Harvard Educational Review

Summer 2000 Issue

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Article Abstracts:

Harvard Educational Review

Summer 2000 Issue

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Dialogic Inquiry: Towards a Sociocultural Practice and Theory of Education

by Gordon Wells.
Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 370 pp. $64.95, $21.95 (paper).

Much has been made of the gap between research and practice in the field of education. Gordon Wells’s recent book, Dialogic Inquiry: Towards a Sociocultural Practice and Theory of Education, represents the fruits of one researcher’s efforts to span this gap. In this work, Wells documents his extended collaboration with a team of teacher researchers in an exploration of the interdependence of language and learning. Divided into three sections, Wells’s book moves from theory to illustrations of theory in action and ends with reflection on how the findings from his collaborative work with teachers contributes to our understanding of students’ learning processes.

In the first section Wells constructs a theoretical framework for his research from a synthesis of Vygotsky’s developmental theory and M. A. K. Halliday’s theory of how language functions to make meaning. In this section he argues for the central role of language in meaning-making: “What is at issue here is not simply the ‘subject’ referred to variously as ‘Language Arts,’ ‘Mother Tongue,’ or ‘English’ but the role of linguistic discourse in making meaning — in mediating communicating and knowing right across the curriculum” (p. 119). Wells argues that the perspectives of these two theorists complement each other neatly in that, while “Vygotsky’s ultimate target is an explanation of individual mental functioning, Halliday’s might be said to be the nature and organization of language as a resource for human living” (p. 6). Also in this section, Wells provides a historical overview of the conception of knowledge, arguing that a review of this concept is crucial to our understanding of how to improve teaching and learning. He writes,

If, as teachers and teacher educators, we hope to bring about significant improvements in the way in which the practice of education is enacted in school classrooms, an important first step, it seems to me, is to attempt to clarify our own understanding of what is involved in the construction and reconstruction of knowledge. (p. 53)

In this overview, Wells brings an impressive variety of disciplinary perspectives, including philosophy and paleology, to bear on the evolution of knowledge.

The book’s central section (ch. 4 to 8) presents data from classroom-based research that Wells conducted in collaboration with teachers who participated in the Developing Inquiring Communities in Education Project (DICEP) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Here Wells shows teachers enacting the theory that he presents in the first section of the book. Readers who are familiar with the criticisms of the traditional tri-partite (Initiation-Response-Feedback) pattern of classroom discourse, in which the teacher initiates a topic (I), the student responds (R), and the teacher offers feedback (F), will be interested in Wells’s reevaluation of this pattern. For example, in chapter five, Wells shows that the IRF pattern of interaction does not preclude collaborative interaction between teachers and students, as much previous research had led us to believe. In chapter six, Wells expands on this idea to suggest that in such collaborative interaction students build on one another’s contributions “in a manner that advances the collective understanding of the topic under discussion” (p. 209). And in chapter seven he shows how the ways in which teachers follow up on students’ responses vary greatly, depending on the teacher’s goals for the activity and the functions of the students’ contributions. If the goal of a lesson is to give students practice in the discourse of science, he suggests, then challenging the logic of students’ contributions (as the teacher in this study does) can actually move the discussion forward. By contrast, if the teacher’s goal is to negotiate what steps the class will take in studying weather and the function of students’ contributions is to make suggestions toward this goal, then exploring the possibilities of students’ contributions is more conducive to a collaborative learning environment than challenging them. In short, teachers do not enact the IRF pattern of interaction in an inflexible, unquestioning fashion; rather, “the choice of the sort of follow-up move to make is a highly strategic one” (p. 262).

Throughout this central section, Wells uses examples to illustrate the central theme of the book: that the development of the individual and the maintenance of the culture are “dialectically interrelated” (p. 242). Although debates about the goals of education tend to place these two purposes in opposition to each other, Wells believes that this need not be so:

As newcomers engage in joint activities with other members of the culture, they are transformed in terms of their understanding and mastery of the community’s practices and in their ability to participate in them; and this, in turn, transforms the community into which they are being inducted. Furthermore, as newcomers become progressively more able to engage in solving the problems that the community faces, they may contribute to a transformation of the practices and artifacts that are employed, and this, in turn, transforms the community’s relationship with the larger social and material environment. (p. 242)

The final section, “Learning and teaching in the ZPD [Zone of Proximal Development],” contains the best example of collaborative research in the book: a chapter Wells coauthored with Barbara Galbraith and Mary Ann Van Tassell, two teacher-researchers from DICEP. These teacher researchers (both grade-two teachers) invited Wells to join them in exploring a question they had conceived: “How could we arrange for the children’s questions to play a more generative role in the planning of the science curriculum?” (p. 293). In his role as a participant observer, Wells encouraged the teachers to reflect on the choices they made in leading the class activities. Wells’s encouragement led the teachers to consider how,

while acknowledging and valuing the students’ ways of thinking about an issue or a problem, a teacher’s questions can direct the discussion to another level of understanding. It also prompted them to recognize that the questions themselves were an indication of their own increasing ability to “let go” and to listen to the children for direction. (p. 311)

Though Wells is certainly not the first researcher to collaborate with teachers, he is perhaps the first to demonstrate with such careful analysis how Halliday’s systemic linguistics and Vygotsky’s theory lead to a better understanding of how language is fundamental to learning. The work described in this volume distinguishes itself from other examples of collaborative research by the novel theoretical orientation that frames it. Laudable for its contribution to the Vygotskian school of thought, the book would have been improved by more discussion of the teachers’ perspectives on this research. With the exception of the collaboratively authored chapter just described, little is said about whether, or how, teachers participated in the interpretations of what was happening in their classrooms. Even when Wells acknowledges the teacher’s role in identifying moments of difficulty in their lessons for his analysis and interpretation, he does not include the teacher’s reasons for identifying these moments as difficult. In all fairness, however, that topic may warrant a book in itself.

Dialogic Inquiry: Towards a Sociocultural Practice and Theory of Education will appeal to researchers and teachers who are interested in applying Vygotskian theory to educational practice, as well as to literacy and science education researchers who are interested in fostering collaborative research relationships between schools and universities. Cognitive psychologists might also find it useful as a study of situated cognition, while applied linguists may appreciate Wells’s application of Halliday’s linguistic theory to classroom discourse.

S.W.B.


Coming of Age in Academe: Rekindling Women’s Hopes and Reforming the Academy

by Jane Roland Martin.
New York: Routledge, 2000. 232 pp. $18.99 (paper).

How can feminist scholars be accepted in the academy without dissociating themselves from women and their own ideals? Jane Roland Martin takes on this question and makes a powerful assessment of the state of women in higher education in Coming of Age in Academe: Rekindling Women’s Hopes and Reforming the Academy. Writing as an experienced scholar of education and philosophy, Martin, Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Boston, introduces the book by stating, “These are heady times for feminist scholars” (p. 3). She quickly uncovers the ironic side of that statement in her introduction — these are also troubling times for women in the academy. Then Martin explicates her thesis in three sections, providing evidence, analysis, and recommendations.

In the first section, “What Price Women’s Belonging?” Martin presents her findings from philosophical forays into the territory of academe made at the behest of an imagined Society of Feminist Scholars and Their Friends. Through reading widely and attending conferences in the United States and abroad, Martin finds that feminist scholars are estranged from one another, from women’s “lived experiences” and from “women’s occupations.” For example, Martin states that, in the 1970s, early feminist scholarship had its roots in the women’s movement and was admittedly not very self-critical. The 1980s, however, were marked by feminist scholars’ accusations of “essentialism” — discrediting any work that represented women as “possessing essential properties very different from” those of men (p. 13). Thus, research on any attributes that were traditionally associated with women (including gender, reproduction, motherhood) was attacked as creating “false generalizations” (p. 16) that did not take women’s differences into account and thus perpetuated stereotypes. This kind of critique has resulted in a culture of fear and separation within feminist scholarship, in which Martin sees feminist scholars “losing sight of our mothers, daughters, sisters, half-sisters, female cousins, and aunts” and “becoming divided from our past, present, and future selves” (p. 24). Martin concludes that this division is the price women pay to belong to academe. In the second chapter, Martin observes that the academy instills language that promotes “aerial distance” and “esotericism” and devalues the practical life experiences that drove earlier feminist activism. As a result, feminist scholars are distanced from women outside the academy. In the third chapter, Martin discusses what she calls “the education-gender system.” Not only does this system value disciplines, fields of inquiry, methodologies, curriculum, and research interests based on their gendered associations, it also operates mechanisms that promote “gender tracking” in which the low-status, low-paying professions — those in which “care, concern, and connection” are primary — are female associated. Among the many consequences of the education-gender system are feminist scholars’ turning away from subjects related to women and professions traditionally practiced by women — education, for example. Martin notes that the invisible education-gender system must be rendered visible and “dismantled” in order to achieve gender equality and reject conforming to “the old female stereotype” (p. 62). She believes that fundamental social reform can be achieved only through fundamental educational reform, not by simply appending feminist scholarship onto the existing system.

Part Two, “An Immigrant Interpretation,” likens women’s entry into the academy to the immigration of Central and Eastern Europeans to the United States early in the twentieth century. The chapters in this part also discuss 1) “the new gender tracking,” which “ghettoizes” women in positions of lower status and financial reward; 2) how higher education maintains a chilly or hostile climate for female students and professors as part of a “filtering process” to prevent too many women from entering the academy; and 3) questions of assimilation and transformation. Martin suggests here that acculturation, a transformational process in which something new is forged from the addition of an immigrant group to a host group, is preferable to assimilation, a one-way process. However, a transformed culture is much more difficult to attain.

Part Three, “Add Women and Transform,” consists of three chapters. In the first, Martin discusses the “brain drain,” in which scholars forsake the “real world” for the academy. In the two remaining chapters, she discusses the ways in which women scholars and women’s research are limited within the academy, and calls for a transformation of the university’s underlying system of beliefs and practices. One aspect of this transformation is the connection of women with each other in the academy. Martin describes the Swedish fika as one practice that could facilitate such connection. The fika is a regularly scheduled time at work when people come together with their colleagues “to swap ideas, share troubles, and generally engage in talk about work, home, and world” (p. 163). In Martin’s vision, a transformed academy would also encourage opportunities for the meeting of male and female minds, support feminist organizations, and work on the problems associated with coeducation — ultimately creating a coprofessoriate, developing a true cocurriculum, and integrating feminist scholarship to transform the education-gender system into a “woman-friendly academy.”

Martin writes with clarity and focus. Although she often uses specialized language, she does so in a manner that allows the reader to glean her meaning, through repeated use of key terms and phrases (for example, “education-gender system,” “aerial distance,” “chilly climate”) in consistent context. Martin navigates this complex terrain with a competence born of familiarity with both the academy and feminist activism. She presents evidence from quantitative investigations of enrollment, proportions of women to men in departments at Harvard, and feminist publications in philosophy anthologies to bolster her point that despite structural appearances of assimilation, women are actually still severely underrepresented in the academy. And as feminist activist Gloria Steinem points out in the foreword, while less elitist institutions may be more open to outsiders, the academy as a whole is still far from transformed. Steinem cites a national trend over the past twenty years, documented by the American Association of University Professors, that shows “the number of tenured males is increasing 30 percent faster than that of tenured females” (p. xi).

Martin ends the book by recalling that it took a “far-reaching and ultimately very aggressive campaign” (p. 182) for the women’s suffrage movement to succeed. She believes that creating a “woman-friendly academy” will take a similar mass movement of men and women working on many fronts, strategically as well as outrageously, through “acts both great and small” (p. 182).

Coming of Age in Academe is a thought-provoking treatment of the continuing inequality in higher education and how it might be ameliorated. Although Martin focuses on women, her observations and analysis are often not far removed from the experiences of others who are marginalized in the academy. Clearly organized and written in a straightforward manner, this critical reflection of the loss of innocence that accompanies a coming of age should appeal to a wide range of readers.

C.S.S.


An Overview of Writing Assessment: Theory, Research and Practice

by Willa Wolcott, with Sue Legg.
Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1998. 206 pp. $25.95 (paper).

Assessment is often a volatile topic in current educational discourse, linked as it is to issues of accountability and standards. Willa Wolcott’s book, An Overview of Writing Assessment, takes a lucid and rational approach to this controversial topic. Her even-handed treatment is especially valuable, given the importance of writing ability to assessment across disciplines. As newer forms of assessment in all disciplines depend increasingly on students’ proficiency in discourse, both written and spoken, concerns about the evaluation of students’ writing ability have come to stand for our concerns about the evaluation of a broad spectrum of competencies. As Wolcott puts it, “because writing is intertwined with the learning process, the complexities of writing assessment serve as a microcosm of the assessment field in general” (p. 1). The kinds of skills that count toward the evaluation of students’ competence as writers — mastery of conventions, originality, depth of content — all have analogues in other disciplines, and so the deliberations about how such skills should be weighted in writing assessment may also strike a familiar chord for teachers in the content areas.

Readers — especially those versed in the debate around writing assessment — will find a logical structure in the book, since it is organized around key topics. Some of these have to do with methods of gathering data for assessment — for example, “Direct Writing Assessment” and “Portfolio Assessment.” Other chapters discuss different approaches to scoring writing, such as “Holistic Scoring” and “Analytic Scoring.” The final chapters highlight especially contentious topics, “Reliability and Validity” and “Issues of Equity in Writing Assessment.” At the end of several of the chapters Wolcott adds “Tips for Teachers,” which offer advice on such issues as how to score essays holistically, how to use rubrics for primary trait scoring, and how to prepare students for direct writing assessments. In keeping with Wolcott’s support of large-scale assessments, these tips are focused on how teachers can prepare students to succeed at this type of writing. Some readers may find fault with the book for not questioning the value of large-scale assessments and not urging teachers to resist their impact on classroom instruction. However, given the proliferation across the United States of assessments that judge students’ writing ability by their performance on composing to a single writing prompt in a single sitting, along with the recent abandonment of more contextualized, interactive writing assessments in states like Arizona and California, Wolcott’s approach is undeniably a pragmatic one.

With the growing trend toward mandating assessment for accountability purposes, writing teachers will find this book a useful resource for informing themselves about a wide range of assessment methods. Teachers who want to know more about the research behind the practice of writing assessment can refer to Wolcott’s extensive bibliography as a starting point. Theories of writing and of assessment make only a brief appearance in this practically oriented text, and where the author does invoke them it is always to the point. For example, Wolcott refers to reader-response theory to explain why teachers (and, by implication, all test designers) need to think carefully about how they phrase their writing assignments. She writes, “Just as reader-response theorists have shown that interpretations of any given written passage can vary widely, so may the demands of a given prompt be interpreted differently, depending on the role of the person reading it” (p. 33).

At the same time that Wolcott acknowledges the powerful role that interpretive biases play in the design and scoring of assessments, she also attempts to account for any possible bias in her account of writing evaluation processes. Because the topic of writing assessment is so fraught with controversy, a book promising an “overview” of the topic may arouse the reader’s suspicion about the author’s bias. Is she a supporter of the large-scale, standardized tests that most state departments of education are now implementing? Or an advocate for locally designed and scored assessments? To her credit, Wolcott openly reveals her personal stance on assessment in a final chapter entitled “In My View.” Sanguine about the ramifications of state-mandated, high-stakes writing assessments, she argues that such evaluation systems have been the catalyst for positive change in many English/Language Arts programs. She also maintains that writing assessment need not be situated in a classroom context in order to be valid: “If one of the central purposes of writing is communication, and that is certainly the case given the growing emphasis on global communication, then it follows that writing can be assessed in more than just local contexts” (p. 180). While not all readers will agree with this perspective, such candor may help readers to evaluate the fairness of her treatment of various methods and approaches to writing assessment.

Wolcott clearly intends this book to be useful to English/Language Arts teachers, as evidenced in the “Tips for Teachers” feature. However, policymakers and administrators may also find it useful as an introduction to the research on writing assessment and as a guide for understanding how they can make large-scale assessments fairer and more useful for teachers and students. Ultimately, the book’s greatest value lies in its potential to demystify for teachers some of the concepts and terms related to writing assessment. If this helps teachers to become more active participants in the design, implementation, and critique of assessment methods, then Wolcott’s book will have made a great contribution indeed.

S.W.B.

Native American Higher Education in the United States

by Cary Michael Carney.
New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999. 226 pp. $32.95.

Historically, attempts to educate the indigenous people in the United States have taken various forms: Christianization, extermination, assimilation, and self-determination. In Native American Higher Education in the United States, Cary Michael Carney chronicles and analyzes approaches to education from colonial times, at places like Harvard College, the College of William and Mary, and Dartmouth College, to the present day.

As Carney describes it, Indian education during the colonial period meant Christian proselytizing. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the strategy regarding the “Indian issue” changed to terminating tribal groups and, when all efforts to terminate “failed,” self-determination eventually allowed Indians to assume some responsibility over their affairs. Regardless of whether the efforts were considered successful, the end result, according to Carney, has always been resistance by Native peoples to a Western European form of education.

In the first chapter, Carney’s framework is noticeable as he explains how racism and ethnocentric perspectives molded Indigenous education. He begins by focusing on the European “discovery” of the New World and the colonists’ attempts to conquer and “civilize” Indians because their lifestyle, beliefs, and philosophy differed from those of the Europeans. It was because of these differences, Carney points out, that the original nine colleges founded during this time were the first to attempt to educate Indigenous men in the Western paradigm.

Most of the proposed schools during the colonial period never came to fruition because of controversy surrounding funding and philosophy. In chapter two Carney describes the beginning of higher education targeting Indians during this period by giving a brief historical overview of schools like Henrico, which was established in the Virginia Colony. He then discusses schools like Harvard, William and Mary, and Dartmouth, which he cites as a few of the first institutions to actively pursue educating Indians in Christianity, and also discusses factors that contributed to the failure of these conversion efforts.

Chapter three examines changes in attitudes toward Indian education as the United States expanded. Carney notes that the U.S. government viewed Indian tribes as barriers to westward expansion during the time he describes as the Federal Period. Removal, assimilation, Christianization, and education in the form of vocational and agricultural training became standard government policy in dealing with Indians. While most tribes resisted, some groups such as the Cherokees and Choctaws eventually responded favorably by forming their own schools. Most of these efforts were short-lived due to changing federal policies and attitudes, which ultimately limited any potential growth or consistency to improve social and economic conditions on reservations.

Chapter four describes further changes in the U.S. government’s treatment of Indians. During this time, which Carney labels the “Self-Determination Period,” government policy regarding Indian education turned from assimilation and removal to the establishment of more extensive vocational, academic, and social programs established near tribal communities and reservations. The relationship between Indian tribes and the federal government improved as a result of increased tribal control over governance and health and educational programs. There was federal recognition of tribal governments and citizenship, and federal funds were directed at increasing the number of Indian families sending their children to public schools and beyond to higher education. As Indian populations grew, tribes began their own community colleges emphasizing the need for local post-secondary education. The push for Indian education, however, amounted to a form of Western European education for many Indian children.

Chapter five compares the development of Indian education to the Black higher education experience. Although the purpose of the comparison is not clear, the chapter does suggest that Blacks responded to developing a Western European form of education much more quickly than the Indian tribes, which, in some places, continue to resist to this day.

Chapter six includes additional perspectives on the current state of Indian education. Carney mentions reasons why historical attempts at educating Indians have repeatedly failed due to the lack of economic infrastructure and to ill-fated plans to instill new and different beliefs and lifestyles in people who prefer to maintain their own. However, the explanations cited miss the long pattern of Western society’s refusal to understand the indigenous worldview that ultimately marginalized them.

The final chapter provides brief examples of the current state of Native higher education. Listed are the current number of tribal community colleges in the United States and Canada. The increase in Indian students in tribal community colleges is cited as indicative of the growing willingness on the part of Indian tribes to finally understand the value of education. The book ends by discussing the implications of this growth and what the future may hold for community colleges serving Native students.

Native American Higher Education provides introductory information for general learning about the history of Indian education. Although the research for the book was conducted in recent times, the book’s focus on the past is somewhat limiting. The inclusion of broader contemporary social, political, and economic themes could have further explained how Native American higher education arrived where it is today.

T.K.B.


Common Purpose: Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods to Rebuild America

by Lisbeth B. Schorr.
New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1997. 482 pp. $27.50.

In Common Purpose: Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods to Rebuild America, Lisbeth Schorr sets out to refute those who view social reform efforts as inexorably inadequate to the problems facing our society — and refute them she does. Focusing on reform efforts aimed at welfare, child welfare, and schools, Schorr identifies a host of programs across the nation that have produced impressive results and explains why.

Common Purpose is divided into three sections. In Part One, “Spreading and Sustaining Success,” Schorr carefully outlines the attributes of successful interventions. For example, she argues that successful programs are comprehensive in scope — aimed at addressing the constellation of problems facing those in need rather than offering discrete interventions. These programs, often long-term, aim to assist families, entire neighborhoods, or communities, rather than provide a specific service to a given person. Further, successful programs evolve and adapt to the needs of their clients over time. Staff members who run these programs are consummate professionals, expert at what they do. In addition to developing well-considered policies and procedures, however, they also invest considerable energy in establishing trust with their community partners.

Common Purpose provides a devastating critique of our social system and explains how various social structures prevent successful programs from proliferating. Replicating or even sustaining such programs has proven extremely difficult. Schorr explains:

We have not acknowledged that the attributes of effectiveness are consistently undermined by the institutions and systems on which they depend for funding and legitimation. . . . Protective bubbles can be created by foundation funding, by a powerful political figure, by a leader who is a wizard, by promises that the effort will be limited in scale and time, or by some combination of all of these. The problems arise when the successful pilot program is to expand and thereby threatens the basic political and bureaucratic arrangements that have held sway over the decades. (p. 19)

In chapter two, Schorr explores how three programs have grown and expanded, despite the long odds — YouthBuild, which helps young people in urban areas develop academic and leadership skills while engaged in renovating low-income housing; Healthy Start, a home-visiting program that assists new parents and has significantly reduced the incidence of child abuse; and New York City’s Beacon Schools, which provide multiple services onsite.

Chapter three is an exploration of how bureaucracy constrains innovation — how rules and policies limit the flexibility of local efforts and tie the hands of program staff. Schorr then describes specific strategies that have “tamed” the bureaucratic beast. Here, and throughout the book, she acknowledges that reform is difficult, explains why, and describes programs that have been successful in spite of the challenges.

In Part Two, “Reforming Systems,” Schorr looks closely at interventions in three specific areas — welfare, child welfare, and schools. In each chapter, she outlines the current efforts being undertaken, notes their shortcomings, and then offers examples of programs that have succeeded. For example, in chapter eight, “Educating America’s Children,” Schorr offers a concise overview of what she terms a consensus regarding successful schools. For example, she finds that successful schools see academic learning as central to their mission. Many are “intentional communities” that underscore and attempt to convey communal and societal norms and values.

Finally, in Part Three, “Rebuilding Communities,” Schorr describes in detail seven “neighborhood transformation initiatives.” She underscores the importance of systemic reform — grappling with issues of economic growth, educational improvement, and community-building concurrently. Schorr also explores the paradox that sustainable initiatives are built both on the resources of the community itself — “strengthening the norms, supports, and problem-solving resources that link individuals to one another and to institutions of their community” (p. 362) — and through securing external resources that bring “clout and influence” (p. 363). Finally, she underscores the importance of designing initiatives on the basis of “plausible theories of change” (p. 364) — whether that knowledge is gained through research or experience.

Schorr’s book is a reminder that thinking broadly and outside current structures is a prerequisite for meaningful change in social systems. Although the bureaucracy and political clout supporting the sometimes dismal status quo is considerable, there are examples of programs and initiatives that have persevered — grown and thrived and made a difference. Educators will find that Common Purpose not only introduces model programs and outlines concrete principles for successful educational initiatives, it also helps place educational institutions within larger societal structures. The book underscores how successful innovation often requires far broader efforts and less conventional partnering than is currently practiced. Educators, policymakers, researchers, and all who care about children will benefit from reading this useful, and ultimately hopeful, book.

M.H.


 

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