Bekah+for+Sept+18th

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• "Sociocultural-historical theory presents a culturally focused analysis of participation in everyday life, [...]. In this view, literacy is a tool for interpreting what people from different communities do, not simply what they do not do when compared to a dominant group." (101). =====

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• "This suggests that literacy knowledge is constructed through tools teachers and students use in everyday life, in and out of school ( such as traditional texts, multimodal textual practices such as instant messaging or blogging, that is, online web diaries, and computers. Teachers can use this framework to better understand how literacy learning happens in their classrooms and beyond and how to use their students' 'linguistic and cultural-historical repertoires' (Gutierrez and Rogoff, 2003: 22) as curricular resources. [...] Furthermore, [...] by conceiving of literacy as a social practice that looks at what people do with literacy in their everyday lives by actively using those practices in the classroom" (102-103). =====

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• "In a community of learners, both mature members of the community and less mature members are conceived as active; no role has all the responsibility for knowing or directing, and no role is by definition passive" (213). =====

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• "Clearly, both kids of learning [adult-run/child-run vs community-run learning] have a place in preparing children for the adult world; judging the worth of the two requires value judgments regarding what is important to learn" (225). =====

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• Definition of Deficient Model Thinking -- "in which cultural ways that differ from the practices of dominant groups are judges to be less adequate without examining them from the perspective of the community's participants" (19). =====

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• "Work on cultural learning styles, however, is sometimes used in ways that are overly static and categorical -- in schools, in cross-cultural comparisons, and in some of the cultural styles work that tried to avoid or that challenges the deficit model. Treating cultural differences as traits, in our view, makes it harder to understand the relation of individual learning and the practice of cultural communities, and this in turn sometimes hinders effective assistance to student learning" (19). =====

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• *note* I haven't been able to get the book yet, but will do so by class. I will also post the quotes from Shannon as soon I get them. I just wanted to get this up as soon as possible. =====

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Discussion: The theories and success with traditional models of learning versus socio-cultural models of learning is presented in these readings. Because traditional models of adult-run learning creates a disconnect between the application of academic learning to real life, socio-cultural historical theories offer a cultural-based, community-based understanding of how learning can simultaneously exist in a classroom and be reinforced in real life (or vice-versa). Tension seems to develop between the teacher's ability to juggle this type of learning and traditional models of learning. One issue that seems to undermine the process of active, community learning is the ability for educators to disregard their own upbringing of the adult-run model in favor or reaching out to the community based learning. Issues also arise when educators mispractice socio-cultural/community learning by generalizing (according to race, ethnicity, etc) and by not truly understanding what type of communities their students come from. =====

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• According to Rogoff, "both kinds of learning [adult-run/child-run versus a community of learners] have a place in preparing children for the adult world" (225). How do we make the judgment call on which type of learning should take place? Does it differ from elementary to secondary? =====

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• Rogoff also writes, "their teachers often have so much 'material' to cover and a need to prepare children for tests involving only superficial knowledge, so their best intentions fall prey to the press of the need to fill the children up with knowledge [adult-run model]" (211). Will the community of learners approach fit into the academic year time crunch? What is the teacher's responsibility -- to meet the needs of state standards (tests), or to engage in real learning through the community of learners approach (that may not take the form of learning that will be evaluated in standardized testing)? How practical is this approach? =====

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• According to Larson and Marsh, learning takes place through socio-cultural contexts. How can we as educators bring this into our classrooms and do we need to make the distinction between real life and the academic setting? ie. Bringing the idea of texting and blogging into our literacy practices, but denying them of the use of their cell phones or not allowing them to use the internet other than for the specific task at hand. In other words, does classroom management undermine the sense of socio-cultural community that we try to achieve in our classrooms? =====

By: Rebekah Moraites