Language is enacted daily to generate or destroy/deny experiences which create meaning. Two powerful teaching tools of language are narrative and inscription (the use of paper, signs, prints and diagrams). They are used to judge a learners comprehension on a topic based on whether or not they present and represent the topic from a school-based perspective -- they ‘talk the talk’ i.e. model principles learned from a text (with graphs and ‘appropriate’ language) when explaining concepts, even if the models are counterintuitive to their personal experiences. Students’ explanations of acquired knowledge using personal experiences are diminished and dismissed, both consciously and unconsciously by those evaluating them.
b) Choose a quote from the reading that elucidates the concept further
“These practices — so material and mundane, so practical, so modest, so pervasive, so close to the hands and the eyes that they escape our attention are, from an historical perspective, radical modifications of the fundamental way in which people strive with one another for power… Shifts in technologies for simplifying, abstracting, deflating the world [into a finite number of relevant aspects (charts, diagrams, formulas, statistics, tables, models which are their representations) [come to be taken as more relevant than the experience itself] so that it can be brought together in new places, and assembled in increasingly complex and abstract ways…ultimately allowing the few to dominate the many” pg. 270. “We are ourselves failing to interrogate the inscriptions we trade in… In as much as we are scarcely able to apprehend the bare existence of what is obscured or obviated by our inscriptions, we seldom name or notice our own blindness” pg.272.
c) Suggest an example to illustrate the concept
The example given by the article pgs. 273-280 (Michaels & Sohmer.pdf) explains the concept well. Four fourth graders are evaluated on the concept of reasoning about seasonal change and its causes. All the students explanations were wrong; yet, one of the four students ‘appeared’ more scientific in his explanation by using appropriate speech as well as constructing and employing a physical model using his hands as the earth and sun, that those evaluating him believed he had acquired some knowledge. The other three students presented as though they had not understood the concept at all, their language was not fluid, and their examples were experiential as opposed to text based. It was only in a later revaluation of the students’ interviews that researcher’s realized that in fact the other three students probably understood the topic better then the student who regurgitated the text.
d) Situate the concept in your own work or life
I would say I could be equated to the student who appeared to be the more scientific especially in my pre-university schooling. I had a knack for learning the concept as it was taught to me and then parroting it back on tests or in the classroom without ever questioning what was I really learning (if anything) and how did it fit with my personal experiences. I think this has stunted my learning in some ways because it is more difficult for me to articulate concepts in my own words, I’m very good at stringing other people’s words together to illustrate my thoughts and opinions but appear inarticulate when I try and explain it in my own words. Further reproducing concepts without questioning them has left gaps in my own understanding of how to teach. The article points this out on page 275 “the teacher was neither able to teach the theory to the children in her own words nor to register (much less identify and correct) the presence of specific inadequacies and errors in the text.” I may know a concept I learned by rote but for me explain it to others requires me going back to the beginning and relearning it.
