Today Lenny and I met and we discussed what aspects of our observation should we pay more attention to, and what theories might be helpful to use to analyse them:
- Dynamics student-student of the same class, studens of different ages, teacher-teacher, student-teacher (Vigotsky, Foucalt)
-Interactions between boys and girls
-What kind of social constructions are happening in class
-Comparison between the school and the system of the Italian school Emilia.
-What is for them the purpose of education (Subdury school)
-Comparisons based on our own experience -public ed., etc.
-Positive and negative points of the method
-Teaching of subjects vs conflict resolution
-What happens when someone gets in trouble? How do they apply discipline?
-Difference of interactions during class time and out of class.
-When the class is supposed to start what do the teachers do?
-Is there any specific reason why the schedule is structured as it is?
-What is the method for teaching subjects (math, science, etc.)
-Observe students as indiciduals, who are the students who stand out? Why?
Students at Sherman Institute, 1919. Courtesy Sherman Indian High School, Riverside CA.
1 comment:
I love the question about boys/girls... essentially a question about gender construction in the school. I have others...
Who are the students who other students react to as leaders and why? Are their times when the students act as teachers and the teachers as students? Under what conditions does that become possible? How do these roles/expectations become real in the classroom?
Remember our discussion of method and theory. It is important to have a "toolkit" of concepts, and it is inevitable that the reading your are doing will pre-structure your observations in subtle ways--as will many other things about your own subjectivities--but don't go into the FS with an explicit plan for finding Foucault. Try to let the FS kids and teachers speak for themselves. Try to let them speak to Foucault, if you end-up discussing Foucault. Try to let them speak to your readers... reflect their critical subjectivity, not just their status as objects of an inquiry.
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