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Chapter Seven
Developing
Learning
Communities
Language and Learning Style
Characteristics of a Learning
Community
It is organized for activity.
Everyone in the school participates in
this activity-oriented environment.
There is a sense that everyone
belongs.
Rationale for Learning
Community Classrooms
 Need to prepare students to be citizens
of a democracy
Through learning to negotiate
differences in the context of a common
curriculum
Through learning citizenship by
practicing democracy
Pedagogies: Old and New
Old methods with new names:
Dialogue (Plato)
Discovery learning (Abelard)
Critical pedagogy, feminist pedagogy,
collaborative learning (Comenius)
What is new:
That these should exist at the same
time and be used by both children and
adults
Roles: Old and New
Traditional roles of students and adults
are expanded
 Teacher as “teller” is expanded to
teacher as guide, coach, cheerleader.
 Other adults assume teaching and
learning roles.
 Students may be “teachers” as well as
learners.
Place of Content Knowledge: Old
and New
 Disciplinary knowledge serves a dual
role:
Sometimes it is learned as an end in
itself.
Sometimes it serves as a means to
another end, e.g., problem-solving or
discovering a new way to see and
understand the world.
Assessment: Old and New
 There is still a use for paper and pencil
testing, standardized or teacher-written.
 General use for such tests is diagnostic.
 Alternative forms of assessment also
play a part:
Peer evaluation
Portfolios
Group tests
Self-evaluation
Perspectives on Language
Acquisition
Language is what makes us human. It
is the primary means for socializing us
into our families and social groups,
and through them, acquiring a cultural
identity.
The Family is the First
Institution
 Introduces us to
language
 Structures the child’s
environment
 Gives labels to roles
such as Mommy,
teacher, priest,
extending roles into
the wider community
 Language objectifies,
interprets, and
justifies reality for the
child.
 Language brings the
meanings and values
of the wider
community onto the
small state of the
immediate family.
Institutional Aspects of
Language in the Family
Language has several characteristics in
common with other social institutions:
It is external.
It is objective.
It has the power of moral authority.
It is historical.
Perspectives on Language
Variation
 All language sounds have symbolic
meaning.
 Within any language, however, the
meaning of elements may differ widely:
Vocabulary
Pronunciation
Syntax (grammatical structure)
Semantics (the meaning of words)
Verbal Communication
Accents: differ from standard language
only in pronunciation
Dialects: differ from standard language in
pronunciation, word usage, and syntax
Black English (ebonics)
Rural (or Mountain) English
Standard English
Continued…
Black English (ebonics, African
American Language [AAL])
 Spoken primarily (though not
exclusively) by urban African
Americans
 Derived in part from the languages
of west Africa
 Ability to code switch (move back
and forth from ebonics to standard
English) is often a matter of social
class
Rural (or Mountain) English
Spoken primarily in Appalachia
Derived from the language of
early English settlers in the area
May be the “purest” English
spoken in the United States
Has been preserved, in part,
because of isolation of mountain
people
Standard English
Is also a dialect of English,
although it is the dialect usually
deemed most “correct”
Is the language of education,
commerce, and the arts
May vary from community to
community, and from country to
country
Bidialectism: the abililty to speak two
(or more) dialects and to switch easily
between or among them
Sign Language: a non-verbal
language of signs spoken by the deaf
 Serves instead of a spoken
language
 American Sign Language (ASL) is
considered an “official” language
Nonverbal Communication
Used by both hearing and hearing-impaired
individuals
Accounts for 50 to 90 percent of the
messages we send and receive
It has several functions:
Conveys messages
Can augment verbal communication
Can contradict verbal communication
Can replace verbal communication
Three aspects of nonverbal
communication:
 Proxemics: sometimes called “social
space”; refers to the “normal”
distance considered appropriate
between two people speaking
 Kinesics: body language, e.g.,
gestures, facial expressions, eye
contact
 Paralanguage: vocalizations that
are not words, e.g., sighs, laughter,
crying
Culture, Language, and
Learning Style
 These three are inextricably intertwined:
Language shapes and is shaped by
culture.
Culture shapes and is shaped by
language.
Learning style originates and accounts for
variations in patterns of learning, and is
shaped by both language and culture.
Relation of Language to
Culture
Language determines vocabulary,
which sets the “right” meaning of
words and of cultural ideas.
Language plays a critical role in the
maintenance of subgroups within a
larger culture.
Language reflects the thought
processes of a culture.
Relation of Learning Style to
Culture
Learning style is developed in the
context of what we attend to
(perception) and how we attend to it—
culturally shaped adaptations to both
the physical and the social
environment.
Thus, particular learning styles are
often associated with particular cultural
groups.
Components of Learning Style
Field dependence: individual perceives
globally or holistically; orientation is
social; is good at observation
Field independence: individual perceives
discrete parts; is good at abstract
thought; tends to be individualistic;
prefers working alone
Continued…
Additional Components of Learning
Style
Preferred sensory mode for learning,
e.g., sight, sound, smell, touch, taste,
movement
Reponse to immediate environment
Emotionality
Social preferences
Cognitive-psychological orientation
Origins of Learning Style
Still a matter of conjecture
Appear to be a combination of
Biological factors
Psychological factors
Sociocultural factors
Multiple Intelligences
The idea, based on brain research and
proposed by Howard Gardner, that
human beings not only have preferred
learning styles, but also preferred ways
of expressing intellectual ability, and
thus, of thinking
Continued…
Seven kinds of intelligence:
Visual/spatial
Verbal/linguistic
Logical/mathematical
Bodily/kinesthetic
Musical/rhythmic
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
The Significance of Multiple
Intelligences and Learning
Styles
 The importance of these qualities for
teachers lies in their ability to identify
preferred modes of learning and to adapt
instruction so that all students get to
practice learning in multiple ways.
 No one recommends that students learn
only in their preferred mode or that
teachers teach in only one mode.
Cultural Groups May Differ in
Communication Styles
 Formal vs. Informal Communication
 Emotional vs. Subdued Communication
 Direct vs. Indirect Communication
 Objective vs. Subjective Communication
 Responses to Guilt and Accusations
Ethical Issues
 Students who speak a dialect of English, or
whose first language is not English, are
likely to be stigmatized.
 Debates about language in the schools are
likely to be as much about issues of cultural
domination as they are about language
itself.
 The assessment of students with limited
English proficiency must be done with care.
Continued…
 The increasing prevalence of English in
world-wide modes of communication—
especially television and the Internet—may
mean that many languages are
disappearing.
 Some balance needs to be achieved
between protecting “small” languages and
encouraging international exchange.
 Without diverse languages, diverse cultures
may also disappear.
 The negative American attitude toward
learning more than one language may get in
the way of our own international
understanding.
Something to Think About
When we study human language, we are
approaching what some might call the
“human essence,” the distinctive qualities
of mind that are, so far as we know,
unique to man and that are inseparable
from any critical phase of human
existence, personal or social.
--Noam Chomsky