David Bloome

Procedural Display and Classroom Lessons

ABSTRACTBased on the microethnographic analysis of classroom lessons and on the application of cultural anthropology theory to classroom education, we argue that classroom lessons need to be understood as procedural display. Procedural display is display by teacher and students to each other of a set of interactional procedures which themselves count as doing a lesson. We argue that procedural display is not the same as nor necessarily related to the acquisition of intended academic or nonacademic content or skills. We further argue that acknowledgment of procedural display calls into question recent process-product research and effectiveness studies, among others. We argue that theoretical models of how classrooms work need to accommodate classroom lessons as procedural display.

Learning over time: uses of intercontextuality, collective memories, and classroom chronotopes in the construction of learning opportunities in a ninth-grade language arts classroom

Framed within interactional sociolinguistics, microethnographic discourse analysis, and cognitive science, we examine how intercontextuality, collective memories, and classroom chronotopes were used in generating learning opportunities in a ninth-grade language arts classroom. Five consecutive videorecorded lessons were analyzed focusing on how the teacher and students constructed relationships among past, present, and future events and contexts. Among the grounded theoretical constructs generated were (1) that the teacher and students socially constructed collective memories as interpretive frames for their reading and writing; and (2) they juxtaposed and problematized differing chronotopes in constructing learning opportunities and building a curriculum. We view these grounded theoretical constructs as contributions to current discussions of the nature and use of time in classrooms.

LEARNING TO READ IS WHO YOU ARE

In this article, the authors explore how the social dynamics in a reading and writing event influence “who children are” (e.g., good readers, non-readers, leaders). The authors explore how the presence of English language learners (ELL) affects the distribution of symbolic capital (i.e., who has high status and prestige) in classroom social interaction, thus affecting the social identities available to the participants. The authors look beyond cultural and linguistic mismatch as reasons for which ELL students are often marginalized during literacy events. They argue that the issue lies in addressing the status that ELL students often have within the classroom community in relation to their non-ELL peers.

Educational Contexts of Literacy

Recent research on educational contexts of literacy has focused primarily on a set of central issues and debates: definitions of literacy; basic cognitive, social, and linguistic processes involved in reading and writing; the efficiency and value of various pedagogical approaches and instructional materials; assessment of reading and writing achievement; and access to literacy learning opportunities for students outside the dominant culture and language. These debates and issues have been discussed in previous reviews of research on literacy in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (Grabe 1990, Kaplan, et al. 1984, Srivastava 1990), in recent handbooks of research (e.g., Barr, et al. 1991, Flood, et al. 1991, Pearson, et al. 1984), in major educational research journals (e.g., Applebee 1984, Clifford 1984, Dole, et al. 1991, Erickson 1984), in reviews commissioned by professional education and research organizations (e.g., Adams 1990, Anderson, et al. 1985, Goodman, et al. 1988, Hillocks 1986), and in other articles in this volume.

Interpellations of Family/Community and Classroom Literacy Practices.

Rather than our viewing literacy as a set of cognitive-linguistic skills acquired by an individual, we view literacy as a set of social and cultural practices enacted by a group. Such a view of literacy has a deep research and theoretical base in anthropological and socio cultural studies (Basso, 1974; Baynham, 1995; Cook Gumperz, Gumperz, & Simons, 1981; Heath, 1983; Hymes, 1981; John-Steiner, 1994; Street, 1984, 1993, 1995), social linguistic studies (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Gee, 1990; Hill & Parry, 1989; Ivanic, 1994; Lemke, 1988), sociologi cal studies (Baker, 1993; Baker & Luke, 1993), sociohistor ical psychological studies (Moll, 1987, 1990; Scribner & Cole, 1981), and educational studies (Bloome, 1987, 1989; Brodkey, 1987; Gadsden, 1992, 1997; Green, 1990; Solsken, 1993). From that point of view, the questions to ask about literacy practices focus on how persons engage in social and cultural activities that involve written language: What are the relationships between one set of literacy prac tices and another? How do a particular set of literacy prac tices affect the social and cultural identities of the partici pants? What are the social relationships among the participants? What are the power dynamics involved in the enactment of a particular set of literacy practices in a spe cific social situation? What social, cultural, and political agendas are being pursued and resisted? With those ques tions in mind, we approached the study of family and com munity literacy practices.2 Among the family and community literacy practices that researchers have studied that involve children are those that

LITERACY AS SOCIAL PRACTICE AND CLASSROOM CHRONOTOPES

Recently, researchers in a broad range of fields have defined reading and writing as social practices. This article discusses two sets of social relations involved in reading and writing practices: (a) author‐reader social relationships, and (b) participant social relationships. Each set of social relationships has implications for issues of authority, power, social identities, definitions of knowledge, emotional relationships, and social group identity. Building on Bakhtins (1981) construct of chronotope (time‐space relationships), this article also discusses two views of time in classroom settings that are related definitions of reading and writing as social practices: (a) time as quantity, and (b) classroom chronotopes.

Building Literacy and the Classroom Community.

It will no longer do . . . to think about literacy as some abstract, absolute quality attainable through tutelage and the accumulation of knowledge and experience. It will no longer do to think of reading as a solitary act in which a mainly passive reader responds to cues in text to find meaning. It will no longer do to think of writing as a mechanical manipulation of grammatical codes and formal structures leading to the production of perfect or perfectable texts. Reading and writing are not unitary skills, nor are they reducible to sets of component skills falling neatly under discrete categories (linguistic, cognitive); rather, they are complex human activities taking place in complex human relationships (italics added). (Robinson, in press)

Critical Discourse Analysis and the Study of Reading and Writing

Book reviewed in this article: Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. By Norman Fairclough. 1995. Discourse and Social Change. By Norman Fairclough. 1992. Critical Language Awareness. Edited by Norman Fairclough. 1992. Language and Power. By Norman Fairclough. 1989.

Lists in Reading Education Reform

though viewed by most people as a neutral genre, lists function in particular ways to frame and define knowledge and culture. Lists have been linked to growing affluence, consumerism, and capitalism (James, 1998), and to making writing unclear (Minto, 1998) among other trends. In brief, lists are not neutral genres; they can be highly political, the more so because they are taken to be innocuous.

Literacy Learning, Classroom Processes, and Race: A Microanalytic Study of Two Desegregated Classrooms.

Detailed descriptions of what is occurring in classrooms and schools serving poor and minority students can illuminate the successes and failures of educational institutions in meeting the needs of these groups. Detailed examination of literacy learning and literacy activities as they occur in classrooms and schools serving poor and minority students is particularly salient, because of the roles that reading and writing play, not only as the foundation of learning in the content areas, but as indicators of academic success. This article explores the nature of one set of contexts for literacy learning, focusing on how three key issues-race, literacy learning, and classroom pro-