Re: Stories &Harvey Sacks

Jacque Ensign (ensign who-is-at virginia.edu)
Fri, 19 Jan 1996 14:44:42 -0800 (PST)

Thanks so much for your message about your writings on stories. I'm
replying to you via xmca in case there are others who were interested in
this topic. I did get a number of references for Sacks as well. The list
is such a goldmine for such. You asked about the nature of the stories told
in math classes. Unfortunately, there were so few stories told in math
classes that I can't say anything about the types of stories. What I heard
were the barest bones of stories, not embelished. What I heard were
generally instigated by a teacher and then the student responded so I
missed the introduction from the student. This is quite different than I
saw in language arts (these were all in elementary first and fifth grades
by the way) where a student would volunteer a story when there was a
trigger from something in the lesson. Those stories were much fuller and
more interesting, such as the student who, in reaction to a story about
Roal Dahl writing notes in the dust on the dashboard of a car, told about
writing a note on his jeans once, in ink, so he wouldn't forget and how he
got in bad trouble when it wouldn't wash out. Stories in math tended to be
bare facts, such as when trying to count quarters, remembered the lemonade
he sold was paid in quarters and then counted correctly. (The story here
being, "I sold lemonade and got quarters." However, the way it was told
was: Teacher, "Remember all the lemonade you sold?" Student, "Oh, yeah."
The rest was implicit).

What I am doing with the data is noting how when stories are told, the
class attention rises, and understanding seems to rise too. I watched the
same classes of students animated in language arts with lots of stories
from teachers and students to illustrate a concept, and the same classes
with heads on desks during the math lessons until some glimmer of a story
came along and they perked up. I'm arguing that by telling stories, there
is increased intimacy and community built since something personal has been
shared and the whole class now attaches personal links to the abstract math
concepts being taught. I wanted to check Harvey Sacks to see if he had
said anything related to this community building- intimacy. So far, I've
found the most helpful theory to be in economic anthropology. At the risk
of being too simplistic here so as not to go into the argument too deeply,
I equate math education with a contractual, short-term exchange in which
the participants do not have intimacy and the goal is a simple exchange of
knowledge. The hierarchy of the teacher is preserved throughout the
exchange, as in king-vassal relationships. I equate language arts
education (and the one math classroom I observed which did use a noticable
amt. of linking of students' experience stories with the math concepts) as
familial exchanges in which the exchange is long-term, has a higher amt. of
intimacy, is like parent-child relationships. In these the goal is for the
students to be apprentices to eventually be like the teachers, to be math
knowers.

In asking why there is such a difference in stories told in math class than
language arts, I've used an interpretation of the ZPD which Lave and Wenger
give in Situated Learning on page 48. They define the cultural ZPD as the
distance between cultural knowledge provided by sociohistorical context
(usually thru instruction) and everyday experience of learner. This is
based on Vygotsky's "distinction between scientific and everyday concepts,
and on his argument that a mature concept is achieved when the scientific
and everyday versions have merged." Given the cultural view of math as
abstract, rational, a priori, the cultural ZPD, to use Lave and Wenger's
definition, is much larger in math than in language arts. By this
definition, math has a larger gap to be bridged since it has been
culturally elevated from the commonplace more than the other subjects.
This would result in teachers having more difficulty identifying linkages
to use in math lessons than they would for the other subjects, subsequently
resulting in fewer links in math. In my interviews with teachers, they
voiced this very problem of being able to identify links to use in math
class whereas they found it easy to think of links in language arts. One
teacher commented that language arts and social studies is full of human
stories whereas math lessons never mention the mathematicians behind the
math concepts. That may have a bearing on students being able to clue into
math and come up with their own personal stories of experiences which
relate to the math lessons.

Jacque