The Missing Link
Wow! These readings have given me a lot to think about and to be perfectly honest, I have put off making this post until the last second because I am/was still not exactly sure what I think or how I feel. In reading the Willinsky article and Chapter 3 of Orality and Literacy, I was often thinking of how my life, my context differs from those not just around the world but around Canada. There are as many shared interests and values as there are differences and I spent a lot of time thinking about them. How are we different? How are we similar? What does that mean for us? Secondly, what does this mean for my students and for me as their teacher?
In Willinsky’s article, I thought a lot about access to information and my students. I started to wonder how access to information impacts our life. Theoretically, the majority of the population has the same access to information. (As I keep reading and reflecting, I wonder do we? How do we know) But what I do I possess (skills, knowledge, socioeconomic status, etc.) that helps me access information more efficiently and successfully? I teach in a neighborhood school that services a population with low socioeconomic standing and resources. Some students however, are bused from a new development in the south end of the city. The access to information is quite varied. In addition, the way they might process the information is incredibly varied.
It lead me to wonder, is access to information the primary goal? If that is the case, we currently have more access more information that we could possibly process in a lifetime. But that isn’t where we stop. Regardless of what the information is, access to it is not the only goal. As a teacher, I see it as my responsibility to assist students in accessing information. Helping them navigate the process as well as the content is top priority. Then I help them ask, what does that mean? What can I do with the information? Where do we go from here? What implications does this have on my life?
What I learned from reading Chapter 3 in Orality and Literacy, is that context does matter. It influences the way we approach, gather, process, and share information. To deny or ignore the differences does a great disservice to the information and the impact it can have on the culture, context and/or individual. Until reading this chapter, I had never thought about the different ways cultures share and process information. I hadn’t thought that there would be a difference between how predominantly oral or written cultures communicate. By not acknowledging these differences, I am not facilitating the same process or information for the students in my classroom. I need to be mindful of the ways in which I share and collect information with and from all students. Missing this piece of the puzzle leaves a gap in learning, understanding, and equity. Without intending to, sometimes the access to information or the process of obtaining access to information is made more complex.
WOW! Such a powerful post Allison! You have asked some incredibly insightful questions and one’s I have found myself wondering as well. I couldn’t agree more that the role of the teacher is changing and we really need to help teach our students how to access information. Not all our students will have the same access and around the world, people certainly don’t have as much access as we do, but regardless we need to teach to help level the field. We may have less available to us, but that does not need to limit us.
Something this made me think was how important it is to then teach students to think critically about what they are finding and learning. We don’t know everything as a teacher, but we can work through and decipher information, and we do classify it almost instantly as useful or not. These are tools our students need as well.
I wonder how often though do my biases affect the information I seek out and the information I teach?
Hi Allison,
Really interesting. I think that with so much information we need to teach students to examine the information that they use for accuracy. Often students don’t know how to find really trustworthy sources, however they often trust written things. I think the logocentrism of our cultures helps to build that focus on trusting written material over spoken material. In the past, that may have been true because materials were vetted by publishers. However, today’s online material is rarely vetted and can include substantial inaccuracy.
Below is a fun exercise I ask my students to look at.
http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
To your point about interpreting the vast quantity of information, I think Vygotsky provides a solution. Vygotsky suggests we create a scientific and critical approach to the world by think through the use of concepts. Concepts are linguistic abstractions for types of things much like how Luria’s tool categorization test in Ong. Literate people usually think through their concepts. What Vygotsky suggests is that we need to develop more and better concepts as ways of interpreting the world. Through better language and terminology, we can better filter the world of our experience and use information effectively. As educators, teaching students concepts and how to apply concepts may be a way that fits with the needs of our students.
Moll, Luis. C. (2013) Vygotsky and Education. New York: Routledge.
Ong, Walter. (1982). Orality and Literacy. New York: Methuen.
Hi Allison,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and reflections on the Willinsky article. One of the characteristics I enjoy about the MET program is that it attracts a very diverse group of individuals, and it is this diversity that helps garner a broader perspective through discussions such as these.
My personal experience has not been too different from your experience regarding the problem of access to information. My school also has quite a disparity both in socioeconomic status, as well as philosophical stances on the use of technology in the classroom. Giving all students access to information has been a struggle from the get-go, as students who come from more advantaged backgrounds have an immediate competitive advantage over those who do not, since so many assessments require research and some basic computing functions, this problem is only exacerbated.
Furthermore, the school that I currently teach at has a diverse student population, and as I have found, cultural background plays significant role in influencing the both the social and educational behaviors of students. One of the questions that I have been pondering over the past few weeks has been regarding the significance of socioeconomic status and its impact on education. What I mean by this traditionally, education was afforded only to the privileged few. The access to educational then further widened disparity gaps, as the educated classes in turn passed down those class-based resources to their children, thereby widening economic gaps. Perhaps access to computers in our schools today, are just replicating this age old problem?