Transcript Participation in community activity: How students come to

Understanding cultures and
cultural understandings:
Participation in community
activity
Dr. Martin Andrew
Swinburne University MELBOURNE
Overview
Learning in Community Placement
An Analogy: Communities of Practice
Extension: Imagined Communities
Applying the Metaphor of “Investment”
The Second Metaphor: (Second) Language Socialisation
Methodology
Findings: How do students come to know what they
know?
Conclusions: The structures of cultural and selfknowledge
Introduction:
Learning in Community Placement
Focus: Kinds of learning; ways to ‘knowing’ (how)
Community placements: context-rich participative opportunities to
acquire cultural learning through a range of ethnographic,
cognitive and situated actions
• safe and realistic ‘situated’ environment
• passionate and engaged ‘acting’ people
• properties of ‘cognitive’ communities of practice
• cultural capital for advanced ‘invested’ EAL learners
Bourdieu’s linguistic marketplace – ‘treasure’
Learning in Community Placement
Community Placement
• Curriculum and assessment potential
• Organised opportunity for real, transcultural experience
• Defined minimum time commitment
• Chance for participants to attend the regular or particular
operations & premises of an established CoP
• Pre-arranged supervisor/ guide/ key member
• Apprenticeship to culture, practice, discourse and members
Learning in Community Placement
Grounding
Participative: the social turn (Block 2003)
Cognitive: transcultural ‘cognitive’ apprenticeship (Brown, Collins
& Duguid 1989)
Social: second language socialisation perspective/ paradigm: not just
what, but “how L2 pragmatic ability is acquired” (Kasper 2001,
519)
Practical: focus on practices helps describe the negotiation of sociocultural knowledge of the additional language learner (Zuengler
& Cole 2005)
Agential: situates multiple subjectivities (Norton 2008) & potentially
confers agency (Manosuthikit 2008, 5)
Participants
Scope: 70 students, six intakes, three years
Study status: refugees (3) migrants (39), international students (19)
and study abroad students (9)
Ethnic relation: Chinese (37), “Taiwanese” (4), “Hong Kongese”
(3), Swedish (6), Korean (5), German (4), Japanese (2), and one
each of Romanian, Iranian, Ethiopian, Somalian, Thai,
Malaysian, Indian, French Polynesian and Samoan.
Sex: 42 females and 28 males
Age range: 19 to 55, with a mean of 25.
Analogy: Communities of Practice
Analogy: Entering into & joining a community via a
placement is analogous to becoming apprentice and
member in a CoP (Lave & Wenger 1991)
Reflectivity: Reflective journals capture connections
between participation and learning
Elements of communities: mutual interdependence, sense
of belonging, connectedness, spirit, trust, interactivity,
common expectations, shared values and goals and
overlapping life histories (Rovai 2002, 4)
Wenger 1998: mutual engagement, joint enterprise and shared
repertoire
How do we Understand
‘Communities of Practice’?
Placement participants: from spectators or “apprentices”
with LPP to possession of engaged, invested interest
involving “the whole person acting in the world” (Lave
& Wenger 1991, 49)
Cognitive apprenticeship: students “acquire, develop and
use cognitive tools in authentic domain activity”
(Brown et al. 1989, 39)
Agentiality: involves ability “to assign relevance and
significance to things and events” (Manosuthikit 2008,
p. 5)
LPP: investment in situated learning of “Discourses” (Gee
1991)
How do we Understand
‘Communities of Practice’?
Discourses (Gee 1991)
“ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking,
believing, speaking, and often reading and
writing, that are accepted as instantiations of
particular identities … by specific groups …
They are ‘ways of being’ in the world; they are
‘forms of life’; they are socially situated
identities” (161).
Extending the Analogy:
Imagined Communities
Analogy: parallel between nationhood (Anderson 1983)
and community membership where we create “new
images of the world and ourselves” (Wenger 1998, 176)
Desire: We feel a sense of community with people not yet
met and connect through the power of the imagination
(Kanno & Norton 2003, 241)
‘Imagined community’: learners’ investment in their learning
as it impacts on future goals, ambitions, dream
communities & desires for belonging and recognition
Applying the Metaphor: “Investment”
The issue of motivation: Investing in participation, new discourses
and identities
The framework: Investment (Norton 2000, ex Bourdieu 1977, 1986,
1991)
Extending metaphors: Brokerage (Pittaway 2004); educational,
cultural & social capital; tastes
Embodied cultural capital: “external wealth converted into an integral
part of the person, into a habitus” (Bourdieu 1986, 244-245)
Investment: In Theory
Learners invest in and engage with real & imagined discourse
communities and discourse identities
Learners’ engagement depends on their investments in cultural and
linguistic learning (McKay & Wong 1996; Norton 2000, 2001;
Pittaway 2004)
Socialisation: “As learners become more adept at community
practices, they increase their responsibility in the community and
become more active participants” (Kanno & Norton 2003, 242).
The Second Metaphor: (Second)
Language Socialisation
Second Language Socialisation (Theory? Paradigm?)
real-world participative activities involving EAL learners
• attends to “the social, cultural and interactional contexts in
which education and other kinds of knowledge are learned, both
formally and informally” (Duff 2008, i)
• refers to “the process by which novices or newcomers in a
community or culture gain communicative competence,
membership and legitimacy in the group” (Duff 2007, 310)
(Second) Language Socialisation
Interaction is crucial for L2 learning (Pavlenko 2002, 286)
Learners are actively engaged in constructing “the terms and
conditions of their own learning” (Lantolf and Pavlenko 2001,
145).
• How do learners involved in community placement construct
such terms and conditions?
• Does learning via SLS occur “informally”, as Zuengler & Cole
(2005) suggest (311)?
“You cannot overtly each anyone a Discourse, in a classroom or
anywhere else” (Gee 1991, 171)
Language Socialisation/
Culture Socialisation
Bridging a connection between
a classroom learning event
and an event in the real
world: the Anzac biscuit
Practicing language from
classroom: the rest home
offer
Acquiring work skills: the CAB
Contrasting the new and the
familiar: the elderly
Focussing “surprises” (Norton
2000) or “points of
significance”, instants when
things change (Pennycook
2004, 330): the window
Mediating “themselves and their
relationships to others in
communities of practice”
(Block, 2003, 109): the Maori
tear
Intercultural Literacy
“The understandings, competencies, attitudes, language
proficiencies, participation and identities necessary for
successful cross-cultural engagement” (Heyward 2002,
p. 10)
Heyward’s Stages of Culture Shock:
• Monocultural levels 1 to 3 (consciously and
unconsciously incompetent)
• Crosscultural level (conscious competence)
• Intercultural level (unconscious competence)
Methodology
Bricolage: essentially
grounded research
approach, informed by
discourse analysis,
autoethnographic
methods and narrative
study
Student as
(auto)ethnographer
Method to analyse
reflective and evaluative
insights and ‘thick
description’ snapshots of
real learner experience
Students …
take course
… comment on any aspects of
language, communication,
socialisation, organisation or
attitude that seemed ‘Kiwi’
…participate & write 4 reflective
entries
Researchers …
… analyse & categorise recurrences in
the dataset (Strauss & Corbin,
1990)
… compare & cross-reference (e-text)
… consult supervisors
Methodology
“Diaries give the language teacher access to
information about the learners’ opportunities to
practice the target language in the wider
community, their investments in the target
language and their changing identities”
(Norton 2000, 152)
Findings: What do invested learners come to know in
community placements?
Andrew & Kearney 2007
• applied speaking skills;
• acquiring procedural
knowledge;
• self-confidence in new
contexts;
• applied classroom
knowledge;
• surprises and re-cognitions;
• recognising difference and
cultural contrasts;
• ability to describe sociopragmatic events;
• realisations about otheraccented speakers and their
struggles;
• observing the symbols of
culture,
• recognition of desire for
future communities
What they come to know
Metaphors of capital
• Being “surprised” by the extent, depth and reality of
their learning in community
• “Really touching” New Zealand culture
• gaining a “window into New Zealand culture”
• Wading in “increased depth”
• Gaining “great rewards” and “cultural treasures”
• Acquiring a “clear vision” all measures of invested
capital.
• Getting “concrete” learning
Findings: How do students come to
know what they know?
Themes
• Participating develops multiliteracies and encourages
skills learning
• Observing leads to reappraisal of what you know
• Applying language acquired elsewhere secures learning
• Negotiating lexical awareness occurs via cultural
socialisation
• Reflecting enables cognitive contrasting
Participating develops multiliteracies and
encourages skills learning
Finding: 32 learners report additional and incidental skills they learned
‘how to’ do
Zheng: “… management skills and services skill, because the employees
need to provide a fast, friendly and courteous experience … and very
important rule – keep smile all the time in front of your customers”.
Beth: “… the needs and characteristics of elderly people” and “how to
handle and emergency”
Radha: “… how children learn by self-discovery” and “how important it
is for parents to talk about their children’s progress”
Karen: “I was informed to behave strictly according to the Volunteer
Behaviour Code, which is a list of Dos and DON’Ts”
Observing leads to reappraisal of what
you know
Finding: 47 students describe “a-ha” “surprises”
Walt: “It’s only when you interact with Kiwis and see what they
have to say that you really feel their pain. Some men just did not
want to talk about the game at all till about two weeks after.”
Dora: “One elderly dipped her Anzac biscuit in her tea and she was
shaking. I could see a tear in her eye.”
Harry: “Before I came to NZ, I always thought that Kiwis must be
very lazy because NZ has a complete welfare system. After
entering [company’s name], I found that the thinking is
absolutely wrong. On the contrary, Kiwis are very industrial (sic)
people.”
Applying language acquired elsewhere
secures learning
Finding: 56 made a bridge from the classroom
Shirley: “Besides learning English in the class, we should go out and
experience real English so we can build up our confidence
gradually … (“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch you. Could you say that
again, please?”)
Rebecca: “By working [in the rest home] I can get a chance to
interact with people by the use of knowledge and strategies
which I have learned from class”.
Anna: “Communication opens doors, and helps me to leave a
positive impression”.
Negotiating lexical awareness occurs
via cultural socialisation
Finding: all students learn lexis agentially
Dany: “The first time I heard clear skin I had no idea about
the meaning, but when they put it into sentences such
as “if you’d like to be a police officer, you need to have
clear skin”
Shirley: “seeing eye dog”; “out of the blue”
Les: “what a hoon!”
Sophia: tapu & Karen: whare ka
Andy: “one shot of Black coffee plus half trim milk plus
half full blend milk”
Negotiating lexical awareness occurs
via cultural socialisation
John: “I am worthless at chess”
“You mean useless”
John: “During my community placement I found myself
in situations where I couldn’t find the words and
expressions I was looking for, but I managed to explain
what I meant anyway. To talk around words you don’t
have in your vocabulary is a very effective method”
Reflecting enables cognitive contrasting
Finding: 50 learners acquire learning about Kiwi ways by reflecting
on contrast with their culture
Les: “… In China, if someone saw you go to ask for a food parcel,
you will be looked down upon by others”
Harry: “Here, the culture is totally different. The company never
deducts staffs’ payments, and the management didn’t even
punish any staff when their mistakes had caused hundreds of
thousands of dollars lost”
Mohammad: “A Christian woman was leading the prayer whereas
this kind of leading prayer by women is forbidden in Islam. We
Muslims believe that our lord ‘Allah’ will punish us or curse us if
women leading the prayer to men”
Conclusions
Community placement …
“…creates me a good opportunity to integrate with other
culture … (to) minimize the misunderstanding between
cultures and religions” (Mohammad)
“is this unforgettable life experience” (Dana)
“really is an extension of our in-class learning” (Radha)
Allows realisation “that understanding a culture could
help me to integrate into a society easily” (Ivor)
Conclusions
• The situated learning occurring during community placements
can be explained by theories around communities of practice and
imagined community.
• The greater the investment, the greater the payoff.
• A successful instance of language socialisation stimulates learners
to seek out future opportunities.
• Learners construct knowledge about the target culture and
incidental world-knowledge through such key interconnected
methods as observation and reflection, application and usage and
realisation due to surprise.
Conclusions and Implications
Reflecting on what was
observed consolidates
empirical data into
knowledge.
Applying strategies and
language from the
classroom and other
contexts helps learners
construct images of
themselves as
communicators
participants.
To provide a context for
language socialisation to
occur is to offer the
learner a linguistic
marketplace of both high
investment and,
potentially, high returns.
Many thanks for your attention
Dr. Martin Andrew
Swinburne University MELBOURNE
[email protected]