1. Developing Learning Communities
Language and Learning Style
Chapter 8

2. Characteristics of a Learning Community
It is organized for activity.
Everyone in the school participates in this activity-oriented environment.
There is a sense that everyone belongs to the community: students, teachers, parents, administrators, support staff, volunteers, and other members of the broader community outside of the school.

3. Rationale for Learning-Community Classrooms
Need to prepare students to be citizens of a democracy. . .
Through learning to negotiate differences in the context of a common curriculum
Through learning citizenship by practicing democracy

4. Pedagogies: Old and New
Old methods with new names:
Dialogue (Plato)
Discovery learning (Abelard)
Critical pedagogy, inquiry learning, feminist pedagogy, and collaborative learning (Comenius)
What is new:
That these should exist at the same time and be used by both children and adults

5. Roles: Old and New
Traditional roles of students and adults are expanded:
Teacher as “teller” expanded to teacher as guide, coach, cheerleader
Other adults assume teaching and learning roles
Students may be “teachers” as well as learners

6. Place of Content Knowledge: Old and New
Disciplinary knowledge serves a dual role:
Sometimes it is learned as an end in itself
Sometimes it serves as a means to another end (e.g., problem solving or discovering a new way to see and understand the world)

7. Assessment: Old and New
There is still a use for paper-and-pencil testing, standardized or teacher-written.
General use for such tests is diagnostic.
Alternative forms of assessment also play a part:
Peer evaluation
Portfolios
Group tests
Self-evaluation

8. Perspectives on Language Acquisition
Language is what makes us human, and is the primary means for socializing us into our families and social groups; and through them, for acquiring a cultural identity.

9. The Family Is the First Institution
Introduces us to language
Language objectifies, interprets, and justifies reality for the child, thus structuring the child’s environment.
Gives labels to roles, such as Mommy, teacher, and priest, extending roles into the wider community
Language brings the meanings and values of the wider community onto the small state of the immediate family.

10. Institutional Aspects of Language in the Family
Language has several characteristics in common with other social institutions.
It is external.
It is objective.
It has the power of moral authority.
It is historical.

11. Perspectives on Language Variation
All language sounds have symbolic meaning.
Within any language, however, the meaning of elements may differ widely:
Vocabulary
Pronunciation
Syntax (grammatical structure)
Semantics (the meaning of words)

12. Verbal Communication
Accents: differ from standard language only in pronunciation
Dialects: differ from standard language in pronunciation, word usage, and syntax
Black English (Ebonics)
Rural, or mountain, English
Standard English

13. Black English (Ebonics, African American Language [AAL])
Spoken primarily (though not exclusively) by urban African Americans
Derived in part from the languages of West Africa
The ability to code switch (move back and forth from Ebonics to standard English) is often a matter of social class.

14. Rural (or Mountain) English
Spoken primarily in Appalachia
Derived from the language of early English settlers in the area
May be the “purest” English spoken in the United States
Has been preserved, in part, because of isolation of mountain people

15. Standard English
Is also a dialect of English, although it is the dialect usually deemed most “correct”
Is the language of education, commerce, and the arts
May vary from community to community, and from country to country

16. Bidialectalism: the ability to speak two (or more) dialects and to switch easily between or among them
Sign Language: a form of nonverbal language of signs spoken by the deaf
Used instead of a spoken language
American Sign Language (ASL) is considered an “official” language

17. Nonverbal Communication
Used by both hearing and hearing-impaired individuals
Accounts for 50 to 90 percent of the messages we send and receive
It has several functions:
Conveys messages
Can augment verbal communication
Can contradict verbal communication
Can replace verbal communication

18. Three aspects of nonverbal communication:
Proxemics: sometimes called “social space”; refers to the “normal” distance considered appropriate between two people speaking
Kinesics: body language (e.g., gestures, facial expressions, eye contact)
Paralanguage: vocalizations that are not words (e.g., sighs, laughter, crying)

19. Culture, Language, and Learning Style
These three are inextricably intertwined.
Language shapes and is shaped by culture.
Culture shapes and is shaped by language.
Learning style originates and accounts for variations in patterns of learning, and is shaped by both language and culture.

20. Components of Learning Style
Field Dependence: individual perceives globally or holistically; orientation is social; is good at observation
Field Independence: individual perceives discrete parts; is good at abstract thought; tends to be individualistic; prefers working alone

21. Additional Components of Learning Style
Preferred sensory mode for learning (e.g., sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, movement)
Response to immediate environment
Emotionality
Social preferences
Cognitive-psychological orientation

22. Multiple Intelligences
The idea, based on brain research and proposed by Howard Gardner, that human beings not only have preferred learning styles, but also preferred ways of expressing intellectual ability, and thus, of thinking

23. Seven kinds of intelligence:
Visual/Spatial
Verbal/Linguistic
Logical/Mathematical
Bodily/Kinesthetic
Musical/Rhythmic
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal

24. Origins of Learning Style
Still a matter of conjecture
Appear to be a combination of:
Biological factors
Psychological factors
Sociocultural factors

25. Relation of Language to Culture
Language determines vocabulary, which sets the “right” meaning of words and of cultural ideas.
Language plays a critical role in the maintenance of subgroups within a larger culture.
Language reflects the thought processes of a culture.

26. Relation of Learning Style to Culture
Learning style is developed in the context of what we attend to (perception) and how we attend to it—both culturally shaped adaptations to the physical and social environment.
Thus, particular learning styles are often associated with particular cultural groups.

27. The Significance of Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles
The importance of these qualities for teachers lies in their ability to identify preferred modes of learning and to adapt instruction so that all students get to practice learning in multiple ways.
No one recommends that students learn only in their preferred mode or that teachers teach in more than one mode.

28. Perspectives on Bilingual Education and Second Language Acquisition
With increasing immigration to the US in recent decades, schools are being faced with challenges of large numbers of children for whom English is not their first language.
There are more than 9,000,000 LEP students enrolled in schools today (US Census 2000); one out of every six children speak a language other than English at home.
The terminology has changed. Children whose first language is not English are most often called English Language Learners or ELLs.

29. Ethical Issues
Students who speak a dialect of English, or whose first language is not English, are likely to be stigmatized.
Debates about language in the schools are likely to be as much about issues of cultural domination as they are about language itself.
The assessment of students with limited English proficiency must be done with care.
Without diverse languages, diverse cultures may also disappear.
cont.

30. The increasing prevalence of English in worldwide modes of communication—especially television and the Internet—may mean that many languages are disappearing.
Some balance needs to be achieved between protecting “small” languages and encouraging international exchange.
The negative American attitude toward learning more than one language may get in the way of our own international understanding.

31. Something to Think About
“When we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the ‘human essence,’ the distinctive qualities of mind that are, so far as we know, unique to man and that are inseparable from any critical phase of human existence, personal or social.” —Noam Chomsky