Author: dgilbar

Working in small groups has been found to be one of the most successful ways of providing a more intimate learning environment and necessitates participation from the students who may stand to benefit from it the most. The potential of this format is often squandered on activities that require little to no critical thinking. The time and resources needed to organize and facilitate stimulating group work often seem so consuming that they may be entirely overlooked by educators.

Group discussion can be split into two formats: seminars and deliberations. The seminar is one of the most widely used formats as it requires a great deal of critical thought and active participation from all students, a collaborative process which can lead. Deliberations require abstract predictive thought to take all factors into consideration to determine an appropriate course of action. Many group activities benefit from an often organically occurring combination of these two forms.

It is much more important that new content and concepts are thoroughly learned than simply exposing students to a larger quantity of material while receiving little in-depth coverage. Small group discussions allow students the opportunity to engage with the material in a way that is otherwise impossible with traditional lecture-based mode of instruction. Students can exercise their comprehension of new concepts and language, develop their own thoughts, and guide one another towards deeper, holistic understanding.

Everyone has had frustrating experiences in the classroom with small groups. In my practice, I intend to implement small groups whenever it is appropriate to do so, but will be sure to avoid situations where students may become dependent on one another for assessments. It is this interdependence that can potentially lead to a great deal of inequity in engagement and discord within the group. When the scope of the work is reduced and the pressure of assessment is eliminated, students may begin to thrive and develop without any kind of external impediment.

Generating in-class discussion can be an incredibly useful process that helps information transition into knowledge. Unfortunately, in many cases it can be underused or even entirely misused. For a proper conversion to take place, discussions need to be able to ebb and flow organically, rather than follow a rigid, linear structure. What can educators help promote this kind of productive discussion and avoid the pitfalls of surface-level discussion?

Display questions are used to prompt simply confirmations of understanding. Although they are used with great frequency, they do not promote deeper learning, especially for those who aren’t typically prompted. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has been shown that the ones who would benefit most from this kind of check-in questions are the ones who are most often overlooked in the classroom. In my own practice, I hope to minimize relying on display questions whenever possible. I believe that by regularly using display question, we lower the learning expectations and teach students to focus on ‘surviving’ these randomized check-in questions rather than continuously engaging with the material.

Open-ended questions call for more than observation or basic processing but actually necessitate some amount of independent critical thought. Follow-up questions may lead to further development, requiring students to justify and articulate their rationale. In other cases, they might be used to prompt students to clarify and organize their thoughts. Hopefully this kind of questioning leads to a natural discussion amongst students. A gentle influence must be adopted in order to direct an enriching dialogue without overtaking and limiting it.

Academic language can be adapted to many different uses. Each discipline uses its own discipline-specific variations of academic language. Sometimes the meaning of this language overlaps between disciplines, while in other instances it may carry an entirely different meaning. For instance, there are multiple uses of the word perspective in art, and although some of these uses may be similar to how it might be used when discussing science or history, there are certain uses that are entirely unique to the discipline. In addition to shared language, there is academic language that is entirely unique within a given discipline. It may eventually become so specialized within their discipline that it could become entirely unrecognizable to those outside the discipline.

Ensuring language competency cannot be the sole burden of English teachers but must be emphasized across all disciplines, a contemporary expectation that isn’t yet being universally adopted amongst educators. The danger is in that educators are experts in their discipline, and in many cases may overlook properly introducing complex language or its discipline-specific application simply because it seems rudimentary to them. It is crucial for educators to understand how students think and what they may be challenged by, and to become more aware of the way in which they reference existing language to explain new terminology.

In the language arts, the student’s ability to convey a literal understanding, to develop an intertextual reading, and to identify and explain recurring themes demonstrates understanding and thoughtful engagement by the student. In the language of history, it is used to establish context, content, and to interpret ideas and events from a particular time and to develop both a critical and empathetic understanding of how it is related to that which precedes and follows it. The language of science is often represented in ways that have little crossover with other disciplines. It is highly technical, empirical, objective, literal, well-organized, and hierarchical. The language of mathematics is perhaps the most distinct as it shares almost no academic language with other disciplines; it uses unfamiliar symbols and unusual methods of organization. It’s abstract nature makes it heavily reliant on a thorough understanding of prior concepts.

Academic language doesn’t always need to be overtly explained, and can often be inferred and reinforced in dialogue with students. Because of a lack of appropriate language to express an understanding, students will often provide fragmented answers to questions posed in the classroom. Demonstrating appropriate use of academic language specific to that discipline by neutrally rephrasing these statements is perhaps the most popular method to subtly develop academic language, and seems to be widely employed across many disciplines.

In many ways, language is more important than that which it describes. The books, facts, theories, and subjects will continue to change for students, but the specific language and the general linguistic ability that it develops will be a relatively static asset in sustaining an ongoing understanding of the world around them.

There are certain words that are used with great frequency that elude general definition. In the arts, perhaps there are no words quite as vague and yet loaded with meaning as the words creative, beautiful and abstract. What do these words mean to you? How do you use them in colloquial speech? In what ways are they used in your particular discipline?

In “A Focus on Vocabulary,” Lehr, Osborn, and Hiebert examine the dangers of deficient vocabulary and the processes by which new vocabulary is acquired. They are limiting their discussion of vocabulary to more advanced words that learners may be exposed to at higher levels and not the fundamental vocabulary that is used in basic, day-to-day communication.

Some words may be understood enough to be received but not comfortable enough to be used. A given passage or statement may contain a word that is entirely new to us, but a general definition can often be inferred based on its context (A Focus on Vocabulary, p. 4). From there, our working definition or schema of these words is gradually expanded upon as we learn more about it through further exposure in different contexts. Eventually, we may be comfortable enough to begin experimenting with these words and may begin applying them in novel ways.

There is a great range of vocabulary knowledge across all grade levels. Throughout all assessed age groups, the range varies by a factor of ten within each peer group, respectively (A Focus on Vocabulary, p. 2). The current approach to these differences in the Canadian school system is streaming. However, it is known that learning opportunities become polarized over time; increased exposure leads to an improved vocabulary, where reduced expose leads to fewer opportunities for improvement. This calls the efficacy of streaming into question. Educators want to reduce, not simply accommodate, these differences in vocabulary.

Studies have shown that educators simply cannot explicitly teach all necessary vocabulary within schools (A Focus on Vocabulary, p. 3). Other opportunities to build schema beyond the walls of the classroom need to be identified and embraced. Lehr, Osborn, and Hiebert highlight an array of methods by which learners might expand their vocabulary (A Focus on Vocabulary, p. 4-18).

Multimedia is tremendously useful in engaging learners and building schema, but its temporal nature reduces the ability to individually adjust pace in order to process appropriately. Teachers, family, and peers may gradually increase daily opportunities for exposure to new vocabulary by introducing them in a comfortable context (A Focus on Vocabulary, p. 7), but this can be an incredibly slow-going process and opportunities may be few and far between.

I believe that reading is the most sustainable and effective form of vocabulary study. There are many reasons for why this may be the case: materials that are readily available, less mentally taxing than active discourse, or how the flow of narrative engages learners. Additionally, with the advent of computer-based technologies, there have been a plethora of new opportunities to keep learners engaged with the material and continually developing new and existing schema (A Focus on Vocabulary, p. 16-17). Reading may be the dominant means of building schema, but it is clear that a synthesis of diverse means are required to equip learners with the necessary vocabulary they need to thrive.

Language success doesn’t end with accomplishing basic literacy; students must be able to efficiently continue to build their literacy and expand their language abilities. Theorists are beginning to return to the basic building blocks of language in order to better understand how to improve comprehension and composition ability further down the line. However,  secondary students are finding that the expectations placed upon them are progressing faster than their abilities currently allow. The current strategies being employed aren’t enough to close the gap.

Fang and Schleppegrell coin the term functional language analysis, which “enables students to identify language patterns and associated meanings specific to particular disciplines as they focus on how language works, helping them comprehend and critique the texts of secondary content-areas.” It categorizes text into three distinct but cohesive types of meaning: experiential, textual, and interpersonal. An analysis of these areas affords students a heightened awareness of which language to apply in a given context, as well as which patterns of language are bridged between disciplines.

Examining functional language analysis from an arts perspective, it can said that the development of technical or theoretical knowledge coincides with the development of the language that is used to describe it. In short: complex topics require complex language. I have certainly found this to be true in my own experience, and I believe that most anyone could relate to a situation with which they felt confined by the limits of their vocabulary to adequately express an idea, emotion, or experience. In art, we often like to consider how a work of art can articulate the ineffable: to express something that couldn’t be fully defined through language.

Fang and Schleppegrell go on to highlight several features of language in the secondary classroom, such as nominalization and multimodality. I find that the latter is the most readily applicable to the field of art education. Art is fundamentally multimodal in nature; it is constructed through various media and perceived in endless configurations. In my practice of art education, the use of multiple phrasings or analogies to critically frame a work is an invaluable tool in developing a thorough understanding.

Discipline-specific Academic language, as well as idioms, tone, and voice need to be explicitly taught in order for students to better engage with the material. Fang and Schleppegrell propose that the responsibility to raise student competency isn’t placed solely on literacy fundamentals, but that it is a ongoing process that is built into the study of each discipline.

Jeff Zweirs explains the role of academic language in his text on “Building Academic Language.” Academic language has the potential to be an incredible tool to aid us in communication, especially in the classroom. Unfortunately, it often leads to confusion and misunderstanding in both English language learners and native speakers with tragic frequency. Zweirs only covers the issue of clarity very briefly, but I believe clarity to be one of the largest barriers preventing youth from adopting academic language.

Unsurprisingly, academic language is used most heavily amongst academics, presumably more than any other population. Yet even within academia, mainstream English is the more comfortable of the two languages. Academic language is built upon a foundation of mainstream English, and no matter how advanced a given academic may be, it is still a learned register. In other words, academic language is a second language even to the most specialized and verbose of academics.

I would never argue that academic language is superfluous. We can use a single word to explain a concept that would otherwise take a great deal of communication to explain. It allows us to communicate concepts that are often abstract or complex in a more effective, concise, and salient manner. There is a tradeoff though: there exists a threshold where academic language ceases to be beneficial. In fact, it can be entirely counterproductive, decreasing the clarity, limiting the audience, and diluting the material. It is not necessarily an issue of vocabulary; even words that a well-educated person thoroughly understands may become overwhelming when packed into a single run-on sentence.

I wouldn’t necessarily argue that academic language standards need to be lowered across the board. It is simply my belief that academic language shouldn’t be used for its own sake; after all, we wouldn’t  say to a child: “Wouldn’t you like to relieve yourself in the lavatory?” We would simply ask “Do you need to potty?” When we use academic language, we must constantly be questioning our motives. Are we using a given term because we have enough experience in our field to know the specialized language required to describe it, or because we can actually use that term to better articulate ourselves to our audience?

I’ve created this fun graph to better visualize this notion. The main disagreement is upon when and where efficiency begins to decline.

An example of where I believe this ‘sweet spot’ can be found is with the celebrated TED series. Scientist, artists, and activists are able to effectively and concisely communicate their area of interest to one another, even when discussing very cutting-edge concepts, through the use of a very minimal amount of academic language. It is at a level that is likely universal amongst those with a basic, unspecialized secondary-level background.

In a post-modern world, what benefit is there to keeping this knowledge exclusive to our specialization, limiting the breadth of who can interpret and find meaning in what we are saying? I believe that the more we can communicate what we mean without losing our audience on the words we choose to express ourselves, the more culturally relevant our discipline can become.