Thoughts on Schema and Sociocultural Theories

I agree with Gee that reading is more than processing skills- once our students have these skills, and even while attaining them- they are socially connected through culture and interaction.  Alvermann, Unrau, and Ruddell (Eds.) interpret Discourse through Gee’s “communities of practice”.  This seems to support my thinking about reader’s/writer’s needing these Discourse communities to make meaning in a socially supported setting. 

Gee asserts that meaning is gained from a person’s experiences and then stored in their “library of experiences”.  “As we face new situations or new texts we run our tapes-perhaps a prototypical one, or a set of typical ones, or a set of contrasting ones, or a less typical one, whatever the case may be.” We do this to apply our old experiences to our new experience and to aid us in making sense of it.  So, according to Gee this function #1 of human language is “situated action.” 

In “perspective-taking”, Gee’s function #2 of human language, he proposes that language “is about communicating perspectives on experience and action in the world, often in contrast to alternative and competing perspectives.” So, it is important for students to interact through discussion, with more advanced peers and adults, about the reading and writing they are assigned in school. This is where instruction and scaffolded instruction with gradual release becomes very important in literacy instruction.  

Tatum and Lee indicate that teachers need to understand the perspectives of their students, their cultural orientations, to develop meaningful literary instruction that will result in critical reading/close reading and written response. If teachers want their students to really read they cannot only change student’s skills, they must also improve their will to read.  They have to want to read. As teachers we have to develop engagement and skill in order to get our students to the levels of reading experienced by Lee at Fairgate High School and Tatum in his experiences with his students. This requires much scaffolded instruction on the part of teachers.

These ideas fit closely with my thinking about teaching middle school students how to express their thinking about reading through written expression.  Language Experience Approach (LEA) is one idea that I have used with struggling students but I think could be expanded to include whole group instruction because of the dialogue that ensues and the important impact of modeling that students find so useful in developing their own writing and thinking.  This approach seems to fit the idea presented by McVee, Dunsmore, and Gavelek in “Schema Theory Revisited.” I agree with this premise that literate processes are influenced by the social and cultural lives of our students as they engage in meaning-making activities. 

Reading comprehension as explained through schema theory cannot be separated from literacy development in sociocultural theory.  These two theories go hand in hand when teaching.  

The research on re-engaging students through the professional development of their teachers  done by Flurio-Ruane, Raphael, Highfield, and Berne supports my thinking on the intersection of these theories: 

“Our work is grounded in the theory that all learning begins on the social plane.  This means that, while individuals are learners, their learning is fundamentally a social process that occurs within social contexts, activities, and interactions with others. Within this view of learning, engagement is socially created.  It is, for the individual, authentic participation in a community’s contexts, activities, and interactions. Engagement enables and sustains both the learning community and its individual members by means of participation in activities.  Members of this learning community vary in knowledge and expertise, but newcomers are gradually socialized into membership” (Cole, 1996). 

“The teachers’ role(s) within a classroom are closely related to the type of classroom discourse.  Au and Raphael (1998) characterize variations in teachers’ roles in terms of the amount of teacher control and student activity.  They define five teacher roles: (a) explicit instructing, (b) modeling, (c) scaffolding, (d) facilitating, and (e) participating. These reflect decreasing control by the teacher and increased activity on the part of the student” (Pearson & Raphael).

These activities have both schema theory and sociocultural theory imbedded in the practice of developing necessary skills by engaging students in learning through socially constructed lessons.

“Students are most passive when teachers are engaged in direct instruction, and they are most active when the teacher simply participates with them in the talk of the classroom.   Au and Raphael’s description implies that it is just as mistaken to assume literacy learning is limited to situations in which the teacher is engaged in explicit instruction as it is to assume that learning is meaningful only when the teacher is out of the picture” (Pearson & Raphael).