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Post by jennie on May 25, 2016 22:13:01 GMT
As I was reading I got a different idea of mushfake, I didn't see it as "faking it till you make it" but a balance of partial acquisition with the deeper insights we gain in situations foreign to us.
It's a little unrealistic to ask or hope for full mastery of a discourse in my opinion. As educators we should be using what students already know from their primary discourse and encouraging or even creating situations where there is a cognitive dissonance and students need to develop their own strategies. The struggle through concepts can be extremely beneficial and productive.
However, as I continued reading this interpretation of mushfake didn't make as much sense when it said that we ought to have our students resist this practice, so I'm not really sure..
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Post by bdelisi on May 26, 2016 1:01:26 GMT
Much like what Erica started this thread by saying, I do not agree with the way the author suggests for minority students to catch on to mainstream discourses. When it comes to education, faking it until you make it (mushfake) doesn't work. You may be able to fake it and understand what is going on at first, but what happens when you have to expand on the discourse or material that you are faking. If you ask me, that usually ends in a mess. Applying this to a school psychology view, mushfake would be like me giving a student the answers to an IQ test just so they do get put into special education, but not having the actually learn the skills needed to pass the test. I think a better way to help these students who are non-mainstream out is to ask them what they feel like they are missing out on or not understanding. From their responses, educators could come up with specific strategies and interventions to help these children catch up to where they need to be. I also think that it is crucial for educators to incorporate non-mainstream discourses into mainstream schooling. That way, students who are not part of the dominate culture do not feel so marginalized and students who are are becoming more cultured and gaining knowledge about their peers and the world around them.
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Post by Jack Bond on May 26, 2016 1:03:44 GMT
My thoughts on "mushfake" fell along the same lines as you all, Caroline, Colleen, and Erica. I didn't like what I got from Gee's point with it, but I understood his intention.
Gee wasn't saying they should fake the discourse with the materials they have, but should try and acquire & learn it as best as they can with the materials around them (as I understood it). For example, if a kid doesn't have parents who can help him acquire the discourse being used in school, he'd have to seek outside help to acquire it (like the library or something, a setting where he can pick it up habitually).
That being said, my issue with Gee is that he doesn't seem to be thinking from a pragmatic or realistic perspective: Yes, kids would do well mushfaking and making due with what they can use, but depending on the kid's age the adults in their life have a huge say in this. Middle or elementary school-age kids, for exmaple, have no way at all to go out and pursue other means to acquire a discourse, as they're dependent on their parents or teachers most of the time to be helped; this creates issues with the resources and time teachers/parents have to do this. Now regarding high school and college-age youths this is a different beast entirely, as they can have the means and time to mushfake, but the question is if they have the *motivation* to do so. Not to sound too realistic, but a fair number of high schoolers or college-age kids don't want to mushfake as they have other social things they'd prefer to do. This doesn't mean ALL of them, but it's naive to think the average high school student would be inspired to go out of their way to learn new ways to acquire material.
And thus we have a vicious circle, because a way to increase motivation and isnpire more mushfaking in some kids is to do so at an early age, mold their minds before the well is poisoned, so to speak. I look at the prime example of mushfaking as Matilda, the title character of the movie/book. You have this little girl from a family of lazy, sleazy people who don't do anything to help her learn or acquire a discourse, but she has the mindset of mushfaking, doing what she can with what she's got, by going to the library and feeding that desire for knowledge. And that's not uncommon in the real world, but it also isn't common. And if there are children or adolescents like this, mmost of them will need adult (parent, teacher, etc.) support to encourage this mushfaking.
Gee's idea isn't bad, but I just see too many issues with how it can practically be applied even though the idea does make sense.
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Post by hannahacree on May 26, 2016 3:06:25 GMT
When reading about mushfake and how it applies to students and discourse, I wasn't sure if I was missing something or if Gee was seriously saying the things he was. His suggestions seemed a bit far fetched and seemed to mask the problems of students not becoming part of a discourse. I see that others had similar feelings. How will students ever acquire a discourse if they never experience the real thing and are only "faking" it?
I think it can be useful for a student to use what knowledge and experience they have to make the discourse more relatable, but at some point accommodation has to occur and the student must learn the practices of the discourse. However, I think the tools and knowledge the student has can be used to learn these practices.
Something important for educators, and those in the field to not forget: all students have something to offer, all have lived their own life and bring to the table a unique set of experiences and body of knowledge.
I think keeping this in mind can help to shrink this discourse learning gap. When we set up opportunities for students to use their own knowledge and experiences to make sense of a discourse we 1.) make the discourse more accessible to the student, 2.) give value to a student and their experiences, which can promote student motivation 3.) diversify the things that all students encounter in school and make known multiple points of view.
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Post by delilah on May 26, 2016 4:03:34 GMT
Like many of you guys, i found this passage to be somewhat disappointing in the sense that i felt as if the author was just saying tat kids that weren't raised around success won't really be able to succeed. It basically said that you need to be comfortable with the discourse before introduction to it in order to succeed. I felt the same way as caroline in being reminded of the Brozo video, we need to incite students interest, like mentioned in bringing boys into reading, we need to encourage students to be interested though relating it to their discourse. Many teachers just seem unwilling to work like that and assist in making them feel comfortable in their schooling so that they can grow and learn. If the students are interested and confident then they will learn, and to do that we need to make school appear to have some relevance to the only discourse that they grew to know and love.
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Post by carolinebyrnes on May 28, 2016 12:37:46 GMT
Here is a place to discuss reading 6
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Post by carolinebyrnes on May 28, 2016 13:49:02 GMT
Something that really stood out from this reading was the idea of differentiated instruction. Differentiated instruction involves matching instruction to meet the needs of individual learners. RTI and differentiated instruction go together well and are extremely similar. Both focus students instructions on different levels of competence. Differentiated instruction will allow teachers to focus instruction on the needs of the students in his or her classroom. However, differentiated instruction might be difficult to implement because of the many different types of needs presented in the classroom. Ideally there would be only two or three groups in a classroom but what happens if there are more? I can imagine this being extremely stressful for teachers. What are some tips to make differentiated instruction more feasible for teachers?
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Post by jennie on May 30, 2016 2:38:05 GMT
This is the first education course I've taken outside the realm of STEM instruction, so a lot of these things I never really think about.
In reference to carolines question I think it can be beneficial to have students at different levels work together some of the time to have more advanced students model for the less advanced.
A question that I had would be, do you think that fluency is the mastery of this discourse?
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Post by colleen on May 30, 2016 16:13:18 GMT
It is interesting that to an outsider, teaching reading may be seen as an easy task because so many of us learn to read as a prerequisite for the rest of our educational career. I think that few people outside of education realize exactly how many different elements are involved in reading instruction and likewise, reading acquisition. Having a minor issue in any of the sub-components of reading discussed (i.e., comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, etc.) can create serious issues for a child.
I agree with Jennie's recommendation that pairing students at perhaps higher levels of reading comprehension with students at lower levels may help facilitate learning. In order for the child to explain and help their peer, they truly have to understand the material. Likewise, it may be beneficial for the struggling student to have reading explained to them from a different approach than what the teacher is presenting. This method may help ease the strain of differentiated instruction for teachers who have multiple levels of academic achievement to cater to.
In response to Jennie's question, I think that fluency and mastery are very similar but not quite the same thing. In my opinion, material can be read fluently and comprehended without reaching the next level, which is mastery. There are many subjects in my educational background that I read about and comprehended, maybe only enough to answer questions about, but never truly mastered.
Here's a follow up question - can mastery be considered the ideal and if so, is it actually being achieved? It seems as though the ideal in schools should be for students to come away with a mastery level of comprehension of specific topics. In reality, most students feel the need to learn as little material as they can get away with to pass test questions and then move on to the next subject. The focus in schools doesn't seem to be on mastery and instead focuses on just getting by. Conversely, there really doesn't seem to be a need to have mastery in obscure subjects that won't be of much use to certain students.
It's no surprise that students struggle when they move to a higher level of instruction because they never fully mastered the prerequisite material to start with. FYI, that sentence pretty much sums up my relationship with college level mathematics in general...so yeah, the question is can mastery be considered the ideal and if so, is it actually being achieved?
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Post by bdelisi on May 31, 2016 0:28:16 GMT
This weeks reading assignment brought us to the FCRR website and they had very nicely laid out the different components that are essential for reading success. This was super helpful for me since I have been struggling with the concept literacy practices. I kind of got the idea that these essentials for reading that included phonics, phonological awareness, comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency were the literacy practices and the teaching practices were the individual strategies that were suggested to build upon these areas. Really helped solidify the ideas of literacy in a way that was easy for me to understand. Additionally, as a school psychologist, some of the learning disability that we test for are reading fluency, reading comprehension, and basic reading skills, which were all outlined on the website. This could prove as a useful resource in the future for us practitioners as a refresher when looking into these disorders and providing teachers and parents with possible intervention ideas when working with students who have an SLD in the area of reading.
Colleen-I totally agree that the goal of schools is to gain mastery, but the goal if students is to get by. I think this mindset could be due to the fact that students are constantly trying to come up with what they need to get a certain grade. It is the grade that they are striving for, not necessarily the content. How is it possible for us to get rid of this mindset? Get rid of grades? But then what would be the replacement. It would be interesting to see possibly in a research study if a school got rid of days, what are the measurements for the students outcomes and how are the students attitudes towards the content.
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Post by aholcomb on May 31, 2016 1:06:06 GMT
Colleen, you brought up so many good points in your post. As I was reading this week's readings, I could not help but notice all of the different suggested ways to teach students how to gain reading skills, fluency in particular. Looking at the suggestions to do echo reading, choral reading, audio-assisted reading, partner reading, etc., I was reminded of all of the ways that I was taught how to read. None of this has ever really clicked before, but I was definitely taught to read in a multitude of ways. This leads me to your first point about how it may seem easy to teach reading to an outsider. I do not necessarily agree, but it is something that I always thought you were either very good at teaching or very bad at teaching. I never thought that there were tools that you could use to teach someone how to read. Looking at all of the ways to teach children how to read now, it is definitely both more complex and more simple to me at the same time. It only makes sense that there are ways to teach children how to read, but at the same time it makes me respect everyone that helped me learn how to read because now I know it was not something they just naturally had a gift for teaching.
I do agree that children are not truly mastering their material before they move on, and the fact that you likened it to your college math experience struck an all too familiar chord with me (I fell out of love with math when I realized I was supposed to be mastering pre-calc in 12 weeks). I think mastery is always ideal, but I also think most children are being rushed before they find it. I think one of the main problems with the current education system is the fact that as soon as the "average" student has mostly grasped the concept, it is time to move on to the next topic. How this will be fixed, I am not entirely sure. However, it is an interesting thing to think about as we all move on with our careers.
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Post by ericalharris on May 31, 2016 2:34:26 GMT
Like Bri, I think this reading helped solidify the idea of literacy practices for me by linking them to something more traditionally seen as literacy. It helped to see a broad skill (reading) broken down into specific practices and further into teaching practices that could support each specific skill. I agree with Colleen that few people outside of education probably realize all of the different components that go into learning to read and how a seemingly small problem at any step can compound into serious issues later on. As a school psychologist, I can't help but think about the different cognitive processes that are involved in each of the sub-areas of reading and how we would identify a disability in any of those areas. I also agree with Bri that this page could be useful for school psychologists as it outlines teaching practices that help build each skill, so we could use this to examine the way the child has been taught as one of the steps in identifying if their reading problems are due to a disability or some other factor like less-than-perfect teaching. This could also be useful in consultation with teachers as it lists specific teaching practices to support specific skills.
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Post by delilah on May 31, 2016 3:32:36 GMT
in response to colleen, i definitely believe that mastery is the ideal, however for the most part i don't believe that it is being achieved. mostly because of how you put it, students try to get by with as little a possible, in which they really don't want to master the subject, and you can't master a discipline without interest in it. For the students that are interested, i believe that they obtain a mastery of the discipline.
honestly though, is there such thing as mastery of a subject when still in primary school, or do we believe that we have to further our education in order to "master" it, in which do we think that everyone has the capability to master every subject if they wanted to?
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Post by delilah on May 31, 2016 3:39:22 GMT
i also found the readings interesting in remembering all of the ways in which I was taught, and I loved colleens statement, that getting behind in a single area will have a huge impact on a students literacy later on. And i find this so true, especially for me because i got stuck in my vocabulary, however i was strong in my other areas, so i was great at reading until i was expected to read sophisticated vocabulary and I got to a point where i felt as if it was too late, and now it makes reading very difficult for me at a college level. I just want to know, what can a teacher do to fix this, to bring a student back to where they left off, do we think that there is something that can be done if they aren't truly willing to try?
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Post by carolinebyrnes on May 31, 2016 14:20:52 GMT
Here is a place to discuss reading 7
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