Wed+3-21

Inquiry Guides: Hannah Smith, Heather Coleman, and Amy Hollander ||
 * What does theory to practice look like in the classrooms?

Before Class:
Please, read this article: http://louisville.edu/journal/workplace/issue5p2/singerpezone.html

Questions to think about (before class): 1. What is theory to practice? 2. How will an understanding of theory to practice aid us in a bilingual environment?

During class: ==== 1.1 More than a century ago, Emile Durkheim rejected the idea that education could be the force to transform society and resolve social ills. Instead, Durkheim concluded that education “can be reformed only if society itself is reformed.” He argued that education “is only the image and reflection of society. It imitates and reproduces the latter…it does not create it” (Durkheim, 1897/1951: 372-373). ====

==== 1.10 For Freire, education is a process of continuous group discussion (dialogue) that enables people to acquire collective knowledge they can use to change society. The role of the teacher includes asking questions that help students identify problems facing their community (problem posing), working with students to discover ideas or create symbols (representations) that explain their life experiences (codification), and encouraging analysis of prior experiences and of society as the basis for new academic understanding and social action (conscientization) (Shor, 1987). ====

==== 1.18 The main ideas about education and society at the heart of the philosophies of Dewey, Freire, Greene, Horton, and Banks are that society is always changing and knowledge is not neutral—it either supports the status quo or a potential new direction for society; people learn primarily from what they experience; active citizens in a democratic society need to be critical and imaginative thinkers; and students learn to be active citizens by being active citizens. Assuming that we agree with these ideas, we are still left with these questions: How do we translate educational theory into practice? What do these ideas look like in the classroom? ====

Stephanie Baker:

==== Moll, Amanti, Neff, and Gonzalez (1992) described funds of knowledge as the valuable knowledge that all people have that allows them to go about and live their daily lives. The concept stresses the ideas that students and their families are competent people with their own possession of language and cultural knowledge which can be used to construct more knowledge in the classroom. Teachers can draw upon the schema possessed by marginalized families as a valuable resource for instruction in the classroom. In their study the ethnographic methods used by classroom teachers changed the way that they saw marginalized families, and the teachers were able to complement their classroom pedagogies with the knowledges they observed in their families’ homes. Although, students’ linguistic funds of knowledge was not the only focus in these ethnographic studies, the linguistic funds of knowledge has been forefonted in other studies, and this research heavily informs my argument concerning the intersection of student knowledge, their language, and the positioning of students and their language by educational discourses. ====

==== Connecting to the importance of the family in maintaining and extending biliteracy, Peterson and Heywood (2007) also found in their interviews of immigrant parents, teachers, and principals that the support of families’ first language led to additive practices of English versus subtractive. Surprisingly, some teachers and principals found parents with limited or no English speaking abilities supporting the students L1 and L2 at home with books, newspapers, and homework help. The researchers recommended the following for schools and teachers regarding their policies concerning first language support for students and families. One is to make dual-language books available and/or invite parents into classrooms to create the books. Two is for school officials to learn the languages of students in the school. Finally, parents should be encouraged to read and write to their children in their first language. The previous studies have bearing on the bi/multiliterate practices that schools and teachers should follow, and in the next section I focus on what has been found in classroom pedagogies that leads to bi/multiliterate students. ====