Questions for Gee's Learning by Design

• What, according to Gee, makes for a good/deep video game? Pick a few of the learning principles he describes that can be found in good video games and summarize the main points he makes about them.
• Do you think it is practical/possible for these principles to be implemented in schools? Why or why not? Do you agree with his argument that the principles of learning behind video games should be implemented in schools? Do you think that video games themselves should also be introduced into school curricula, after reading this piece? Why or why not?

Questions for next week

1. The "Methodology" section (720-725) of the Hull, Kenney, Marple, & Forsman-Schneider article details the process of constructing a qualitative case study. What's the relationship between these qualitative methdologies and course themes related to out-of-school literacy and learning?

2. On page (reader) page 724-5, Hull et al discuss the importance of agency and "de/recontextualization" and, in Gee's terms, how "good learning requires that learners feel like active agents (producers) not just passive recipients (consumers)." With these ideas in mind, discuss how the teachers in the Parker excerpts enabled students to learn agentively. What implications do these approaches have for pedagogy in general?

3. Choose one of the learning principles discussed in Gee's article about video games and discuss how you would use a video game to teach specific content (a concept in math, physics, language arts, physical education...)

running late...will be there in 5 minutes.

Here are the presentation groups for next week:

Ogbu J.U. & Simons H.D. (1998). Voluntary and involuntary minorities: A cultural-ecological theory of school performance with some implications for education

Group: 

DJ Campbell

Matt Williams

Remington Price

James Lubell

David Keys

Nancy Ledesma

Lee, S.J. (1994).  Beyond the model-minority stereotype: Voices of high- and low-achieving Asian-American students.

Group:  

Yoon Ju Lee

Rocio Sanchez

Yoojung Kwon

Isaiah Kang

Stephanie Chau

Richardson, E. (2002). “To protect and serve”: African American Female Literacies.

Group: 

Vishal Baheti

David Song

Juyeon Baek

Shannon Hawari

Kathy Shen

Newkirk, Tom. (2002). Excerpt from Misreading masculinity:  Boys, literacy, and popular culture

Group:  

Nicholas Piccinini

Joshua Tovar

Alister Meshkin

Soon-Chan Kim

Tina Chen

Hull, G.A. & Schultz, K. (2002). Connecting schools with out-of-school worlds: Insights from recent research on literacy in non-school settings.

Groups:

Laqshya Taneja

Sasha Rasmussen

Scott Sok

Jelani Dunn
Julia Heunis
Victor Sandifer

Street, B. (2003). What’s “new” New Literacy Studies? Critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice.


Jeremiah

More blog entry questions (in addition to Yurie's excellent questions :)

• Street argues that literacy is a “social practice.” Using examples from Hull & Schultz, Richardson and/or Newkirk, explain what Street means
• Street also argues that literacy is “always contested, both its meanings and its practices, hence particular versions of it are always “ideological”, they are always rooted in a particular world-view and in a desire for that view of literacy to dominate and marginalize others” (p.694 in reader). How might our discussion of Friere and/or racial power dynamics play into his conception of literacy?
• Richardson writes that “African American females’ language and literacy practices reflect their socialization in a racialized, genderized,sexualized, and classed world in which they employ their language and literacy practices to protect and advance themselves” (p. 637 in reader). How does this intersectionality create a unique linguistic practice? How does Richardson see these affect African American female students?

Newkirk writes about the role that Bourdieu’s “cultural capital” plays in
what is considered valid reading and writing subject material in school.
What does he mean by “cultural capital”? How does this tie into power in
our classrooms?

Last week, we read Mahiri and Sablo who indicate that “real life” subjects
such as drugs, murder, and abortion are not considered socially acceptable
topics. Newkirk highlights the unacceptable genres of comic books, horror
stories, etc. Why do you think classrooms are such restrictive spaces for
student creativity? Who benefits from restricting the canon? Think about
out of school examples highlighted by Hull & Schultz as ways we can
problematize these limitations.

Questions for Misreading Masculinity (Newkirk)

• In his book Newkirk argues for the "viability and utility of forms of popular culture that many in education dismiss as inappropriate or worse." He makes the case that these forms of pop culture that young boys enjoy should not be excluded from schools or separated from what education systems deem as important mediums of literacy. What is his evidence/reasoning behind this argument and how does he come to this conclusion? Do you think that what he argues is valid and should be applied to the American education system today?
• What does Newkirk say about the "hierarchy" he claims education systems have established in literature today? What does he mean when he talks about the classification of literature into the "serious" and the "vulgar"?

No blog entries this week...

Don't worry about blog entries this week; instead, concentrate on getting your literacy autobiographies polished up and ready to turn in. Good luck!

Steele and Aronson, Stereotype Threat

Steele ans Aronson:

• In this essay the authors discuss the ill effects of stereotype cues and stereotype threat both psychologically, and to a lesser degree, psychosomatically. Do you believe that stereotype threat has the propensity to physically affect, when activated, negatively stereotyped students?
• The authors write: "From hundreds of interviews that I've conducted with black college students, it's clear that many believe that the stereotype places them in situations freighted with unnerving expectations. Some report feeling a sense of unfairness, that there will be less patience for their mistakes than for white students' mistakes, and that their failure will be seen as evidence of an unalterable limitation rather than as the result of a bad day." How has this thinking been engender/proliferated, and by whom? Please explain. 

Question for Mendoza-Denton

Mendoza-Denton:

• In this chapter Mendoza-Denton chronicles the erroneous assumptions, which later became aphorisms, regarding what was perceived as an inherent cognitive deficiency in African Americans; and, how these erroneous assumptions have informed rhetoric around the achievement gap. Who benefits from this form of race science, which posits race as biological? Explain.
• Despite working to deconstruct deleterious racist ideology in this chapter, Mendoza-Denton, there is a perceptible positivity and hopefulness in the author's tenor; why do you think this is?

Questions for Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

• In the first chapter of his book, Fanon writes: “Every colonized people—in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local culturally originality—finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing language… (Pp.8 of the original text)?” What does he mean by this?
• In this chapter, Fanon seems to be arguing that for the colonized purposeful assimilation is concomitantly emasculating and infantilizing. Do you agree with this line of argumentation?

• Also on page 18 of the original text, Fanon argues that the Negro…will become proportionately whiter—that is he will come closer to being a real human being—in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language.” Do you feel this this argument is applicable to our educational system here in the United States?