Language as talisman #elel2013

Yesterday at the  Everyday Language, Everyday Literacies Conference taking place in Sheffield, UK, the afternoon started with presentations from members of the Language as Talisman project, starting with Richard Steadman-Jones exploring the meaning of "talisman" (e.g. power, protection) and how that related to language. He was followed by Accents are R8 GR8’ – accommodating accents and dialects from David Hyatt. This project aimed at helping students to be confident about their use of language, be proud of their cultural heritage and help the school counter the criticisms from school inspections on the use of accent and dialect by teachers and pupils (i.e. non-use of "Standard English").
Rather than seeing this use of dialect as a deficiency, he put forward the contrastivist approach, in which you learn to be attuned to the differencies between one way of speaking and another, so that you are also capable of switching between them. Hyatt also mentioned accommodation theories.
The children in the study were asked when they would use their normal Rotherham accent and when they would "speak a bit more posh". They said, for example they might speak posh with new school-mate they didn't know, but otherwise would speak normally with their friends. However with a school inspector they were divided, some would speak normally, others explained that if you didn't talk posh the inspectors would think the teachers hadn't taught you to speak properly.
Kate Pahl tweeted a related work (some research mentioned by the speaker) at http://www.cf.ac.uk/encap/resources/welsh_linguistic_landscapes_from_above_and_below_final_with_figs.pdf
The website for the Talisman project is at http://languagetalisman.wordpress.com/
Photo by Sheila Webber, photoshopped, 2013

Renditions of the discourse of persons with disabilities by the non-disabled role-playing in a virtual world #elel2013

Another report from the Everyday Language, Everyday Literacies Conference taking place in Sheffield, UK, #elel2013. In the first parallel session today I heard Natasha Rappa (National Institue of Education, Singapore) talking about Understanding Re-Voicing: Renditions of the discourse of persons with disabilities by the non-disabled role-playing in a virtual world. The places of research were (physically) Singapore and (virtually) the 3D world, Second Life. I chose this session because of my interest in Second Life. In Singapore there has been work to support those with disabilities, but they remain less visible than in e.g. the UK. The speaker's aim was to get students to hear and understand better the experiences and voices of teenagers who have disabilities. Rappa's research question was: How do non-disabled adolescents re-voice the discourse of those with disabilities. She worked with three groups each with 5 people. She facilitated role playing in Second Life. Before this the students analysed news artcles about people with disabilities (looking at choices in wording and grammar) to heighten awareness and knowledge. The students compared stories from mainstream media and a society for those with disabilities, and then looked at specific individuals who had written or told their stories of disability.
Following this, the students role-played scenarios in which they role played a disabled person or people who were bully or defending the disabled person. Data collection was through students' one-paragraph responses to the question whether the disabled should be taught in special schools, a worksheet about the chosen real life narrative of disability and an essay responding to the question "the disabled are weak". The concept of "Fresh talk" (Goffman) as a result of a change in footing was important in approaching the research.
She selected some insights. One was showing how one student had re-voiced some of the arguments of his chosen "real life" disabled person, in his defence of himself role-playing a disabled person in Second Life. To that extent there was not "Fresh talk", but rather echoing another's voice in the role play. In the post role playing reflection, this student distanced himself from the role and put forward the argument of the other students, saying that the disabled person would be better of in a special school.
In her analysis the speaker had described a matrix from "Imitating" (e.g. echoing) to "Recasting" (e.g. "co-opting") with a middle ground of "melding", "juxtaposing" etc., and she noted that the students moved between different footings. The "Fresh talk" occurred more with those students who took the middle ground (perhaps because they were trying more to work out the relationship between their own identity and that of the disabled person?).
In discussion the issue emerged of the students' immersion, or lack of it, in Second Life and how that impacted their reactions, and whether the task was a bit too binary or encouraging extreme responses rather than collaborative debate. The speaker talked about practical influences on the research design, e.g. where this intervention fitted into the students' curriculum.

Exploring literacy, identity and learning lives in educational transitions #elel2013

Another day, another conference and I am now at the Everyday Language, Everyday Literacies Conference #elel2013taking place in Sheffield, UK. Øystein Gilje started the day with a keynote talk on Exploring  literacy, identity and learning lives in educational transitions. It drew on the Local literacies and community spaces project, which is centred on the Grorud valley, Norway. His focus (and the focus of the project) was learner identity: “learning lives”. I haven't been able to locate the website for this project yet, but I'll add that when I do. The Grorud Valley is a new conurbation on the outskirts of Oslo, which people from various parts of the world and from Norway (including Oslo's inner city) have migrated to.
Whilst close to Oslo, it is also close to the countryside. It is a place which is identified as having social and cultural clashes, "another place", with a problematic identity. Gilje identified Oslo itself as a divided city. However, the Grorud valley has become a particular focus for discussion on immigration and disquiet about change. The researchers looked at how the Grorud Valley was presented in local and national media.
A key question was how young people dealt with educational transitions, e.g. moving into schools in teh valley, and moving out of the valley into e.g. university. Gilje described some existing  initiatives that had been set up in the region e.g. to prepare young immigrant learners for school.
The Learning Lives project looked at cohorts 5-6yrs, 15-16 and 18-19, with 20 informants (and their families) in each cohort, between October 2010 and December 2011. This timespan included the 2011 massacre of young people and the Oslo city centre bomb, and the speaker talked a little about the impact of that on him as a researcher.
Researchers followed the participants in the Grorud Valley and through their transitions. So they were looking at how the young people constructed their learner identities across contexts, including looking at the sites of knowldege and the Valley as a social place. This included asking parents to reflect on their child as learner. The team of four researchers were also concerned with the choices the young people had to make as learners. There are limited choices between primary/secondary and upper secondary education, and a lot more between upper secondary and tertiary education. The first cohort (5-6 years) is when the children go from kindergarten to school.
The speaker followed 24 children from 3 kindergarten and (at the upper age level) followed 12 media students and 12 skincare students (to vocational education), 6 apprentices in garage, and a colleague followed 12 students into academic programmes. Data was collected through observation, interviews, questionnaire and artifacts created with the participants (e.g.drawings, maps, scrapbooks) which stimulated reflection. Analysing the data was a complex procedure and the speaker talked a little about how it was coded, with some aspects being routinely coded e.g. place, type of practice.
The speaker showed a couple of video clips, firstly "Martin", who wanted to be a film maker, talking about how and why he had remixed in a video. The context was a media class "which allowed him to perform a learner identity, bringing in identity as a rap artist" and allowed the students to draw on their knowledge from outside the classroom, and also learn about Ibsen (as Hedda Gabler was a key cultural element in the video). The speaker compared this with a clip of a 5-6 year old using a computer programme to learn to spell the word "fox", then following classmates' practice in clapping and hanging up her headphones (which was a signal in class for students to move to the next task). This is a learner identity where learners are being managed tightly, and fulfilling expected roles as learners, in contrast to the example of creating a video in the media class.
The speaker finished by identifying the varying learning contexts, the current and developing identity, and in particular the "timescale" element. On a matrix with matrices of past/present and macro/micro he identified a phylogenetic (wider environmental/cultural) level, sociogenetic (roughly specific socio-cultural context) level, microgenetic (specific literacy event) and ontogenetic (personal level). Within this matrix they are seeking to gain insights into learning identities at different times, in different learning events, to form a picture of a learning life. I'm blogging this quickly, so as usual I cannot guarantee that I captured teh speaker's intentions accurately.