Tumblr: Third culture kids

I found this webpage. I laughed a lot with some of the posts : )
http://whenyoureathirdculturekid.tumblr.com
This one in particular:

When someone I've known for years still doesn't pronounce my name properly 

http://whenyoureathirdculturekid.tumblr.com/post/48610035837/when-someone-ive-known-for-years-still-doesnt

Diversity in the classroom

One of the aspects that can be drawn from Johns' article "Linguist Diversity and Instructional Practices" is that peer learning is one of the ways to encourage an inclusive environment in college classrooms, although as we saw last week, in Heath's Ways with Words there was also an example of peer learning in a lower educational level. As an international student myself, I find collaborative work and peer learning very useful although sometimes it is hard to make yourself understood by the others, specially with issues related to content that does not fit into "expected" content in a particular context (this is actually hard to explain). What I am referring to here is intimately linked to the idea that critical thinking is a social construct, as well (142). The way we learn how to think critically about all sort of things is cultural in most cases. However, I also believe that multicultural students have developed the skill to go beyond two "cultural thinking" as they usually have to simultaneously manage two ways of thinking. I have heard many times, not only among people who study languages or  any other discipline in the humanities field but also among engineers who study abroad things like "I speak German in the company I am doing an internship for, but when I have to talk to my boss sometimes we communicate in English to clarify things and I also think in Spanish at the same time, so my mind jumps from one language to another and to the social conventions of each culture as well". So , in my opinion, there is something else apart from cultural-critical thinking for multicultural people and that would be something like "multicultural critical thinking" and it consists of the ability to communicate and to engage in social interactions in which several cultures-languages are involved with the conscious awareness that you are also switching social and cultural norms.

Johns categorizes Hispanos is three groups, which I found simplistic in some way. I don't think I fully identify myself with any of the groups proposed. The only fact of categorizing students is sort of unfair because that limits the students' identities. Are these categories really necessary? I think biodatas are a good way for educators to get to know their students, who do not necessarily have to fit into this typology.

After having read Lovejoy and Delpit we can affirm that students need to know that there are different varieties of English they can employ in their writing compositions and oral tasks and that one of them is gonna lead them or not to "success" , namely Standard English. However, if they are aware of the fact that they can use different varieties for different purposes, that it is up to them whether or not they want to make the efforts to have linguistic competence in these varieties and to master Standard English in particular, their instructors will have succeed in their teaching roles. In my opinion, it is a matter of promoting cultural-sensitiveness as well as teaching linguistic, pragmatic and sociolinguistic issues.

Ethnography and education

This week's reading, the second part of Heath's Ways with Words (1983)  made me change my mind a little bit regarding ethnographic studies. While the first part of the book was a general study on the two towns (Roadville and Trackton) the second part focuses on the educational context more specifically, which I found more interesting. In fact, among the different materials that ethnographic studies provide us with, the evaluations and notes taken by the teachers (chapter 7) and the stories written by the students are one of the most descriptive and informative ways to understand the sociocultural context of a particular situation.  For example, by reading the notes taken by teachers in pages 268-271, we get first hand information about the learning and teaching processes of both teachers and students and what type of issues they think they are facing.
One of the texts that struck me the  most was one note written by a white teacher (270), who mentions that black students were like foreigners to him/her. While (s)he realizes that it was because of his lack of sensitiveness towards black students what caused misunderstanding issues and not "ignorance or lack of education", the comparison (s)he employs (that of foreigners) is still (kind of) racist. However, I must admit that for that period of time, realizing that was more than enough. Would this statement be equated to current examples of discrimination in educational settings? How would we react if we replaced blacks for "hispanos" in that sentence? From my point of view, a declaration like that would not be very politically correct. It is interesting to notice how education is linked to history and Heath's study is a good example to helps us understand it and to realize that ethnographic studies could be particularly useful when trying to implement changes in education.

Another example that I found very informative is the one in which a black girl talks to a white teacher and claims for a fairer way to be understood: "why should my 'at home' way of talking be 'wrong' and your standard version be 'right'? (271). Maybe the answer to this question would be what the black principal says"we were more concerned with our own public image than the kind of pupils we turned out" (271).

Apart from these notes, Heath describes specific methods that were starting to be emplyed in the classrooms in order to promote a different approach towards learning. For instance, in pages 285-286, a teacher explains how she carried out a reading activity which made students start to think about this particular skill as something not only useful but also enjoyable. teachers, then started to motivate students to use reading and writing skills in their daily lives (289). Moreover, teachers became aware of cultural issues , as we Heath describes in page 290, and also she describes one particular example in which children from both communities interacted and listened to each others (291).

On Ethnography

This week's readings, Heath's Ways with Words, an ethnographic study on two communities made me think about several aspects.
In the fist place, Heath inevitably makes us wonder what education is and which agents are in charge of kid's education. As Heath narrates, "Trackton adults have had little schooling, but they believe it has made a difference for others, and it will make a difference for them. They tell their children: "go to school, learn to talk right, to read and write, and you can get on outta here". At home, children in both communitities learn language, hear their elders talk about "talkin" and "doin" right, and some have come to realize that languages, schooling and learning are critically linked to the ways one gets on at home, school and work" (1983: 29). Therefore, getting to now these homes and how things go there enables us to understand schooling at the same time. Heath's ethnographic study aims at better understanding the educational system of these two communities.
However, even though Heath is aware of the limitations of his study, we have to ask ourselves the following questions: would it be possible to carry out studies like this one at a larger scale? in what cases do we need to do it? what are the factors that determine that a particular schooling situation deserves to be ethnographically studied? And also, after having carried out the study, what are the factors that aregoing to be considered in order to implement modifications in a particular schooling situation?

My impressions while reading Heath's study were that I was reading something similar to a realistic novel and I would sometimes ask myself about the relevance of what I was reading. Some other times I would not understand what Heath wanted to express and I would have liked to see an example. Although Heath makes evaluative comments all the time, sometimes I wanted to know the why of certain things that I thought could be relevant. For instance, when Heath is interviewing two women and the laugh, Heath transcribes it but does not explain why they were laughing (1983: 64).
Therefore , an ethnographic study like this one may be interpreted in different ways by different people and thus, the outcomes of the study and the solutions proposed to implement the situation may differ a lot from each other. For example, what caught my attention was the fact that women seem to have a very different role than men. Heath says that "the link between mother and son lasts the longest and is the strongest" (68) and women write and read more than men do, so the role women have in educating the kids at home is much more relevant. Therefore, the way they have been educated is going to influence the way they will educate their kids. These are some of the aspects I focused my attention on, which because of my personality and my interests, may be different from the rest of the readers.
In my opinion, ethnography is very useful when we want to understand why something is happening in a particular situation but its role is to support or reject an already existing theory or hypothesis.

Ethnography: roles and limitations

This week´s articles about ethnography helps us to understand what the roles of ethnographic studies are as well as the limitations of this type of research. 

As Athanases and Heath (1995) and Hammersley (2006) explain, the fact that the roots of ethnography are in Anthropology determines what ethnography is: ¨the understanding of people´s perspectives, perhaps complemented by the study of various sorts of documents" (Hammersley 2006: 4).  Canagarajah refers to this type of research as the "realistic understanding" of a particular situation (1993: 603). 

However, this understanding is, in my opinion never completed for several reasons. The main one relates to subjectivity. In my opinion, the only fact of selecting a methodology as well as the setting and the participants for the study is biased. What Athanases and Heath (1995) say about students they "are cultural members" (267), thus, their opinions and behaviours represent specific samples of a particular culture, can also be applied to researchers and teachers. 

Also, despite one of the stages of Athanases and Heath´s guidelines, namely building rapport, participants in an ethnographic study may feel under pressure or "observed" and "analyzed" by the researcher, so their perspectives and opinions may not be totally honest. This relates to the tension between the emic-epic tension. How could objectivity be measured in ethnographic studies? And how can we promote more objective approaches to ethnography? One possible answer could be to carry out a study between several people instead of just one researcher. 

In the case of Canagarajah, his translations into English from the Tamil language spoken by the students convey a certain degree of "manipulation" as well. These translations, although they may seem an almost imperceptible manipulation could have been revised or contrasted by another person, and so they could have been more objective or, in other words, less personal. 

So, in my opinion, despite these limitations (among others, see , ethnography is a necessary type of research that can support other studies. Ann Mills  (2007) and  Canagarajah (1993) provide examples of how ethnography is useful in education. Actually, although this type of ethnographic studies take a long time, teachers can carry out mini-ethnographic studies right before the class starts. One of my professors at ISU interviewed each of his students (25) before the class started. Students had to complete a very short written interview (or survey) about their study-habits and their previous knowledge as well as about their personal interests and difficulties. Next, we talked to him about it and he got to understand our personalities. The outcomes of that mini-ethnograpy have determined the way he is teaching his class and what he expects us to achieve by the end of the semester. 

As for the political implications of ethnography, as Hammersley says " understanding people does not require sharing their beliefs, or being obliged to offer them support"  (2006: 11) or, on the contrary, reject their ideologies.  So the aims of ethnographic research just relate to understand the context behind a particular situation and do not imply a political position on behalf of the researcher. 

New Work Orders, New Literacy Practices

As Street claims the fact that due to Globalization new work orders have appeared, together with new epistemological and communicative orders, should lead researchers to “rethink” of both dominant literacies and literacy practices of “outside and often alien”groups (2001). This rethinking can also be related to Pennycook’s transgression theory, in the sense that it requires critical awareness and the construction of “new frames of thought” (2007: 41).

In my opinion and from my personal experience, large business corporations , as stated by Street ( 2001: 5) play a major role in promoting certain types of literacies due to the development of a new work order associated with “globalization of production and distribution” (2001:3).

I have a personal experienced which I didn’t explicitly linked to the ideas  of new work orders and  literacies until reading Street’s article. I worked for IBM Global Services for almost a year in a translation project. My job was to revise documents translated into Spanish from English and to localize those documents into many Spanish-speaking countries (Venezuela, Honduras, Colombia, Perú, Spain…etc). The documents would “travel” from The USA to India and then to Spain, where we would edit them and send them to those countries. The final step was to create web pages with those documents. I worked in a team of 12 people. Our project manager was in Belgium and she would contact us (in Spain) and the clients (in India, The USA and other Latin American countries). The standards for editing (and writing) were all the same, no matter where the documents were going to be localized. Sometimes, we (Spanish workers) wouldn’t understand the language of those documents either because the translation was not appropriate or because of the local expressions employed by the translators. However, those were the expressions used for the rest of the territories.

Me and my colleagues were always questioning the accurateness and/or appropriateness of our texts and we never found specific answers for our doubts. How could people in Venezuela (one of the target audiences) be able to understand a text written in the USA, revised by people in India, translated I don’t know where, revised by workers in Spain whose boss was in Belgium? Who created the standards and what type of criteria were employed?  Were the people who created the standards aware of all the cultural groups and language varieties behind the whole localization process? Why is it call localization when there was just one single way to do it?

Street claims that researchers have the "task to make visible the complexity of local, everyday, community literacy practices and challenge stereotypes and myopia" (2001: 7) but how can researchers challenge the power of these powerful corporations whose only interest relies on making profits?

Another important aspect that can be related to this experience is the notion of "the end of language" (Street 2001: 4) and literacy. When editing those documents which were going to be localize in the Internet, language understood as a grammatical system (and lexical, morphological) was just one of the issues we had to think about. What the corporation wanted us to do was to be able to use the electronic and digital tools in order to place the content of the documents in a webpage. Therefore, they didn't really care about what it was said in the documents but about the fact of making it available to their customers (even if they would not understand the message). So the corporation valued this other type of language (semiotic system, electronic language) more than the successful expression of comprehensible (and local) meaning.

This really complex "process of interaction" depicts in a certain way what Zubair calls "Interpretative Control" (making of meaning of the private and public discourse, controlled by men even in Western Societies) (2001: 199). If we map the relationship between the participants in the communicative process, we would put The USA on the top. Next, we would place Belgium, followed by India and Spain (more or less at the same level). Finally, countries in South America would be place at the bottom.
This way of mapping the relationship between the interlocutors of a macro interactive process also proves Gee's idea of literacy as a societal construction. In fact, in Gee's words "any view of literacy is inherently political, in the sense of involving relations of power" (32).

Language policies

In the article "Enacting and Transforming Local Language Policies" ((2011), Tardy calls for a change in language assumptions in America in order to promote a multilingual space for language production (mostly in the classroom and in written forms). According to her, "individual and community values are influenced by public, institutional, and programmatic discourses, as well as values related to individuals' numerous cultural, religious, and social affiliations" (2011: 650). For this reason, both educational institutions and media have a major role in fostering an ideology towards language. The fact that there is an "absence of explicit language management" in the US can be an obstacle when trying to promote open perspectives to multilingualism, as it can lead to the spread of the "myth of linguistic homogeneity" and the English Only Movement (2011: 652). However, this explicit absence of language management can be seen as a tolerant attitude to language. In many places there are offical guvernamental institutions to promote the use (even to prescribe the "correct use") of a particular language such as the Real Academia de la Lengua Española in Spain, The Goethe Institut in Germany or La Alliance Francaise in France.
College education, teachers at high school and other levels and media can be agents for the change Tardy is calling for. By working at the local level, we can resist dominant ideologies  the myth of linguistic homogeneity.