Situated Cognition and Comprehensible Input

There is so much I want to say about the third design principle, The Knowledge Principle. So much of what Brown, Collins, and Duguid have to say in their article “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning” aligns, almost seamlessly, with the progressive methods of teaching a world language today. I’ll try to keep my thoughts organized and to the point.

Dr. Bill Van Patten, professor of Second Language Acquisition of Michigan State University, in his article “Creating Comprehensible Input and Output,” defines communication as “the expression and interpretation of meaning in a given context.” Context is defined as the setting (physical space) and the participants (including their ages, roles, genders). He goes on to explain that “the classroom is one context with fixed participants and a fixed setting. So the classroom context will affect how we express and interpret meaning as well as what kind of meaning can be in focus.”

But just because my context is a classroom, it does not mean that I am restricted to the culture of a traditional classroom; i.e. the typical student-teacher dynamic (teacher as “sage on stage,” students as compliant pupils following directions) or that my interactions with my students are inauthentic.

So here is my struggle: what is the “culture” of my content? One would think that would have a very simple answer, because as a German teacher I am expected to teach German culture, but the “culture” that we learned about through John Seely Brown, et. al. has a slightly different meaning. In their article on situated cognition, enculturation refers to the practice of exposing students to the behavior, language, and culture of practitioners. For conventional core subjects, these practitioners are usually professionals in the field: historians, poets, doctors, chemists, etc. But who would be a practitioner of German? A linguist? A translator? Or the just plain folk (JPF) of everyday Germany?

In order to find the answer, we’ll have to backtrack a few steps. Van Patten explains that “learners hear and see language in a communicative context that they process for meaning. We call this type of language input. Input cannot be equated with the staple of much traditional language teaching: explanation about grammar, presentation of vocabulary lists, practice, fill-in-the-blanks, and so on. For mental representation to develop, learners have to hear and see language as it is used to express meaning.”  Brown, Collins, and Duguid reinforce the idea of input with their theory of “legitimate peripheral participation.” They state that “this peripheral participation is particularly important for people entering the culture. They need to observe how practitioners at various levels behave and talk” From here, then, we can make the assumption that input should come from an authentic place - what would students communicating in German likely talk about? In what communicative/conversational situations would my students likely find themselves? I therefore believe that my job is to enculturate my students into the world of JPF Germans, where they can converse and communicate with peers and native Germans alike.

In conclusion, I need to give students opportunities to hear language in an authentic context, even if that context is a classroom. I just have to make sure the input and communication flows from culture of JPFs communicating and conversing rather than that of a teacher explicitly teaching language rules to her students.

An example of this could involve the following: I tell my students a story about what I did over the past weekend. This is a conversation they would very likely have with a teacher, a friend, or a coworker. Students are given the task of remembering who I saw, and what I did with each person and when (for example, I went to the movies with my husband on Friday evening, but went shopping with my sister on Saturday). Students can then use this model to discuss their weekends with me and the rest of the class. By the end, we’ll have a record of what everyone did over the weekend. I can then pull up an infographic of what Germans enjoy doing in their free time (bike riding, watching TV, playing soccer), and we can compare and contrast our findings, reconnecting them to the work of Germany and its people.

A Saber-toothed Criticism

As I read J. Abner Peddiwell's The Saber-tooth Curriculum, I found myself frequently nodding my head in agreement. My poor (non-teacher) husband had to sit through lengthy passages that I just "had to read out loud" to him. So much of Peddiwell's criticism hit home.

Unfortunately, despite its original publishing date of 1939, so many of Peddiwell's thoughts and allegories still ring true today. A poorly-designed educational system not only opens a society up to attack, as seen by the warrior tribe in the text, but also leads to a steep economic/social decline of the society itself. By the end of the story, there is a deep divide between the "haves" (greedy fish chiefs/corrupt Wall Street execs?) and the "have nots" (paleo-youth playing with rocks to pass the time/"educated" Millennials drowning in student loans who can't find jobs in their fields of study?).

All of these problems stem from the main theme that the instruction students receive is completely inauthentic. Nothing that these children and young adults are expected to learn has any real-life connection to what their current community needs. Although the original system developed by New-Fist was authentic to the community of his time, as the needs of that community evolved the lessons taught to their youth remained the same.

Peddiwell's dystopic description of general education then/today also applies to modern foreign language instruction. There is a huge paradigm shift going on right now (well, attempting to, anyway) about how we teach our students language and what language acquisition actually looks like. The "old ways" of grammar-translation and audio-lingual methodologies (think workbook pages with grammar exercises and "dialogs" that have to be memorized) are still deeply rooted in language classrooms and curricula all over the country.

"New wave" instructors using comprehensible input (CI) and communicative language teaching (CLT) methods are constantly fighting against these traditional ideologies. We are sometimes successful, but often we run into a lot of the same resistance found in Sabertooth (such as the progressive teacher who started her “Real-Creek School of Fish-Grabbing”). Many curricula still insist on explicit grammar instruction and inauthentic "communication" exercises as means of assessment.

Language acquisition experts such as Stephen Krashen and Bill VanPatten are working to challenge these traditional approaches and change instruction to be more authentic, communicative, and reflective of natural acquisition. I have found great success following their advice, using CI, TPRS, MovieTalk, Communicative Tasks and other strategies in my lessons. The links below describe their theories and research to those who are curious:

http://www.educ.ualberta.ca/staff/olenka.bilash/best%20of%20bilash/krashen.html

http://learninglanguages.celta.msu.edu/sla-vanpatten/

Throw out those Lesson Plans!

Paradigm shifts are scary: they mean that everything you were doing before was misinformed or counter-productive. All those hours gone to waste. And what do teachers hate more than anything else? Having our precious time wasted. Oh, yeah, and being wrong. We hate that, too.

It all comes from a good place, though. We want to do our best. We want the kids to learn and grow. It’s important! We’re important! And it takes a ton of time to plan meaningful and motivating lessons for our students. We give up our lunch breaks, mornings, evenings, and weekends planning out activities, aligning said activities to standards and content goals, assessing the activities in order to give our students feedback and inform our next round of planning, etc.

We’ve worked so hard to create the plans we’ve used in our classrooms everyday. And now we have to throw it all away?

Well, yeah.

And here’s why: Lesson “plans” are not the place to start. A plan is just a list; a series of exercises in chronological order that keep students busy and fill class time with content-centered activity. Having a plan is important, but should always come second - or even third - to design.

“But design and planning are the same thing! I design my lesson plans!!” one may argue.

Well, no.

Design is the big picture: the architectural concepts and sketches behind the final blueprints and construction.

Unlike planning and logistics, Design lives in a conceptual space. The world in which Design lives does not have any rules - gravity and the laws of planetary motion do not exist in Design World. So what does? Creativity, abstract thought, invention, flashes of brilliance, that feeling of elation you get when you finally remember the name of that actor from that movie with Barbra Streisand that made you cry.

Anyone who has ever had a brilliant “Aha!” moment has started here, in Design World. Once design is in place, once the idea has formed, then the planning and logistics can begin.

So what can implementing design do for me as a teacher?

A good design can:

• Solve a common problem, usually in simple and innovative ways.
• Inspire new ideas or perspectives.
• Communicate an overarching message or theme.
• Elicit a specific emotion or reaction from an audience.

Implementing design into our teaching not only makes our content more engaging for our students, but it inspires them to incorporate the skill of design into their own lives. Take a look at your curriculum. Do you see an authentic problem that you want your students to solve? Do you want to communicate an overarching concept or theme to your students? Do you want your students to walk away with a specific feeling about a topic? Start there. Allow yourself to break the rules of Tradition and hang out in Design World for a bit.

Eureka! You’ve got it? Now you can start planning!