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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