentioned communities of practice (38).  Did you ever consider using this as your framework? What, if any, other frameworks/methodologies did you consider using for your work?

I really appreciated your reflexivity statement and your discussion of how your presence should be represented as part of the data.  Something that I had never read before was the idea of using time/space to eliminate some of the ‘inside’ knowledge in which you would have had access to your own thoughts or feelings if you had analyzed immediately.

Gabriel & Lester…

Gabriel, R. & Lester, J. (Forthcoming).  The romance quest of education reform: A discourse analysis of The LA Times’ reports on value-added measurement teacher effectiveness. Teacher’s College Record.

As a new student learning research and the research process, this article was great for me. It combined all of the information in a readily accessible format that I have been taught to include in a study and write-ups about my study.  It also helped me see one element of the bigger picture that I have been desperately trying to see so far this term.  It was a great article and very relevant to the current state of education reform.

I loved the opening for the article: ‘In the fairytale of US public education reform, the root of all evil has presumably been identified: ineffectiveness in teaching.  Districts and teacher’s unions, like kings and dukes in a romantic tale, have the authority and influence that should protect their people from the evils of ineffective teachers, but lately they have been powerless to track down and eliminate the dragons of ineffectiveness that lurk in our K-12 schools (2).’ It not only got to the heart of the premise behind the problem of the article’s purpose, but it was written in what I think of as qualitative style.  It gave me an interest to keep reading the article and learn what they learned.  There was not  an attack on the LA Times, but instead stated that ‘The issue lies with the ways in which VAM continues to be positioned as a means by which to validly and reliably identify low-performing teachers, even when research suggests otherwise (3).’ The researchers presented findings from a discourse analysis of 52 articles published between 2009-2011 on VAM.

As a teacher with 6 years of experience TN, I have experienced the previous teacher evaluation system.  I have been around for the previous standards movement roll-out.  I am the first to admit that we needed a new evaluation system and new standards. However, it astonishes me that administrators and the public really think that ‘By comparing individual students to their own historic performance over time, the method is said to eliminate the problem of individual differences and outside factors (5).’  There are stories throughout our state alone that prove this not to be true.  For example, tornadoes rolled through middle TN a few years back and the students had to take their EOCs that week.  Can you tell me that didn’t affect data?  There was a school shooting just after winter break and students had to return to the same school for testing.  A favorite specialist teacher in another school passed away in a car wreck and the school staff and student body was grieving during testing. One bad year, one bad circumstance.  It can affect a teacher’s TVAAS scores for 3 years before dropping off. Those are extreme cases.  What about factors that effect students on a daily basis, such as hunger, housing, family dynamics, etc.?  How are those elements excluded?  ‘Since student projections are created by comparing a student’s achievement over time rather than comparing students to each other, VAM is said to avoid the difficulty of controlling for individual differences among students (Sanders & Rivers, 1996).’ (7) It is ridiculous!

Sanders (professor of agriculture at UT) ‘decided to use the case of teachers and student test scores to demonstrate a model often used in genetics to estimate the half-life of radioactivity in cattle after reading about the dilemma of teacher evaluations in a campus newspaper’ (5).  Dr. Allington references this in a lot of his courses, but I never had the specifics to refer when discussing the TN evaluation with my peers.  Something else that Dr. Allington discusses is how the actual formula for the calculation of TVAAS data is copyright protected and doesn’t have to be shared with the public for analysis in other contexts.

‘Ironically, Sanders stipulated that scores of the TVASS should never be used as the sole indicator of effectiveness and should never be made public.  In fact, state law (now amended) prohibited the public release of individual teachers’ scores (5).’  See that is one of those things that I like to refer to as bunk in education.  There are many instances where as a state, as a system, or as a school that are adopted for one thing and then tweaked for another purpose.  It’s no longer research-based, but its deemed okay since ‘It’s the best we have.’  SAT-10 was supposed to be used for primary grade testing last year in a kind of piloting format even though primary teachers are teaching CCSS and it is TN Standard aligned.  After districts gave the assessment, the teachers were informed the test was being mandated for use with the evaluation model and would count as their TVAAS data.  They weren’t even teaching all of the content for that assessment.  They were teaching CCSS.  That is ridiculous for that to be valid (or ethical for that matter).

TRUE:  The main concerns around the uses of VAM within teacher evaluation include: the stability of scores assigned to teachers (Papay, 2010): large error rates in identification (Schochet & Chiang, 2010); the effect of student assignment (random versus nonrandom assignment) on a teacher’s scores; the large number of classroom-level variables that cannot be disentangled from a teacher’s score; and the lack of standardized test data with which to calculate value-added scores for teachers in untested subjects and grades (approximately 60% of teachers in some states).  (8)  Not to mention the assessments are not developmentally appropriate.  Kindergarteners are given the SAT-10 which has some questions in which they choose this or that picture.  One little boy picked a picture and said, ‘I know it is this one, but I don’t like that picture.’  Instances like that are determining how effective his teachers are at doing their job.

A problem a lot of teachers have across the state: ‘instruction in tested subjects is often provided by teachers, co-teachers, specialists, aides, parent volunteers, substitute teachers, out-of-school tutors, etc.: thus, responsibility should not be pinned on the individual teacher of record’ (8).’ On the flip side, all special areas teachers are being judged as ineffective or effective on subjects that they don’t teach.  The music teacher’s data is based on 4^th grade reading/ELA scores on TCAPS, as well as the librarian, the art teacher, the technology teacher, the counselor, and the gym teacher.  F’real.  It is valid though.  Just ask Commissioner Huffman or Haslam.  They’ll tell you.

‘As social constructionists, we do not have the right endowed by possession of a final truth.  But we do have the right that all people, in principle, have to intervene in democratic debate with a truth that can be discussed, in order to further our visions for a better society (10).’  I am still working on this statement and this sentiment throughout the learning that we are doing, but I was able to connect it to discussions that we have had in class.  It made me understand our conversations a little better.

‘Societal myths, cultural perspectives, and identities (such as what makes a teacher effective or ineffective) are generated as these ‘unnatural’ realities are reified and eventually become taken-for-granted (11).’  What about student identity?  What about commitment to the profession?  What about planning?

Critcher has noted, ‘discourse analysis reveals how ways of speaking about an issue are constructed to subsume all other versions’ (12).

4 Step Analysis Process:

1.     repeated readings of the texts

2.     selection, organization, and identification of discursive patterns

3.     generation of explanations linked to the overarching patterns

4.     reflexive and transparent documentation of our claims (14)

Discourse Analytic Questions that Sensitized the Process:

•            What is the discourse doing?
•       How is the discourse constructed to do this?
•            What resources are present and being used to perform this activity? (14)
•       We have discussed the difficulty in creating questions at the beginning of your study.  Could these questions be identified upfront on your IRB when you yet to have your research questions as preliminary guides?

‘Within educational researchers’ ongoing efforts to promote the use of research in order to serve all children well, it is important to examine the ways in which the tools and findings of educational research are represented to the public by the public (e.g., media outlets). Furthermore, efforts to improve education are often mediated by the media and contingent upon the ways in which language is used to communicate messages about reform (31).’  This hit home for me, because it was something that could be pointed to appropriate others in how to view what is shared.  In the previous school year, it was all that I could do to get through the school year. I felt so beaten down.  Every time that I turned on the TV or radio, read Facebook status updates, or read the newspaper, I was bombarded with disparities about the teaching profession.  Every body had an opinion and every body was dogging on teachers.  So, ‘To label (‘brand’) a teacher as either an ineffective or effective teacher reinforces ideologies and discourses that position teaching as a singular, monolithic thing, measurable by one thing (i.e., VAM) and knowable by outsiders (32).’  For everyone out there that thinks this isn’t true, let them be a teacher.  Let them see how difficult our job is and how VAM doesn’t measure that.