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The Eighth International Literacy & Education Research Network Conference on
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Sarah Michaels Richard Sohmer
"A Page So Big No One Can Fall Off": Intersubjectivity
and Apprenticeship Abstract Much work on classroom discourse has looked at the different "ways with words" (Heath, 1983) and different literacies students bring from home and how these interact (and lead to breakdowns, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation of intent) in multi-cultural classroom encounters. Less attention has focused on how it is that newcomers to a practice (who come with highly developed "ways with words") come to take on new ways of signaling and interpreting meaning, so as to be seen and heard as competent "members" of the new practice. This is especially critical in educational arenas, where how one presents oneself with reference to the collective endeavour and how one signals competence -- is carried largely in language. In these contexts, learning and/or intelligence is often evaluated on the basis of structured discursive performances (whether oral or written). How one comes to signal competence in new ways has been understudied. The focus of this paper is the "architecture of intersubjectivity" -- that is, the way that a shared world is established largely through talk, in an after-school science program for predominantly poor, "at-risk" middle school students. The after-school program, known as the Investigators' Club, stands in stark contrast to school, where most of these students are actively failing. In the I-Club, scientific activity is organized around group discussion/debates over a set of carefully selected "discrepant events," which build on the students' embodied experience and everyday ways of speaking, but at the same time, support the participants to take on the identity of an investigator, someone who theorizes, predicts, explains, justifies, persuades, in short, is "smart." Gradually, participation in a set of recurring "language games" guides members to discover, practice and acquire many of the discursive moves and tools that are highly valued in school. Using transcripts of group discussion over many months, this paper charts the participation of students and teacher in the recurring speech event known as "Circle Up Time." In particular, we document how the teacher scaffolds (implicitly and explicitly) and participants take up new discursive moves and new forms that presume membership, identity, and competence. The markers of intersubjectivity are often carried in what "goes without saying," what can be left implicit, via ellipsis or signaled deictically via intonation, gesture, or a reduced reference to what has now become a shared context of the mind. Here, successful learning can be conceptualized and charted as a function of the Discourse itself -- as a carrier of intelligence -- increasingly coming to speak through the I-Club members. Bionotes Sarah Michaels is an Associate Professor of Education and Senior Research Scholar of the Jacob Hiatt Center for Urban Education at Clark University. A sociolinguist by training, she has been actively involved in teaching and research in the area of language, culture, multiple literacies, and schooling. Her current research focuses on the intersection of language, culture, and learning in school and community settings, as they play out in an after-school Science Investigators Club for at-risk middle school students. She is also currently involved in rethinking teacher education so that it focuses central attention on "Accountable talk" and "teacher research" -- supporting teachers as theorizers, curriculum innovators, and educational leaders who use the tools of ethnography and discourse analysis in asking and answering their own questions. She holds a B.A. from Barnard College and a Ph.D. in Education (Language and Literacy) from the University of California, Berkeley. Richard Sohmer is a Research Associate at the Hiatt Center for Urban Education at Clark University. He is the founder and co-designer of the Investigators' Club, an after-school science program for inner-city middle school students. He is currently co-Principal Investigator of a Spencer Foundation major grant, "Socializing Motivation and Academic Efficacy: The Power of a Practice." Building on his work as a Renaissance musician and professional housebuilder, he is interested in the architecture of intersubjectivity via apprenticeship structures. His current research focuses on documenting the principles and practices that promote intersubjectivity and successful science learning in the Investigators' Club as well as the apprenticeship of teachers new to the I-Club practice. Sohmer holds a B.A. from St. Johns College, and a Ph.D. in Discourse and Mind from Clark University.
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