Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 1

Vygotsky Was Right: Case Study Findings and Implications for Reading and Writing Instruction

by

Diane R. Phelps

The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant PR/Award # R305G040153 to The State University of New York at Buffalo. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education. Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 2

Tell me and I’ll forget, Show me and I may remember, Involve me and I’ll understand. --Chinese Proverb

Introduction

My final project began with the review of a week’s worth of edited WIRC video data depicting successful social mediation of reading and writing instruction using thinksheets in Mrs. Lesswing’s fourth grade classroom. From there, I decided to investigate Mrs. Carpenter’s similar fourth grade classroom where the WIRC intervention was less effective. I was convinced that the heart of the issue had to do with that which was taught not having been measured. I decided I needed to objectively re-examine the data by conducting a case study to investigate more thoroughly teacher practice. I selected two students with similar profiles, each from one of the classrooms which I was comparing: Bobby from the more successful 4th grade classroom of Mrs. Lesswing, and

Devan from Mrs. Carpenter’s class. The evidence gathered from this study has caused me to reframe my argument. My new argument is that Mrs. Carpenter’s students never learned how to reappropriate text to make new meaning because they were highly dependent on directly copying from their teacher in two forms: copying from the blackboard as a group, and recording the thoughts and opinions of the teacher during individual writing conferences. Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 3

The WIRC Research and the Thinksheet Intervention

The study of reading-writing as two separate processes has been going on for decades (Tierney & Shanahan, 1991).

The basic premise behind the WIRC grant is that the use of thinksheets integrates reading and writing instruction to maximize learning (Englert & Raphael, 1988).

Thinksheets can be defined as step-by-step guides to problem solving designed to be used interactively by teachers with their students (Kirschner & Yates, 1983). The combination of collaborative instruction and textual interaction creates a favorable environment for the development of higher psychological processes (Vygotsky, 1978) of reading comprehension and writing composition. As thinksheets support students through the process of writing about reading, they bring together two cognitive problem spaces for students—the rhetorical and the content (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987).

Case Study Findings

In composition instruction, the practice of extended periods of teacher dominated discussion is referred to by George Hillocks as the Presentational Mode of instruction

(Hillocks, 1984, 1986). This manner of instruction is teacher-directed and provides little opportunity for students to interact and to demonstrate the processes through which they make meaning. Teachers in this mode facilitate instruction through a series of Initiation,

Response, Evaluation (IRE) sequences (Cazden, 1986). They ask questions that necessitate single word or similar easily evaluated responses from students. Based upon the evidence, it appears that Mrs. Carpenter tended to lead the students through the thinksheet: she was interpreting each question on the thinksheet as an IRE sequence. Mrs.

Carpenter was often pressed for time. When students did not respond quickly enough, Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 4

Mrs. Carpenter would provide the answer for the students. Part of the reason that I selected Devon (from Mrs. Carpenter’s classroom) for this study is that last spring during a video taped writing conference with Mrs. Carpenter, I recorded Devan as saying that he could not answer the teacher’s question about the essay he had written because he had not even read the story.

Based upon the findings of this comparative analysis, I have concluded that the following three ‘glitches’ exist in Mrs. Carpenter’s classroom, which serve only to undermine her well-intended efforts at excellence: counterfeit collaboration, relying on traditional methods of instruction, and the inhibiting of knowledge transformation due to a preoccupation with “getting the right answer.”

“Counterfeit collaboration” is a term I coined to describe the situation that existed in Mrs. Carpenter’s classroom when it appeared on the surface that a learning community was co-constructing meaning, but when in fact some of the learners were just “along for the ride.” A Community of Practice (Englert, Mariage, & Dunsmore, 2006) is what ideally exists when students and teachers collaborate to construct knowledge. “Central to participation in the community is the acquisition of language proficiency in speaking, reading, and writing (Englert, Mariage, & Dunsmore, 2006).” Our WIRC intervention thinksheets are designed to have students function in their ZPDs (Vygotsky, 1978).

However, when a teacher provides the answers for the students, the mediating power of the thinksheet is by-passed and knowledge construction is “short-circuited.” The teacher- dependent student will always ‘get the right answer’ if she is willing to wait long enough.

“Counterfeit collaboration” was also observable in Mrs. Carpenter’s classroom when the students were assigned to work in groups and pairs. Upon looking closer at the data, I Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 5 noticed that whole groups of teacher-dependent students would fool around until the teacher came over and gave some correct answers. Oftentimes students working in pairs or groups would simply copy the answer of the student in the group who they believed to be most likely to have it right. Unfortunately, passive students who choose to rely on copying as a default writing strategy are not doing the learning. As Dr. Collins is fond of saying, “The one who does the work is doing the learning.”

Mrs. Carpenter also gave priority to the ‘tried and true’ teaching methods which she had learned in college in the seventies. Mrs. Carpenter routinely taught grammar and parts of speech out of context. Mrs. Carpenter’s classroom was teacher centered and teacher directed. In Mrs. Carpenter’s classroom, the teacher had the right answer and the student was rewarded upon its discovery.

We on the WIRC team do not believe that all copying is bad copying. Students are often told to put their responses “in their own words.” More often than not, students who struggle do not have their own words to use. As a result they sometimes copy directly from a text. This, according to Collins (1998) is a default strategy. Struggling writers do not have a “better way” to put information on the page. The result often is copying, not in the deceptive sense, but rather as a means to an end. Part of the WIRC theory is that students can develop this re-appropriation of words from a text over time through the use of thinksheets. Thinksheets allow them to interact with the teacher and have meaningful transactions as they return to the text they are reading (or re-reading).

There are three stages of development which provided evidence for students moving forward from knowledge telling to knowledge transforming: direct copying, less copying, and high overlap or strategic copying. Strategic copying demonstrates knowledge Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 6 transforming higher levels of thinking. Over time, these ideas have become increasingly important in the analysis of student writing in the WIRC project ( Brutt-Griffler, Collins,

& Lee, 2006; Collins & Lee, 2005).

With this said, based upon the evidence of this study, it appears that having students copy full sentences from the text in the Ideas section of their thinksheets fails to allow them to generate their own original sentences in their essay later. Copying as a strategy in extended writing appears never to be productive. A teacher tempted to provide the students with complete opening sentences to copy might consider the use of sentence starters instead.

In Mrs. Carpenter’s classroom, the quality and quantity of copied writing was valued over true original knowledge building. Especially with the ‘intensive’ students, knowledge transformation can be very time consuming. Once I realized that it appeared that much of Devon’s thinksheet work had been copied throughout the year, I compared one dozen thinksheets from both fourth grade classrooms. The data I gathered reflected the fact that while Mrs. Lesswing had scaffolded her students away from relying on copying as a default strategy, the work of Mrs. Carpenter’s students had been mostly copied all year long. It was remarkable to note that not once did Mrs. Lesswing have her students copy her words in their extended writing. The essays of the students in Mrs.

Carpenter’s classroom began with a teacher-provided opening sentence right until June.

A teacher who takes the short-cut today of allowing extensive copying fails to cultivate the independent thinking necessary to take the assessment tomorrow.

On the other hand, based upon my findings and a follow up teacher interview, in

Mrs. Lesswing’s classroom I was able to identify the following three mediators to Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 7 successful knowledge transformation in both reading comprehension and writing composition: prioritizing weekly one-on-one writing conferences, the teaching of grammar in context as needed, and a learner-centered classroom with the teacher as coach or facilitator.

Mrs. Lesswing’s one-on-one writing conferences were at the hub of what she referred to as her “writing factory.” The time she devoted each week to these writing conferences ensured the presence of the essential ‘Teacher-Student-Text Connectedness.’

Mrs. Carpenter would always begin with student reading aloud his or her own writing. In this manner, she could have them pause between each sentence for her teacher feed-back.

Assisted read-aloud (Dixon-Krauss, 1996, p. 32) not only a “responsive social setting” for mediating the reading process, but also mediates the writing process. According to

Hebb’s rule, “neurons that fire together are wired together (Paulsen & Sejnowski, 2000).”

What this means is that any activities that are co-constructed also reinforce one another.

Thus, teaching reading and writing together also makes good sense from a cognitive standpoint. For these reasons, writing conferences that incorporate assisted read-alouds are brilliant from both the social and the cognitive perspectives.

While the data from Mrs. Carpenter’s classroom revealed a deliberate emphasis on rules of grammar and the proper names for the parts of speech, I never saw Mrs.

Lesswing take time away from her reading and writing instruction for a mini-lesson on grammar. What Mrs. Lesswing did do was to have a station with textbook grammar work sheets for completion once a student had finished his or her thinksheet. In this manner, grammar was de-emphasized, but not entirely overlooked. Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 8

In her effective and flexible classroom management style, Mrs. Lesswing exuded patience. Whether students were working together in partners, working independently, discussing the text as a group, or conferencing on writing with the teacher one-on-one, the classroom discourse was dialogic. Mrs. Lesswing had a high degree of classroom participation. She incorporated a deliberate questioning strategy to elicit responses from students. In her questioning, Mrs. Lesswing would often include “how” and “why” questions. Mrs. Lesswing would get students to elaborate by asking, “What does that look like?” It is written in chapter fourteen of the Handbook of Writing Research that,

“Vygotsky’s work suggests that effective teachers make tacit knowledge perceptible through think-alouds that make visible the discourse, thoughts, actions, decisions, struggles, and deliberations that are part of the writing process (Englert, Mariage, &

Dunsmore, 2007).” This type of Vygotskian learning collaboration was highly evident in the classroom of Mrs. Lesswing.

WIRC Case Study Implications

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. --Chinese Proverb

The Teacher: The case for unpacking traditional preconception

Traditional preconceptions are often based upon narrow and outdated teaching methods. According to Goodman and Goodman (Moll, 1990), these teachers “use artificial and conformist materials and methods that force students out of their naturally developing zones into transacting with artificially written texts. In the case of Mrs.

Carpenter, the use of the socially constructed thinksheet was secondary to her own “tried and true” model for literacy. As I observed Mrs. Carpenter’s class, I thought that she was Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 9 supplementing the thinksheet intervention with her own traditional methodology. What the data reveals is that the thinksheets took a backseat to Mrs. Carpenter’s familiar

“knowledge out of context” strategies in her traditional teacher-centered classroom. Mrs.

Carpenter was comfortable teaching grammar out of context, often pointing out the parts of speech and grammatical rules as separate “mini-lessons.” These lessons were more like mini teacher centered lecture presentations without much feedback from the class.

My hunch is that most of Mrs. Carpenter’s students do not even know a noun from a verb. I believe that there is a place for grammar instruction in the socio-cultural English

Language Arts classroom, but I believe that it needs to be taught within the context of literacy for the purpose of more fully making meaning. Mrs. Carpenter’s classroom incorporated an attempt at collaborative learning, but most of the time on task was teacher dominated by direct instruction. The teacher dominant classroom with the teacher viewed as the expert who disseminates knowledge and discipline can be counter- productive to allowing learners function in their ZPDs (Moll, 1990). Moll elaborates that opportunities for mediated learning are lost in teacher-dominated classrooms because “… the learner becomes dependent on the teacher for sources of information and for ways of thinking and doing (Moll, 1990).” Students will become more concerned with “behaving in a particular way” than expressing their own individual thoughts and ideas in their own activated zones. This explains why over the course of the school year Mrs. Carpenter’s class could more or less copy from the teacher two dozen different thinksheet essays and be contented without having expressed creativity or originality. Vygotsky writes, “What lies in the zone of proximal development at one stage is realized and moves to the level Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 10 of actual development at a second. In other words, what the child is able to do in collaboration today he will be able to do independently tomorrow (Moll, 1990).”

The Student: The case for connecting and confidence-building

A key difference between Mrs. Lesswing’s classroom and Mrs. Carpenter’s classroom is that at the hub of Mrs. Lesswing’s classroom was the one on one writing conference. Mrs. Carpenter allowed for student partners and small groups, but the discourse within these groups was not always knowledge transforming. One problem with the discussions in Mrs. Carpenter’s classroom was that the teacher was often looking for one specific answer. Miller (2003) writes, “…even teachers who believe they are holding “discussions” insist on their own “correct” textual interpretation.” The teacher talk in Mrs. Carpenter’s classroom consisted primarily of what Miller (2003) refers to as

“…traditional teacher talk focused almost solely on questioning and evaluating the correct responses.” As I played back the video data I had collected in Mrs. Carpenter’s classroom, I noticed that quite frequently during class discussion, Mrs. Carpenter would start out her thoughts with “I think.” Mrs. Lesswing facilitated the co-construction of meaning by really getting to know each of her students through her individual writing conference strategy. “Reading is an interaction between the reader, text, and context

(Valencia and Pearson, 1987).” In a like manner, writing is an interaction as well. As a student interacts with the teacher and text in the writing conference, s/he is being scaffolded to independent thinking.

One significant difference between the teacher talk of Mrs. Lesswing and that of

Mrs. Carpenter was that whether she was conducting individual writing conferences or whole group discussion, Mrs. Lesswing exuded extreme patience insofar as “wait time” Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 11 was concerned. The length of the “wait time” used by Mrs. Lesswing was among the longest interval of any classrooms observed. I would estimate that it averaged twenty seconds, but frequently Mrs. Lesswing would lengthen the “wait time” by rephrasing her question to allow the student to look at it from a different angle. During one video taped observation, the question posed to the class was, “What is a terrain?” Mrs. Lesswing patiently called on nearly a dozen students around the room as they repeatedly answered with different characteristics of a terrain, but never actually provided the definition. Only after approximately ten minutes had passes and Mrs. Lesswing was absolutely sure that no one in the room knew what the definition of a terrain was, did she give the class a hint as to the meaning by explaining the Latin root. Mrs. Lesswing would also validate the opinions of the students and stress that no answer was incorrect if a student could back it up with evidence from the story. Allowing for ample “wait time” created the “assistive social space (Miller, 2003) in which students could socially construct meaning.

On the other hand, Mrs. Carpenter was always pressed for time. Mrs. Carpenter made comments to me as a field observer, to her colleagues, and to her students about the curriculum that needed to be covered over various periods of time. Over the course of the year, never during my observations did I see Mrs. Carpenter elicit a response from a student who was struggling with the answer. After reviewing the teacher talk data from the week long video of Mrs. Carpenter’s class, I would estimate that Mrs. Carpenter’s average “wait time” was three to five seconds. Typically, Mrs. Carpenter would address a discussion question to the class, call on three or four students, and then supply the correct answer. While Mrs. Lesswing encouraged independent thinking by validating the Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 12 individual thoughts and opinions of the students, Mrs. Carpenter usually had one correct answer in mind which she often ended up just telling to the class.

“Teachers must constantly adjust their methods to accommodate the learning and teaching process for each child. This is a great challenge for all educators (Bodrova &

Leong, 2007, p.13).” As a one-on-one writing mediator, the teacher motivates the student to put forth her best effort by keeping her connected to the writing process. The

Vygotskian concept of learning in the ZPD assumes the learner needs a “more knowledgeable other to plan and guide the learning (Dixon-Krauss, 1996).” To enable the mediation of learning to take place, the more knowledgeable must provide a scaffold tailored to the needs of the learner and the learner must be motivated to try. (Dixon-

Krauss, 1996). The thinksheet is a scaffolding tool, but it can be misappropriated if the teacher who is using it chooses to provide the answers rather than to scaffold the learner to finding the answers on his or her own. Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) refer to it as

“procedural facilitation.” Students operating with a properly implemented mediational means were able to perform at higher levels than they could have otherwise.

The District: The case for re-examining assessment practices

The place to begin with educational reform in America is the standards movement. “Cognitive education programs should be built as a combination of a system of symbolic tools with the didactic approaches based on the principles of mediated learning (Kozulin, 2003).” Administers need to be enlightened as to the characteristics of good socio-cultural teaching theory and practice and the rationale that makes so much sense. Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 13

Traditional assessment that lacks interaction is static (Dixon-Krauss, 1996). Static assessments are often used to classify students. Students who perform poorly then receive an instructional program that has lowered expectations (Stanovich 1986). “Dumbing down” does not keep the learner in his or her ZPD.” Bored students will actually “shut down” because the brain tends to “switch off” if the task is too easy (Schwartz & Begley,

2002). Moll (1990) discusses the limited entry to the “literacy club.” Struggling learners

“…participate in a self-fullfilling prophecy: They appear to be stupid and unprepared for literacy. The school technology then classifys them as deficient, and a cycle of intervention begins that eliminates all invention and most of the authentic convention of functional language. The learner fails at this too (p. 245).”

Dynamic Assessment Procedure (DAP) is one good alternative to traditional assessment. “The instructional methods used during assessment are described as ‘active, constructivist-interactional’ as opposed to ‘passive, behaviorist, transmission.’ The processes as well as the products of learning are examined (Dixon-Krauss, 1996, p.

143).”

Another Vygotskian alternative to the traditional assessment of writing might be the use of collaborative assessment. Collaborative assessment might be especially effective for assessing the co-construction of writing. Both DAP and collaborative assessment merit further investigation because learning would continue to take place during these types of assessment. Time on task would not be lost to the assessment process. They also appear to be superior to traditional assessment measures because they allow for consideration of not only the writing product, but the process as well. Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 14

Finally, districts should consider models and strategies that facilitate the teaching of reading and writing together. “Young children should engage in reading and writing experiences that integrate language and action in a social context (Dixon-Krauss, 1996).”

Teaching reading and writing together is an effective practice because students internalize reading and writing cognition in the social context of literacy activity.

Conclusion

We on the WIRC team like to believe that by approaching reading and writing instruction in a socio-cognitive manner, our thinksheet intervention is a powerful mediator of learning. The data obtained through the comparative analysis presented is a reminder of the importance of the individual teacher in the implementation process. In the case of Luria and Leont’ev’s early research with Vygotsky , “mediational means were created with the express intent of shaping individual action (Wertsch, 1991).” We developed our thinksheets with the express intent of scaffolding knowledge transformation by teaching reading and writing together. As the agent of mediation, it is paramount that the teacher remains focused not on the expected literacy outcome, but rather on the socio-cultural literacy process. A well-intended teacher who attempts to expedite the knowledge acquisition process by providing too many of the answers will actually stall the emergence of literacy at the listing or knowledge telling stage. She will unintentionally ensure that the learner remain teacher dependent much in the same manner that a “mama’s boy” enters adulthood attached for life to his mother’s apron- strings. When poorly implemented, thinksheets (or any effective learning strategy) can be actually mediated for inefficiency, rather than efficiency (Wertsch, 1991). As Kozulin

(2003) writes, “Symbolic tools have a rich educational potential, but they remain Vygotsky was right: Case study findings and implications 15 ineffective if there is no human mediator to facilitate their appropriation by the learner (p.

35).” Perhaps in the future the WIRC data will be used to formulate materials not only to mediate literacy for young learners, but to mediate instructional practices for effective teachers.

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