The Big Questions, ch. 10

http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cognition/piaget.html

 

 

So I was really thinking about the switch from "possibility as a subset of reality" to "reality as a subset of possibility" as adolescents transition from concrete to formal operational thinking.  And I thought, jeez, I don't think I see very much of this in my students.  I then discovered the graph above.  Data show that only 30-35% of high school students are in the formal operational stage.  I definitely have observed a good amount of this thinking in my older students, particularly those in the upper level courses.  But the average freshman?  I feel like most of them are like Calvin in the cartoon above ("most" is hyperbole, but i'm not exaggerating by much.  And I don't mean to belittle the younger students by saying this, it's just that they are not in that cognitive stage yet .  Nakkula and Toshalis say that we as educators should be there for students who are exploring the "big questions", and help guide them if they ask.  But maybe we might play a bigger role in helping students ask the questions in the first place.  I say this because there are a couple of specific times during the year when this comes up in biology class (nutrient cycling - what happens when living things die, and of course, evolution) and it seems that when I talk about these topics, the kids act as if its the first time they have even considered life beyond the time and space in which they live.  --I'm very curious about how my case study student will react during these discussions, because as far as I can tell he has little or no third-person perspective-taking at all.  I'm reminded of the panels towards the end of Ayers that depict students running into their teachers outside of school...and none of them can believe their teachers are actually regular people who go to concerts or shop for new shoes!  Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that 30-35% number is correct, or maybe even a bit high...

One part of chapter ten I really like is the comparison of faith to a "kind of map".  "we need some larger sense of the direction of our movements and the social and moral terrain on which we live.  The need for a map is especially pronounced for adolescents, filled as they are with the vulnerabilities and possibilities recently revealed in the expansion of their minds and the formation of the identities".  (211)  At first I thought that the idea of faith as a map was limiting, in the sense that instead of having free will, we are on the road toward some pre-determined destination.  But I don't think that's what N & T (and Kaufman, whose idea this is) are implying.  They are simply saying that, when kids try and start making "sense of it all", it's much easier, and more productive, to think about it with this map as a backdrop.  Regardless of how the map is created (modeled by someone the student has a built a relationship with, fear of going to hell, etc) the map shows the road to being a good and decent person.  Hopefully. 

Whether or not adolescents are, or will soon be asking existential questions, it seems that we as educators can offer them some guidance.  Maybe we need to listen if they are struggling with it.  Maybe we need to help create their map.  Maybe we need to model traits such as empathy and tolerance.  And maybe in doing so, we can help co-author what might be the core that binds all other aspects of their identity together.  N & T write on page 226, "If we have helped an adolescent find a question he feels is worth asking and orienting his life around, we have done our job.  All we must do then is encourage him to go further, to seek out others, and to revel in the excitement of probing the depths of the human experience."



9

So, I've been doing some zooming lately, trying to find trends as I'm reading Nakkula and Toshalis.  I'm reminded of a "disclaimer" Dr. Horwitz mentioned about the set up of the chapters in Understanding Youth-- how they are compartmentalized and address each aspect of youth identity development separately, but in reality these aspects overlap one another in complex ways in each adolescent. N&T have interwoven narratives of individual students throughout to give a broader context and to show just how complex the interactions among these varying identities really are. 
It seems to me that N &T develop each chapter in a similar way.  They introduce the topic (gender, racial, ethnic, and sexual identity).  They emphasize how distracting it can be for students to deal with the topic, leaving them less than fully present as learners in the classroom.  They then make an apology for attempting to present a generalization of such complicated and multi-faceted issues.  This is followed towards the end of each chapter by the presentation of a fairly neat, tidy, and general version of identity development as it relates to the topic. 
I think overall N& T do a good job of offering educators multiple lenses through which we can view our students, and at the same time remaining humble about the fact that they are not offering a panacea for educating all students in our classrooms ("This is not a 'how to' book" -preface xiii). 
I only mention this progression that I have noticed within the chapters of Understanding Youth because we are getting further into our case studies and it just kind of hit me that the resolution of identity issues could help a struggling student more than any conventional remedy.  Today I sat in a parent conference with a student.  The result of the meeting was an extra help schedule that the student would have to follow--it included Tuesday and Thursday after school, Saturday school, and study halls.  Now this is nice, but I got the impression that the root of his struggles were more related to some of the issues N & T have discussed in recent chapters, as opposed to ability to comprehend academic content.  Maybe during these extra help sessions the teacher and student will build a relationship that might ultimately help the student, but I'm really afraid they won't and the student will become apathetic. 
Regarding Chapter 9:  I'm pretty much with everyone else in that I have no idea how I would start a conversation with a student about sexual identity or sex in general.  BUT I think that maybe that's up to the student.  It is our job to provide a space where a conversation about sexual-related issues could happen...
It's chapters like this that really help me put into perspective what students (including those in the culture of power) go through during a school day.  The things they must be preoccupied with.  The confusion.  In some cases the doubt and fear.  I think of how much energy all of that consumes--energy that is not being put into their learning in the classroom. 

further pursuit of flow

"If one has more fully explored one's racial identity, might that contribute to higher levels of academic achievement?  Is a student who has a complex understanding of their "Blackness" or "Whiteness" or "Puerto Rican-ness" more likely to have elevated academic potential?"
(N&T 127-8)
Exploring, trying on, testing, hiding, and acting out identities has become a prominent theme in this course over the past few weeks.  In order to develop optimally and realize an authentic self, adolescents need time and space to figure out who they really are, who they want to be, how they want others to see them, and who others want them to be.  These are Ward's "homespaces" in chapter 6 on Gender, and Marcia's "identity moratoria" in chapter 2.  The equivalent spaces in chapter 7 on Race can be seen (I think) in Cross' African American racial identity development (pages 136-7), and Helms' White racial identity development (pages 146-7).  It seems that maybe the key stages are the "Encounter" status in Cross, and the "Disintegration" status in Helms.  I might be wrong because the statuses are less clearly defined as to when the search for racial identity really starts for a person (or I'm missing something).  At any rate, the statuses that comprise the two identity development "progressions" are really eye-opening, especially when you think that you may have a black student in the immersion/emersion stage working alongside a white student in the reintegration stage.  yikes. 
A couple of quotes:
"Despite the meritocratic rhetoric of public education, schools have been and continue to be instrumental in reproducing the racial hierarchies of the larger society in which White is privileged and Black is marginalized.  Black-White identity encounters therefore cannot be understood without interrogating these power differentials.   Seen in this way, any developmental practice that proceeds as if these encounters occur in a raceless or somehow color-blind ecology is not only counterintuitive but developmentally negligent." (144)
"Denying the salience of race in our work with youth may in fact contribute to the legacy of racist, exclusionary, and debilitating practices in schools.  In fact, research has indicated that endorsement of "color-blind" racial attitudes is significantly associated with greater levels of racial prejudice and a mistaken belief that society is just and fair." (125)
So N&T make these, what I find to be, scathing indictments of those claiming not to see color, and then ask the reader the questions that I began this blog entry with.   Their point is that acknowledging and not pretending to ignore issues involving race that arise in schools, can help adolescents shape their journey towards an identity by providing them with another important lens.  Depending on the situation, they now have a creativity lens (chapter 3), a possibility lens (chapter 4), a gender lens (from last chapter) and a race lens in their arsenal. 
But it's up to educators to help them focus these lenses in productive ways.  If successful, the students can be actively engaged in their learning in the classroom--completely present as authentic selves, in pursuit of flow. 
Thought I'd include a ted talk by the "father of flow" Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (chapter 4).  It's 19 minutes, but pretty cool.

All the World's a Stage

Frank Smith's classic view of learning says "we learn without knowing we are learning."  He follows up with: "we unfortunately learn things that we might be better off not learning." (p 3, The Book of Learning and Forgetting).   After discussing foreclosed identities in chapter 2 of Nakkula and Toshalis and reading chapter six this week, the latter quote takes on an eerie tone. 

If students are not given the safe spaces they need (identity moratoria, or "homespaces") to think and to question and to challenge status quo, they will be less likely to achieve an identity or realize an authentic self.  And it's up to us as educators to offer students these spaces.   If not, and they find themselves trapped in a foreclosed identity, underground, or in the closet, they cannot "be fully present as learners, as classmates" (115)  (I realize it might be a bit of a stretch to put kids with a foreclosed identity in with the others discussed in chapter 6, but parallels can be drawn between the two---it's just that they are not actively hiding parts of themselves.  Like the others, they are actors following a script, they just don't know it.)
N&T also write on page 115, "The heavy scripting of adolescent gender identity forces most youth to hide critical parts of themselves and in so doing robs them of vital opportunities for optimal development."  Students can spend so much of their energy trying to follow the script of the patriarchal status quo, that little is left over for creative and academic endeavors.  This is where gender identity development directly relates to student learning.  How is a kid supposed to pursue flow experiences, or do their nightly math problems for that matter, when they are consumed by how they are viewed by their classmates?  Given this, the facilitation of refocusing student's energy becomes paramount for educators. 
Christina and Madonna both mentioned that their schools have clubs geared towards offering such spaces.  But these clubs leave out kids like Jerry (115-117).  He is white, heterosexual, and male.  And he is just as susceptible to following "the script".  All students that experience inauthenticity need to be included because, "sacrificing part of the self leaves one less resilient, less fully equipped to thrive and to defend oneself in the face of life's demands, including those demands to forego aspirations for a lead part in exchange for a 'supporting role'." (103)

One thing I question in chapter 6 is the prevalence of Skiba et al's finding that "girls are highly underrepresented in advanced placement math and science classes." (105)  I have an advanced placement biology class with 8 male students and 21 female students.  Just sayin'. 

From Problems To Strengths

I think I get the concept of flow, but I think Nakkula and Toshalis contradict themselves with the reference to the lack of women in science careers.  They write "we must nurture the high-end skills just as we must help students develop in areas of relative weakness".  Well, which one is it?  Focus on what students do best and develop those skills (leading to flow) or strive to encourage students to be well-rounded?  They write on page 70, "Given that highly successful careers in the sciences, for example, require strong early foundations in math and science coursework, it would seem imperative that girls who ultimately pursue this direction would need intense early focusing in these subjects.  Can one invest deeply here while also developing strong skills in the arts, in athletics, and in the humanities?"  Ok, so they understand that they seem to be contradicting themselves....and they offer an answer on the next page: "the experience of skill development in one area can provide the motivation and the modeling needed to apply one's efforts in other areas.  That is, the experience of building skills builds confidence and a sense of competence.  The more confident and competent we feel, the more likely we are to venture into new learning activities."    Makes sense.  If you're really really good at something, then you supposedly have the confidence and competence to do other things well.  N & T call this phenomenon (on page 72) learning how to learn.  They offer Lorena's story as an example of the relationship between flow and possibility.  Through hard work, Lorena becomes a confident and competent rower, and this confidence and competence spread to her writing in English class.  But I have a problem with this...people only have a finite amount of energy and time (as N & T mention), and I'm skeptical that Lorena would be able to handle much more than rowing and writing essays (and she already kind of liked English to begin with).   Throw all the other school subjects into the mix, and I'm just not convinced.  And I think N & T sort of cop out by writing that students with confidence and competence in one area are "more likely ...to venture into new learning activities."  Maybe I'm being negative, but their explanation just doesn't sit well with me.  Throughout my graduate school experience, the "theory vs. practice" gap has certainly closed, but this "skill as a possibility" section reminds me that the gap is still there to a degree. 
I actually like and agree with the idea, but I wish N &T applied it to learning a few things well over the course of a lifetime--I think that's more realistic. I don't know.  Chapter four just didn't do it for me.  

A day later...


So I changed my mind a little bit after reading about Lorena and her science fair project partner Steve in chapter 5.  I guess N & T were not necessarily saying that students will achieve flow in all areas of school if they've achieved it in one, but when students have a knack for something, and it's recognized by an educator and fostered, the students can apply the same mindset to help them succeed (not necessarily excel) in other areas. 

N & T write in chapter 5 that individuals can't reach optimal development alone, and that relationships are key to the process.  The individual, along with her peers, parents, teachers, and community members are a team, and the success of the individual and the team are very much interwoven together.  This idea is not limited to cognitive development (Vygotsky).  Sullivan's work shows that self-understanding and self-esteem are also promoted interpersonally.  The question is whether or not the importance of relationships is stressed by teachers in the classroom in order to optimize student development. 
I think I had a big "zoom in" moment.  I've been thinking all along that forming relationships means getting to know a student really well--like, more than just a student .  But after reading chapter 5 (specifically the section "Educational Mentoring" at the end) I realize that relationships can simply mean that the student and teacher trust and respect one another. 

"...I feel like a bond between us and that helps me focus.  I'm like, 'oh he respects me, I'm gonna respect him by paying attention in his class and doing awesome.'"

This is a quote from my "Interview with an adolescent" and sounds a lot like Antwon at the beginning of chapter 5.  I keep thinking that I really need to get to know this student better, but maybe the relationship we have already is what he needs to learn in my class.  Maybe just acting like a "decent person", and modeling that behavior for the students is what builds relationships.  If this is the case, teachers can spread their time and energy over a larger area and reach far more students.  I find this incredibly refreshing and feel a bit like a weight has been lifted. 

Did I zoom in too far?  Ben, tell me I zoomed in too far. 

Why can't I stop thinking about relationships?

Ok, so Ayers tells us to build relationships with our students, and to embark on meaningful learning journeys alongside them.   Nakkula and Toshalis wrote in chapter one that it's important to determine where each student is at in order to have a productive meeting of the minds, and that we are co-authoring the lives of our students.  Smith says that we learn from people around us with whom we identify.  Kolb urges us to gain insight into learning styles in order to reach all students and guide them through each phase of the learning cycle. 
relationships
alongside
meeting of the minds
co-authoring
identify
gain insight
reach
guide
I've been hearing that learning is about relationships.  Maybe I'm fixated on this, and I'm trying too hard to stuff it into that nice, tidy, elegant box that I so want to tuck away in the "how students learn" compartment of my brain...but the idea was only furthered by this weeks reading of Nakkula and Toshalis:
"Imagine how our schools would be experienced by adolescents, immersed as they are in meaning-rich identity-searching experimentation, if we were to ask with genuine curiosity and care (rather than judgment and fear) why they chose that shirt, why that music, why that book, why these friends, why this hair, why that movie, why that food.  Adolescents want to talk about such things, and if we are fortunate and skilled enough to be trusted by them, such questions can lead us into pivotal conversations in the unfolding drama of crisis and possibility." (24-25)
I understand N & T are talking about assisting students in their quest for an identity, but you can't tell me that an adolescent attempting to figure out who she really is, is not going through a learning process.  The authors are addressing Erikson's Crisis with this quote, but how about this regarding Marcia's Commitment:
"It is possible and may even be beneficial for people to loop through the statuses multiple times throughout life, revisiting experiences and reconstructing decisions based on changing environments and relationships, possibly vacillating between statuses for years before emerging into a stable identity." (29)
trust
pivotal conversations
relationships
N & T conclude chapter two with "Youth do not enter particular identity statuses alone, nor do they negotiate them independently....development...is promoted interactively within all of the relational and opportunity contexts within which we exist." (39)

Unless I missed it, there wasn't much about academic learning in chapter two, but N & T drew parallels between risk taking/creativity and academics in chapter three.  Regarding pushing students beyond their comfort zones, N & T write, "powerful learning opportunities exist whenever we move beyond the safe and known." (43)
How do we know what is "safe and known" for a given student?  Build a relationship with them.  Determine their zone of proximal development by gradually challenging them.  Identify their learning styles and gently nudge them into disequilibrium.  Once teachers figure out how far they can push and challenge students mentally, they can engage in "meaningful activities...that serve not only the learning and thinking skills necessary for educational success but also a value system rooted in care, collaboration, and high achievement of various types.  The more transparent that value system is, the more clearly school scaffolding is constructed on adult-youth shared values, the more likely it is that educators can foster healthy development and reduce the magnitude and consequences of high-risk behavior" (56)
youth do not enter particular identity statuses alone
development is promoted interactively
transparency
shared values

Vygotsky, Bartsch, Jessor, Marcia, Erikson, Ayers, Nakkula, Smith

Relationships

Every time I have a new idea about learning, I sit and think about it and it always comes back to being possible only if a strong mutual relationship exists between teacher and student.  I feel like I may be zooming out way too far.    Someone tell me I'm zooming out too far. 

meeting of the minds

"Educators of adolescents must go beyond merely transmitting curricula if they hope to influence their students' thinking more deeply; they must share how they themselves think about or make sense of this content.  In short, there must be a meeting of the minds if educators are to play an influential role in the development of their adolescent students.  This meeting can occur around formal academic content as well as less formal social interactions, depending on the goals for the 'meeting'.  The key is that the educators' thinking be made as transparent as possible..."
This is Nakkula and Toshalis' intro (bottom of page 8) to Vygotsky's interpsychological development (bottom of page 9).  
What would __________say about this?
Ayers:  During meetings (of the mind, or otherwise) some form of a relationship gets built--especially if the meeting is face to face.  Ayers repeatedly stressed his message that teachers need to get to know their students in order to effectively teach each one, so I think he would encourage the meeting of the minds interaction between them.  N and T also mention "transparency" quite a bit in reference to the educators way of thinking----if a student can clearly see how the teacher thinks, there is a higher chance of learning because the student may take certain helpful cues from the teacher--"dispositions of mind" as Ayers called them.  So in a way the teacher has to make obvious her thought process, which is difficult to do because of the familiarity with the subject matter, social norms, etc.  Ayers would then cite the teacher he wrote about who had her class study something different each year (something new to her students and   to her), so they could learn alongside one another.  In this way the teachers thoughts may be made much more transparent to the student.   But I think N and T are also implying that teachers display a bit of vulnerability here as well.  If a teacher meets a student (in a mental meeting room) and they embark on the journey toward learning together, it might emphasize that they both need one another in order to succeed.  This would only strengthen their relationship, and the cycle would become a positive feedback loop (in biology, where a stimulus enhances particular response)
Smith:  I think Smith would agree emphatically with N and T's transparency bit.  Don't know if this makes sense but if an educator is explicit and subtle at the same time (what?), the student may be able to readily "absorb" her thought process.  I guess I mean "strongly hint" without giving anything away to the student.  This can be in the form of problem solving methods or some other type of critical thinking--and the student can pick up and internalize the cues subconsciously. 
Kolb:  I also think Kolb would be a fan of the meeting of the minds idea.  If an educator displays different ways to take in and experience concepts, students expand their potential to learn. Subject matter aside, I think that the push and pull of building on existing mental scaffolding should require an educator to touch on each phase of the learning cycle, which would in turn afford students the opportunity to test boundaries and construct themselves and the world they inhabit.   

A final takeaway from N and T is that in all of this, as the educator is guiding the adolescent student, he is also constructing his own life.  The idea of the educator coauthoring the student's life is important, but equally poignant is the awareness of the student as coauthor of the educators life.