Laura Duell EDR Fall 2013

 The Audience/The Crowd:Behaviorism Behaviorism focuses on observable changes in behavior. Behaviorism is the result of a person’s response to stimuli. External stimuli can be manipulated to strengthen or weaken individual behavior. Behaviorism is a bottom up model, it depicts reading process as a series of discrete stages through which information passes. (Basel, phonic skills come first, decodable texts.) The audience/crowd are passive participants in the game. They watch from the stands only. They do not actually play the game but they are knowledgeable about the rules and how the game is played. The audience/crowd are like students in a classroom that are being transmissive learners. Students sit and listen to the teacher teach concepts and skills. The audience/crowd sits and watch the game. This is how they learn about the rules, positions, and how the game is played.

 The Batter: Cognitivism You cannot tell what is going on in the batter’s head or how they are inferring what kind of pitch the pitcher is going to throw. You cannot predict what the batter will do with the pitch thrown. Will they swing at the pitch or not? What is the thinking process going on in their head that helps them decide when and if to swing. This is the same thing that goes on in the head of a child learning to read. Schema theory explains how we store knowledge, how we learn, and how we remember what we have learned. Schema theory comes into play as the batter decides whether or not swing based on his past experience with baseball pitches. He knows which kinds of balls to swing at because he has presumably practiced and played the game many times before. Metacognition is thinking about the learning that our students obtain. In fact, I have just realized that our Learning Logs for this course are metacognition! The batter uses his metacognition skills to reflect on the learning that has occurred from all his experiences with balls that are pitched to him. He uses this reflective knowledge to once again decide if he should swing or not.

 Manager/Coach: Constructivism The manager and coach construct the team, choosing who will play, what the batting order is. In doing this, the manager or coach is actively constructing the team that makes the most sense the same way we actively construct knowledge through “doing” to make meaning. Constructivism is the active construction of meaning. Learning occurs when individuals integrate new knowledge with existing knowledge.

 Pitcher: Psycholinguistics The pitcher must make predictions/inferences about what type of pitch the batter might swing at while making sense of the signals his is visually taking in from the catcher and coaches. Reading is natural and all about meaning making. Psycholinguistics is how our brain works to help us interpret what we are reading, even when key pieces of information are missing from language. The pitcher makes meaning of the signals he receives from team mates and coaches in order to inform his decision about what pitch to send to the batter.

 Catcher: Reader Response The catcher reads all the signals give to them by the pitcher and coaches. They then have to interpret what they mean. The meaning is in the transaction between the catcher and pitcher. Meaning not in the text and not in the reader but in the transaction between the two-aesthetic/efferent stances. Learning results from a process known as inferencing/predicting. Anytime a reader figures out something that is not explicitly stated, the reading is inferencing. The catcher does not verbally communicate with the pitcher or coaches, yet they are able to infer what is being asked of them through non-verbal communication.

 Outfielders: Critical Literacy Critical literacy is an explicit awareness that the language of texts and the reader’s responses to it are not neutral. It encourages multiple reading of the same text from different perspectives. A play can be seen from different positions as an outfielder. A player may have a different perspective of a play based on the position he is playing and thus being understood differently by each player.

 Infielders: Sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics involves literary practices in which repeated or patterned literacy events or occurrences within a particular social setting or community. Players are familiar with the game and their positions from repeatedly playing and practicing them. Basic principles of sociolinguistics are that each social group has its set of guidelines for what is required to be a member in good standing, social groups are always changing; change is “negotiate” or hammered out, group identification provides orienting framework for the individual’s beliefs and behaviors. Baseball players or anyone associated with the game are a social group. Players have their own language, particularly the pitchers and catchers that are constantly communication through agreed upon signals. A team’s roaster is often changing, allowing new “members:” onto the team and subsequently, allowing new members into their society and into a particular teams set of rituals.