Book Report: Research In The Classroom

Research in the Classroom THE EMERGENCE OF NEW MEANINGS

BOOK REPORT By Carlos Azevedo*. Have you ever imagined that learning in kindergarten classes may have something in common with physics and complex theory? This is one of the striking analogies you will find out in Z. Donoahue, M. Van Tassell, and L. Patterson (Eds.) peer-reviewed collection of academic articles: “Research in the Classroom: Talk, Texts and Inquiry” (1996), International Reading Association, pp. 131. Research in the Classroom is made up of nine independent intriguing chapters written by a diverse range of scholars from the U.S. and Canada, each of whom thoroughly focuses on personal reflections of their past experiences within dynamical, often collaborative, learning communities. Such communities are not only composed by students, from kindergarten to high school level, but by teachers as well. As the reading progresses, it becomes clear that both teachers and students are treated similarly as metalearners who are in quest for the golden path towards more effective learning. On the student side, there is the nice example from the transcripts of Allison’s – a kindergarten student – entries on the so called “Think Books”, a kind of written student forum, moderated by teacher Fedele. In this book, Children were able to express their thoughts and feelings as relevant events were occurring in class. The analysis of Allison’s inputs incidentally revealed the continuously adaptive process which often unconsciously happens as a result of students struggle for a better understanding of their surrounding school environment. This was often achieved by children through comparisons of such events with their experience with family. As on the teacher’s side, Isakson and Williams precisely share their views via audio-recorded dialogues between them on Isakson’s initiative of maintaining journals which described her daily observations over high school student’s behavior in class. By analyzing the evolution of objective indicators through semesters, such as the number of journal pages, as well as subjective aspects like the impartiality of her inputs to the journals, they conclude that, besides enhancing service for students, this practice helps “maintain the self as teacher”. This piece is undoubtedly an outstanding contribution for learners’ community. While some theory and literature review is covered, it does not impact the fluidity of the practical teaching work descriptions. Therefore, the reader’s interest is unlike to diminish. In fact, specialized readers will have a good source of reference at hand, while non-specialists are likely to be even intrigued by the book’s well-placed analogies. For instance, there is a marvelous section in the opening chapter wherein Patterson describes learning communities as:

“[…] complex systems. Borrowing the concept from mathematics and the physical sciences, we see learning communities as multifaceted, dynamic systems that behave in nonlinear, interdependent ways. […] These systems, like learning, are so complex that they have a constant element of unpredictability. We can see patterns across many classrooms […], but trying to predict individual learning moments is futile.”

However, it is Patterson’s statement that “Networks of unpredictable meanings emerge from these learning communities” which sheds light on the most pleasant episode of the book: the classroom

Research in the Classroom

observations of a brainstorm session which takes place in a kindergarten class on geometry (Chap. 5). It is pleasant to hear from the student’s enthusiasm in response to the teacher’s active encouragement. Moreover, nice conclusions are sketched from this experience. One of them was the observance of the emergence of new meanings due to student’s collaborative engagement. If you are, like me, an enthusiast of the principle of continuous learning, then you will be certainly interested on discovering as much as this book has to offer through its rich narratives, discourse, transcripts and more. You will be completely involved by Allison, Josh, Ted and many other students’ dialogues and you will be overwhelmed with this fair excerpt of 1990’s high quality teachers’ findings. For all of these reasons, if I were you, I would be quickly running to grab it from the shelves.

Written on April 20th 2009 by Carlos Renato Belo Azevedo, a high advanced student at ABA Aflitos who enjoys book report projects . This work was very well guided by teacher Jonathan Reinaux. *

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