Literacy: An ability to “do” in the face of standardization
Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development suggests development occurs in four stages: sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Charles Stangor (2011) suggests that during the sensorimotor stage, which is typically experienced from birth to age two, a child experiences the world exclusively through his or her senses (p. 299). Interestingly, the human brain develops most rapidly throughout a child’s first three years of life. And, possibly even more interestingly, there are three common types of learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. These three factors — the sensorimotor developmental stage, rapidity of brain growth in young humans, and different types of learning styles — play a large role in how teachers understand and interact with students and their varying forms of literacy. Through the three factors mentioned above, this article will work to provide practical strategies for teaching and “doing” literacy in the diverse classroom, while utilizing our first instinctual forms of learning.
It was a discussion I had with some of my peers regarding standardization and learning styles that sparked my interest in the subject of literacy in the face of standardization. One of my peers suggested that standardization was not the rut in which educators become stuck; rather the rut in which teachers become stuck is the notion that standardization of the classroom manifests itself in the standardization of students. With this thought, I wanted to explore how the education of students could be individualized successfully while students’ accomplishments are still being tested through standardized assessments.
In my personal understanding of adolescent literacy, an adolescent may be considered literate if he or she is able to “do.” Being literate is not something confined to the physical act of reading and writing; rather, being literate is the capability of self-knowledge and in turn acting on that self-knowledge to do and create. The very nature of literacy is multimodal because it is not confined to one form of expression. Unfortunately, students are typically tested on formal literacy through short answer and multiple-choice state mandated exams, which do not recognize or measure a student’s literacy in any informal, non-traditional form. Therefore, the question remains: how do teachers transform non-traditional literacy into an ability to perform both inside and outside the classroom?
There is a need first to examine two factors for practical teaching strategies: cognitive development and the physical development of the human brain. In Figure 1, readers see how a human’s brain rapidly develops in the first few years of life and gradually plateaus as humans approach adolescence. According to Piaget’s Theory, these vital years of development are spent learning not through traditional text, reading, or analyzing, but through sensing. If during the most vital human developmental stage our primary source of learning comes from our senses, it is incomprehensible why our senses would become obsolete as we aged and be otherwise ignored during our schooling. Armed with this information, educators should seek to engage all learning styles, particularly styles pertaining to sensory modalities such as sight, sound, and touch in addition to traditional texts.
Despite students being confined to standardized testing, teachers do not have to standardize their students. In order to prepare students for these state mandated exams, teachers must push past the notion that students are “flat” beings and instead recognize students as individuals. Image 2 from Nick Sousanis’ book Unflattening captures this very idea. The illustration acknowledges the standardization of the educational system, which is represented by the one dimensional qualities of the humanoid beings at the bottom of the page. What is interesting about this image, and the message that Sousanis subsequently conveys, is that the shapes hanging on the rope are recognized as human-like, but are nonetheless likely incapable of becoming human. In a practical sense this means students are just as equally incapable of becoming anything like the cookie-cutter, standardized, humanoid versions of themselves to which a standardized education system teaches. Standardization will always be a part of our past, and is currently our present; but it is imperative that teachers individualize education so that our students recognize their own three dimensional qualities, their own forms of literacy, their own untestable talents thus allowing them to manipulate those strengths into learning strategies that are applicable in Flatland and any lands that do not lie as flat as the American education system.
Donna Alvermann (2001) suggests McDermott and Varenne, “emphasized the need to avoid educational practices that mark those who are different from the perceived norms as lacking…” (p. 678). It is this very mindset, the thought that to be standardized is to be normal, my article aims to eradicate. Rather than normalize standardization, this article hopes to promote a more inclusive, creative learning environment for different content areas and different types of learners.
Now, it has been insinuated throughout my article that a student’s individual learning style, whether it be auditory, visual, or kinesthetic, is the key to effective teaching. It is not. Teaching to a student’s individual learning style has little effect on his or her ability to learn or retain information. In fact, teaching only to a student’s best learning style fails to challenge the student to master a different learning style. So, why do learning styles matter? Contrary to popular belief, these “learning” styles are not learning styles at all — they’re teaching and doing styles. Riener and Willingham (2010) suggest a child’s preferred “learning” style is in fact the mode in which a student feels most competent and confident in his or her ability to complete a task — to do, to express his or herself. Thus, it is most important for educators to teach in the learning style that is most apt for the content, rather than the student (p. 32–35).
In order for an educator to teach to the content’s best modality, while also opening his or her classroom to students’ individual expressiveness, this article poses the following hypothetical. In an English class in which comma usage is being taught, it may be best to present the information in a kinesthetic fashion. The teacher will teach the lesson, giving examples on the board, and then allow the students to practice on their own. Despite the fact that this teaching style appears bland, it actually caters to all three learning styles by speaking aloud the instruction, giving visual examples on the board, and allowing students to practice on their own, all while making use of the content’s best primary modality. For review at the completion of the unit students may be given three review choices that reflect their own “doing” style preference: write a song about comma usage (auditory), create their own diagram or paneled cartoon to explain comma usage (visual), or take part in a standard worksheet in which students have to correctly place the commas (kinesthetic).
This teaching strategy exposes students to the different types of learning styles, while also allowing students to become more proficient in a learning technique that may not be their preferred style. And, after challenging students’ learning proficiencies, the students are allowed to choose which style they would like to use to complete a review of the section. If a teacher so desires he or she could even require students to do all three types of reviews.
This methodology for literacy in the face of standardization allows students to express themselves and their knowledge in their preferred style, while also allowing the importance of content to drive the lesson and exposing students to learning styles with which they may not be comfortable; this allows students to express their own forms of literacy while also allowing the teacher to create a lesson in a more controlled environment. If teachers are able to tailor and individualize their teaching style to the content’s best modality and make clear why learning the content is important, the likelihood of students being able to recall this knowledge is heightened — even on standardized testing — because the material was taught in the content’s best modality, while students were allowed to practice through their personal “doing” style.
References
Alvermann, D. (2001). Reading adolescents’ reading identities: Looking back to see ahead. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 44(8), 676–690.
Human brains grow rapidly [Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://humanorigins.si.edu/human-characteristics/brains
[Individualization versus standardization]. (2014, September 22). Retrieved from https://cvkerr.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/education-needs-more-individualization-and-technology-can-make-that-happen/
Jarrett, C. (2015, January 5). All you need to know about the ‘learning styles’ myth, in two minutes. Retrieved September 5, 2016, from https://www.wired.com/2015/01/need-know-learning-styles-myth-two-minutes/
[“Natural” selection]. (2014, September 22). Retrieved from https://cvkerr.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/education-needs-more-individualization-and-technology-can-make-that-happen/
Sousanis, N. (2015). Our bodies in motion. In Unflattening (pp. 69–82). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Stangor, C. (2011). Introduction to psychology. Retrieved from http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/9/9.00SC/MIT9_00SCF11_text.pdf
