Re: [xmca] Gratier, Greenfield, & Isaac

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

I am cc'ing authors in case they have not signed up for the discussion. A
mixture of questions have been raised that perhaps
they can help to help us sort out.
mike

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 3:00 PM, yuan lai <laiyuantaiwan@gmail.com> wrote:

> Michael, I believe there are ways that mirror the “natural way” to teach
> cultural capital overtly. I’ve seen 3- and 4-year-olds from families of
> refugee status quickly appropriated the value placed on print, showing
> interest in print, wanting to write their names, feeling proud of their own
> attempts, not long after establishing a relationship with the preschool
> teacher in various activities in a family literacy program, which embeds
> print in almost all its classroom activities. For example, the teacher read
> to the children while they were eating, pointed out print and signs in the
> environment for them as they went out for recess, and wrote notes in front
> of them to request materials needed for the classroom. The transformation
> of
> the children’s attention, interest, and desire is amazing given that the
> children hardly understood English when they entered the program and their
> parents seldom read to them or pointed out print around due to low reading
> and writing ability in English and in their first language. I've since been
> convinced of the importance of setting up a learning environment that has
> an
> emphasis on relationship building.
>
> Jay, until you revealed it, I didn't see it. I reread the section leading
> to
> the hypotheses section and found that there is some reference to praise,
> but
> not at all to criticism.
>
> It appears that the same two classrooms (BC and non-BC) have been studied
> from different angles and the findings seem to be consistent with Gratier
> et
> al.'s framework. This article certainly extends their work. Terms such as
> style and collectivism do connote essentialization; the authors’ data
> provide substantiation of the essentialzed norms and communication styles
> (although what one sets out to do confines what one looks for) but I think
> they could have gone a step further. The example of a father’s feeling
> uncomfortable when the teacher praised his child does not tell how he may
> act or say to people in his in-group. There is also the assumption that
> home
> socialization remains the same after immigration. Given the contrastive
> framework in Gratier et al., I see little reasons not to include the
> videotaping of the same groups of children (some of them, more likely)
> interacting with their parents at home. Or is another paper forthcoming?
>
>  Yuan
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 4:46 AM, Michael Glassman <MGlassman@ehe.osu.edu
> >wrote:
>
> > Jay
> > ,
> > It seems to me a playing out - at least to some extent of Bourdieu's
> larger
> > theory.  That increasing the cultural capital of the teacher in relation
> to
> > the class would increase the level of social capital, which would lead to
> > some of the findings they present.  A lack of cultural capital (usually
> > assumed on the part of the students) would certainly lead to more
> > difficulties in communication and the students feeling more uncomfortable
> in
> > class.
> >
> > But this leads to a fairly radical assumption on the part of the authors
> > concerning habitus, even in terms of Bourdieu's theory.  That is that
> > cultural capital can be taught overtly, as cultural capital - Bourdieu
> seems
> > to emphasize that we learn cultural capital more or less unconsciously,
> > through everyday experience in the right situations (whether it is with
> > parents or in a school system where the type of cultural capital that
> leads
> > to easy social capital is pervasive).  I'm not so sure this is possible.
> >
> > I have another difficult which is that I read habitus as defining class
> > distinctions rather than cultural distinctions, and that I'm not sure his
> > ideas translate between the two, or make that much sense if they do.  The
> > types of cultures like Latino/Latina cultures are going to have class
> > distinctions defined by different habitas, defined most easily by
> different
> > levels of economic capital, and different recogntions of symbolic capital
> > (and symbolic violence),  To say a population so large has a single type
> of
> > habitus I think is problematic - especially when using a terms such as
> > collectivist, which is both categorical and far too broad I think to be
> > really salient in describing classes, let alone entire cultures (I think
> > level and type of social capital might be more appropriate if you are
> going
> > to use Bourdeiu's theory as a starting point).
> >
> > Michael
> >
> > ________________________________
> >
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Jay Lemke
> > Sent: Thu 12/3/2009 12:16 AM
> > To: XMCA Forum
> > Subject: [xmca] Gratier, Greenfield, & Isaac
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > I don't know how many people have yet had a chance to look at the MCA
> > article-of-the-month (Gratier, Greenfield, & Isaac on communicative
> > habitus and attunement in classrooms).
> >
> > I must have missed something, so could someone explain to me how they
> > derive the hypothesis that the more culturally attuned classroom will
> > have more criticism (by the teacher? or by everyone?) and less praise,
> > than the mismatched classroom?
> >
> > And what do you think generally about the methodology in this work?
> >
> > JAY.
> >
> >
> >
> > Jay Lemke
> > Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
> > Educational Studies
> > University of Michigan
> > Ann Arbor, MI 48109
> > www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke> <
> http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
> >
> > Visiting Scholar
> > Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
> > University of California -- San Diego
> > La Jolla, CA
> > USA 92093
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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