Reading notes on Mercer, chapters 5-7

In Chapter 6 of Words and Minds, Neil Mercer asks, "Have you ever felt, during a conversation with a child, that a shift in their understanding has taken place as a result of gaining some new information?" 

Well, yes, yes I have. 

It is soooo tempting to share out-of-the-mouths-of-babes stories to illustrate language development in children rather than try to synthesize my reactions to the diversity of topics in the last half of Mercer's book. These chapters discuss communities of practice, virtual communities, computer mediated communication, language development, and kids -- all areas of personal and professional interest to me.

Suffice it to say, I could fill an entire blog post with a response to Mercer's question, but I'll save those anecdotes for Facebook.  Instead, I will share some of my reactions to a few of the numerous implications for teachers, researchers, and teacher-researchers contained within chapters 5-7. [Note: See below for a cute photo and gratuitous kid-and-computer-mediated-communication anecdote all rolled into one.]

Still pondering context...

On p. 108, Mercer writes that "'explicitness' is a relative concept, a matter of context" and "the relevant consideration is whether matters are made sufficiently explicit by the participants to each other." This is exactly what we discussed in class last week, with the example of a teacher who may not know her students and what is or is not relevant to them.  If the teacher doesn't effectively contextualize the instructional content, she will be able to tell by students' facial expressions, body language, visual cues of engagement and disengagement, and (we hope) their questions.  

But, again, one would HOPE that in instances of teaching and learning, contextualizing is a joint venture between all participants (teacher and students). What about the researcher who is located on the other end of the participant-observer spectrum? I am beginning to come around to the idea that the researcher's compulsion to interview participants may be missing the mark insofar as discourse analysis (DA) is concerned, but the idea of simply acquiring audio in some disengaged fashion -- leaving the recorder on and walking away -- that's still hard for me to understand.

This issue of context came up again late last week, when I ran into a friend and school administrator at a local eatery.  She was grabbing breakfast to go and said she was off to a collaborative team meeting at a local high school, the same high school where I use to teach and still know several faculty, including the head principal.  She said (with the ulterior motive that I would apply for a current job opening there), "You should come to one of these meetings.  We talk about everything."  It was only after she rushed off that I realized, job opportunity aside, she had just offered me entree into an authentic data collection site, one where securing permission and developing rapport with participants would be relatively easy.

So, I immediately texted her with my own ulterior motive: to secure a back-up data collection site, just in case my first choice does not yield enough interesting data. (See related post on DA data collection plans.) I simply asked her via text, "Tell me about the kind of content discussed in a collaborative team meeting."

Here is her exact reply: "We do s-teams for a variety of reasons (pregnant sts, truant sts, students who may need to be tested for ld or ed); we also discuss students on the f-list and interventions. Every once in a while we actually discuss instructional issues: strategies, cross-curricular issues, etc." 

While allowing for the fact that text messaging is terrible medium for "contextualized joint activity" and "track laying," I think this is a great example of "alien jargon," what Mercer might call "teacherspeak." I am a teacher, and a former teacher within the potential research site being discussed, and I think it's safe to say that is the only reason I "get" 90 percent of her reply as well as her ironic tone at the end. But even I'm not entirely sure what "the f-list" is because no such term was ever used or discussed during my 6-year tenure at the school; I can only assume it's a list of failing students, which would make sense to most reasonable observers, I guess.

I am in the process of acquiring the principal's approval and the informed consent of team members to audio tape their collaborative meetings, but I feel like a relative outsider.  I haven't taught at the school in question since 2005; that's six years out of the loop, out of the "long conversation." I'm nervous about the "hidden contexts" and the inevitable jargon that will likely swirl through 30 to 45 minutes of rushed professional discourse. Mercer says this is a "profound problem" for analysts (p. 175).

Understanding and using discourses as "rhetorical tools"

I enjoyed the story about Sokal who used discourse as a "rhetorical tool" to ignite a debate between two academic fields, one of which he clearly did not respect.  It made me think of when others take up specialized discourses for even less-than-savory aims: to hoodwink, to propagandize, to denigrate a community or a people. There are lots of hoaxes on the Internet to this end, and, in recent years, a bit of hysteria about needing to teach "information literacy" to Internet users, especially children. I would argue information literacy is simply literacy and can be achieved by facilitating numerous and meaningful reading and writing experiences for learners of all ages. 

The Sokal story also made me think about literary genres, where the author's ability to "take in" readers and listeners by "saying something in the right way" (p. 112) is not the object of suspicion but a measure of sincerity and truthfulness. Speaking convincingly in various discourses is an enviable talent in literary circles and the source of much successful poetry, fiction, satirical writing, and social commentary. 

According to Mercer, "'recreational' genres" nurture "interthinking" by helping us make sense of and explain our own lives. There are just so many implications here for my field (literacy and reading education). For example, Mercer writes, "Genres are templates for interthinking, which, like all social conventions both facilitate and constrain what we do" (p. 170). The affordances and constraints of convention are exactly why we must encourage young people to pursue a varied and balanced reading diet. There is also compelling argument here for reading educators who seek "literature-based" or "balanced literacy" programs as opposed to the traditional basal approach.

I would add that reading, listening to, and watching a variety of genres should be accompanied with equal doses of writing and other forms of content production, so that learners can practice wielding the complexities of language for their own purposes and gain insight into how authors and other "powerful voices" innovate with and manipulate language. To that end, scholastic journalism, creative writing, and mentor texts are important outlets for learners to safely "try on" genres. I always believed this as a high school language arts teacher. But I realize now that my understanding of "genre" was perhaps too limited. I now see "genre" in the broader linguistic sense. The implications are the same for classroom teaching: expand writing instruction to include a variety of authentic subjects, modes, audiences, and purposes.

Revisioning the role of teacher as "discourse guide"

I am really interested in Mercer's "Talk Lessons" research, which he says is ongoing in Mexico and the UK. I wonder if similar work is being done anywhere in U.S. schools? A year ago in REED 603, Advanced Studies and Theoretical Models of Reading, we discussed the role of discussion as a constructivist tool for developing thought and aiding in reading comprehension, and our professor told us that this is under-researched area in literacy studies. 

I am inspired by this idea of teacher as "discourse guide" who develops each learner's individual capacity for "interthinking." But I wonder how many teachers are themselves versed in and comfortable with ideas of "collective thinking" and "ways of using language"? Many teachers would be offended by ideas in Words and Minds, e.g. memorization of facts as a waste of "cognitive storage space" and the suggestion that the most evolved of our species are those who "use joint communicative effort to recall" (pp. 168-169). I can just hear the old guard protesting, "Sounds like cheating to me!" Several of my former colleagues sneered at group work, and I distinctly remember one who pointedly referred to it as "guided ignorance."

My new dream dissertation: "Developing Teacher Capacity for Guiding and Facilitating Exploratory Talk in the Secondary Classroom."  Wouldn't that be fun?! Something like "Talk Lessons" with self and own students OR "Talk Lessons" with a teacher-participant (or co-hort of teacher-participants -- now I'm dreaming big).  This falls in line with the framework for teacher language developed by Peter H. Johnston in Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning. This handbook provides ways for literacy teachers to become more intentional in their teacher talk with the prerequisite assumption that all children deserve “to construct themselves as responsibly literate democratic citizens” (p. 80),

Taking the research community to task?

Mercer says there is very little interest in evaluating outcomes of people's communicative efforts. How can this be true?  I thought that the whole point of DA was to identify outcomes and effects of language in use. In class last week, we talked about the commitment within certain DA camps to examine power differentials and "long conversations" about race and gender. But it seems Mercer is taking the DA research community to task for not doing enough. Or, is this just posturing and puffery so that he may claim his own little niche in the research market? 

I want to give Mercer the benefit of the doubt, especially when he writes about transforming "the quality of education and working life" through "careful analysis" and "applied research" (p. 175). It sounds like the same social justice agenda I mentioned in my last week's reflection. Is Mercer a critical discourse analyst? Is he pressing for more of this vein of analysis? 

"Look, Mommy, Scooter is keeping your ABC's warm!"

Reading notes on Mercer, chapters 5-7