Culturally relevant pedagogy demands that we as teachers not only create the conditions for all students to achieve academic success and cultural competence, but that we also prepare students to critically engage with the world that they exist in (Ladson- Billings, 1995). The desire to push our students to develop critical consciousness guided us as we began this lesson study cycle. The initial research question around which we designed the lesson was “how might we push tenth grade students to increase their sociopolitical consciousness?” During the course of our research, several key themes emerged. These include discussion as a literacy and social justice tool, equitable access to learning for all students, and motivation and engagement.
Discussion for Literacy and Social Justice A primary theme that I explored through my research was regarding how discussion can be used as a literacy and social justice tool. According to Mohammed (2020), discussion and debate were prominent components of black literary societies throughout the nineteenth and twentieth societies. Furthermore, through engaging in discussion and debate, individuals developed tools to recognize and fight oppressive systems (Mohammed 2020). By interacting with others to think about and discuss real-world issues, individuals develop critical thinking skills, linguistic skills, and broaden their understanding, all of which can enable them to recognize and address those same real-world issues. Alfonsi (2008) discusses why socratic seminar discussions in particular are powerful tools that teachers can use to push students to learn from each other, co-create meaning, and make connections beyond the classroom. She suggests how to properly structure and sequence questions during a socratic seminar discussion for maximum effect. There should be three categories of questions: opening questions that are broad and allow for many students to speak and cite the text, core questions that are more specific and lead students to construct meaning together, and closing questions that are designed to push students to make connections between the text and something else such as their lives, or history broader history (Alfonsi 2008). This enabled us to create discussion questions with these aims in mind when designing our lesson. We wanted to use discussion as a means by which students might increase their understanding of systemic causes of societal inequities, thus increasing their socio-political consciousness. In order to do this, we consulted research by Freire (1972) in which he suggested that an indicator to measure the development of critical consciousness is whether one moves from placing blame on individuals to placing blame on systems when explaining inequities. This helped shape the discussion questions and gave us a measure by which to gauge students’ progress toward our original goal during the discussion. Equitable Access One of our primary goals at the outset of the lesson study cycle was for all students to be able to access the content in order to participate in the discussion, and ultimately develop critical consciousness. One consideration regarding equitable access that arose during my research was the tension and difficulties of being a white educator teaching students of color. Ladson-Billings (2006) states that white educators often mistakenly rely on cultural explanations to explain black and brown students' inability to access the content and experience success in schools. She argues that instead teachers need to change what they are doing to ensure the success of their students. Mohammed (2020) states, “Although individual literacy was valued, these societies were highly collaborative and prompted social responsibility to share knowledge gained from acts of literacy rather than keep education to one’s self.” This pushed us to consider how we might structure the lesson so that “reluctant learners” could utilize their classmates as resources in learning. Socratic Seminars are a tool that educators can use to support students in collaboratively constructing meaning. I began to consider how to design a socratic seminar so that students can all participate and grow from the activity regardless of learning styles, ability, language skills, or other outside of school barriers. According to Alfonsi (2008), norm setting, reflection and debrief are extremely important so that students learn from each other and jointly build understanding about a topic as opposed to showcasing their own correct answers. This pushed me to think about what criteria for success would look like at the end of a seminar and what emerged was that students should come out of the discussion with a new or deeper understanding after listening to their peers' ideas. This meant that the expectation was that students should not hold the exact same view as they did at the beginning of the lesson. This helped us design a pre and post seminar assessment that asked the same question as a way to measure change in thinking. We were also able to frame the discussion as an opportunity for growth and that the expectation was that each student would be assessed on their growth in thinking. The importance of debrief and reflection also stood out and led us to develop post-seminar reflection questions that pushed students to think metacognitively and evaluate their own participation and growth. Motivation and Engagement: Bringing all students into the conversation During an anticipatory planning brainstorm with the lesson study group, we identified that student engagement and participation would likely prove especially challenging given that the discussion would be taking place on Zoom as opposed to a physical classroom. The setting could prove to further entrench existing participation dynamics. We conducted research specifically on how to get all students, particularly reluctant and disenfranchised learners, to engage. If we want all students to increase their socio-political consciousness, all students must engage with the text and the discussion. A theme that emerged was about the importance of authenticity and relevance if we want reluctant, disenfranchised and disengaged students to participate and grow from the discussion. We wanted all students to feel comfortable speaking and one way to do this was to choose a topic that had real-world significance to themselves (Toshalis & Nakkula 2012). According to Toshalis & Nakkula, some students' home and life contexts make them pre-motivated to learn. These pre-motivated learners know and trust that academic environments are valuable, safe, and can offer them real-world success. They already believe that school works for them. Other students' social contexts outside of school create conditions where they feel marginalized inside schools. For these students “the predisposition to be unmotivated and to disengage from teacher-directed activity may be strong,” (Toshalis & Nakkula, 2012, p. 4). One way to motivate and engage marginalized students is to give them agency and power over their learning (Toshalis & Nakkula 2012). When teachers indicate through their words and their actions that the students are responsible and have a say in what occurs in their classrooms, students will experience more meaningful learning. By largely taking the teacher's voice out of this discussion, students were able to grapple with the content, hear each other's ideas, and productively struggle with what makes conversations successful and unsuccessful. Reference List Alfonsi, C. (2008). Hey teacher! Get off that stage: Assessing student thinking with socratic seminars. Ohio Journal of English Language Arts, 48(1), 65-71. Dorman, E. H. (2012). Cultivating critical, sociopolitical awareness in urban secondary schools: Tensions and possibilities. Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education, 9(2), n2. Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1968. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Herder. Ladson‐Billings, G. (1995). But that's just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory into practice, 34(3), 159-165. Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). It’s not the culture of poverty, it’s the poverty of culture: The problem with teacher education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 2. 104-109 Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. Scholastic Teaching Resources. Toshalis, E., & Nakkula, M. (2012). Motivation, engagement, and student voice. Education Digest: Essential Readings Condensed for Quick Review, 78(1), 1-20. https://studentsatthecenterhub.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Motivation-Engagement-Student-Voice-Students-at-the-Center-1.pdf |