Date: Tue, 31 Oct 1995
From: worthenh@garnet.berkeley.edu
Subject: Chapter 3, Contexts

A response to this chapter, from Helena Worthen:

Chapter 3 of Contexts for Learning, Dynamics of Discourse: Literacy and the Construction of Knowledge (Gen Ling M. Chang-Wells and Gordon Wells) begins with a summary of the social constructivist view of knowledge, focusing on its central paradox: although an individual possesses only that knowledge that he or she constructs, no individual alone is sufficient to construct knowledge, nor is knowledge, once "constructed" from the point of view of one person, transmittable to another (as in education) by mere recitation of propositions. To work through this paradox (in which an individual has to be both isolated from something and connected to it at the same time), the authors set up a framework of Vygotskian ideas within which they analyze some classroom episodes of transactions among individuals that result in the collaborative construction of knowledge. They argue that the mediating element of these transactions (which resolves the paradox of constructivism) is literacy. Thus they are saying that what makes possible the changes that we see in someone as they become "educated" is literate activity.

The authors accomplish this by identifing three "dimensions of change" as characteristic of the process of schooling. Following the Vygotskian framework, these are the "intellectualization" of mental functions (the process of bringing them under conscious and voluntary control); decontextualization of concepts, and integration, systematization and justification of beliefs, the last of these requiring, say the authors, paradigmatic (Bruner, 1986) rather than narrative modes of discourse. The authors assert that these three dimensions of change in mental functional all depend on literacy as they broadly define it:
...what is significant with respect to all of these dimensions of change in mental functioning is that they are dependent on literacy, when this is understood not simply as the encoding and decoding of written language or the use of witten texts for functional purposes, but as engaging with texts of alll kinds in ways that exploit the symbolic representation of meaning as a means of empowering intrapersonal mental activity (Wells, 1987;1990)(61).

Then adding that it is the "development of . . . literate thinking . . . that is the school's major responsibility in literate societies" (62) the authors go on to note three mental functions specifically attributable to literacy. To abbreviate, these are the accumulation and systematic organization of information; the fixing of meaning in a permanent form, and the objectification of the outcomes of thinking, facilitating reflection. The authors thus make a circle in their reasoning. In the Vygotskian framework, schooling is associated with three dimensions of mental change; literacy enables/ can be credited with three functions that are closely related to, if not identical with, the mental functions associated with schooling; literacy, broadly defined, is the major responsiblity of schooling in literate societies; therefore, the authors propose, it is "the development of literate thinking in particular, rather than schooling in general, that makes possible the construction of scientific concepts and hence the evolution of higher mental processes" (62).

The Wells's then proceed to describe in considerable detail the process whereby an individual appropriates cultural ways of thinking through participation in a conversation. These conversations can be "effective discourse in the student's zone of proximal development" (64). They explain that children "encounter" literate knowledge in such conversations when the talk is about texts. Acknowledging that to interpret such a conversation (much less guide it) is a matter of considerable complexity, they then move to their illustrations. These are seven in number, all transcriptions of conversations within groups of two or more elementary school chilren and their teachers. In these illustrations it is indeed possible to see children finishing each other's sentences, supplying words for each other, building on each other's ideas, modifying their affective response to an idea as the conversation goes along -- that is, learning from the conversation in which they are participating:
"Throughout our data analyses, we have attempted to demonstrate that it is at points of negotiation of meaning in conversation that learning and development occur, as each learner's individual psychological processes mediate (and at the same time are mediated by) the coinstitutive intermenal processes of the group. (86)."

At the core of each of these conversations there is indeed a text, although sometimes the text is remote: children make a collage for a presentation about a novel, prepare to trace a map, draft a report about wolves, or attempt to explain the principles by which a "windfinder" works. The authors conclude by noting that they have taken the "complete, contextualized episodes of conversation as the minimal units for cultural-cognitive analysis" (86) and that, if we study the role of literacy within these units, we will see that literacy assumes a more substantial role than has been presumed in the transformations that occur during schooling.

I read this chapter with intense interest, coming as I do from some years of teaching reading and writing-related courses to adults -- everything from basic reading to vocational students in an Oakland, California community college to novel/long fiction writing to graduate students at University of San Francisco. In the world of community college education, which is my primary area of interest, the term "literacy" has a narrow, operative definition: it means the ability to decode, and it is measured by standardized tests, and persons who are assessed to have poor "literacy skills" are put in remedial classes, often as prerequisites outside their target subject matter, and often taught as labs where the student works for a certain number of hours with a computer, doing drills. Merely having the gut feeling that this isn't good educational practice, that it is unfair to these students, doesn't cut the mustard. To counter the administrative inertia behind these practices, one must have good explanations -- in fact, a theory of learning that can be invoked to organize what we observe, explain what is the matter, and plan what we would prefer. Making matters worse is the fact that the existing practices are sufficiently well supported by folk-versions of cognitive science theory ("the mind is an information processor") that a competing theory has to also be able to explain the limitations of cognitive science theory.

Therefore, although I am convinced that the Wells' have illustrated the transformative process through which the children they observed learn through the mediation of a conversation occasioned by literacy, and I am even willing to accept (happy to accept, in fact) that literacy, broadly defined, is more fundamental to the group processes of schooling than schooling is to literacy (which turns Mike Cole and Sylvia Scribner's conclusions in Psychology of Literacy on their heads, by the way), I lament the unselfconsious ease with which they assert a definition of literacy so broad that it includes "further production of texts in a variety of genres," including plays and collages, and a definition of a text so broad that it includes a mechanical artifact made by a child. I am personally drawn to Vygotskian theory because it gives us a better explanation of why more learning happens in some contexts than others; the need for this better explanation occurs in budget committees and hiring, curriciulum and strategic planning committees, and in professional development planning -- places where the negotiation of meaning is quite dramatic and charged with differences of purpose. I would like to ask the authors if they would be interested in shifting their attention to an arena in which the power relationships are more equal than between elementary teachers and students, and in which the stakes are (if not actually higher) then more publicly valued. What would they speculate to be the implications of their arugment in this new context?