Discursive Psychology Blog Post for 7/16/13

Edwards and Potter – p. 77-177

 

I am a “light weight” too when it comes to these readings.  I am finding it very slow going.  I read and reread and am still not sure I can articulate much of an understanding of what I read! The activities we do in class – last week with the Graffiti Wall, last night with the drawing of how cognitivists and discursive psychology view particular concepts, and the practical examples (Paula Dean, various snippets of conversation) that we discuss are really helpful in grounding all of the theoretical reading.  I am hoping more will come clear when we meet for class on Wednesday.

I am understanding that DP sees “memories” as variable constructions based on the context in which they are communicated.  This makes sense to me when I reflect on conversations I have had with students over the years about books they were reading or concepts we have discussed. What students are able to relay in a “conference” about a book is different than what they say when they are in a more formalized assessment situation.    This is true for me as well.  What I ‘remember’ independently about what I have read is very different from what I am able to construct in conversation with others. 

“Attribution theory is designed to describe and account for how ordinary people make causal sense of events, and especially of people’s actions.”    When I read this, I was thinking about our conversations about ‘learning style’ or explaining someone’s actions by saying “that’s just the way they are”.  I have, on more than one occasion, been irritated by the later explanation – in both professional and personal situations.  This reminds me of an earlier conversation you and I had (via blogging) about the idea of learning disability (in reading).  It has been my experience that once that label is applied, it becomes the explanation for why a student can’t read …  “that’s just the way he is!”  That “attribution” becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy of sorts – we change our instruction almost to ensure the student doesn’t learn to read (we limit his opportunities in text, we think that skills based and phonics instruction is the way this student has to be taught, we stop expecting that the child WILL learn to read) because his label explains why he has difficulty with reading.  An alternative interpretation would be to think the problem lies in the interaction between the student and teachers.  This interpretation gives hope that the situation could change and that the “learning disability” is not a FIXED condition.   I think DP could give hope to this sort of situation … if we attributed the difficulty in learning to some glitch in the interaction and not a glitch residing inside the child.   It seems to me that labels of these sorts serve as “externalizing devices” … “ways of accomplishing versions, categorizations and explanations such that they appear as simple, uninterpreted and unmotivated descriptions” (p. 90).    This is one of the things that is so appealing to me about Reading Recovery.   When Marie Clay talks about selection of students for RR, she says there are only two conditions…1) that the student be the lowest in their cohort of students in terms of achievement on The Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement and 2) that the student be participating in the core reading instruction in the classroom.  Children are not excluded from participation in RR due to low IQ, high absenteeism, or (and I love this one) “someone else’s classification of the child as learning disabled.”    To Clay, it didn’t matter the label or the number … kids need to learn to read regardless.    She attributed a difficulty in literacy achievement for children to  inappropriate teaching.   This is encouraging to me, as it implies that something can be done.  Teaching can be adjusted to meet the child wherever he/she is.   The concluding sentences of Chapter 4 seem appropriate here … “As soon as we begin to study situated discourse, abstracted models of rational thought soon diminish in explanatory significance, as we discover how versions, explanations and inferences are constructed, implied and embedded in talk.  It is in the accomplishment of social actions, rather than the display of underlying cognitive representations, that we find orderliness in discourse (p. 102).

 

When reading chapter 5, I thought a lot about how we construct and deconstruct notions of “truth” in Reading Recovery training.  When we are having ‘behind the glass’ conversations, teachers talk about what they are noticing or what they believe about a child as he/she is engaging with literacy tasks.   A teacher might say something like, “He is not fluent as he reads”.  We would watch and listen to his reading and look for “evidence” to support the assertion.  Sometimes, the looking will refine the assertion … “He is not fluent when he reads narrative sections of text but does well in the dialogue section of text” … or “He is not fluent because he keeps stopping to talk to the teacher about what he iis reading.”  Our constructions of tentative “truth” are based on our collective observations of the live lesson.  One of the major tenants of RR is that the teacher remains “tentative and flexible” in her theories about the child and is always looking for different avenues to pursue.  This seems to fit too with DP.  There is no absolute TRUTH.

 

Before class on Monday, I had finished the book.  I read ahead this weekend so I could spend more time today on the blog post.  When we were reading the PD deposition, and we came to the part about the “dancing gun”….I was reminded of pages 114 and 115 when the authors talk about the use of “idiomatic expressions” and the use of figurative language in “inauspicious environments”.   This may also connect to some of the story telling she did when being interviewed by Matt Lauer.  I never really considered how these elements of language could be deployed to serve a particular function.  It is so interesting to me that they tend to occur at predictable times and that “they have a robustness that makes them hard to challenge with specific facts or information” (p. 115).

 

In Chapter 6, I liked the discussion of the conversation between Margaret Thatcher and Brian Walden.  I would like to talk about this with my blogging partner on Thursday.

I felt relieved when I reached Chapter 7.  I wondered about the chapter placement in the book – the entire book might have made more sense to me if this chapter would have been the first, rather than the last.  I particularly liked the recap of fact construction devices on pages 160 – 163.  I see this playing out in conversations with people.  I think we aren’t aware of using these “devices” most of the time.   Sometimes I think people are intentionally manipulative and are jockeying for position, but most of the time I think these “devices” are employed without us really knowing what we are doing.  As I reread my highlights from this section, I was reminded of the comments Natalia made about us being hard wired to have our needs met and that we do what we have to in order to survive.  I agree with her comments…