Discourse Analysis

9.8.13

 

Doing Conversation, Discourse, and Document Analysis – Tim Rapley – Chapters 1-5

 

What a breath of fresh air this text is!  So much of what I read was familiar – a review of all of my qualitative research classes, but Rapley has a way of saying things in a unique way and enhancing my comprehension of what was already on the way to understanding.   For example, we have read over and over in the DP class and this class about how events are both historically and culturally situated.  Rapley offers some great examples to bring these concepts into focus.  To help the notion of historically situated come into focus, Rapley gives the example of how audience behavior has changed between 1880s and the current day – and offers various factors that contributed to that change (p. 16).   To explain the idea of conceptually situated events (p. 20), he talks about how individuals behave differently depending upon where they are – how we tell stories differently depending upon who we are around.

                The chapter on ethics was mostly familiar as well.  But, there was one thing that Rapley suggested that I don’t believe we have discussed in any of my qual classes.   On page 29, Rapley talks about how you should give participants a way to contact you after the event so that if they changed their minds they could ask you to destroy the recording (if they were interviewed etc.).  I imagine former participants could find me if they wanted, but I know I wasn’t explicit in saying, “This is my contact information if you change your mind.”

                I was reminded of a situation in one of my research projects on the bottom of 29, top of 30.   While I was observing, one of the participants began to talk about the sexual molestation of a relative.  This topic was not the focus of my research and was shared only because the teachers I was observing were receiving training on child sex abuse.  In the middle of the observation, I made the decision to stop recording field notes because I didn’t want to jeopardize the relationship I have with the person who was disclosing and the other participants in the group.  It was an awkward situation though, and I wasn’t really sure what to do.  I just didn’t feel comfortable recording that sensitive information that wasn’t really relevant to my research topic – other than the fact that the participants know one another well enough to share that kind of information.

                When I read The Art of Case Study, by Stake when I had advanced qual, I was surprised that Stake didn’t think audio recording was necessary.  He felt recording reflections after an interview or observation (and taking field notes during the encounter) was sufficient.  For me, that isn’t the case.  I agree with Rapley when he says (on page 39), “I always try to audiotape, for some very pragmatic reasons: I want to interact with the participants….the tape provides me with a much more detailed record of the verbal interaction than any amount of note-taking or reflection could offer.”

                In chapter 5, I thought Rapley really stressed the importance of going back to the primary source (the actual recorded event) and not relying on a secondary source (the transcript).  There were many times he addressed this issue….

-          P. 50 – “What is key to remember is that you base your analysis on the recoding and your field notes.”

-          P. 59 – “I personally do not like doing any analysis from just transcripts alone.  I find them rather flat reproductions of interactions as you can easily be ‘misled’ about just what is it that is going on and miss the nuances that you gain from hearing a specific tone or voice or pace of speech.”

-          P. 59 – “Through re-listening to your recordings you constantly re-engage with just what it is that is going on at specific moments in that encounter.”

-          P. 64- “The transcript is always secondary, a memory device.”

-          P. 70 – “A finished transcript should never be the starting point of your analytic work; it is in and through repeated listening or watching your recordings and in and through the ongoing process of transcription that your analysis should be based.”

The last quote is particularly significant….the act of doing the transcription is actually the vehicle for analysis.  Doing the transcript allows you to interact with the data and forces you to listen and be present with the information.    I think I learn so much when I transcribe, and why I would hesitate to “send out” the recordings to be transcribed by someone else.

 

Some ‘technical challenges’ of video analysis: social actions, objects, material realities and the problems of perspective – Paul Huff and Christian Heath

 

                In this article, the authors talk about the methodological concerns of videotaping and video analysis, particularly about selecting the camera angle.   For my project in this class, I am going to look at a videotaped interaction between a child and me when he was in Reading Recovery and receiving one to one lessons.  I used to video tape this little boy often, because he had significant speech difficulties and I found him hard to teach because I couldn’t always understand what he was trying to say.  I selected the angle for the video tape because I wanted to see him and hear him and see where I was missing what he was trying to communicate.  I didn’t select the camera angle for a research purpose – other than the authentic one, which was to understand him so that I could teach him.  Only now am I using the video for analysis and that is for secondary reasons.   If I wanted to publish my analysis, I could address this choice as part of my reflexivity statement – sharing with readers the context of the creating of the video recording.

                This paragraph seems to summarize the difficulties I will face when I begin my analysis – “… choosing where, what and when to film, how to categorize and transcribe the data that are collected; how to select fragments to analyses from a corpus; how to develop an analysis that resonates with the collected materials and how to present analyses to audiences or in conventional research publications” (p. 257).

                I thought this was a great definition of “multi-modal analysis” which I have read a number of times but hasn’t been as explicitly defined – “the repeated scrutiny at extraordinary levels of detail of how talk and visual conduct in the material environment” (p. 256).

                The discussion of the mid-shot convention was interesting, and I could see it being useful in some situations.  In thinking of my possible dissertation topic - Reading Recovery Teacher Leader professional development, I can see how selecting this camera angle would be appropriate.  Though I might not have all of the teacher leaders in range, I could look specifically at a smaller group of teacher leaders.   But, I think much would be lost, as the interaction is among the entire group of teacher leaders.  It might be more appropriate to forgo the video all together and just do audio taping of everyone.   I still have time to consider this, but I am glad to have read this article now, as it will inform my decision as I get closer to the time.

                On page 273, Luff and Heath say, “Video can provide unprecedented access to a domain and can provide an invaluable resource that can be subjected to repeated scrutiny not only by the researcher but also by colleagues.  A convention has emerged for video data collection that seems to support this kind of research activity, particularly the analysis of focused interaction.”  I agree with this statement and can see how looking at student/teacher interaction in Reading Recovery (one-to-one) might be more appropriate for video analysis.   This is something that happens all the time in RR – teachers video tape their lessons with kids in order to get better at teaching them.  They do their own “analysis” and “research” – of what they say, of what the kid says, of how the ‘talk’ influences the students literacy processing.  Videotaping in this setting is typical, and both teacher and student get used to the camera and don’t act any differently than if the camera weren’t present.   I can see video being very useful to look at these interactions.

9.25 Discourse Analysis post

Discourse Analysis

9.25.13

 

Rapley – Doing Conversation, Discourse, and Document Analysis (Chapter 6-10)

 

            I enjoyed the readings for today.  I always like when the texts provide the transcripts and then the analysis after the transcripts.  On page 76, as I was reading the analysis, I was thinking about how, in my experience, this is what we do in conversation – we find a way to connect to what other people are saying, to link our perspective or information onto what they find to be salient.  I was thinking about this especially in relation to working with kids.  I am wondering if I will find this sort of linking/connecting when I watch my Reading Recovery lesson.

            I am curious too about what I will find in the lesson in terms of question-answer sequences.  I have seen the video several times, and I am remembering a moment when the student asks me a question “what ‘dat mean?” he asks, as he points to some bold print in the text.  When I watched lessons and observed teachers interacting, I always thought it was meaningful when students felt comfortable enough to challenge a teacher or ask a question.  To me, it meant a level of comfort and trust which had to deal with the power differential between teachers and students.  In these chapters, we read about power and context, and while I think analysis should focus on interaction as it unfolds, I am also very aware of power that exists outside of the interaction.  This is a bit of a struggle for me to make a decision about.  I guess I think both are important!

            On page 81, Rapley talks about the organization of agreement and disagreement and the feature of storytelling.  With both of these organizations of talk, I thought of Reading Recovery teacher training sessions.   There is so much discussion and pondering and wondering.  Often people “put out” their understandings and others either agree or disagree and site evidence from the interaction between teacher and student to back their claim.  Sometimes, people go off on story telling rants – often (in my experience) this is a filibuster of sorts.  It takes people out of what is going on with the teacher and child in front of us (behind the glass), and to a place where the teacher is totally in control of the version of events and cannot be questioned.  If I decide to do the investigation of RR TL for my dissertation, this will most definitely be a place to notice.

            I was blown away by the information by Kitzinger and Firth in the indented paragraph on page 85.   It is such a taken for granted form of education for rape prevention – that the woman says no.  I wouldn’t have thought about this as “counterproductive” because it is just something I have not questioned….and, I consider myself a feminist!  This makes complete sense to me now…clearly I haven’t thought enough about this important issue!

The bottom of 89 reminds me of our conversations in Digital Tools this summer – “you can see how documents and related technologies both constrain and enable our actions and interactions”.     As I read this chapter, I was thinking through all of the possible documents that are related to Reading Recovery – both lessons and sessions.  With lessons – the teacher keeps a lesson record which she writes on during the interaction.  She also keeps track of known words in reading, known words in writing, running records of oral text reading, a tower of progress grid that shows changes in text level reading over time as well as writing samples, and an alphabet book.  With Reading Recovery teacher sessions, there is a session agenda, the texts or articles the teachers read from and use, and charts that are generated by teachers in sessions.  All of these would be appropriate to collect and include in analysis.

The section beginning on page 95 – which talks about the video analysis of the Rodney King beating – was interesting.  This quote stood out “What is important to note is how, through their actions, they collaborate to build a way of how to make sense of the images on the video.”  In Reading Recovery sessions, we do this with both live lessons and with videos that we watch.  We discuss and replay (either in video or in recollection) of interactions and try to make sense of the happening.  Most of the time, we come to a consensus of what we saw…and, there are times when we don’t and people hold to their “truths” and their “claims” of how they are making sense of student behavior or teacher/child interactions.

This quote on 97 also stood out to me, “So what the analysis of conversation allows us to do is to try to document the ways that people and things organize specific institutions and institutional tasks and identities.”  So, Reading Recovery teacher and student create what happens in Reading Recovery together.  And, teachers in Reading Recovery, with their teacher leader, create the “norms” for what takes place – we organize what it means to be in a lesson with a child or what it means to do Reading Recovery training sessions.

 

 

DA 9.18.13

Discourse Analysis

9.18.13

 

Conversation Analysis – Gail Jefferson

 

I thought the opening of this article was interesting – that she’d rather transcribe than any other part of the work.  I can’t say the same, myself.  Though, I do think transcribing is the beginning of the analysis, in that I am becoming familiar with the data and thinking about it as I transcribe.    On page 21, Jefferson talks about the views of Labov, who says that people’s dialect shouldn’t be included in the transcription because it is viewed as somewhat defective.  I agree with Labov in that dialect is sometimes viewed as deficient (especially if it is southern), but I do not agree that it shouldn’t be put into the transcription.  If we are trying to capture how the interaction ‘sounded’ than dialect is a big part of that.  I think if would be important to include.  

 

Conversation Analysis – Chapters 1-3 – Hutchby & Wooffitt

            I thought the first chapter did a great job of defining conversation analysis.   Will summarize using bullet points here.

Conversation Analysis

-          “enables us to view the social world and to analyse social interaction” (p. 11)

-          “is the study of talk” (p.11)

-          “is the systematic analysis of the talk produced in everyday situations of human interaction: talk in interaction” (p.11)

-          “is situated as far as possible in the ordinary unfolding of people’s lives” (p.12)

-          “the objective of CA is to uncover the often tacit reasoning procedures and sociolinguistic competencies underlying the production and interpretation of talk in organized sequences of interaction.’ (p.12)

We talked some about “next turn proof” in our DP class this summer – but, I liked the examples and definition on page 13.  Next turn proof is how the researcher can tell how an individual within an interaction  understands what was just said.   It “ensures that analyses explicate the orderly  properties of talk as oriented to accomplishments of participants, rather than being based merely on the assumptions of the analyst.” (p.13).

Page 20 offers a summary of key insights which serve as the methodological basis for CA…

-          Talk in interaction is systematically organized and deeply ordered.

-          The production of talk in interaction is methodic

-          The analysis of talk in interaction should be based on naturally occurring data

-          Analysis should not initially be constrained by prior theoretical assumptions

I am glad the authenticity of the ‘raw data’ was addressed – that CA attends to the fact that the data was not collected as part of a “research” study, but that it came about as part of a naturally occurring event.  On page 23, Sacks talks about how the reader has as much information as the “researcher” in deciding upon the accuracy of the analysis.

I have started to think about Garfinkel’s “breaching experiments” at really interesting times.  The other day, I got on the elevator, and instinctively moved to the corner furthest from the other person on the elevator.  But, what if I had stood close to the other person – that would have violated the norm of “how we behave in an elevator”.   Riding the Marta train last week, I thought about how little interaction there is among people.  No one speaks or makes eye contact.  There are established ways of being when you are on the Marta train… 

The discussion of membership categories (p.35-37) was interesting.    Categories are not ‘neutral’ descriptions (p.36).   “Categories, then, do not merely provide us with convenient labels which allow us to refer to persons; they also provide a set of inferential resources by which we come to understand and interpret the behavior of persons so designated” (p.36).  The example and explanation on p. 37 was a good one to think through with these ideas about membership categories.   The examples on 38 and 39 were also great – the operator doesn’t question the authenticity of the person with the medical connections,  but does question the individual with no stated credentials who calls in about a rape.

I have also been thinking about this idea of preferred response and how I sometimes ask questions of my students in REED 430 class.  I will say something like; “Was that helpful?” after we do an activity or I summarize the reading etc., but there is little likelihood that one of them will say, “No, lady, not helpful.”  I would like to stop doing that, because, really…what does it accomplish? (tongue in cheek…).

I thought a lot about my Reading Recovery teachers when I read the section on the organization of turn taking.  One of the things about the RR training that is initially disturbing to the participants is that the rules of talk are altered.  People do talk over one another, and interrupt, and talk at the same time…as they watch and discuss the child working with the teacher behind the glass. The reason this happens is because we are trying to get to the unfiltered responses of the teachers – we want them to talk about what they are seeing and noticing and build upon the ideas of others in the group.  And, we want them to be almost immediately reacting to what they see.  Some teachers don’t ever really get comfortable with the free for all that happens behind the glass.  The fact that people were disturbed shows how closely they do abide by the rules and how it is unsettling to them when the rules are changed.   This idea is better stated on page 54 – “A great deal of work on apparent violations of the rule – set demonstrates how those apparent violations are actually robust illustrations of how closely members do orient to the rules.”

The idea of repair made me think of self-correction in reading.  When kids spontaneously identify and attend to an error in what they have read.  They correct what was initially said, most often because of some information (visual, structural, or meaning based) that tells them that what was read before was incorrect.  

Chapter 3 talked a lot about how the transcript is not the data, but a convenient “referential tool”.   Returning to the “listening” of the data was stressed.

 

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

 

I reread this article (from our DP class) just before my STATS class the other day.   I rehighlighted the bullets on page 6 – about the assumptions with much research…

-          Physiological states are accessible through quantifiable, external measures

-          Each measurement is taken to be an accurate representation of an internal state

-          Participant responses are treaded as being related to, and therefore predictors of actual eating behavior.

In Stats, we were talking about ‘constructs’ and instruments that ‘measure’ these constructs.   It was taken for granted that these surveys or instruments could represent internal states.  It surprised me that there was no argument, no discussion of this information…it is just assumed that it is possible to get at the internal in these ways.

What I like about DP and CA is that the assumptions like this one go away…the raw data is examined and responded to as it occurs…it doesn’t claim to reflect internal states.

I like the idea of ‘eating in situ’ being examined – that looking at it as it happens gets to the experience, and not to what people say about the experience.  The same is true for teaching – looking at the interactions as they happen, and not peoples’ reflections upon or beliefs about what happened.

Discourse Analysis for 9.11.13

Discourse Analysis

9.8.13

 

Doing Conversation, Discourse, and Document Analysis – Tim Rapley – Chapters 1-5

 

What a breath of fresh air this text is!  So much of what I read was familiar – a review of all of my qualitative research classes, but Rapley has a way of saying things in a unique way and enhancing my comprehension of what was already on the way to understanding.   For example, we have read over and over in the DP class and this class about how events are both historically and culturally situated.  Rapley offers some great examples to bring these concepts into focus.  To help the notion of historically situated come into focus, Rapley gives the example of how audience behavior has changed between 1880s and the current day – and offers various factors that contributed to that change (p. 16).   To explain the idea of conceptually situated events (p. 20), he talks about how individuals behave differently depending upon where they are – how we tell stories differently depending upon who we are around.

                The chapter on ethics was mostly familiar as well.  But, there was one thing that Rapley suggested that I don’t believe we have discussed in any of my qual classes.   On page 29, Rapley talks about how you should give participants a way to contact you after the event so that if they changed their minds they could ask you to destroy the recording (if they were interviewed etc.).  I imagine former participants could find me if they wanted, but I know I wasn’t explicit in saying, “This is my contact information if you change your mind.”

                I was reminded of a situation in one of my research projects on the bottom of 29, top of 30.   While I was observing, one of the participants began to talk about the sexual molestation of a relative.  This topic was not the focus of my research and was shared only because the teachers I was observing were receiving training on child sex abuse.  In the middle of the observation, I made the decision to stop recording field notes because I didn’t want to jeopardize the relationship I have with the person who was disclosing and the other participants in the group.  It was an awkward situation though, and I wasn’t really sure what to do.  I just didn’t feel comfortable recording that sensitive information that wasn’t really relevant to my research topic – other than the fact that the participants know one another well enough to share that kind of information.

                When I read The Art of Case Study, by Stake when I had advanced qual, I was surprised that Stake didn’t think audio recording was necessary.  He felt recording reflections after an interview or observation (and taking field notes during the encounter) was sufficient.  For me, that isn’t the case.  I agree with Rapley when he says (on page 39), “I always try to audiotape, for some very pragmatic reasons: I want to interact with the participants….the tape provides me with a much more detailed record of the verbal interaction than any amount of note-taking or reflection could offer.”

                In chapter 5, I thought Rapley really stressed the importance of going back to the primary source (the actual recorded event) and not relying on a secondary source (the transcript).  There were many times he addressed this issue….

-          P. 50 – “What is key to remember is that you base your analysis on the recoding and your field notes.”

-          P. 59 – “I personally do not like doing any analysis from just transcripts alone.  I find them rather flat reproductions of interactions as you can easily be ‘misled’ about just what is it that is going on and miss the nuances that you gain from hearing a specific tone or voice or pace of speech.”

-          P. 59 – “Through re-listening to your recordings you constantly re-engage with just what it is that is going on at specific moments in that encounter.”

-          P. 64- “The transcript is always secondary, a memory device.”

-          P. 70 – “A finished transcript should never be the starting point of your analytic work; it is in and through repeated listening or watching your recordings and in and through the ongoing process of transcription that your analysis should be based.”

The last quote is particularly significant….the act of doing the transcription is actually the vehicle for analysis.  Doing the transcript allows you to interact with the data and forces you to listen and be present with the information.    I think I learn so much when I transcribe, and why I would hesitate to “send out” the recordings to be transcribed by someone else.

 

Some ‘technical challenges’ of video analysis: social actions, objects, material realities and the problems of perspective – Paul Huff and Christian Heath

 

                In this article, the authors talk about the methodological concerns of videotaping and video analysis, particularly about selecting the camera angle.   For my project in this class, I am going to look at a videotaped interaction between a child and me when he was in Reading Recovery and receiving one to one lessons.  I used to video tape this little boy often, because he had significant speech difficulties and I found him hard to teach because I couldn’t always understand what he was trying to say.  I selected the angle for the video tape because I wanted to see him and hear him and see where I was missing what he was trying to communicate.  I didn’t select the camera angle for a research purpose – other than the authentic one, which was to understand him so that I could teach him.  Only now am I using the video for analysis and that is for secondary reasons.   If I wanted to publish my analysis, I could address this choice as part of my reflexivity statement – sharing with readers the context of the creating of the video recording.

                This paragraph seems to summarize the difficulties I will face when I begin my analysis – “… choosing where, what and when to film, how to categorize and transcribe the data that are collected; how to select fragments to analyses from a corpus; how to develop an analysis that resonates with the collected materials and how to present analyses to audiences or in conventional research publications” (p. 257).

                I thought this was a great definition of “multi-modal analysis” which I have read a number of times but hasn’t been as explicitly defined – “the repeated scrutiny at extraordinary levels of detail of how talk and visual conduct in the material environment” (p. 256).

                The discussion of the mid-shot convention was interesting, and I could see it being useful in some situations.  In thinking of my possible dissertation topic - Reading Recovery Teacher Leader professional development, I can see how selecting this camera angle would be appropriate.  Though I might not have all of the teacher leaders in range, I could look specifically at a smaller group of teacher leaders.   But, I think much would be lost, as the interaction is among the entire group of teacher leaders.  It might be more appropriate to forgo the video all together and just do audio taping of everyone.   I still have time to consider this, but I am glad to have read this article now, as it will inform my decision as I get closer to the time.

                On page 273, Luff and Heath say, “Video can provide unprecedented access to a domain and can provide an invaluable resource that can be subjected to repeated scrutiny not only by the researcher but also by colleagues.  A convention has emerged for video data collection that seems to support this kind of research activity, particularly the analysis of focused interaction.”  I agree with this statement and can see how looking at student/teacher interaction in Reading Recovery (one-to-one) might be more appropriate for video analysis.   This is something that happens all the time in RR – teachers video tape their lessons with kids in order to get better at teaching them.  They do their own “analysis” and “research” – of what they say, of what the kid says, of how the ‘talk’ influences the students literacy processing.  Videotaping in this setting is typical, and both teacher and student get used to the camera and don’t act any differently than if the camera weren’t present.   I can see video being very useful to look at these interactions.

9.4.13

Discourse Analysis

Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method by Marianne Jorgensen and Louise Phillips Chapters 4-6

After last week’s fiasco with the reading, it was nice to see my old friend, Discursive Psychology.  I was reminded of the difference between the social constructionists beliefs and those of the cognitivists.  It is amazing to me how much of the cognitive view of the world is assumed and continued through our talk. I am aware now of statements I make that support that view, even though I am beginning to question that view and am leaning more toward a social constructionist orientation.

Speaking of orientation…I was thinking about that on page 110 and the whole idea of a ‘self’.  Last week, you said in class that a self doesn’t exist outside of interactions with others.  Sara and I made eye contact across the room…as I was taking it in and thinking it over, and I assume (by her expressions) that she was doing the same.  I am right handed, I am always going to be right handed…and that is part of my “self”.  Does that apply to sexual orientation?  A friend (yes, really…a friend) is in this current debate with herself – her “identity” as gay (which she has identified since she was 18…she is now 49) is in conflict with her “identity” as Christian.  She cannot resolve the dilemma by existing as both, so she is choosing the Christian identity and leaving her gay identity…thinking that if she isn’t in a gay relationship, she isn’t gay and she can be fully Christian.   Being in this class and DP has given me a new way to consider this.  To me, being gay or straight is like being left handed or right handed or ambidextrous.   It is part of the self that I think is more settled or determined than other aspects, like being quiet or studious or scoring a particular way on the Myers-Briggs personality scale.  I can see how the later descriptors can change depending upon where you are or who you are around or what the situation calls for (subject positioning)…but her dilemma, the gay vs. Christian and just choosing seems a very different thing to me.   The paragraph on the bottom of 111 disagrees with me… “Across all three strands of discursive psychology, the dominant view is that identities are constructed on the basis of different, shifting discursive resources and are thus relational, incomplete, and unstable, but not completely open.  In Hall’s terms, we form a ‘sense of self’ by choosing one version of the self out of all the possible versions of ‘me’.”  My friend is choosing her ‘Christian’ self because she cannot reconcile two aspects of herself that seem to be in conflict with one another.  I think I might need to read Wendy Hollway’s work!  (referenced on page 113).

            I liked the section that talked about the 10 steps of the research design and methods in DP.  A nice review and a nice way to think through how DP can be applied to my areas of interest – which is similar to what I did for the DP final paper.

            I underlined this quote on page 130 – “The Maoris become exotic and the white majority becomes the normal mode.  It is the Maoris that represent difference; the broader Pakeha society surrounds the Maori culture and determines its limits.”  In the margin, I wrote that this is done to all “minority” groups.  Men are the ‘norm’ and women are different (thinking about medical research and what we know about how heart attacks happen.  All the common symptoms are men’s symptoms and women’s symptoms are “different”), heterosexuals are ‘normal’ and homosexuals are ‘different’, white is seen as the ‘norm’ and non-white is ‘different’.  I think if you exist in the ‘normal’ groups you really don’t see the issues or problems with that…you just aren’t aware of those characterizations until you are in a non-‘normal’ group.

            This quote on page 190 stood out to me – “…discourses fix meaning by excluding all other meaning potentials.  Two discourses can collide in an antagonistic relationship to one another when they try to define the same terrain in conflict ways.”   This made me think of the debates in education – between phonics people and whole language people – between school psychologists who test and label and teachers who want to instruct and improve.  These groups really speak different languages and when they try to interact, it can be disastrous.

A Review of Discourse Analysis in Literacy Research: Equitable Access – Rex et. al

            Wow!  I loved this!  For my article critique/lit review, is it okay to read some of these?

            I have absolutely hated the book A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne since I read it in 2006.  I found it condescending and patronizing and insulting.  As a kid who came from home where there wasn’t a lot of income and no college degrees, I was pissed off that someone that didn’t know me, or my family or what we valued was making large generalizations about us and lumping us with other people who were also unknown by the author.  UGH!  So, I cannot wait to read Dworin and Bomer’s article. I want to see the line by line dissection of that insulting text.

            This quote was in important one for me “Educators must do the work of making connections between seemingly conflicting identities if they hope to increase access for students with marginalized language and literacy practices” (pp. 102).   I am not sure how prepared teachers are to do this…there is a great deal of “blaming” of families and kids that fall outside the ‘norm’. There is such a deficit discourse about children who do not come from middle class two parent homes and define literacy in the same ways as the teacher.

            I want to read Luna’s work about students with learning disabilities…

            I used to do writing workshop in my class and we had a “share” chair, where students read their writing to the class.  I taught the “inclusion” class, so there were several students who were identified as learning disabled who were part of the class and shared their work too.  The Mariage (2000) study would be an interesting one to read.

            I would also like to read the study by Thonus (1999) – about tutoring discourse.  This is very relevant to Reading Recovery.

            I am meeting tomorrow with a research librarian to hunt for articles around discourse analysis and professional development in literacy!  Hoping it goes well!.