Literacy Theory, the Young Child and “Incommensurable

Understandings.”Dory Lightfoot

University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)

What do I mean by incommensurate?• As Bhabha (1994) points out, policies are a type of

cultural artifact that represent the “truths” of part but not all of a community.

• How do strategies of representation … come to be formulated in the competing claims of communities where… the exchange of values, meanings, and priorities may not be collaborative and dialogical, but may be profoundly antagonistic, conflictual and even incommensurable?(Bhabha, 1994, 2)

Why this paper?

• This paper looks at the use of scientific discourse to create the “universal child.”

• Science, alone, is insufficient to make educational decisions.

• Metaphorical analysis shows that competing educational methodologies reflect conflicting values and moral beliefs. These beliefs are culturally and historically specific.

• “Best practice” decisions based on “scientific” studies can paper over incommensurate educational values but cannot make them disappear.

The Young Child as Universal Learner

• Much current educational research works on the assumption that science can identify cognitive “universals” in young children and identify neutral, value-free “best practices” for providing education for all.

• In this paper, literacy theory in the United States shows how the apparently “neutral” language of science hides deep cultural differences in values and understandings of young children.

• The language of scientific neutrality obscures but does not resolve “incommensurable” (Bhabha, 1994)differences.

• The use of science to set up one understanding of the young child always has power implications. Science sets up and enforces a particular “regime of truth.”

Why is this the language of science problematic?

• Universalizing terms such as “children” subsume all children into knowable and calculable category.

• These terms lead us to ignore culturally constructed elements of understandings of young children and their relationships with adults.

• A look at different metaphors concerning parents and children in the U.S. give us an example of how problematic such universalizing assumptions are.This

exemplifies a turn to universals taking place globally.

Two theoretical underpinnings to discussion

• Poststructuralist/postcolonial theory-- knowledge is power.

• Theory of metaphor-- here emphasizing Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980)idea of “conceptual metaphors” linking together wide, and superficially unrelated areas of experience through a shared, underlying metaphor.

Foucault, (1980) Truth and Power.

• Truth …produces regular effects of power. Each society has its régime of truth its 'general politics" of truth: that is the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true: the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those charged with saying what counts as true. (131)

• Metaphors allowing us to understand and calculate the young child are particular “regimes of truth.”

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) Conceptual Metaphors

• A conceptual metaphor is a conventional way of conceptualizing one domain of experience in terms of another. (Lakoff, 1996, 4-5)

• People conceptualize a great many things in terms of metaphor-- morality among them. (Lakoff, 1996, 374)

Lakoff’s two metaphors of family.

• In U.S. culture there are two strong competing metaphors of the “good” family.

• These metaphors extend beyond the home to influence our understandings of “good: and “appropriate” social institutions, and have strong moral overtones.

• Contrasting “family” metaphors provide an example of how social/cultural understandings of education are shaped by factors that lie “outside” of science.

Metaphor #1: Nurturant family.

• The primal experience… is one of being cared for and cared about, having one’s desires for loving interactions met, living as happily as possible, and deriving meaning from mutual interaction and care. (Lakoff, 1996, 108)

• Nurturant families de-emphasize top-down authority relations. They are characterized by shared decision making, parental modeling of moral values, and child-centered family discourse patterns.

• Encouraging children to figure out important concepts on their own with adult support is “caring” and promotes intellectual and moral development.

Metaphor #2:Strict father model.

• [The model is] a traditional nuclear family, with the father having primary responsibility for supporting and protecting the family as well as the authority to set overall family policy. He teaches children right from wrong by setting strict rules and enforcing them through punishment. (Lakoff, 1996, 66)

• In “strict father” families strong authority relations, and explicit rules enforced by sanctions and punishment are “caring,” and promote development and correct behavior in young children.

• Family discourse is adult-centered.• Leaving children to figure out important topics on their own is “uncaring”

and leads to poor behavior.

Literacy methods as family models.

• Our understandings of the young child learning to read have strong ties to metaphors of the family.

• Whole language instruction has elements of the “nurturant family” model. It seems naturally “good” and appropriate to people using this metaphor to understand the young child.

• Phonics instruction has many elements of the “strict father” metaphor.

Literacy methods seen through textual analysis.

• This presentation gives a brief look at how metaphorical understandings run through texts and reflect values not measurable by scientific comparisons of methods.

• The samples are from apparently non-political, scientific discourse, drawn from a handbook of literacy research.

Text #1: Nurturant family

understandings in scientific text. • I am not focusing on written language as a …code but as

a …symbolic tool that mediates human experience and interaction.(126)…Children’s words are always ‘used’ words; they are part of the dynamics of society… Like all learners, children must use familiar frames of reference to recontextualize salient aspects of new activities (new concepts, new symbolic tools and new social practices). This …allows children a sense of competence and agency… In a dialectic fashion, children also recontextualize aspects of their worlds within the frameworks of new activities and thus potentially gain new reflective angles on experiences. (134) (Dyson, 2002)

First text: Subtle metaphorical links

to “nurturant” family metaphor.• Children participating in “communicative

events”-- engaging in conversation with adults as part of learning process.

• Literacy learning as means of children gaining “agency” and “competence.”

• Children learn actively-- structuring their own “recontextualization.”

Phonics advocates write about learning

• I describe the development of children’s abilities to recognize and categorize different phonological units in spoken words… I argue that we need to understand more about the relative weight that needs to be given to the different phonological units of syllable, rhyme and phoneme (111) …60 children who had performed …poorly [were trained] in grouping words in terms of sound... At the end of the second year children in the experimental group… were 8 months further in reading than the semantic control group, and a year further in spelling. (122). (Goswami, 2002)

Second text has elements of “strict

father” metaphor. • Reading consists of acquiring a set of specific

skills (e.g. “phonological units) as determined by adults.

• No mention of children’s input into learning process.No dialogue.

• Skill recognition process referred to as “training” in recognition of adult-centered discourse process in classroom.

Question: How can incommensurate educational understandings be

settled using science alone? • Scientific discourse avoids moral issues and value

discussions/conflicts in search of “neutrality.”• Science is reductionstic and seeks to find most

economical possible solution that fits all situations.• Scientific discourse inclines us to look for “universal”

models of learning and teaching.• Science cannot be eliminated from decisions about

policy or methodology, but it cannot be the only voice.

Conclusions: Can educators find a language that recognizes different cultural

understandings of the young child?.

• Education is about culturally and historically contingent values-- not just “best practice.”

• Metaphorically laden values have strong overtones of moral rightness/wrongness and cannot be easily overturned by a new set “scientific” studies or policy decisions.

• We need to highlight different metaphorical values in order to understand them.

• Policy decisions are negotiations between parties with different and even “incommensurate” values-- not just searches for a universal, scientifically “proven” solution.

• “Scientifically”driven “best practice” models will always be more acceptable to some groups in society than others, as they are consonant with the understandings of some groups and not others.

For comments, or for a paper, write to

Dory Lightfoot

at

doryl@uic.eduUniversity of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)