Art Un ticle I.1 ited Sta In the ates News - Woodring College of ...

Joint productive activity is the process of both teacher and students working together to producesomething that is of value to everyone involved.Developing the language and literacy of instruction in all activities means that there is an overtfocus on learning the discourse of the content area concurrent with learning the concepts.Contexualizing schooling in students’ lived experiences refers to making connections (in anovert manner) between the content being learned and the students’ personal prior experiences,both within and beyond school.Teaching for cognitive complexity means making sure that every student is cognitivelychallenged, which implies individualization of tasks so that everyone is working on a task that isappropriate for his or her knowledge and ability.Instructional conversation refers to the teacher engaging in conversation with an individual orgroup of students, where the topic of conversation is of importance to all involved, and theteacher does not already know the answer to the question he or she is asking, and additionally,has an authentic reason for wanting to know the answer.Despite the various successes of educational approaches grounded in cultural difference theory,in recent years cultural anthropologists have begun to critique the underlying framework onseveral counts. These critiques can provide insight into how Tharp’s principles can be enhanced.The first criticism is that cultural difference theory pays insufficient attention to power relations(Mehan, 1993). For example, how can the gap between poor, urban Latino culture and theculture of a discipline of power, such as math or science, be successfully negotiated when thereis such a great power differential between the two? The second critique is that cultural differencetheory focuses almost exclusively on the structural (macro) level when defining culture, byfocusing on class, race, and/or gender issues. This overlooks the more micro level influencessuch as peer groups, or the culture of the individual institution (Geertz, 1973).The third critique deals with cultural difference theory's inattention to issues of identity andindividual agency (Minick, 1993). From this perspective, there is no room for an individual todevelop a cultural identity that is at odds with his or her structurally defined culture of origin,while in reality, such individuals clearly do exist. The final argument is that cultural differencetheory paints a monolithic perspective of culture. For example, all students from the samecultural group are thought to have developed the same patterns of thinking, talking, and actingduring childhood, and can likewise be aided by the same classroom interventions (Eisenhart &Graue, 1993).Simply by examining one's own cultural background and the variety of factors that effect it, itbecomes clear that cultural difference theory is an oversimplification of how culture helps shapean individual’s identity in practice. For this reason, we turn to a second anthropological tradition,practice theory, which addresses some of the more intricate dynamics in the interactions betweenstructural features and individual agency.Practice theory is concerned with a number of different aspects of culture, including: 1) thesocio-historical development of cultural groups and their members over time (Levinson &Holland, 1996); 2) the interplay of cultural productions (resistance) and cultural reproductions(conforming voluntarily or involuntarily to the cultural and structural norms) (Levinson, 1996);3) power relations within and across cultural groups (Luykx, 1996); and 4) the dialectic betweenstructural (macro-level) features and individual agency (Holland & Eisenhart, 1990). Practicetheory explores how historical persons are formed in practice, within and against larger societalforces and structures. These structures provide the (tacitly understood) framework that governsthe functioning of schools, as well as other social institutions.© 2008 Dr. Catherine CollierAll Rights Reserved122