MCA ABSTRACTS 11(3)

Streetwise Science: Towards a Theory of the Code of the Classroom
Regina Smardon

This paper takes Elijah Anderson’s “code of the street” as the context for studying science learning in an inner city American public school. It is proposed that a socio-cultural model of mind can help to explain how students in an urban chemistry class negotiate contradictory cultural codes. This analysis includes a consideration of (a) interaction styles, (b) the meaning of chemistry talk, (c) the dynamics of the code of the classroom, and (d) short-term learning and long-term consequences. An analysis of microinteractional synchrony in classroom video footage is compared with ethnographic observations. It is concluded that fostering integrative identities that blend cultural codes can help to promote a new code of the classroom that values science learning. This study suggests that students sometimes use the code of the street to enhance science achievement. Exploring this phenomenon yields new information about the process of code blending and the dynamics of classroom culture.

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Culture, Hybridity, and the Dialogical Self: Cases from the South Asian Diaspora
Sunil Bhatia and Anjali Ram

This paper outlines a dialogical approach to understanding how South Asian-American women living in diasporic locations negotiate their multiple and often conflicting cultural identities. We specifically use the concept of voice to articulate the different forms of dialogicality—polyphonization, expropriation and ventriloquation—that are involved in the acculturation experiences of two second-generation South Asian-American women. In particular, we argue that it is important to think of acculturation of the South Asian-American women as essentially a contested, dynamic and dialogical process. We demonstrate that such a dialogical process involves a constant moving back and forth between various cultural voices that are connected to various sociocultural contexts and are shaped by issues of race, sexuality and gender.

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The Need for Structure and Guidance When ICT Is Used in Project Work
May Britt Postholm. Tove Pettersson, Sigrun Gudmundsdottir, and Annlaug Flem

ICT can be integrated in the classroom processes in different ways. This study reveals that ICT as a mediating artefact in project work can contribute to the learning processes in the classroom. When ICT as an artefact is used to make a film, planning and decision making become natural and necessary processes in the pupil groups. The case study takes both the pupils’ and the teachers’ perspective and focuses on the learning environment and what it means for the learning processes. To understand and get more insight in the actions taking place in the classroom, the processes are analyzed from the theoretical point of view provided by social constructivist theories. The rationale for the article is to describe and thus show how the classroom structure is shaped by both the project work method and the ways the teachers organize the work and guide the pupils throughout the process in which ICT is a central mediating artefact.