Moving Forward
To be able to synthesize the reading from this week is complex and difficult to articulate through a blog post. Our previous reading and discussions in class has drawn me to the intersections of identity and the process versus the product. Leander and Frank (2006) bring theoretical background to expand my thinking of identity and literacy and put it in motion. What stood out to me, and created a deeper understanding, was when Leander and Frank (2006) focus on work “that argues that identity cannot be conceived in either macro (social and cultural) or micro (psychological) units, but must rather be thought of as always in circulation between intensely personal and powerfully social forces” (pg. 186) Learning in motion is not something new to me, however, this work of identity in motion does push me forward to articulate how I believe children learn in the classroom.
Classroom environments provide me with a visual of identity and its complexities. Kuby and Vaughn’s (2015) work valued the children’s ways of being and knowing by using, “the term becoming not to imply a future goal or end result, but to illuminate the fluid, sophisticate being of young children” (pg. 436). When teachers stand back and observe what is happening, I know state mandated standards would be evident and motivating to provide more opportunities within the classroom walls. I do agree with Kuby and Vaughn (2015) that the field of poststructual theory provides opportunities to look at literacy in a new light, but I also think the foundation of a literacy workshop should be valued. Because of this foundation, we are able to move forward and keep pushing ourselves to examine current practices. It is easy, at times, to forget where literacy started and where the shifts have occurred. To say one approach is best practice would not value how literacy educators have come to this level.
What I enjoyed most was how these authors built upon previous work and the ability to bring current knowledge of identity to the forefront. Leander and Boldt (2012) address my push back while reading, isn’t it just all arbitrary? They leave me with the limits of understanding human practices and the inability to have directness with this research. “There is, at the same time, the powerful potential of constantly changing assemblages and of thinking of the ways that both research and pedagogy can build from its own major elements to emerge into improvisational flight” (pg. 44). I am left thinking through the fresh lens to look at identity the same way I look at a classroom, ever changing!
Beth, I love your closing statement, "I am left thinking through the fresh lens to look at identity the same way I look at a classroom, ever changing." I took away something similar from the readings, in that, I liked the idea of identity as fluid - being and becoming; evolving almost - out of the environments within which we are being. I like that you included pedagogy in your post, because I believe that postmodern theory has a place within pedagogy and opens doors for new or "fresh lens" to look at how we teach and teach teachers to teach within the classroom or school environment overall.
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ReplyDeleteI love the pictures you chose to share this week in your post. I think what you emphasize through those texts is the representation of ALWAYS becoming. These pictures are literacy in the making. Though they are held still (I suppose video would be the closest you could come on a blog post), they emphasize this in the moment/messiness/randomness that came out of the readings for me this week.
Beth,
ReplyDeleteI am hoping this works the second time since the internet lost my first reply. I appreciated how you described this week's readings as "learning in motion" and "identities in motion." I think this articles helped me to understand many of my students' becomings better. When I was teaching I loved seeing the moments of identities in motion, even though I didn't understand what it was at that time. After reading Leander and Boldt's (2012) descriptions of Lee and Hunter and how the assemblages available at different moments revealed their identities, it reminded me of one particular former student of mine. This student really responded to assemblages that I wasn't aware of as a teacher. For example, one day I took off a cloth tie belt off the sweater I was wearing and laid it on my desk. My student took the belt and during the next few minutes during calendar the belt -in the context- shifted his identity from being a student doing math - to a karate fighter - to tying the belt around his head and becoming a dancer. All of this from an assemblage I couldn't have predicted. My teacher perspective wonders how do we incorporate this into a classroom. While I could create the time for that student in that moment, what would have happened if the rest of the class had shifted identities also? I am trying to imagine how this would look in a classroom.
~Sarah
Beth, YES, YES, YES. Everything you said plus more. Your reference to Leander and Frank (2006) pulled me toward their use of "hybridization". I am realizing am most comfortable with this concept that identity is where the psychological meets the social and cultural. I don't know if I agree with you about postructural not valuing the foundation of literacy workshop, though. I saw a deep valuing of workshop in Kuby and Vaughn (2015). I especially liked how they positioned the teacher within the piece as both wanting to go beyond the district/state mandates while still being bound by them. I thought their exploration of the children's identity was also an exploration of her identity, and I wished they had written about that.
DeleteI had the same thought too about Leander and Boldt (2012) point being too arbitrary but as I read their arguments carefully, it started to make sense. Like you, I love that they did not undo or throw away the earlier ideas of multiliteracies but rather build on it. I must admit sometimes I still think this is all and truly beautiful and remarkable to point out but how can we as researchers relate it an educator in a hyperdiverse classroom who is being pressured to meet standards, as if standard ways of becoming to put it in Kuby and Vaughn's terms.
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