Words & Minds (Mercer) Reading Notes and Thoughts

Based on my experience as an elementary ESL teacher during the NCLB and Reading First craze, the recent move to CCSS, and on the last few weeks that have been spent getting an introduction to DP, this book was especially relevant to where I am at currently in my professional development.  It was hard for me to pick out individual things to discuss, because there was a lot of great stuff in this book. I hope it sets the tone for the rest of the course reading materials.  I loved it.  Keep it on the syllabus for future course offerings.

There were several elements that seemed especially relevant to where we left things on our last night of DP, a short week ago.  One of those elements dealt with the role of accountable talk as it is being ‘mandated’ in Tennessee schools or at least heavily focused on in ELA and Math CCSS teacher trainings.  I thought some things in this reading seemed to point to how the move could have been supported as ‘research-based’.  For example, ‘Classroom research has shown that the educational potential value of collaborative activity is often squandered because students do not communicate effectively (pg. 146).’  Accountable talk instruction would seem to support the improvement of collaborative activities by teaching students how to communicate with one another.  I also tied the accountable talk portion of the CCSS trainings with the later reading on exploratory talk. 

Exploratory talk is that in which partners engage critically but constructively with each other’s ideas.  Relevant information is offered for joint consideration.  Proposals may be challenged and counter-challenged, but if so reasons are given and alternatives are offered.  Agreement is sought as a basis for joint progress.  Knowledge is made publicly accountable and reasoning is visible in the talk (pg. 153).

One thing from the reading was the idea the Talk Lessons.  If I had read that this came out of the TN CCSS training manual, I wouldn’t have been surprised.  It aligns perfectly with what TN teachers are being told to implement in their classrooms right now.  I am pretty sure that the ‘Ground Rules’ are posted throughout my school in almost every class in one manner or another and the same is true for the Talking Rules. 

We have agreed to…

-share ideas

-give reasons

-question ideas

-consider

-agree

-involve everybody

-everybody accepts responsibility

Our Talking Rules…

-We share our ideas and listen to each other.

-We talk one at a time.

-We respect each other’s opinions.

-We give reasons to explain our ideas.

-If we disagree we ask ‘why’?

-We try to agree in the end (pg. 161-162).

On our last night of DP, one of my classmates shared that she had just attended the CCSS training in her school in which they learned about CCSS.  Then, we discussed how interesting this idea was and several members of the group discussed whether or not they thought this was good teaching or practice.  When we discussed it, I had just attended the CCSS training myself that was provided by the state and then participated in a school level CCSS training in which we discussed the implementation of accountable talk.  I was on the fence.   I can see how the level of accountable talk that they were striving for would help students be better prepared for life outside the classroom and better participants in conversations in their jobs. ‘As children communicate with people around them, they are learning to perceive and understand the world from the perspective of being a member of a community (pg. 132).’ The more articulate one is the more likely that their ideas will be accepted and sought out.  At least, I think that is true for some arenas.  I also worry about the students who are in our classroom that aren’t striving to be college bound or work in ‘professional’ careers.  How are they going to be perceived in their jobs if they pull out this line of talk?

Example of Accountable Language Stems

·  “I agree with _____ because _____.”

·  “I like what _____ said because _____.”

·  “I agree with _____; but on the other hand, _____.”

Disagreement

·  “I disagree with _____ because _____.”

·  “I’m not sure I agree with what _____ said because _____.”

·  “I can see that _____; however, I disagree with (or can’t see) _____.”

Clarifications

·  “Could you please repeat that for me?”

·  Paraphrase what you heard and ask, “Could you explain a bit more, please?”

·  “I’m not sure I understood you when you said _____. Could you say more about that?”

·  “What’s your evidence?”

·  “How does that support our work/mission at _____?”

Confirmation

·  “I think _____.”

·  “I believe _____.”

Confusion

·  “I don’t understand _____.”

·  “I am confused about _____.”

Extension

·  “I was thinking about what _____ said, and I was wondering what if _____.”

·  “This makes me think _____.”

·  “I want to know more about _____.”

·  “Now I am wondering _____.”

·  “Can you tell me more about _____?”

Review

“I want to go back to what _____ said.”

(Retrieved August 21, 13, from http://curriculum.dpsk12.org/lang_literacy_cultural/literacy/elem_lit/curric_instruc_assess/interdisc_units/)

As a side note, it was interesting for me to read about Community of Practice, which the author described as being ‘applied to groups which are united by common purposes and who engage in joint activity (pg. 116).’  It was interesting for me, because it is work that I have looked at heavily in relation to my work with professional development study groups that aim to increase the professional development and collaboration between the mainstream classroom teachers and myself, the ESL teacher in my school.  I believe I looked at how it was presented by Wagner and a colleague, but I have to go back and check my notes. 

The biggest and best part that came out for me in the reading, based on where we left things a week ago, dealt with context.  It was something that continues to perplex me in terms of how to understand DP and its use in research.  I think context is very important to really understanding something and it is hard for me to accept or even understand the rope of context in DP studies. I was really glad that we were going to come back to this, at least in relation to DA.  Mercer described it by saying ‘Context is not something that exists independently of people.  People have to strive to create foundations of common, contextualizing knowledge (pg. 44).’  Mercer shared how there are many definitions to what context is and shared the resources that are drawn upon to establish context, such as:

-‘the physical surroundings;

-the past shared experience and relationship of the speakers;

-the speakers’ shared tasks or goals;

-the speakers’ experience of similar kinds of conversation (pg. 44).’

Early on, Mercer shared that “‘Context’ is created anew in every interaction between a speaker and listener or writer and reader.  From this perspective, we must take account of listeners and readers as well as speakers and writers who create meanings together (pg. 21).” From a DP standpoint, is this one of the reasons why the role of the researcher or rather the reflexivity of the researcher is so important?  Even if context was ‘simply’ defined by the physical surroundings in a DP study, the researcher’s background and schema set the stage for how it is perceived and therefore how it is represented to the research audience.  Is this correct?  Is that why context is held to the same regard in DP studies as it is in other qualitative studies?  The researcher has to define what is important, because really, at the end of it all, the study comes back to who the researcher is and what the researcher is bringing to analysis of the study?

Great Quotes from the Reading That I Wish to Hold Onto…

Language is a tool for carrying out joint intellectual activity, a distinctive human inheritance designed to serve the practical and social needs of individuals and communities and which each child has to learn to use effectively (pg.1).

We all think collectively, and teamwork of this kind is vital for many kinds of activity (pg. 2).

‘Two heads are better than one’ meaning that the mental resources of two or more people working together can achieve more than the sum of their individual contributions (pg. 3).

Two heads may be better sometimes, but we also say that ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’.  That is, we find that people frequently misunderstand each other, and that joint activity can generate confusion, stifle individual creativity and achieve only mediocrity (pg. 3).

Language is…flexible, innovative, and adaptable to the demands of changing circumstances.  It enables people to create, share, and consider new ideas and to reflect together on their actions (pg. 4).

Words mean what humans agree together to make them, new words can be created as required, and they can be combined to make an infinite variety of meanings.  Language enables us to share thoughts about new experiences and organize life together in ways in which no other species can (pg. 4). 

Words can carry meanings beyond those consciously intended by speakers or writers because listeners or readers bring their own perspectives to the language they encounter (pg. 5).

In order to become effective communicators, children have to learn a particular language and understand how it is used to ‘get things done’ in their home community (pg. 5).

Each living language is therefore a cultural creation which has emerged from the history of generations of a community of users.  Unlike young honey-bees, children will only learn how to use a native language by interacting with the people around them in the context of social events (pg. 7).

We use language to transform individual thought into collective thought and action (pg. 8).

Vygotsky’s 2 functions of language:

1.  Cultural Tool:  use it for sharing and jointly developing the knowledge which enables organized human social life to exist and continue

Psychological Tool:  use it for organizing our individual thoughts, for reasoning, planning and reviewing our actions (pg. 10)

Michael Halliday:  ‘When children learn language…they are learning the foundation of learning itself.’ (pg. 11)

It is that language provides us with a means for thinking together, for jointly creating knowledge and understanding (pg. 15).

Shared Knowledge formed part of the context-the contextual foundation- that they (colleagues in a workplace) created for their talk (pg. 19).

Some researchers define ‘context’ in terms of the physical environment in which language is used, but that only provides some potential resources for our context-making (pg. 19).

I feel that we have to accept that ‘context’ is a mental phenomenon and that it consists of whatever information listeners (or readers) use to make sense of what is said (or written). (pg. 20)

Conversations run on contextual tracks made of common knowledge (pg. 21).

Exophoric reference-employing words like ‘that’ and ‘there’ to refer to things which exist in the physical context of the talk.  Exophoric reference is a kind of linguistic ‘pointing’ (pg. 23).

By ‘conversational ground rules’ I mean the conventions which language users employ to carry on particular kinds of conversations.  Conversational ground rules are part of the context of any conversation.  They consist of the knowledge, which may not be made explicit by speakers, about how to do certain kinds of talking (pg. 28).

Cumulative talk is based on ground rules which encourage joint, additive contributions to the talk and relatively uncritical acceptance of what partners say (pg. 33).

We often only recognize ground rules exist when someone breaks them (pg. 39).

Attempts to build context from shared history can be done well, or badly; they may or may not succeed (pg. 47). –Side note, this reminded me of a scene from the movie Dangerous Minds. It was a perfect example of characters with a shared interested from a shared profession not succeeding in an exchange. When the characters are discussing the poet ‘Dylan’ and one of them is discussing Bob Dylan and the other is discussing Dylan Thomas, but both think they are discussing the same guy.  Neither of them could have been more clear in what they were saying, but their individual viewpoints were just that, individual. 

Collective remembering is a very common, everyday kind of joint thinking. Interacting with our friends, family and colleagues, we frequently use the resource of each other’s memories to clarify past events, check our personal evaluations of them, and recall how to perform skilled operations (pg. 49).

Teaching techniques for building the future from the past…

-recap: brief review of things that happened earlier in the previous joint experience of the class

-elicitations: usually in the form of a question; an attempt by a teacher to obtain from students information gained in past classroom activity

-repetitions: repeat student’s answer in an affirming, conclusive way, holding the answer up, so to speak, for all the class to see

-reformulations:  paraphrase the student response

-exhortations:  having students think or remember(pg. 53-55)

Children need to be enabled to become active users of the tool of language, and this means giving them opportunities for practice in less didactic kinds of conversations (pg. 56).

Everyday conversations involve:

-referring back to shared experiences

-eliciting information

-offering information

-justifying ideas and proposals

-evaluating other people’s contributions

-repeating and reformulating each other’s statements (pg. 56)

Techniques effective orators use:

-3 part list

-contrast with seemingly conflicting statements

-call and response

-metaphors and similes

-reported speech

Disputational talk is characterized by an unwillingness to take on the other person’s point of view and the consistent reassertion of one’s own (pg. 97).

Exploratory talk is that in which partners engage critically but constructively with each other’s ideas (pg. 98).

How Communities Enable Collective Thinking

-a history

-a collective identity

-reciprocal obligations

-a discourse (pg. 106)

Fluency in the discourse is likely to be one of the obvious signs of membership (pg. 107).

Language can be used by them to simulate social life, to create virtual contexts in which they can use dramatized activity to think together about the ways in which life is carried out in the communities in which they are cultural apprentices (pg. 144).