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Chantel JayLauren Mark’s Updates
Situated Learning
James Paul Gee's research on situated learning reminded me of Richard Nisbett's intercultural research in his book, The Geography of Thought, http://www.eigenauer.com/GeographyOfThought.pdf, especially in the chapter, "The Social Origins of Mind."
Nisbett describes how Asian parents foster an awareness in their chilren of how their actions will influence others, emphasizing relationships instead of straightforwardly supplying information about objects and asking conceptual questions about them, like American parents.
For example, he mentions how a Japanese mom might say something like, "The farmer feels bad when you don't eat everything your mom cooks for you," or "the wall said 'ouch.'" Nisbett then gives statistics on how Koreans proved themselves to more accurately read how employers felt about their employees than Americans could, who tended to just take ratings at face value.
This perceptiveness translates into assumptions about communication in the classroom. Anyone who's had Asian students in their classrooms (straight from Asian countries - moreso than those who grew up overseas like myself), will probably notice how much more reluctant they are to just into classroom participation. Westerners tend to see clear communication as being the speaker's responsibility, whereas Asians tend to place the responsibility on the speaker. As you can imagine, asking questions to clarify then becomes a sign of incompetency, or weakness.
I've found, in my experiences teaching here, that students of all ages, from middle school to university, are much more apt to ask their teacher questions during informal worktime moments, when the attention of the entire class isn't directed at them. We need to take these considerations in hand when we're thinking about how to structure our lessons, and when we're thinking about which model of education to adopt.
This is very interesting to me, but for reasons that are varied from yours. We live in southern Illinois and we live in a primarily white area, and by area I mean about an hour in any direction. As a teacher, I do not pretend to have all the answers but I do desire to become more knowledgeable. Having an understanding about various cultures would be something that could help in my classes. In one of my classes we talk about education. I think this information would be interesting to discuss with my students, to understand how learning does not look the same in all countries. Thanks for the information!
Mark, I feel exactly the same way about creating learning environments that give students more options to engage with learning and exploration. I think it comes back to the infamous Zone of Proximal Development, where we meet students where they are, and from there, help nudge them toward other avenues.
The very last day of class in a high school American Culture Class that I taught this summer inadvertently led to some interesting discoveries. There were usually roughly 50 students in the class, and b/c it was an elective, there were mixed levels of students there, from the A (highest track - reared to test into Taiwan's national universities) students, to F (vocational track) students. Perhaps partly because they were used to excelling in school, and probably in part, because I was more familiar with some of the A and B level students, having them in smaller classes of 25 outside (whereas the E level students still had to have regular English class in groups of 50), during a normal American Culture Club class, it was largely the A and B level students who participated, or seemed to participate, in my eyes.
During that final class, which was used as an informal review session for their exams, the classroom was filled with quiet murmurs of friends studying together as I walked between the rows to see if anyone needed help. Suddenly, students seated near the back of the classroom who I thought didn't have much interest in English at all began asking me detailed questions about the nuances of how passive voice could be used, or whether the odd Spanish phrase that they had memorized (of course, it was te amo) was correct. Maybe it was partly the urgency of impending exams that brought this out of them, but I think that the informal structure of being able to engage with the teacher and just 1 or 2 peers, instead of having the eyes of the entire class on them, allowed students not only to have the courage to ask for help, but also the desire to dialogue with me in English instead of averting their gaze shyly with a quick nothing, nothing response.
This pattern also happened in multiple 7th grade classes during that final review day. It was as if an informal, yet respectful environment somehow transformed the teacher-student dynamic more into that of peers, instead of the typical power-holder/subjected one.
I think that 1 step toward creating a successful third space, within the inevitable confines and continuous test-markers of a curriculum is not only to let students work in smaller groups, but to tailor the tasks dealing with class material in a way that directly applies to their daily lives, and then offer incentives for good performance.
It's more challenging to do this with younger, middle school aged students than it is with high school students, especially when here, the middle school classes are a chaotic group of mixed levels and their main interest with English is poking fun at each other and their teachers, but I think this is a really interesting avenue to explore. How do you see digital technologies creating this space? To be honest, in local schools like the one I just mentioned, where technology is not available for students, I haven't given it much thought. Ironically, in the schools where technology is available here, those places are American schools, and the students are very westernized already :)
Lauren, I'm glad that you connected the notion of situated learning with the culturally situated learning (and teaching) experiences of Korean, Japanese, and American students and parents. Your examples help us to flesh out a concept that I've often felt is underdeveloped with practical examples. As an American who was born and partially raised in an East Asian country (Japan), I can relate to how a cultural environment strongly influences (to the point of being automatic or habitual) how we view learning and its success or failure. That said, as a teacher having worked for a number of years with strongly multicultural young adult and adult students, I've often been amazed by the eager willingness and capacity for my students to develop their own strongly held interests, abilities, and critical thought to cultivate a more open-ended, flexible, and at times challenging dialogue with the cultures in which they were raised. As teachers we have the obligation (I feel) to create learning environments that afford (and not force) this kind of growth in our students. It's how that can be achieved - in multicultural as well as monocultural learning environments, both traditional and informal - that for me is the exciting challenge.
Learning is certainly differently situated for each of our students, beginning long before they ever step foot into our classroom. The learning environment we help to create can either acknowledge and actively cultivate meaningful learning in line with our students' different 'situations', or it can alienate them by closing off a student's culture from the classroom, and along with that, censoring all that makes that student an interesting, unique learner with untapped potential.
I want to join you in your search for finding a model of education that we can adopt to account for these issues. Using Homi Bhaba's phrase, how can we create a 'third space' for our students? I feel digital technologies have a lot of potential in starting to create this space . . .
Yours,
Mark