Discursive Psychology Post for 7.8.13

Discourse Analysis and Discursive Psychology – Jonathan Potter

            I read this article in my office on campus last Thursday.  As I was reading, I texted my partner, “I think this might be it…what I want to do for my dissertation”.  As I was reading this article, I was filtering the information through the lens of what I have done for the last 7 years in Reading Recovery and what I anticipate focusing on in my dissertation (either how Reading Recovery Teacher Leader professional development happens or on how language/teaching interactions happen between Reading Recovery student and Reading Recovery teacher).  

Briefly, Reading Recovery is a first grade intervention that offers one to one tutoring to 1^st grade students who are in the bottom 20% of their cohort according to teacher ranking and a battery of assessments called The Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement.  The aim of the intervention is to accelerate the literacy achievement of the student so that she is in the average of her class (in less than 20 weeks of 1 to 1, daily, 30 minute lessons in reading, writing, and word/letter study).  The intervention has been around in the states since 1984 and has been in New Zealand (where it originated… in part from a dissertation...) since the late 1970s.   It has evolved and changed with current research and educational demands and is not only widely used in the states, but also in New Zealand, England, Australia,  and Department of Defense Schools (among others).  Additionally, the text (both professional and student) have been translated into Spanish, French, and German.    The intervention is highly successful, with approximately 75-80% of students achieving “average” or better levels of proficiency in 20 weeks or less.  There has been considerable research done on RR – especially the training of teachers, but, there hasn’t been much on the “turn by turn” interactions between teacher and child or the professional development or training of Teacher Leaders (who are trained by University professionals at regional training sites and then train teachers in their school districts).

            James Britton said, “Comprehension floats on a sea of talk”.  This is a basic premise of professional development for Reading Recovery professionals.  They “talk” together and are prompted by a RR Teacher Leader as they watch a live lesson unfold behind a one way mirror – “behind the glass” is the term in Reading Recovery.  In one room, there is a Reading Recovery teacher and child doing a lesson as they typically do.  The child reads a number of books, writes a story, works with words and letters etc. They are seated at a table in front of what looks like a mirror.  They can see themselves but not the teachers seated directly behind the glass on the other side.   There is a microphone picking up all the action.  In the adjoining room, there are the Reading Recovery Teacher Leader (who is guiding the discussion) standing by the “glass” and Reading Recovery teachers who are seated in chairs facing the glass so they can watch the lesson and talk about what they are noticing, wondering,  and questioning.   Typically, the training session involves viewing two lessons “behind the glass” (2 different teachers and children) in the manner described above and an after the glass discussion.  The two teachers who taught behind the glass are part of the after the glass discussion.  The focus of the talk after the lessons is not on fixing the teacher or child, but rather on reflecting on what was seen and wondered about, as it compares to what we know about emergent reading and writing through core early literacy text.  Those texts are consulted and read from and discussed as lesson examples are recounted and reflected upon.

            I provided that brief (believe me, I could have written for pages and pages on this training) description so that when I reflect on this article below, my comments have a place to land….

            Reading Recovery is all about reflecting upon teacher/child interaction as it occurs.  It is heavily influenced by Vygotsky’s work and the notion of “the zone of proximal development”.  It seems a natural fit with DP and DA. I underlined “This is the stuff of real life. It is a recording of how the interaction unfolds for the participants” on the first page.  And, there is SO much interaction that is taking place.  There is the teacher and student, and then there are the teachers themselves as the lesson is happening.   Additionally, there are sessions that involved the University trainers who are focusing on how the RR Teacher Leader is guiding and responding and questioning teacher assumptions in the discussion. 

            On page 3,   it says “… some of the big issues of social relations played out, in particular the sociological truism that power and resistance go together.”  To me, Reading Recovery has a very different “power” kind of structure than most educational initiatives I have been involved in over the last 15 years.  There is no “Truth” with a capital “T” – what works for one child in one situation and may be appropriate may be completely inappropriate for another child.  There is no hard and fast “rule book” about how things are “to be done”.  All teacher actions are subject to questioning and review and scrutiny in light of how the child responded.  Teachers are charged with “following the child” and many new-to-Reading-Recovery-teachers are disturbed by this.  They hold very tightly to an idea of what a “struggling” reader needs instead of looking at this particular learner and what he is she is responding to or not responding to.  There is also a difference in the power structure between teachers.  It doesn’t matter if you have a PhD, have taught for 20 years, have tenure, and were named as “teacher of the year” for your building.  If you prompt a child and create confusion for the child, you will be questioned by your fellow Reading Recovery teachers.  It is the moment with the child that matters – not the labels you apply to yourself (or others have applied to you).   It is very unnerving for many teachers to be questioned and some teachers can’t hack the questioning and decide that Reading Recovery does not work for them.  In my experience, those that leave are those that cling very tightly to beliefs about themselves, or “struggling students”, or “curriculum” and cannot think about a particular child and what he/she needs in the moment.   I thought it was very interesting that this article says that these issues of power and resistance are central issues to discursive psychology.  They are central issues in Reading Recovery too – though perhaps not formally recognized (which might make it good for research).

            Before a professional development session in Reading Recovery, which involves those “Behind the glass” sessions, I always feel a certain amount of anxiety and excitement.  As a teacher leader, you never know what will take place.  You can’t script what you want to say to/with the teachers ahead of time.  You have to stay in the moment (just as the teacher does with the child) and respond to the “interaction as it unfolds in real time and in real situations” (p. 4).     DP and RR share that focus on real life interaction.   

            On page 5, Potter says that DP is focused on the “public realm” – so is RR.  RR is not concerned with what you say you do when you teach a child.  Often, what we say we do and what we actually do are not the same.  I may think I am holding a child accountable for the independent production of the problem letter “b”.  I may claim that the child can make the letter consistently without error and without prompting.  But, when I go behind the glass, what I REALLY do is revealed in my actions – I use language to prompt the child through the production – “stick down, bubble around”, or I supply a magnet letter for the child to look at as he writes, or I say “be careful” to slow the child before he begins.  Those actions are mine – not the independent actions of a child.    So, in RR there is little “description of the child” by the teacher for the other teachers.  It is what it is when the child and teacher interact behind the glass.

            At the bottom of page 6, when Potter is talking about  the talk about the British royal family and certain talk that keeps hierarchies in place, I thought about how sometimes teachers’ talk and assumptions about “struggling” readers work to keep kids ‘down’.  There is often a litany of “can’t do” that teachers hang onto when they are working with “struggling student”.  Sometimes it is their assumption about a child that holds the child back – not the actual ability of the child.  For example, a teacher may provide a very high level of modeling or scaffolding for a child when it is not necessary.  A teacher jumps in and corrects the child before giving her a chance to notice and correct a mistake.  The kid could have the ability to make a correction but if the teacher intervenes and does it, the assumption she takes away from the interaction is that the child lacks initiative and doesn’t correct mistakes – which is not true.  The teacher didn’t allow the child the opportunity.    So, I am thinking about how DP could be used to examine the talk of RR teachers … and how there may be talk about children that keeps them at risk and in jeopardy. 

            On page 7, Potter is describing Strand 2 which is focused on interaction and not on transcripts of open ended interviews.  This speaks to what I mentioned before – what teachers do and what teachers say they do are often very different things!  I have had to replay video for teachers before to get them to actually see what they were doing in interaction with students rather than rely on what they believed they were doing.    

            Strand three: Discursive Psychology and Sequential Analysis seemed VERY appropriate to all things Reading Recovery – all the characteristics fit, especially – a – working with a corpus of conversational material, d – attention to psychological phenomena in institutional settings, and e – integration of lexical analysis with attention to prosody, delivery, and embodied action.  Jeffersonian transcript seems very difficult and tedious, but I am hopeful it could be very useful when looking at Reading Recovery lessons or interactions among teachers.  

            In Reading Recovery, there develops a body of shared knowledge and understanding.  Through both talk and action, teachers show what they know about how students develop efficient reading and writing processes and how to foster that development in students.  The teacher leader is constantly assessing where teachers are in their understanding and prompting to get them to reveal more (through language) about what they understand.  It is interesting – sometimes teachers can ‘talk the talk’ all day to let you know they understand, and they teach and cannot apply with children what they are able to describe in words.   And, I have seen the opposite – teachers who cannot explain the rationale behind a decision, but can make very effective teaching decisions.  The latter problem is much easier to work with!

            I loved this next section, and made even more clear to me how my potential topics connect with discursive psychology.  

1)      Discourse is action oriented.   “Consider the use of questions to indirectly deliver advice” – this happens all the time in RR when teachers prompt students for action.  Clay says, “Prompts are not just talk, they are a call to action to the child to do something within his response repertoire to solve a problem.”   I am thinking of when teachers say, “Does that make sense?” to a child.  It is often a call for the child to reread a section of text to check that all is correct.  I thought the explanation of how discourse analytic work is different from just work around language was important – it is all about the action. 

2)      Discourse is situated.   This section addresses the turn by turn interaction that is so important in Reading Recovery.  The teacher is constantly issuing an “invitation” to the student to engage in the literacy event.   “When an invitation is issued this sets up an environment for what happens next”...  Clay could have said this quote – “the turn by turn unfolding of talk provides an ongoing check on understanding” – this is true for both the teacher/child interaction and the teacher/teacher leader and teacher/teacher actions.    I liked the part about “identity” and think it could fit with both teachers and children.  Children generally come into RR with an idea of themselves as someone who finds reading hard.  It is amazing to watch that concept and identity shift as they progress through the lesson series and have some successes with literacy learning.  Often, this change in self-concept is revealed through their words – they will spontaneously talk about their problem solving or say “I am a good reader” or “I wrote a long story” etc.  The teacher part of the identity is really interesting too.  As I mentioned earlier, it is sometimes difficult.  They have the identity of “teacher of the year” but in this new setting they are not as settled and are questioned regularly.  Some find this incredibly uncomfortable.  It can go the other way too, that teachers develop confidence and a refined ability to make quick and efficient decisions.   Potter says, “Discourse research highlights, for example, the way descriptions are built to counter actual or potential alternatives”.  In Reading Recovery, teachers think lots about alternative explanations for happenings.  If the child says have for had was it because he didn’t look all the way to the end of the word, or was it because he was reading in present vs. past tense, or is it because of his particular reliance on certain language structures?  Teachers would look for patterns over time as the child read in order to answer those questions.  The themes of attribution, attitudes and persuasion also seem to fit for Reading Recovery as well as discursive psychology.  

3)      Discourse is both constructed and constructive. I am wondering about this sentence “Discursive research can be focused on the way constructions are built and stabilized, and how they are made neutral, objective, and independent of the speaker.”  I am thinking that how a Reading Recovery teacher leader or teacher develops might be interesting…. Or how their ideas about struggling readers change as they go through training.   The last sentence of this section fits with these topics – how kids and teachers change over time is subtle and is revealed through both their language and actions.  

4)      Discourse is produced as psychological.

 

I want to think through both of my topics with these 7 stages in mind.  This might help me in later writing my methodology section for the Digital Tools class.

	Interactions between RR teacher and RR child	Reading Recovery Teacher Leader professional development
Obtaining access and consent	I could look at interactions between teacher and student through a local school district where I used to work. There are currently 20 RR teachers and they each teach 4 children one on one for half a day.  I have a good reputation with teachers, principals, and central office staff, and believe they would allow me access.  Working with parents to get permission would be the most problematic aspect.  Their child is already viewed as a struggling reader and they may not be comfortable having a researcher writing about their child.  If the teacher was just audio recording the daily interactions, that might be okay…but, it would be really useful to have video. I have a particular teacher in mind.  We worked together in the past, have a strong relationship, and she is a teacher who is open to learning.  She would welcome the scrutiny and close observation of her teaching.	Teacher leaders at trained regionally through GSU in Atlanta.  They are also trained at OSU in Columbus.  I have connections in both places and believe I could get access to either site.  I would prefer GSU, because of my stronger connections there.
Data Collection	I could ask the teacher to video/audio RR lessons every day for as long as the child is in RR.  This ‘archive of records’ would be daily, for 30 minutes, for up to 20 weeks.  I would consult with the schools systems IT people to find the best devices for recording etc.  I would purchase them myself.   Having this dearth of information could be useful later for other research projects – not just my dissertation.	Reading Recovery Teacher Leader training takes place in a variety of ways.  The TLs take reading theory courses which are seminar style and involve a great deal of discussion and reflection on reading research.  This would be important to record (audio probably) because teachers reveal their beliefs about reading practice through their comments in discussion.  How they change over time would be revealed.  The RRTLs also have “clinical” classes where they watch lessons behind the glass and a university trainer leads the discussion as the live lessons occur, much like the RRTL will be expected to back in their home site after they are trained.  Recording this would be interesting – do I just set up the audio/video on the TL side of the glass (leaving the lesson to happen and be picked up only peripherally?).  There is so much cross talk and over talk in these interactions.  I wonder if I could pick up on all that transpires if I just allow the TLs or trainer to “press play” when the sessions begin.   Also, the RRTLs are teaching children every day.  This is such an important part of their training….do I record all of that for every teacher?  Seems like so much data… maybe I just need to focus on one aspect of the training…the BTG discussion seems most important to me, in part because it is so different than all of the PD I have engaged in.  It is one of the most unique aspects of RR training.
Data Management	For either project, the Data Management seems similar.  I would need to have a way to store audio and video files.  I would want to use ATLAS ti as much as possible since I am become more and more familiar with it and realize how important it would be to my project.  I am thinking of “skill builders” I can work on for Digital Tools that might help me with this aspect of my dissertation.   Working with video and maybe transcription software like Inqscribe might be good choices.
Transcription	For both projects, I need to learn Jeffersonian transcription if I am going to use DP as the lens of examination.  Do I pay a transcription service to do the first pass, generic transcriptions and then go back and do the Jeffersonian myself?  What a lot of data (for either project)!  Of course, if I am only doing specific sections it would be more manageable… Would the criteria I use to decide which pieces for focus on emerge as I was working on the project?
Developing Research Questions	p. 21 “Rather than posing a question the focus is often on attempting to explicate the workings of some kind of social practice that is operating in the setting, perhaps with the ultimate aim of making broader sense of the setting as a whole.”    -          How kids develop agency in RR?  -          How teacher identity shifts/changes as they participate in TL training?  -          Ask the TLs what they find difficult in their jobs and what they were interested in (like CPO example)? ‘Themes of interest emerged” … “Emotion has been theoretically interesting in discourse work.” “Emotion is often treated as a causal variable that has a distorting effect on cognition.” – LOTS of emotion in RR – for both students and teachers.  Students who are not used to being pushed sometimes have a hard time moving from being a passive learner to being forced into action.  Also positive emotion too…begin to become self-reliant and confident and verbalize this.  Carol Lyon’s book on Teaching Struggling Readers – talks about the role of emotion in learning and how we cognitively shut down if we are scared, worried, or feel threatened.  Thinking too of the challenge of RR training for TLs.  Hardest and most beneficial learning for me personally.  Some compare it to ‘boot camp’ others to ‘running a marathon’.  * small but growing literature on talk and emotion.  Thinking about how challenging going behind the glass is.  Teachers sometimes cry.   Feels sort of scary to just jump in and start recording not really knowing your research questions.  Really have to trust the process and search for understanding…what is going on here, what is important here?
Analysis	“Most time consuming and most crucial…” “The process of analysis will involve increasingly precise attempts to specify what is going on, how some practice or practices are unfolding.”   -          I guess the analysis happens over the entire time data is collected and transcribed.  If a service does the first pass transcription, then I suppose I am just reading and reflection (maybe writing analytic notes) about what I am noticing as I read through the happenings.  If I am present for the teaching sessions, my notes on what I am hearing might be useful as well. -          So, my overarching questions would be “What is going on?” and “How is this training/teaching unfolding?”  (not explicitly stated, but in general…)
Validation	This “turn taking” interaction happens over and over in Reading Recovery – for both student and TL in training.     Cases of departure – most teacher leaders make it, some don’t.  Would those be the deviant cases?  Or TLS that have break downs going btg…most don’t but some do.  Or people who change their practice (most do, some don’t) would those be examples of exceptional cases? With student/teachers – just looking at one teacher and child…so times when teaching fosters initiation and times when it doesn’t.  Prompts the teacher uses that bring out some sort of initiative and prompts that stump the child (there is no action/just inaction).   Coherence – would need to look at other studies on PD or on teacher/child interaction (for ‘struggling readers’.   Does my info class or compliment and why?   How does it contribute to ‘larger web of understanding?’   Readers’ evaluation – presenting snippets of the transcript to serve as examples of the conclusion I have drawn.

 

p. 40 – in many ways DP is a “classically empiricist enterprise”?  Because of concrete recorded action and little interference by the researcher?  “Its analytic approach is focused on the way practices are built in real time and how their organization and intelligibility is dependent on the normative organization of talk.”

- psychological issues that are relevant for participants.

- how psychological matters are public and intelligible.

“The key interest for discursive work is in the public practices, how upset is displayed, understood, and receipted.”  Thinking about how difficult change is – for both children and adults.  It is emotional and challenging to change – for a child that is passive and then expected to be active…or a teacher who has been “competent” and accomplished with an old belief structure and is put in an environment that challenges some of the beliefs she holds dear. 

 

Eating Your Words: Discursive Psychology and the Reconstruction of Eating Practices – Wiggins, Potter and Wildsmith

 

            It was interesting to me that the authors, at the beginning of the article, addressed the assumptions of some of the previous research: 1) Physiological states are accessible through quantifiable, external measures, 2) Each measurement is taken to be an accurate representation of an internal state, and 3) Participant responses are treated as being related to, and therefore predictors of actual eating behaviors.   The authors shatter these basic assumptions that are so widely spread and deeply held.  This made me think of standardized testing in education…that we assume these measures are true and valid – that we can confine something as complex as thinking or learning to a single score.  We have such a need to quantify and calculate, to encapsulate complex processes, that we create structures on faulty foundations and assumptions.  Then, we all collectively agree to this “Truth” and whole systems exist to support the faulty structure. 

            In the method section, I was struck by how short (in duration) the data collection was – only 7 days.  Quite bit of data was ultimately collected – over 15 hours of conversation, but 7 days seemed so short.   If I were looking at language of RRTLs in training session, that would yield so much more data across a year.  Would that even be appropriate?  3 hour sessions weekly for 52 weeks = 156 hours of talk.  And, that is just looking at specific training sessions, not theory class or teaching of students.  If I looked at the interaction between a RR student and teacher over the course of a lesson series, that would be 50 hours of talk – 2.5 hours a week (5, thirty minute lessons) for a maximum of 20 weeks.   That might be more appropriate for a dissertation.  If I gave the teacher the audio/video recorder, she could record the sessions and I would not have to be present. 

            I found the transcript excerpts difficult to make sense of – even with the ‘key’ in the appendix as a reference, it was difficult to play back in my head how the conversation exchange took place.  I suppose it gets easier over time with more experience.  Similarly, in Reading Recovery, teachers take “running records” of student text reading.  There is a code/short hand for insertions, deletions, rereading, self-correction of errors etc.

            On page 8, I underlined … “In giving reasons for eat or not eating the food, its nature is simultaneously constructed and evaluated” because it makes me think of ‘behind the glass’ conversation where teachers are offering potential rationale for a teaching decision a teacher behind the glass made.  The understanding becomes constructed on the spot by those participating in the discussion.  A similar happening occurs sometimes between a student and teacher.  The teacher attributes a student’s success in solving a problem to the child’s action (“you worked that out when you reread the sentence”) or the child offers his/her explanation for problem solving.  This happens over and over in RR, as the aim is to make the child constructive and active.   On the next page, I underlined the following, “How one describes the food is related to how the food will then be treated, for example, whether it will be classes as something that one should, or could eat.”  I wrote the following in the margin, “How one describes the learner is related to how the intervention will occur – whether a decision is or is not appropriate.”  These connections between this work in DP and RR continue to pop in my head.

            At the bottom of page 9, the authors talk about how DP can used to reveal flexible constructions of “physiological accounts”… this made me think of Marie Clay and her assertion that RR teachers remain tentative and flexible in their thoughts about learners and the various possibilities about how to intervene to effect literacy achievement.  I am wondering if a close examination of the ‘talk’ would reveal flexibility or rigidity…. Kind of like the excerpt on p. 11 where one of the participants describes the vegetables as having a permanent sort of condition – “lovely”, “nice” etc. 

            I thought about the term “eating in situ” and relayed it (or course) to RR – which examines “teaching in situ” – not ‘retrospective accounts’ or an ‘experimental design’ – as it actually occurs.

 

Discursive and scientific psychology – Derek Edwards

            I wrote this question in the margin as I read page 426 – “How is shared understanding of emergent literacy built and shaped though talk within Reading Recovery Teacher Leader training sessions?”  I think it is interesting that the author was a developmental psychologist influenced by Vygotsky and Bruner…Marie Clay was too (RR creator).

            I am reading all of this and still struggling with what discursive psychology actually “is” and how it is connected to, but different from discourse analysis.  I feel like this article is helping me sort it out.  Allow me to type up some quotes from the article to clarify what DP is…

DP – “provides a systematic, empirical analysis of talk and text, principally everyday recorded talk, using a coherent set of concepts and methods” (p. 427).

One of DP’s tasks is to “examine how psychological concepts (memory, thought, emotion) are shaped for the functions they serve, in and for the nexus of social practices in which we use language” (p. 427).

Again, I go back to my potential dissertation topics….a systematic analysis of teaching interactions between a student/teacher  (or teachers) to examine how thought or emotion are shaped within the context of literacy learning lessons.  Not quite sure I have it yet, but thinking it all through.

I thought the discussion of the “interpretive gap” was important.  The author defines the interpretive gap as “the distance between the object under scrutiny and via, method, data processing, and inferences, what you eventually want to say about it” (p. 428).    The author maintains that in DP, the “interpretive gap” is narrower in DP than in experimental social psychology because the interpretation is grounded in the actual text (talk) and can be immediately accessed by the reader, who doesn’t need any special interpretive training to see the connection between the segment of “data” and the interpretive claim about data.