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Backing each other up "like in basketball": an examination of literacy and the forms of capital among peers in an elementary school classroom community of practice
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Backing each other up "like in basketball": an examination of literacy and the forms of capital among peers in an elementary school classroom community of practice
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Content
BACKING EACH OTHER UP “LIKE IN BASKETBALL”: AN EXAMINATION
OF LITERACY AND THE FORMS OF CAPITAL AMONG PEERS
IN AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CLASSROOM
COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
by
Amy Lassiter Ardell
__________________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
May 2007
Copyright 2007 Amy Lassiter Ardell
ii
DEDICATION
I dedicate this dissertation to my husband, Jimmy, for his ongoing
encouragement, support, love, and patience.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people have been critical to my growth as a scholar during my time at
the University of Southern California. I have appreciated every step of the process
and would like to thank the following people for their personal impact on my life
and my life’s work.
Dr. Laurie MacGillivray, my initial advisor, gave me the chance to attend
school. Working under her as a teaching and research assistant shaped me in critical
ways, particularly as someone who strives to get past binary oppositions and see
the teaching and learning world in more complex ways. She has also become a
good friend.
Dr. Amanda Datnow, my fearless and patient advisor, has generously
supported me throughout our time together. Her sharp intellect, positive attitude,
and personal warmth have sustained me through the ups and downs of degree
progress. I am so thankful.
Dr. Ron Astor and Dr. Robert Rueda have influenced my thinking greatly,
both as teachers and as committee members. It has been nothing short of pure
privilege to learn from them.
The teachers and students of Olive Avenue Elementary School were
especially wonderful. Bonnie, Cecilia, and the students were welcoming and
supportive during the study. It was a pleasure to observe children learning in such
an intellectually stimulating environment. It is my sincere hope that the lessons
learned from their actions and experiences will serve countless others in the future.
Dr. Jennifer Palma and the soon-to-be Dr. Margie Curwen were and still are
critical sources of support and friendship. We have been las tres from the first day
iv
we met, sharing important intellectual and personal connections that have made the
USC experience so special.
Dr. Nancy Walker, Dr. Joan Tardibuono, Kimberly Shotwell, Tina Tsai, and
Dr. Karla Colorado have been important sources of mentoring, support, and
friendship during coursework and beyond. I have loved our hours of conversations
about school, literacy, students, scholarship, dating, marriage, and motherhood.
My family has been critical to the completion of this degree. My husband
Jimmy has been with me every step of the way, and I will always appreciate the
multiple acts of kindness involved in his support of my fulfillment of this dream.
My parents, Mike and Marcia Lassiter, have been key influences and great
sounding boards during my graduate school journey (thanks especially to Dad for
the writing gene and Mom for the analytical one), as have my in-laws, Dave and
Cynthy Ardell. All have also been patient with my progress, even when it meant
that I had to sacrifice time away from them. I appreciate the numerous occasions on
which they helped with child care, and Noah does, too. My sons, Noah and
Matthew, should know that I am so happy to be their mom and hope that, in
reaching this goal, I encourage them to seek what they love to do in the world.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION ..........................................................................................................ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................... iii
ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................... viii
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION................................................................................1
Current Literacy Policy in Southern California..............................................1
District Literacy Policy at Large ..............................................................2
Olive Avenue School................................................................................7
Highlighting the Role of the Social Environment in Literacy Learning ......10
Purpose of the Study.....................................................................................12
Significance of the Study..............................................................................13
Plan for The Dissertation..............................................................................13
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................15
Theoretical Framework.................................................................................15
Communities of Practice ........................................................................15
Elementary Classrooms as Literacy Communities of Practice...............18
The Forms of Capital..............................................................................23
Forms of Capital in Elementary Classrooms..........................................26
Summary of the Theoretical Framework................................................27
Empirical Studies of Peer Interactions During Elementary Classroom
Literacy Learning ...................................................................................28
Structural Components of Classrooms and Peer Dynamics ...................28
Who Is Present..................................................................................29
Questioning Common Sense ............................................................30
Classroom Structures and Power............................................................32
Summary of Empirical Studies of Peer Interactions ..............................34
Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY .............................................................................36
Site and Participant Selection .......................................................................36
Data Collection.............................................................................................40
Ethical Considerations..................................................................................45
Advantages and Limitations of This Case Study..........................................46
Data Analysis................................................................................................47
Peer Resources........................................................................................48
Teachers and Classroom Environment ...................................................50
Forms of Capital .....................................................................................52
Chapter Summary.........................................................................................53
Chapter 4: FINDINGS..........................................................................................54
The Role of the Teachers and the Classroom Environment .........................55
Penguin Cluster as a Community of Practice .........................................55
vi
People as Social Learners .................................................................56
Knowledge Through Active Participation........................................57
Knowledge Through What Is Valued in Context .............................60
Learning as Personally Transformative............................................71
Tensions and Conflicts .....................................................................73
Summary of Penguin Cluster as a Community of Practice ....................78
The Nature of Students’ Capital Resources in Penguin Cluster...................79
The Role of Economic Capital in Penguin Cluster.................................80
Economic Resources From the School.............................................80
Economic Resources From Teacher Initiatives ................................82
Economic Resources From Student Work........................................84
The Role of Cultural Capital Resources in Penguin Cluster ..................85
Cultural Capital Development in the Classroom..............................85
The Role of Cultural Capital From Students’ Homes ......................88
Cultural Capital Exchange in Context ..............................................94
Objectified Cultural Capital in the Classroom ...............................102
Summary of Cultural Capital Exchange in Penguin Cluster ..........105
The Role of Social Capital in Penguin Cluster.....................................106
Teachers’ Social Capital Resources ...............................................106
Teachers’ Views of Student Networks ...........................................108
Student Views of Their Social Networks .......................................111
Summary of the Forms of Capital in Penguin Cluster..........................120
How and When Students Access the Resources of Their Peers .................122
Accessing and Guiding Each Other in a Community of Literacy
Practice: Trends ..............................................................................123
Independent Work ..........................................................................124
Group Work....................................................................................128
The Kinds of Assistance Students Accessed and Guided.....................131
The Bigger Picture of Peer Assistance and Guidance in
Penguin Cluster...............................................................................136
Summary of Peer Assistance and Guidance in Penguin Cluster ..........146
Chapter Summary.......................................................................................147
Chapter 5: CONCLUSION.................................................................................150
Intentions of the Study................................................................................150
Ties to the Existing Literature ....................................................................151
Connections and Insights Into Communities of Literacy
Practice .....................................................................................152
Connections and Insights Into the Forms of Capital ......................156
Connections and Insights Into Peer Interactions During
Elementary School Literacy Learning......................................159
Implications of This Study and Directions for Future Research ................162
Conclusion..................................................................................................167
REFERENCES .....................................................................................................168
APPENDICES
A. TEACHER INTERVIEW PROTOCOL................................................172
vii
B. STUDENT FOCUS GROUP INTERVIEW PROTOCOLS .................173
viii
ABSTRACT
As an investigation into the social aspects of literacy learning between peers
in the upper elementary grades, this study addresses the primary research question,
“How and when do students choose to draw on the resources of their peers in a
classroom community of practice as they solve problems in their literacy work?”
Two subquestions were also addressed to determine potential ways in which his-
torically inequitable patterns of student achievement can be disrupted in the context
of an innovative public school classroom: “What are the roles of the teacher and the
classroom environment in this process?” and “What is the nature of students’ eco-
nomic, cultural, and social capital resources and how do these come into play as
students undertake and complete literacy assignments?” Two complementary the-
oretical frameworks, sociocultural theory were employed to think about how a
diverse group of fourth and fifth public school students learned to read and write:
Wenger’s notion of a community of practice Bourdieu’s forms of capital. Students’
experiences were analyzed in relationship to each theory and in an open-ended
manner, using data collected from a variety of sources.
Aspects of each theory were empirically grounded in this study. The fact
that the focal classroom functioned as a community of practice allowed it to nurture
a set of strong and well-developed values and norms that anchored teachers’ and
students’ efforts to activate and convert forms of economic, cultural, and social
capital in strategic and productive ways. Classroom work that was closely con-
nected to the larger social world and encouraged students’ active participation gave
it purpose. In turn, development of a shared repertoire was encouraged through
curricular explorations that began with teachers’ leadership but also incorporated
ix
relevant student knowledge and experiences. Collectively fostered understandings
about literacy included the need to balance both skills and dispositions to take on
personal identities as readers and writers. In this way, students’ ability to utilize the
social setting of the classroom to work through the interdisciplinary curriculum was
central to the cultivation of a literate “habitus.”
1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
During a focus group interview regarding the social environment of his
classroom, James, a fourth grader in a multiage fourth- and fifth-grade classroom,
considered the question of whether it was easy or difficult to work with his friends
in class. He replied,
I think it’s kind of easy to work with your friends, so if you need a little
help, they’re there to back you up, and you back them up, like in basketball.
Yeah, that’s the thing we do in this class, because we’re a good healthy
team. We’re Penguin Cluster.
James was right. Penguin Cluster, a group of 62 children and two teachers
in an urban public magnet and charter school in southern California, was a place
full of reciprocity, just as he described. In a time when educational policy makers
assume a one-way distribution of knowledge, where standards are to be transmitted
from teacher to students, often via a scripted curriculum, this idea of multilateral
exchanges of information and expertise seems out of place, even mildly eccentric.
However, the evidence collected in this study shows that the paradigm of knowl-
edge transmission from adult to child, teacher’s manual author to students—the one
represented in many current literacy instructional policies—is hopelessly naïve.
Human agency is an integral part of any classroom’s learning story, and its role
must be considered more carefully in learning more about how schools can
maximize academic accomplishments for all students.
Current Literacy Policy in Southern California
The kinds of literacy activities that take place in James’s classroom, when
compared with other schools in the district with which his school is affiliated, are
2
fairly unusual. The charter status of his institution allows his teachers an exemption
from district policy. The distinction between the two is made clear by outlining the
primary tenets of standard district practice and contrasting it with how the teachers
in James’s classroom describe their site.
District Literacy Policy at Large
In his review of case study literature regarding recent district-level reform
initiatives, Anderson (2003) noted multiple trends across settings. Many of the
strategies used in these often coordinated and rigorous efforts included (a) a com-
mitment to public accountability for student performance, (b) a focus on instruc-
tional techniques designed to close achievement gaps (usually concentrated on one
content area in a particular grade-level span), (c) the harmonization of district
assessment data with state-established standards and assessment expectations, (d) a
provision for uniform curricular materials and a requirement that they be employed
in a standardized manner, (e) an effort to train existing administrators and develop
teacher leaders to undertake and maintain the reform, and (f) ongoing targeted pro-
fessional development for teachers. These types of practices were usually imple-
mented by urban districts as a response to problems such as weak or uneven student
academic performance, fragmented and unfocused curriculum, high levels of
student and teacher transience, and low expectations for poor children and students
of color. Both of these issues and these solutions were present in the district affili-
ated with James’s school. Thus, the policy described below is a typical representa-
tion of the kind of literacy reform currently taking place in city school districts
across the United States.
3
The district that sponsors James’s school is a large urban district in southern
California. Slightly ahead of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001
(NCLB, 2002) curve, the district made literacy achievement a top priority in 2000.
The district began by implementing a comprehensive plan in grades K-2 and then
expanded the scope to grades 3-5 during the 2001-2002 school year. Along with
this expansion, the district took advantage of available federal and state monies to
support its literacy initiatives through grants such as the California Reading First
Initiative, established under NCLB. According to district documents, its compre-
hensive plan adheres to state standards and includes specific “rigorous, research-
based instructional materials, focused classroom instruction, professional develop-
ment for classroom teachers and administrators, and literacy coaches” (District
Office of Communications, 2003
1
). This approach heavily emphasized the role of
the curriculum and the teacher in literacy achievement.
To meet the first set of criteria, each elementary school had a choice of
adopting one of three basal reading programs: Open Court, Success for All, or
Reading Mastery. Most schools elected to use Open Court. These programs were
chosen because they “aligned with state standards” and because they had been
“proven successful in other urban school districts” (District Office of Communica-
tions, 2003). In addition, the district mandated regular testing of student progress in
literacy, with assessments given every 6 weeks. Results of these tests are used to
inform teachers about instructional effectiveness and assist the district in determin-
ing options for future professional development. The plan for achieving the other
1
The term District is substituted for the full name of the organization in
order to maintain confidentiality.
4
three aspects of the district’s literacy plan include 2 to 3 hours of daily literacy
instruction, ongoing training of teachers in the use of the basal program and state
language arts standards, and district-provided literacy coaches for each school site.
Literacy coaches, usually veteran educators, work directly with teachers in the
classroom to ensure implementation of the basal program. These components are
meant to ensure close adherence to the packaged curriculum with frequent testing
of the program’s content, professional development that reinforces its primary
tenets, and additional personnel to monitor and support its full implementation in
classrooms.
Each kindergarten and first grade classroom in schools with large numbers
of English Language Learners and reading scores below the 45th percentile in first
grade received the Waterford Early Reading Program, a computer software pro-
gram meant to support classroom instruction and provide teachers with additional
feedback on student performance. As teachers conduct their reading lessons,
students take turns with 15-30 minutes of individual sessions where they, “’play’
word identification games and sing songs—fun activities that are really about
learning the alphabet, phonics, words, and phrases” (District Office of Communica-
tions, 2003). Students record their diction into microphones so that the computer
can follow their oral language progress. Waterford students are given 52 books and
four videos to reinforce their learning at home. According to district documents, the
superintendent is so pleased with the program that it will be put in as many class-
rooms as possible with the help of grants and adult education funding. The
Waterford program, “which work[s] much like a one-on-one tutor” (District Office
of Communications, 2003), serves as the district’s way of reinforcing curriculum
content for underperforming students through technology.
5
In 2002, the superintendent’s office published its 5-year strategic plan. This
document reiterated the district’s commitment to improving student performance in
literacy by making reading and writing its first listed goal, with the banner head-
line, “All students will achieve grade-level standards for literacy to enable them to
be globally competitive in the 21st century.”
In the last two years, we have focused heavily on reading as a life skill—a
gatekeeper skill. Like many districts across the country, we have recognized
that a balanced, research-based literacy program that includes explicit and
systematic phonics for reading has proven the most successful at helping
students acquire the skills to read. (Superintendent’s Strategic Plan, 2002,
n.p.)
2
The document explains that the district will measure its success based on norm-
referenced test scores, with a goal of achievement at or above the 50th percentile in
reading. The district monitors progress with matched scores from year to year
(comparing same-group progress) and pays particular attention to historically
underperforming student groups through the use of score breakdowns for minority
populations.
Many implicit assumptions are present in these official statements. First, the
roles of the curriculum and the classroom teacher are highlighted as the targets of
improvement. The implication is that these are the pivotal domains for positive
change. While they may be key aspects of a classroom, the students’ role is left
unaddressed.
Second, because the curriculum, usually Open Court, anchors the district’s
reform efforts, the selection limits the literacy repertoire for both teachers and
students; if it is not in the book, then it is not taught. The assumption is that the
2
The Plan is published by the school district, which is confidential.
6
curriculum is comprehensive. However, the curriculum creates a divide between
“school literacy” in the form of a basal program and the “real life” literacy
necessary for global competitiveness that the district also desires to achieve.
Further, since professional development is tied directly to teachers’ increased
understanding of how to teach the basal program and coaches are there only to
support program implementation, if the program is not working for particular
students, teachers are left with few official means of support from their employer.
Close adherence to a program keeps literacy instruction tied to the language arts
curriculum, represented by a set block of time, rather than expanding it to all
content areas.
Third, since in official documents only the role of explicit phonics and other
“skills” are specifically addressed, one wonders about the district’s definition of
“balanced curriculum.” Any mention of the necessary dispositions and habits that
one must also have to present oneself as literate is lacking. These dispositions
might include but would not be limited to knowing how to select a book or written
genre for a particular purpose, knowing when to employ particular strategies when
reading or writing, and reading and writing for enjoyment or other personal reasons
outside of school.
Fourth, in making the choice to highlight only one aspect of the reading
process in its documents, questions arise about the role of writing. While the
district claims “literacy” as its goal, it is curious that only reading scores are used to
measure progress; how the district addresses writing achievement is unclear.
These multiple issues are the direct result of a paradigm of knowledge as
something that can be transmitted directly from teacher, curriculum, and computer
to student, with the student’s role being relegated to test taker and performer of
7
tasks. Such a mindset contrasts with how literacy instruction occurs in James’s
classroom.
Olive Avenue School
Although James’s school, Olive Avenue, is affiliated with this larger public
school district, it does not have to abide by the above policy for literacy instruction
due to its charter status. As an institution that has undergone multiple self-initiated
reform efforts over many years, Olive Avenue is a unique public school. However,
it does not have an official literacy policy of its own that can be used for compari-
son with the district. Data collected during interviews with James’s teachers,
Bonnie Morales and Cecilia Sennett
3
, as well as information provided by the
students of the Penguin Cluster during focus group interviews, produced a contrast-
ing paradigm of how knowledge is acquired. Chapter 4 shows how this different
view affected how literacy learning was experienced in their classroom.
Despite the fact that Olive Avenue School was a highly decentralized place,
it possessed a distinct set of norms that constituted a strong school culture. For
teachers, all of whom worked in pairs to support a collective group of students, the
expectation was that they create a high-quality classroom experience based on their
own expertise. Such collaboration was supported through creative scheduling that
allowed partner teachers to meet once a week during the school day for team
planning, as well as through access to small grants to assist in paying for some of
the resources that they might need to bring their curricular visions to fruition. The
subsequent pressure on teachers to be excellent at what they did was high,
3
All names used in this report are pseudonyms.
8
especially considering the school’s unwritten expectation that the learning that
happened at school was to be shared as much as possible with the larger com-
munity. This happened frequently, both through inviting the public to the school
to view performances or displays and bringing classroom learning to larger com-
munity institutions, as one cluster did when it displayed its social studies work at a
local museum. While community ties were developed by individual teachers, the
school’s reputation for high quality often helped the teachers to make these con-
nections. In addition, the school kept records of parents’ networks and talents,
should individual teachers wish to draw on their resources to facilitate classroom
learning.
Olive Avenue’s culture had a large impact on students’ experiences as well.
Most prominent was a school-wide commitment to constructivism, a teaching
philosophy that posits that people learn by integrating new information with what
they already know, actively “constructing” knowledge in the process. Although
each cluster at Olive Avenue was distinctive in terms of what it offered students,
each maintained a commitment to a constructivist approach through a learner-
centered, project-oriented design. Bonnie expressed the impact of this philosophy
on children:
All through the grades, they’re encouraged to be thinkers. They’re encour-
aged to problem-solve because there’s so many projects that are group
projects, so you’ve got to do a lot of problem-solving. So they’ve been
trained to do that and to say, “Oh, no, that doesn’t work that way, it works
this way.” They’re trained to be more independent about taking care of their
work.
The demands of a constructivist approach on children meant that they had
to develop particular habits and dispositions, such as problem solving and inde-
pendence, in order to be seen as capable by their teachers. What is interesting about
9
these habits and dispositions, though, is that they had the potential to serve children
well outside of an academic arena, even if they were cultivated by participating in
such an arena.
When we just finished our report cards, part of our evaluation was on how
much a self-starter a student was . . . those aren’t exactly what the words on
the report card are, but it’s the idea that you also can take responsibility for
your own learning because that’s how you create lifelong learners. . . . It’s
trusting the child to be a learner. It’s emphasized more or less in different
classrooms, but I’d say all throughout the school we trust the child to be
capable, trust that they’re going to be able to figure it out, that they’re going
to be able to problem solve, that they’re going to be able to take that per-
sonal responsibility. . . . The philosophy is the opposite of [the child as] an
empty vessel [citing Paolo Friere]. (Bonnie)
The constructivist philosophy was evident in classroom practices, in official
measures of student achievement, and in adults’ general attitudes toward children at
the school. The consequence of this philosophy in action was that children were
seen as having something to offer in the learning process.
Olive Avenue was not a perfect place. Teachers mentioned political,
logistical, and social issues that they struggled with regularly in their work.
However, the contrast between the epistemological views of the district and the
views of the educators at this school created interesting dichotomies between
obscuring and highlighting children’s roles in the learning process, between setting
strict curricular limits and having unlimited ones, and between teaching children to
read and write for specific school purposes and teaching them to read and write for
lifelong purposes. This study focuses on the potential of the alternative view and
the role of student agency, classroom environment, and resources as possible
avenues for the closing of the achievement gap. In this sense, while the district’s
goals of wanting to provide more equitable opportunities for children of all back-
grounds to be academically successful are admirable, perhaps greater equity can be
10
achieved by each child getting what he or she needs instead of all children getting
the same thing.
Highlighting the Role of the Social
Environment in Literacy Learning
The preceding section makes it evident that adults spend a great deal of time
thinking about how to make schools better places of learning. Among many other
important tasks, national and state officials pass legislation, school boards struggle
over budgets, principals look for ways to hold their staff members accountable, and
teachers attempt to create lesson plans that will benefit students. All of these ele-
ments matter in the educational lives of students. Still, as Wenger (1998) indicated,
the relationship between teaching and learning is not one of cause and effect but
rather “an interaction of the planned and emergent” (p. 267). Thus, despite the
insistence by some adults that planning-oriented changes alone (e.g., NCLB) will
ensure educational equity for all students, we must pay more attention to how
children respond to these plans. Only then will it be clear what is actually being
learned as a result of the plans.
From a child’s point of view, schools are social places. School is where one
learns how to fit into the world beyond one’s family, both socially and academic-
ally. One content area where these dimensions often intersect is literacy, as it is an
inherently social practice (Barton, Hamilton, & Ivanic, 2000; Cook-Gumperz,
1986; Street, 1995). Students are often asked to reveal a great deal of themselves as
they engage with texts (McCarthey & Moje, 2002). Judgments, aesthetics, analysis,
and personal connections are regular and ongoing aspects of reading and writing
(Rosenblatt, 1978). In addition, measures of students’ literacy abilities are, in many
cases, quite public (McCarthey, 2001, 2002). These indicators can be both formal
11
(e.g., standardized test scores, reading at a particular level of text) and informal
(e.g., instructional groupings, posted student work on classroom walls).
As the opening quote of this study illustrates, children draw on the social
resources around them to solve the problems of their daily literacy work. James
formed bonds with classmates who could become helpful sounding boards for his
work. Once he showed the cover of his student-authored picture book to his friend,
Mike, asking for feedback. When Mike replied, “It’s you, but it’s sloppy,” James
returned to the computer to redo it. He remarked later that he had already thought
that it was bad, but he wanted an opinion from someone who thought like him. In a
separate project, James worked with two other students to write a brochure about
starting a school recycling plan (a project that his class had undertaken earlier in the
school year) to distribute across the state to teachers and students. During this
process, elaborated in chapter 4, James worked hard to create the best possible
product, using every social and cultural resource at his disposal. These means
included the knowledge and expertise of his peers, his mother, his teacher, his own
outside of school experiences, what he had already learned in class, and the Inter-
net. These interactions can be seen as evidence of children’s emergent responses to
the literacy curriculum as members of a classroom community of practice (Wenger,
1998).
In a time when the achievement gap in literacy is wide, particularly among
students of various social classes (U.S. Department of Education, 2003) and racial
and ethnic backgrounds (U.S. Department of Education, 2002, 2003), it is
important to investigate the nature of this discrepancy. Careful study of diverse
children’s interactions in an innovative literacy classroom can identify what
12
contributes to these achievement patterns and what possibilities exist for disrupting
them.
Purpose of the Study
A close look at how children solve problems to move through the literacy
curriculum can offer important insights into the nature of the relationship between
children’s social and academic worlds as they learn to read and write. Analysis of
these daily events in Penguin Cluster draws from two complementary theoretical
frameworks. The first framework is sociocultural theory, in particular the concept
of a community of practice, which is a social group developed over time through
ongoing purposeful endeavor (Wenger, 1998). The second framework utilizes
Bourdieu’s (1986) notion of how forms of economic, cultural, and social capital
operate in practice. An analysis of a “literacy community of practice” from a
sociocultural perspective provides a way to think about the role of the classroom
context, while Bourdieu’s frame is useful in addressing issues of power in this
setting, particularly as it operates through culture and social class.
This study was guided by the following research question: How and when
do students choose to draw on the resources of their peers in a classroom com-
munity of practice as they solve problems in their literacy work? Two subquestions
were addressed: (a) What are the roles of the teacher and the classroom environ-
ment in this process? and (b) What is the nature of students’ economic, cultural,
and social capital resources and how do these come into play as students undertake
and complete literacy assignments?
The examination of students’ experiences in a community of literacy
practice is intended to capture a more complex picture of the relationships among
13
institutional structure, the workings of culture and social class, and individual
agency as children learn to read and write.
Significance of the Study
This study is timely for a number of reasons. First, as discussed in chapter
3, the focal classroom is a product of multiple structural reforms and has consist-
ently demonstrated a high degree of success in teaching children from a variety of
backgrounds how to read and write. Thus, it merits attention when many stake-
holders seek equitable achievement in literacy. Second, because this study
spotlights children’s reactions to curriculum, it heeds recent calls for research that
pays attention to the consequences of particular methods of instruction (Luke,
1998). Third, this study builds on previous studies of the social aspects of child-
ren’s literacy development by looking at inherent power relations through the lens
of capital exchange (Bourdieu, 1986). The use of this framework is important
because some researchers have asserted that it is through the exchange of capital
resources that historically inequitable patterns of access can be disrupted (Lareau &
Horvat, 1999).
Plan for The Dissertation
The following four chapters elaborate on many of the points made in this
chapter. Chapter 2 reviews in detail both of the two theoretical frameworks and
related empirical studies of elementary classrooms that draw upon these frame-
works. In addition, it outlines empirical works that discuss peer interactions during
literacy learning, including the effects of structural components of classrooms on
peer dynamics, the questioning of common sense notions of peer dynamics, and
issues surrounding classroom structures and power relationships. Chapter 3
14
contains information relevant to the methodology used in this study, including
study design rationale, site and participant selection, and information about the
procedures used in both data collection and analysis. Chapter 4 presents and
discusses the findings of the study as they relate to each theoretical framework and
the research questions. Chapter 5 ties the findings to the existing literature, dis-
cusses potential implications, and provides recommendations for future research.
15
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Because the study draws from both the socioculturally derived notion of a
community of practice and Bourdieu’s forms of capital, these two theoretical
frames are described in the first section of the chapter. The theoretical overview is
followed by a review of empirical studies that apply these specific frameworks to
literacy learning at the elementary school level. The second section of the chapter
provides an overview of empirical studies of peer interaction during classroom
literacy activities. Particular consideration is given to the role of the classroom
structure and teacher and studies examining issues of power in peer interactions.
Studies reviewed in this proposal primarily reflect research conducted within the
past 10 years.
Theoretical Framework
Communities of Practice
The study of a community of practice sheds light on what is learned in a
social context. Specifically, it is “a locus of engagement in action, interpersonal
relations, shared knowledge, and negotiation of enterprises” (Wenger, 1998, p. 85).
This view assumes that people are fundamentally social beings and that knowledge,
which comes about through active participation in various social worlds, is the
result of what is valued in a particular setting. This review focuses on its conceptu-
alization as outlined by Wenger, as his work explicitly deals with the characteris-
tics, operations, and possibilities inherent in communities of practice.
16
Learning as participants in a community of practice is about the creation of
identities, meanings, and a sense of social belonging as learners take part in the task
at hand; it is a personally transformative process. From this perspective, learning is
inevitable and happens regardless of intention. In fact, Wenger (1998) defined
practice as both the explicit and tacit aspects of a response to a particular design for
learning. The togetherness of this response is what galvanizes the community
through three key elements: mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared
repertoire.
Mutual engagement gives a community of practice its shape by providing
opportunities for authentic participation in meaningful activity. It allows people to
seek their own role in the group. Conflict is inherent and necessary as multiple
perspectives and levels of competence are critical to reaching a common goal. For
this reason, great value is given to the ability to coordinate competencies with
others. This social way of being gives way to complex relationships constituted by
both unity and tension.
Joint enterprise is fundamentally a negotiation among members of a
community of practice as they respond to their given situation. Because mutual
engagement requires diversity of thought, joint enterprise is not harmonious
practice. Yet the conflict inherent in their negotiated response can move the group
toward its goal. As the group progresses, relationships of accountability are created
that are integral to the negotiation. As the group works with particular resources
and limits, members gain ownership over their situation. This sense of ownership is
important, given the fact that the community is nested in larger historical, social,
cultural, and institutional contexts.
17
Shared repertoire refers to the resources that the community has at hand.
These resources can be explicit (e.g., tools, routines) or tacit (e.g., discourses, con-
cepts). They may be produced by the community through its work or appropriated
from outside sources because of their usefulness to its practice. A shared repertoire
echoes the group’s shared history of mutual engagement. It can be the source for
creativity, since there is the potential for multiple approaches to practice. Yet it can
also be a constraint if the group relies solely on the past to inform the future. The
uncertainty involved when a shared repertoire is put into action helps to generate
meaning through negotiation between group members.
Wenger stated that communities of practice, which are fundamentally
interested in issues of practice and identity, involve inherent tensions that must be
addressed in order to be productive. These include tensions between what consti-
tutes participation at all levels and how these norms are reified, tensions between
in-group and outside-of-group meanings and values, and tensions between identi-
ties as participants/nonparticipants and negotiations of meaning. Within these push-
pull dualities exist decisions about how newcomers to the community are socialized
into participation and how to keep the group recognizable to its members while also
transforming it to provide for its future. There are also questions about the group’s
boundaries and relationship to other groups, as well as each individual’s ability to
reconcile and broker as a member in multiple communities of practice. As indivi-
duals make decisions (or have them made for them) about their level of participa-
tion in various activities within the broader practice, they are making complex
choices about how they belong in the group—with whom they choose to work,
what they choose to pay attention to, and subsequently, what trajectory they
imagine for themselves in the future. All of these tensions and questions change as
18
the group’s activity changes, reflecting the complexity and dynamic nature of what
it means to be a member in a community of practice.
Elementary Classrooms as Literacy
Communities of Practice
Although its publication precedes Wenger by 7 years, Tharp and
Gallimore’s seminal work, Rousing Minds to Life (1991) relates well to the
principles of a community of practice. Also situated in a sociocultural perspective,
the authors drew on notions of learning through assisted performance to reform
literacy instruction in their elementary school research and development KEEP
(Kamehameha Elementary Educational Program) project. Rather than rely on
traditional didactic classroom communication techniques, they utilized Vygotskian
theories of teaching and learning, particularly his notion of the zone of proximal
development, as an inspiration for the idea of assisted performance or “true
teaching.” Assisted performance is a meeting of a student’s existing abilities with
his or her teacher’s thoughtful responsiveness through seven primary strategies:
modeling, contingency management (focused mostly on the strengthening of
positive behaviors), feedback, instructing, questioning, cognitive structuring, and
task structuring (Tharp, 1993; Tharp & Gallimore, 1991). These interactions, which
provide students opportunities to perform tasks at a level just above what they
could accomplish on their own, begin with a social exchange between a student and
teacher for a particular purpose. Learning occurs as the student becomes increas-
ingly more self-reliant, at which point the ability that was once emergent becomes
more integrated and routine. Rather than remain static, however, newly mastered
capabilities are refined and reorganized through the student’s further participation
19
in learning activities that continue to employ notions of assisted performance in the
zone of proximal development.
Of course, for this kind of teaching and learning to occur, the classroom has
to be purposefully designed in a way that facilitates these types of interactions.
Tharp and Gallimore (1991) pointed to two key elements that allow educators to
aid student learning: activity settings and triadic assistance. Activity settings, which
are constituted by both a shared meaningful goal and the opportunity for joint
productive activity, involve students in a struggle for intersubjectivity through the
achievement of mutual understandings, vocabulary, motivations, values, and
expectations. What occurs, who participates, and to what degree they participate is
determined purposefully by the activity itself. Further, as critical foundations for
common experiences, activity settings spur the development of students’ thought
processes and construction of meaning (Tharp, 1993). The triadic model of assist-
ance, in which the official responsive support provided to students by the teacher
operates in the simultaneous context of both ongoing and unregulated unofficial
peer coordination of efforts and independent self-reliance, is allowed to flourish
within activity settings as students continually strive for intersubjectivity. The
provision of time and space for these child-led interactions is necessary and vital to
student learning. Since good teaching requires both purposeful direction and know-
ing when to hold back, educators have to have a way to allow for learning to occur
at times when their intervention would be counterproductive to a student’s
progress.
KEEP project classrooms were developed with the idea of maximizing
assistance in the context of an overarching goal of integrating students’ home
knowledge—what Vygotsky calls “everyday concepts”—with academic thinking or
20
“schooled concepts.” For teachers, this meant structuring reading lessons to draw
on students’ existing understandings, leading them through a text, and then
discussing the relationships between the two. After participating in these tailored
and responsive “instructional conversations” (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991) in which
comprehension of the text is the primary objective, students then headed to an
independent activity center where they could do related follow-up work. The
authors found that in these centers students continued to work within their zone of
proximal development (although at a level closer to their existing independent
abilities) by assisting each other when necessary through coordination of individual
expertise. This type of participation allowed students to practice skills and gain
self-assurance in the process. Because this type of assistance was open ended (and
therefore matched more closely with the kind of aid that children gave each other
naturally outside of school), there was greater opportunity for students to incorpor-
ate familiar cultural norms into how they helped each other. In this way, teachers
were able to channel students’ natural inclinations to interact with their peers for
academic purposes, making for a more efficient learning environment. However, it
is important to note that the conscious creation of a classroom setting with norms
that encouraged individual accountability and collaboration among peers also
facilitated these types of exchanges.
More recent work by Tharp and colleagues (Dalton, 1998; Tharp et al.,
2004) as part of the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence
(CREDE) have built on the efforts of the KEEP project to produce what they call
the five standards for effective pedagogy: (a) teachers and students learning through
joint productive activity, (b) the weaving of language and literacy into all academic
content areas, (c) purposeful efforts to link school and home contexts as a regular
21
part of academic learning, (d) teaching complex and critical thinking, and (e) teach-
ing through dialogue and instructional conversation. Teacher’s employment of
these pedagogical guidelines has been empirically successful across multiple cul-
tural, economic, and age-level groups. Because they are flexible and nonexclusive
and promote active student participation, and because they are not undertaken at the
expense of other effective teaching strategies, student achievement gains in literacy
as measured by standardized tests have been a consistent result in classrooms that
have employed the five standards in comprehensive and consistent ways.
Many education studies that apply Wenger’s (1998) framework more
specifically have discussed how adults operate in a community of practice (e.g.,
Au, 2002; Coburn & Stein, 2006; Pallas, 2001). By contrast, studies of children’s
participation in classroom communities of practice tend to draw on related concepts
such as legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), the basis for
Wenger’s 1998 monograph. Two studies in particular took a closer look at the
nature of children’s participation over time within the community through the
application of these principles.
Toohey (1996) documented the participation patterns of two nonnative
English speakers in a Canadian kindergarten classroom during craft and free-choice
activity time over the course of the school year. While she found that language
ability was a factor in children’s classroom participation, she also noted that any
resulting identities were context specific (i.e., who was involved in a given inter-
action). For example, one of the focal students had difficulty in participating in
many social groups but became an important resource for a new student whom he
mentored in classroom routines. The other focal student was seen by English-
speaking peers as sweet and by Cantonese peers as bossy, thus providing her access
22
to different types of resources based on her different social positions. Thus, the
overarching social hierarchy within the classroom played a strong role in who
could obtain both material and social resources. This access mattered because the
children equated intelligence with resource know-how, a classroom norm that had
profound consequences for their subsequent participation and resulting identities.
Manyak (2001) analyzed the consequences of a literacy activity called the
Daily News in a primary (first- and second-grade) classroom of native Spanish
speakers in an English immersion public school in California. He found that the
students’ shared history of participation in this event served as an important
resource. Over the course of the year, the teacher gradually handed over responsi-
bility for the writing of the Daily News, a public message of important events in the
lives of the children, to her students. With this increased responsibility, children in
turn held each other accountable for its proper creation based on the teacher’s
expectations. They also infused the practice with contributions based on their own
experiences and varying levels of literacy expertise. Specifically, children’s emerg-
ing bilingualism became highly valued as a measure of academic competence, thus
producing identities that bridged their home and school lives. Manyak noted that,
through important friendships developed through this literacy event, children
became academic resources for one another. The collaborative nature of the Daily
News activity also provided children with a way to build academic confidence in a
way not available to them during more individualized tasks.
Both of these studies document relationships between children’s social and
academic worlds and pay careful attention to the role of access to resources.
23
The Forms of Capital
Pierre Bourdieu’s framework is also particularly useful for this study
because it is predisposed to focus upon processes in context, which he called fields.
Fields represent subareas of the broad social world, but for the most part have their
own rules, values, and ways of relating with respect to both relationships and
distributions of resources, or capital (Carrington, 2001). In his chapter in the
Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education entitled “The
Forms of Capital” Bourdieu (1986) identified three fundamental types of capital:
economic, cultural, and social.
Economic capital, the most readily identifiable form, involves both money
and property rights. While the dispositions associated with economic capital—
dispositions designed to protect economic wealth—are the exclusive domain of the
upper classes, they are not a panacea for societal success. However, Bourdieu
acknowledged that it is only when economic capital coordinates with cultural and
social capital that it reaches its full potential. Still, noneconomic forms of capital
can potentially convert themselves into an economic form as well.
Cultural capital comes in three forms: embodied, objectified, and institu-
tionalized. The embodied state refers to the cultivation of a habitus, or set of long-
lasting mental and physical temperaments. As something that is not directly trans-
missible (though theoretically much easier to acquire in families possessing “the
right kind” of cultural capital), habitus can be developed only over a long period of
time. While one’s original dispositions will always remain evident in some form,
purposeful indoctrination is possible, providing one has the available time and is
willing to make necessary personal sacrifices. Objectified cultural capital is
manifested in tangible, material items. These goods can be obtained solely through
24
economic capital. However, one must also possess the know-how to employ such
commodities for their appropriate use. By contrast, institutionalized capital is
evident in the form of academic credentials. While this type of cultural capital is
fairly straightforward, there is still a system of comparative value in place (a degree
from Harvard vs. a degree from a community college, for example). Institutional-
ized capital is particularly important as it can convert itself into economic capital.
Bourdieu defined social capital as the collective value of the actual or
potential resources available to someone through a network of either formal or
informal institutionalized group membership. These relationship networks, which
can take the form of anything from a family to a school to a political party, provide
opportunities for both material and symbolic trading. Thus, the amount of social
capital a person possesses is dependent on the amount of resources (in the form of
economic and cultural capital) to which he or she has access via these social net-
works. Bourdieu pointed out that these networks do not automatically exist, but
instead are made to work (sometimes unconsciously) through “investment strate-
gies” that encourage material or symbolic exchanges that in turn produce mutual
knowledge and recognition between and among group members.
At the same time, Bourdieu acknowledged that the given potential of any
group is constrained. In other words, for groups to preserve their identity, they must
establish limits on membership criteria. As a result, they also shut themselves out to
the potential benefits new and different group members might add. In this way, the
preservation of social capital is reliant to some extent on the reinforcement of the
norms present in cultural capital. By reinforcing behaviors, privileging the
possession and use of particular goods, and requiring credentials, the group’s
25
identity is controlled and maintained, allowing the individual to be easily recog-
nized as a member of the group.
The accumulation of social capital on the part of the individual is also a
time-consuming process. One must not only work at remaining socially active but
must also constantly work at having something that is valuable to provide. Here
again, money helps, as it is much easier to connect oneself to a network because of
a widespread established reputation (traditionally through a family name) and the
objective evidence of available resources. By the same token, when an individual
commits an act of transgression that might jeopardize the group, institutions will
often have an authoritative representative step in to expel him or her from the
membership. Still, the amount of power given to this authority is directly related to
the strength of the group’s social capital.
Thinking again about how the three forms of capital relate, it is easy to
begin by saying that economic capital can fluidly transform itself into the other two
forms. Still, Bourdieu was clear that there are other outcomes that can only be the
result of the possession of social capital. Yet, while the success of the other two
forms depends on their masking of the influence of economics, money will always
be at their root. It is also important to keep in mind two other significant factors:
time and sacrifice. The combination of these three phenomena—economics, which
avails time to pursue schooling (institutionalized cultural capital), combined with
the sacrifice of time and daily labor, and the social capital available as the result of
an academic degree—allows school to function as a sort of societal wild card. In
other words, as greater educational access is granted to people outside of the
dominant class, its power is diffused. The arbitrariness of societal success is
exposed (e.g., legacy admission policies at universities) and the dominant class
26
works even harder to reproduce existing structures in more surreptitious ways.
Bourdieu concluded that, unfortunately, schools often become complicit to these
interests.
Forms of Capital in Elementary Classrooms
While some scholars have looked at the role of capital in the school experi-
ences of middle school and high school students (e.g., Gibson, Gandara, &
Koyama, 2004; Stanton-Salazar, 2001; Valenzuela, 1999), this framework has yet
to be applied to students at the upper elementary level of schooling. However,
Monkman, Ronald, and Theramene (2005) used an incident in an urban, first-grade
bilingual classroom of mostly Latino immigrant students to illustrate how social
and cultural capital are negotiated in a school context. Using Bourdieu’s work to
analyze a vignette of a classroom book presentation by three students and their
peers’ reaction to their talk, the authors noted how the teacher helped to ascribe
value to particular kinds of knowledge and practices that are commonly associated
with more privileged educational settings. The authors showed how forms of
embodied, objectified, and institutionalized capital were present within the activity.
These included particular presentation styles, textual artifacts (e.g., magazines,
atlases) and cultural knowledge (e.g., a sense of the importance of educational
achievement). They concluded that the teacher’s critical awareness of the schooling
process, her own practice, and the potential of her students’ contributions to the
school setting allowed her to develop a professional repertoire that guided and
shaped the cultivation of cultural and social capital resources in the classroom.
Although their study was not an empirical piece, Carrington and Luke
(1997) made an additional case for needing to know more about how forms of
27
capital operate as children become literate. They stated that school success in
reading and writing is often explained by a variety of “folk theories,” or particular
equations for literacy success that have taken hold in the imaginations of teachers,
students, and the public at large. These explanations include simple combinations
of factors, such as code knowledge, self-esteem, middle class status, family sup-
port, knowledge of the English language, mainstream discourse habits, and a per-
sonal initiative to succeed, among other things. Yet students often succeed—and
fail—in their school literacy endeavors in spite of these factors.
As an alternative, Carrington and Luke (1997) suggested that an application
of Bourdieu’s sociological frame in empirical work would serve to counter current
myths about how literacy is acquired and what it means for individuals’ lives. They
argued that teachers currently operate on speculation about what kinds of literacy
(e.g., critical literacy, traditional skills) matter for their students’ life trajectories.
Yet in considering Bourdieu’s sociological theory, of which the nature of the forms
of capital is a part, there seem to be any number of variables that must coordinate in
particular ways if societal success is to be achieved. As a result, it may be the case
that even an accomplished learning of school literacy is not enough if individuals
are unable to call up other forms of capital to get ahead in society. A look at school
literacy in this relativistic light takes on popular conceptions that it is a magic bullet
for societal success. It also provides insight into both the “powers and limits of
literacy in generating economic, social, and cultural change” (p. 110).
Summary of the Theoretical Framework
Communities of practice and forms of capital are complementary frames for
many reasons. Both frameworks are process oriented, unpredictable (although each
28
operates from a particular logic), and see personal relationships as a key site of
action in context. The generative nature of a community of practice in terms of its
production of identities, meanings, and a sense of social belonging implies an
ongoing creation and exchange of social and cultural resources. An analysis of a
community of practice through a lens of capital exchange may facilitate an under-
standing of how and when individuals come to possess, develop, and accumulate
social and cultural capital resources that in turn impact their academic literacy
development.
Empirical Studies of Peer Interactions During
Elementary Classroom Literacy Learning
A variety of empirical studies of elementary classroom literacy learning
have been conducted to explore the dynamics and effects of peer interactions.
Especially pertinent to this review are studies that focus on classroom structure as
children collaborate and studies that analyze peer dynamics in terms of power.
While the studies are presented in distinct categories, it is important to point out
that these categories are in many cases fluid; elements of structure and power are
often present, explicitly or tacitly, within many of these works. They are separated
into categories based on the authors’ stated intent.
Structural Components of Classrooms
and Peer Dynamics
The first set of studies in this section reflects the role of the structural
aspects of classroom activity and their subsequent impact on peer dynamics. These
studies are further divided into two subcategories: (a) the impact of who is present
on the structure, and (b) how these studies bring about questions regarding
common-sense notions of classroom learning.
29
Who Is Present
Issues of who is present in an activity matter for its structure. Two studies
explored a classroom space that was purposefully created to be free of adult
intervention. Stone and Christie (1996) observed and recorded 163 incidents of
literacy-related activity in a multiage (kindergarten-second grade) sociodramatic
play house center. They found that children collaborated frequently (75% of the
time) across ages in a variety of ways. Types of collaboration included modeling,
tutoring, negotiating meaning, and affirming and contradicting their peers’ literate
efforts during activities that ranged from reading bedtime stories to creating
shopping lists. While the authors found that in a majority of cases older children
mentored younger ones, there was some evidence that younger children took
leadership roles, particularly as they assisted second language learners. Stone and
Christie concluded that unstructured time to practice literacy behaviors, particularly
in multiage settings, was a productive use of classroom time.
A second study of an informal classroom literacy event was conducted in an
English as a Second Language kindergarten classroom (Fassler, 1998). During a
free reading period the author observed a focal group of three students choosing
books previously read to the class by the teacher. She noted that they often imitated
the teacher’s behaviors during their own readings to peers, rehearsing new vocabu-
lary, literacy conventions, and narrative strategies in the process. Fassler concluded
that the teacher’s effective modeling, ample supply of books, and provision of time
for students to “read” them gave children opportunities to learn in ways that were
unavailable to them during whole group lessons and other structured activities.
Because children could elect how they participated during this time (as reader, as
audience member), they could draw on their own available strategies and coach
30
their peers. These interactions were seen as helpful for both their literacy and
language development.
Other studies have documented less harmonious pictures of child-directed
literacy interactions. Matthews and Kesner (2000, 2003) found that children’s aca-
demic and social status in the classroom often played a large role in both enabling
and limiting students’ participation when the teacher was not present. For example,
in their case study of a struggling first-grade reader (Matthews & Kesner, 2000),
the authors noticed that his attempts to contribute to group work were often
rebuffed or ignored by his peers. Furthermore, his low-status academic position
was reified through frequent and unsolicited attempts by his peers to assist him
with his work. The authors suggested that teachers become aware of these types of
dangers and intervene more frequently in order to disrupt social patterns.
Questioning Common Sense
Results from a second set of studies examining the impact of classroom
structure on peer dynamics calls into question typical assumptions of teaching and
learning. For example, in capturing the experiences of a struggling fourth-grade
reader, Moller (2004/2005) described the ways in which frequent teacher support
could create “zones of possibility” for participation and learning. The author
described how Ashley, a girl reading well below grade level and a social misfit,
was able to move from peripheral to full participant over 27 sessions of a student-
led literature discussion group. Because the teacher provided Ashley with extra
materials to support her reading and because the researcher would intervene during
literature discussions to help other students hear Ashley’s comments without
dismissing them, Ashley progressed along a trajectory of increasingly successful
31
participation in the group. Moller concluded that the possibilities for students
created through teacher support help to dismiss “deficit models of reading and
static labels for achievement” (p. 419) by putting literacy competence in context.
A similar study focused on the participation of a fifth-grade boy labeled as
learning disabled (LD) in a classroom book club concluded that sociohistorical
labels such as the ones used in special education can be called into question when
the nature of an activity provides for multiple ways to contribute to what is learned
(Gutierrez & Stone, 1997). In tracking the participation of Billy during a 6-weeks-
long book club in a Spanish bilingual transition classroom, the authors made note
of the strategies that he developed to become a full participant in the group.
Through the use of humor in particular, Billy created a role for himself in the group
as a leader, a position not typically associated with the LD label. For this reason,
the authors advocated for classroom structures that allow for broader notions of
what counts as learning in order to increase opportunities for student participation.
Larson (Larson, 1995, 1999; Larson & Maier, 2000) analyzed student and
teacher talk during primary grade writing activities to show how students and
teachers shift roles during interactions over text composition. She identified the
ways in which students and teachers in kindergarten (Larson, 1995, 1999) and first-
grade classrooms (Larson & Maier) fluidly moved in and out of roles of teacher,
student, co-author, and overhearer as they constructed texts. As they shifted roles,
students often took up the processes of their teacher (Larson & Maier) and redistri-
buted knowledge about the forms and functions of texts in the context of a flexible
participation framework (Larson, 1995, 1999). In this way, the notion of children
working and learning “independently” was questioned.
32
In their examination of two teams of students writing a “planet story” in a
bilingual third-grade classroom, Tuyay, Jennings, and Dixon (1995) made the case
that a common activity does not produce common opportunities to learn the same
content. However, the authors contended, the fact that the writing activity was
structured in such a way that the student groups could interact with their teacher in
ways that met their needs, there were instead, and perhaps more important, ample
opportunities to learn. In other words, students learned content relevant to their
learning process at the time, even if what was learned in each group was different.
This finding counters the common-sense notion that educational equity is achieved
when every child is learning the same thing.
Classroom Structures and Power
As the above studies make clear, children continually position themselves
and are positioned by others; they also develop and utilize discourses (Gee, 1996),
or ways of being, to meet their social needs (Lewis, 2001). For example, in a year-
long ethnographic study of a first-grade suburban classroom of primarily White
middle-class students, Rowe, Fitch, and Bass (2001) traced how children created
and accepted particular positions for themselves and others during writer’s work-
shop. For example, one student, Will, came to be known as an important peer
resource and “good writer” because of his ability to spell words quickly, a skill
considered valuable by the students (though unimportant to the teacher). Simul-
taneously, peer positioning worked to entrench another child’s resistance to writ-
ing. As a strong social force in the class, Nathan’s struggle with writing made him
look less powerful to his peers. As a result, he refused to participate in writing
activities despite multiple attempts by the teacher to offer academic support. For
33
him, the only way to maintain his dominant social position was to refuse to write
altogether.
Other studies have looked at the role of gender dynamics during classroom
interactions between peers. Using data collected throughout the duration of one
fifth-grade literature circle in a multicultural and economically diverse school,
Evans (1996) traced a pattern of oppressive positioning of the two female members
of the group by the three male members through persistent teasing and redirection
of activity. Although Evans conceded that this pattern was only temporary—the
girls were not necessarily marginalized in all aspects of classroom activity—she
pointed out that the power struggle evident in this literature discussion group calls
into question the assumption that student-led activities are necessarily more
democratic in nature than teacher-directed activities.
Similarly, Lewis (2001) traced themes of power, gender, and race in the
interactions of her fifth- and sixth-grade students during four literary activities.
Through spotlighting the experiences of five representative focal students, Lewis
discerned that broader societal structures related to the marginalization of people
based on social class, gender, age and ability were often reinforced through peer
interactions. These reifications were especially present during student-led activities.
However, she also found that student-led activities served as the place that most
often provided opportunities to manipulate these norms. The tension between the
reinforcement and transgression of societal expectations points to the complexity
inherent in the “social drama” of the classroom.
34
Summary of Empirical Studies
of Peer Interactions
As a group, these studies reflect the both the possibilities and limitations
inherent in peer interactions for learning. It is clear that teachers play an important
role (actively or passively) in student interactions, even when they are not direct
participants. In particular, how teachers design the activities and participation
structures in their classrooms (Gutierrez & Stone, 1997; Stone & Christie, 1996),
the expectations and possibilities that they create for students (Fassler, 1998;
Larson & Maier, 2000), and the ways in which that they potentially support
students in reframing existing social hierarchies (Moller, 2004/2005) all seem to
affect how children interact with one another. It seems that, without the explicit
guidance of caring adults, children tend to defer to standard societal notions of who
has power and who does not (Evans, 1996; Lewis, 2001; Matthews & Kesner,
2000, 2003) in their own negotiations of social and academic positions. This is a
significant finding, given the goal of the present study to explore ways to close
inequitable gaps in literacy achievement.
There are various ways to build on these works and create new insights with
the present study. While many researchers have looked at particular moments of
harmony (Fassler, 1998; Stone & Christie, 1996) or conflict (Matthews & Kesner,
2000, 2003), the potential for exploring these dynamics in more complex ways will
provide important insights into how children reproduce and transform social norms
(Lewis, 2001). Analyzing the consequences of these patterns may also reveal what
puts children on varying life trajectories (Carrington & Luke, 1997).
Although nearly all of the empirical studies reviewed touched on the role of
social and cultural resources for participation and learning, a critical analysis of this
aspect of classroom life merits further study. It may be obvious that the shared
35
history of participation in an activity can serve as an important resource for learn-
ing (Manyak, 2001) and that resource know-how matters greatly for participation
(Toohey, 1996). However, more needs to be learned about how resources are
cultivated and activated by children as they learn to read and write. For example,
while researchers often attend to the socioeconomic status of the children’s
families, the role of the economic resources of school/classroom sites in the
creation of social and cultural capital resources for children is rarely discussed.
Since teachers ascribe value to particular ways of being in classrooms
(Lewis, 2001; Monkman et al., 2005), the attempt in this study to reframe peer
dynamics through a combined theoretical framework of a community of practice
and the forms of capital may encourage them to be more critical in their daily work.
In documenting the complex ways in which children navigate the social and
academic terrain of a literacy communities of practice through the accumulation,
conversion, and activation of various forms of economic, social, and cultural
capital, teachers may be spurred into thinking more about how they can create
ample opportunities to learn (Tuyay et al., 1995) so that increasingly equitable
patterns of achievement can be realized.
Relationships matter for learning (Monzo & Rueda, 2001) and peer
relationships in particular can serve as exceptional means of support (Datnow &
Cooper, 1998). These social connections further the production of resources that
assist in literacy learning (Moll & Greenberg, 1990; Yaden, Madrigal, & Tam,
2003). Only through an exploration of people’s perceptions of particular spaces and
geographies (e.g., Astor, Meyer, & Behre, 1999), the social practices within them,
and the identities produced by them can we begin to understand the complex
interactions of economics, culture, and social networks in individuals’ lives.
36
CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY
Case studies are used to study a particular phenomenon in detail in order to
learn how it functions in context from the point of view of the people experiencing
it (Yin, 2003). The goal is to get as complete a picture as possible by examining a
microcosm across multiple variables. Learning more about how and when students
choose to draw upon the resources of their peers as they read and write is possible
only in relation to a specific classroom context. Therefore, a case study design
using qualitative methods was a logical approach for this inquiry.
Site and Participant Selection
Requirements for a research site for this study were specific. It was import-
ant to find a classroom that was designed by the teacher to deliberately function as
a community of practice. Since the study addressed what contributes to typical and
atypical patterns of literacy achievement, it was also desirable to find a school with
an ethnic, racial, linguistic, and socioeconomic mix. The study required a teacher
who was an expert in literacy instruction.
As a former elementary school teacher and alumna of the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA) teacher education program, I contacted teacher-
friends, former colleagues, and members of an educator inquiry group in which I
participate through my alma mater to ask for recommendations. I followed up on a
number of these referrals; none of them was appropriate for one reason or another.
Finally, a friend, who was teaching at the selected site recommended her upper-
grade colleagues as ideal candidates. I contacted the teachers by telephone, visited
their classroom, and found it to be the perfect site for the study. The teachers
37
agreed to participate and approval by the principal (and therefore district) was
secured. The school, classroom, and students are described below.
Olive Avenue Charter School was both the first magnet school and the first
charter school in a large urban district in southern California. It is a California
Distinguished School and a Magnet School of Merit; its Academic Performance
Index (API) ranking is consistently above the state standard of 800. During the year
of this study (2005), it reached 867 (School Summary Accountability Progress
Report, 2005). Originally founded by parents, the school has an integrated curricu-
lum based on a school-wide theme of “Interdependence: Human Interaction With
the Environment.” As discussed in chapter 1, the school takes a strong constructiv-
ist, activity-based approach and has a subsequent expectation that students assume
responsibility for their learning, behavior, and materials.
In addition to curricular innovations, institutional changes have been made.
The school is governed by a shared decision-making structure with representation
from parents, teachers, and administrators. Classrooms are made up of “clusters” of
multiage students, with teaching teams who operate in a combined space of two
classrooms. Instructional time is organized into blocks rather than by subject,
allowing for students to work on long-term projects that integrate regular classroom
studies with outside enrichment, such as art, music, drama, physical education
(PE), technology, and gardening. This structure often frees teachers to pursue joint
planning time and professional development during the school day and allows
students to continue to build their repertoire of knowledge across disciplines.
Anyone residing in the district attendance area is eligible to attend the
school but, due to high demand and a long waiting list for admission, students are
selected through a lottery system. Still, teachers noted that applications often came
38
in clusters of their own; once one family gained entrance, they often shared
information about the school and its application process with cousins, neighbors,
and friends. This pattern meant that students often came to Olive Avenue in small
groups from diverse neighborhoods throughout the city. Demographic data for the
year of the study (2004-2005) indicated that, of the 364 children enrolled at Olive
Avenue School, 38.5% were White, 26.1% were Black, 18.4% were Asian, 16.2%
were Hispanic, 0.5% were American Indian/Alaskan Native, and 0.3% were
Pilipino (District School Profile, 2006). Twelve percent of the students were
English Language Learners, mostly from Spanish and Korean linguistic back-
grounds. Twenty-four percent of the students were served by federal free and
reduced-price lunch programs. Although it does have a socioeconomic mix of
students, it is not a low-income school and does not receive federal Title I funding.
The focal classroom for the study was Penguin Cluster, a multiage (fourth-
and fifth-grade) classroom taught by Bonnie Morales and Cecilia Sennett. One of
two upper-grade clusters in the school, Penguin encompassed 62 students at the
time of the study. The nature of the classroom is elaborated in chapter 4. In general,
the structure of the classroom involved no assigned seating and fluid groupings and
regroupings of students based on the nature of the activity and, occasionally, aca-
demic ability level. Curriculum was highly interdisciplinary and project based,
often with a public demonstration of expertise required as a way to culminate a
given activity. Two adult classroom aides worked part time in Penguin Cluster.
Although they provided mostly clerical support to the teachers, at times they
assisted individual students with their academic work.
Bonnie, the teacher in charge of language arts instruction, had 32 years of
teaching experience and had been at Olive Avenue School for 16 years. Before
39
arriving at Olive, her career background had included involvement in preschool
special education, gifted and talented education, and part-time work with nonprofit
groups such as California Poets in the Schools and Performing Tree. She had also
served as a school science coordinator and coordinator of 4-year-olds kindergarten
and preschool in another district. Bonnie has a master’s degree in creative writing,
an Ed.D. degree in multicultural education, and an administrative credential; she is
nationally Board Certified and has taught English and children’s literature at the
university level, including founding the writing center at a local state university.
Most recently, Bonnie earned a master’s degree in counseling psychology and
passed the licensing examinations required for marriage and family therapy in
California. Toward the end of the school year, Bonnie announced her retirement
from teaching to begin her new career as a therapist. Because of her academic
background, Bonnie was especially interested in being a part of the study, and
mentioned at the beginning of the study that she was looking forward to having a
“third eye” (the researcher) in the room.
Cecilia, the teacher in charge of mathematics instruction, began her involve-
ment at Olive Avenue as a parent. In fact, both of her children had had Bonnie as a
teacher. She then served as the school’s art teacher for 9 years before deciding to
earn a general education teaching credential. The year in which this study was
conducted was Cecilia’s second year as a regular classroom teacher in Penguin
Cluster with Bonnie. Cecilia had also worked in a co-op preschool and as an adult
dance instructor prior to earning her urban studies and education degree. She
considered herself a novice teacher; as a result, it took some convincing by Bonnie
for her to agree to participate in the study. To minimize Cecilia’s concerns, almost
all observation time was spent on Bonnie’s side of the room; however, as the study
40
progressed, Cecilia developed a positive rapport with the researcher. When Bonnie
made her decision to retire, Cecilia invited the researcher to consider taking
Bonnie’s place as her new teaching partner.
Data Collection
The primary unit of analysis in the study is the “community of literacy
practice” in the classroom. Multiple forms of data were collected to record the role
of the teacher and classroom structure and to discern the nature of students’
economic, cultural, and social capital resources. These included field notes taken
during daily classroom observations, interviews with teachers, lunchtime student
focus groups, and an examination of student work and other relevant documents.
Each of these is discussed below.
I collected official classroom data daily for 6 weeks from mid-May to the
end of June 2005. However, this was not the first time the students had seen me.
After identifying Penguin Cluster as the study site in November 2004, I visited the
classroom approximately twice a week to informally observe the students’ literacy
practices. No notes were taken during these visits but the observations allowed me
to begin to theorize about what I might find once I was able to collect data in a
formal capacity. This informal time also allowed the students to become comfort-
able with my presence and for me to learn their names. In compliance with the
principal’s request, I formally introduced the study to the students once spring
standardized testing was completed in early May 2005. Of the 62 students in the
class, I received consent to participate from 54 students and their families. Of these
54, the majority elected to participate in all aspects of the study, although some
chose to opt out of particular strands of data collection (e.g., not agreeing to be
41
audiotaped during a focus group). This “cafeteria style” approach to consent
ensured students a high level of comfort with regard to their participation in the
study overall.
Forty-nine students are quoted and/or described in this manuscript. While
the inclusion of as many student perspectives as possible was a strength of the
study, it became awkward in initial drafts of this paper to identify each student by
pseudonym, gender, grade level, ethnicity, and general academic level with each
quote. Therefore, Table 1 provides this information so the reader may connect
student comments to personal characteristics. Names in this chart are ordered by
appearance in the manuscript. Three of the criteria—grade level, ethnicity, and
academic level—were determined with the assistance of the teachers. Because they
each viewed the children’s academic level differently, when there were disputes,
Cecilia’s opinions are listed first, Bonnie’s opinions are listed second. Pseudonyms
were usually self-selected by students, although aliases were arbitrarily assigned to
students who were not interested in choosing a name or simply forgot to do so.
Once official visits began, I acted as a participant-observer, taking
handwritten field notes from around 9:00 am (after the classroom morning meeting)
until the end of the school day at 2:40 pm. Although the original plan was to
observe only during literacy activities, I quickly realized that the interdisciplinary
curriculum in Penguin Cluster meant that print-based activities that explicitly
required students to utilize their reading and writing skills occurred throughout the
day. During these observations I took field notes that literally scripted the talk that
took place in a focus cluster of students through the duration of the time block
allowed for a given activity. On occasion, I asked students informal questions
related to their work process and recorded these ideas as well. Focal groups were
42
Table 1
Pseudonyms and Descriptions of Participating Students
Name Gender Grade Race/ethnicity Academic level
James M 4 White high
Mike M 5 White middle
Jasmine F 5 White high
Sara F 4 Asian-American low
Layla F 5 African American/Latina high
Samantha F 4 White middle-high
Annabel F 5 White high
Savannah F 5 African American high
Tanner M 5 White high
Cassidy F 5 Latina low/low-middle
Tina F 5 Indian-American middle
Christine F 4 African American/White middle
Mathias M 5 Asian-American high/middle
Julie F 5 White middle-high
Molly F 4 White high/middle-high
Jimmy M 5 African American middle/low
Simone F 5 African American high
Paul M 5 White high
Kareem M 5 African American low
Victoria F 4 African American middle/low-middle
Andrea F 5 African American middle
Max M 5 Latino low
Jessica F 4 White middle
Parvati F 4 White high
Becky F 5 White high
Blake M 4 Asian-American/White high/middle-high
Cady F 5 White high/middle
Justin M 4 Asian-American high/middle
43
Table 1 (continued)
Name Gender Grade Race/ethnicity Academic level
Shani M 5 African American middle/low
Briselda F 5 Latina low-middle
Austin M 4 Asian-American middle
Robert M 4 African American high/low
Mason M 5 Asian-American middle/low
Jared M 4 Asian-American high/middle
Tara F 4 Asian-American high/middle
Anthony M 5 Latino low/low-middle
Brent M 4 Latino low
Joe M 5 Latino high
Kennedi F 5 African American low-middle/low
Lily F 5 White high/middle
Bob M 4 African American high/middle
Jane F 4 White high/middle
Karen F 5 White middle-high/middle
Fiona F 5 Latina middle-high/middle
Chris M 5 Latino high/middle
Jewel F 4 Asian-American middle-high/low-middle
Alexandra F 4 White high/middle
Georgia F 4 White middle/low-high
Ahmad M 5 African American low
chosen at random, with representative sampling of students sitting in various areas
of the room (the back table, on the carpet, etc.) during the course of data collection.
The teachers’ talk was also recorded as part of the field notes. These included times
when they presented the lesson or interrupted activity to address the class at large
44
for clarifications and announcements, and during interactions with the focal group
of students.
Two formal interviews were conducted individually with the teachers, one
at the beginning and one near the end of the data collection period. Each session
was audiotaped and transcribed by a professional. After the first interview with
Bonnie, she requested a follow-up on the same questions as she realized later that
she had much more to say. Questions for the teachers focused on the school con-
text, curriculum planning, school and classroom resources, their views of students,
and other related topics. A list of protocol questions is provided in appendix A.
I held 16 daily drop-in lunchtime focus groups for students, with pizza
provided as an incentive to attend. While the initial plan was to hold one focus
group per week, so many students were interested in attending that I conducted six
focus groups on the first set of questions, five focus groups on the second set of
questions, and five focus groups on the third set of questions. Groups were limited
to no more than six students to allow everyone to respond to the questions. A list of
discussion topics for each focus group was posted at the beginning of each week so
students had time to think about their potential responses and gage their own ability
to contribute information. All interviews were audiotaped and transcribed by a
professional. Questions for the student focus groups concentrated on their school
experiences, the social organization of the classroom during literacy activities, their
use of resources, and the trajectories that they imagined for themselves in the
future. A list of protocol questions for each session is provided in appendix B.
A variety of supporting documents was also collected. These included
information from school, district, state, and independent Web sites, media reports
about the school, letters from the school and teachers to the parents, documents that
45
supported the activities of the students in class (e.g., handouts, written guidelines
for an assignment), and student work. I recorded postings on the classroom walls
(agendas, student work, classroom norms, lists of students, informational posters,
etc.) in field notes. These documents were used to triangulate data gathered from
other sources.
Ethical Considerations
Studies of children should be especially attentive to issues of ethics due to
the nature of their status as a vulnerable population. Most central to students’
understanding as they agreed to participate in the study was that it had no tie to
teacher evaluations and assessment. I worked hard to explain to students that their
participation was voluntary and that they would not receive any special treatment
from their teachers as a result of their participation. They were aware that their
choice to participate in the focus groups required a forfeit of recess time.
Since the study was presented to students in the presence of their teachers,
there were other adults working to ensure that students understood their right to not
participate. Students were made aware that they were never under any obligation to
answer questions that made them feel uncomfortable and that they were in a posi-
tion to drop out of the study at any time without consequence. Once they chose to
go ahead with participating in the study, they were reminded that information that
they shared was not confidential. Although the raw data were not made available to
anyone, their peers and teachers had an opportunity to review and respond to the
findings if they were interested. Identities were masked though the use of
pseudonyms.
46
As a former teacher, I was aware that while this study is important, it should
tread as lightly as possible on the educational experiences of the children. In other
words, outside of the initial introduction of the study to the class, no changes to the
regular classroom routine were required by the study. Students were interviewed
during recess and lunch, not during class time. Teachers were interviewed before or
after work hours. Although I am aware that my presence had an inevitable effect on
classroom dynamics, I took great care to ensure that this impact was minimized.
Advantages and Limitations of This Case Study
The open-ended nature of a case study allowed consideration of a wide
variety of variables. Since the goal of case study research is to generalize to theory,
findings could be compared with the complementary frameworks of Wenger (1998)
and Bourdieu (1986). The combination of an innovative school, a highly qualified
teacher, a multiethnic student population with broad socioeconomic representation,
and an alternative approach to curriculum that still produced student success on
standardized measures made this an exceptional case. The choice of a case study
methodology forced me to be up front with my own biases and rationales.
The primary weakness of this study is that, because it is focused on one
case, it does not allow generalizing the findings to other settings. However, that is
not the goal of case study research, which is to generalize to theory (Yin, 2003).
Strong communication skills were necessary to develop trust with the
study’s participants. One way of building this trust was to take special care with
respect to ethical issues and personal biases. I focused on becoming aware of my
personal stances throughout the process. I clarified why decisions were made about
how the final text was constructed, including issues of what information to
47
incorporate and how the context was organized. In reporting a case study, the
researcher carries a large burden of representing the participants’ experience from
an emic perspective in the written product. Of course, I also had the option of
adding in my own etic point of view as I made sense of the data. Member checking
with students and teachers was employed as one way of ensuring construct validity.
Data Analysis
In analyzing the data, it was important to create a “chain of evidence” that
made plain the relationships of the research questions, the data collected, and the
conclusions of the study (Yin, 2003). Yin explained that a high-quality analysis
depends on four primary criteria: the use of all the data, consideration of all rival
interpretations, the determination of the most significant aspects of the data, and the
use of the researcher’s expertise. I add to this list an important learning from
Rogoff’s (2003) description of the goal of cultural researchers. She explained that
people who adopt a derived etic approach work hard to understand a phenomenon
from the point of view of those experiencing it.
The strategy for analysis of the data was to bring it into conversation with
the theoretical framework. Comparison of the data on how and when students
accessed their peers as they conducted their literacy work to Wenger’s (1998) and
Bourdieu’s (1986) theories showed how the students’ experiences interacted with
the teachers’ expectations, classroom structure, and notions of capital exchange.
Disruptions of the theories were also evident. The goal was to describe students’
experience in relation to Wenger’s community of practice and Bourdieu’s forms of
capital using an iterative process of data analysis. In concrete terms, codes based on
aspects of theory (e.g., social capital, cultural capital) were supplemented by open
48
coding of data based on categories developed during data analysis. A qualitative
software program, HyperResearch™, was employed to manage the data and coding
process.
Peer Resources
With respect to the primary research question, How and when do students
choose to draw on the resources of their peers in a classroom community of prac-
tice as they solve problems in their literacy work?” two primary categories were
coded initially. These labels, peer access and peer guidance, were meant to reflect
times when students sought help from their peers and times when unsolicited
guidance was offered to students by their classmates. These quotes and incidents
from the field notes and student focus groups were then further categorized to
reflect trends in student interactions. Three main patterns were discerned in the peer
access group: seeking material resources from peers (e.g., borrowing erasers,
asking where someone got a set of colored pencils), seeking procedural resources
(e.g., asking about what they should be doing or how they should be doing an
assignment), and seeking content resources (e.g., asking for help with spelling,
writing ideas, or other content-oriented questions). Three similar patterns were
recorded from the peer guidance group: behavioral guidance (e.g., telling someone
to stop talking, telling someone to get back to work), procedural guidance (e.g.,
computer operation assistance, telling someone how much to write for an assign-
ment), and content guidance (e.g., helping someone with the content of his or her
work in some way).
Since the quality of interaction was different during sanctioned “group”
work than during individual assignments, two subcodes were added to the initial
49
data: teacher-directed guidance and student-directed guidance. Teacher-directed
guidance referred to times when a teacher told students to seek another (often
specific) student for assistance and/or times when students working in a group
followed the teacher’s guidelines for interaction to the letter (i.e., only doing what
they were told to do). This label identified the kinds of interactions that were
officially sanctioned by the teachers. Student-directed guidance, by contrast,
referred to times when students took additional ownership of an assignment, either
by going beyond what was asked of them by their teachers or by undergoing a
particular group work assignment in their own way (and possibly in a way that was
different from what was asked of them by their teachers). These codes were
particularly helpful in attempting to discern the “how” part of the main research
question during group work versus times when students were expected to work
independently on a particular project.
The final step in analyzing this set of data was to re-read each incident or
quote and take notes to discern further patterns across the data. In doing so, it
became evident that students mentioned or demonstrated eight primary ways of
student interaction as they worked on literacy assignments: feedback/information,
spelling assistance, collaboration, showing off, trading work, assistance, ideas, and
copying. Feedback/information referred to times when students showed their work
to their peers or noticed what someone else was doing, coupled with questions or
suggestions about the quality of the work, the appropriateness of the work, wanting
to know whether the student was doing something correctly, or asking for informa-
tion such as the name of a character in a book. Spelling assistance referred to times
when students asked for or offered orthography help to peers. Collaboration
referred to times when students discussed and/or brainstormed ideas for a common
50
project (not always a group project). Showing off was noted when students held up
their work for others to see without requiring any type of peer response. Trading
work referred to times when students exchanged their work with friends without
necessarily requiring feedback. Students often used this strategy to get ideas from
peers. Trading work was always defined as a reciprocal process. Assistance referred
to times when students asked a classmate to do some aspect of their work for them,
relinquishing control over the process (wanting to be told what to do, write, etc.).
Ideas referred to times when students used their peers’ work, or work in the class’
archives, for ideas. Ideas were not just content oriented but were sometimes used
for procedural aspects of work and/or quality of work. This was often a one-way
process, where students, for example, walked up to the wall and looked at some-
thing. In other words, it was not a dialogue. Copying referred to times when
students copied someone else’s work, without dialogue or understanding as part of
the process.
Findings from this second set of categories were juxtaposed with the
access/guidance coding to see how the two intersected. This final act allowed
identified students’ strategies as they solicited and offered help to their peers.
Understanding possible reasons for these trends became clearer after the coding for
the two research subquestions was conducted and analyzed.
Teachers and Classroom Environment
For the first subquestion, What are the roles of the teachers and classroom
environment in this process?” the coding process was relatively straightforward.
Quotes from both teacher interviews and student focus group transcripts reflected
instances when teachers and students spoke directly about the nature of their
51
classroom and their school. The codes classroom environment and school environ-
ment were often the result of the questions asked to students and teachers during
interviews and focus groups about their experiences at Olive Avenue and in
Penguin Cluster. Results from these codes assisted in capturing the experience of
this school and classroom from a derived etic point of view (Rogoff, 2003).
After this initial coding, I read across each category again and took further
notes to determine trends. School environment quotes were categorized in three
groups: students’ experiences as members of the school community, teachers’
experiences as members of the school community, and school resources and issues
that were brought up, usually by teachers but sometimes by students. Classroom
environment quotes were categorized as teacher and student quotes in a slightly
different manner. Information gathered from the teacher interviews was matched to
the elements stated in Wenger’s community of practice framework: (a) community
of practice assumptions; (b) examples of mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and
shared response; and (c) tensions present in a community of practice. It made sense
to look for places where theory and the data corresponded with this set of quotes
because teachers were responsible for the design of the classroom as a whole,
including determining the curriculum, classroom structure, and the learning goals
for students. The prior analysis of their descriptions of the school environment
informed understanding of which elements of the total classroom design were a
result of teachers echoing larger school values and which elements were aspects of
their own “planned” curriculum (Wenger, 1998). Student’s responses were con-
sidered in terms of the “emergent curriculum” (Wenger). In other words, their
responses were sorted not according to specific aspects of the theory, as with the
teachers’ responses, but according to how students labeled their experiences. These
52
subcategories included students’ descriptions of general classroom norms and their
descriptions of reading and writing in Penguin Cluster. This allowed comparison of
students’ experiences with teachers’ intentions, noting times of consistency and
incongruence. This analysis provided insight into the role of both the teachers and
the classroom environment with respect to student interactions in the classroom.
Forms of Capital
For the second subquestion, What is the nature of students’ economic,
cultural, and social capital resources and how do these come into play as students
undertake and complete literacy assignments? Bourdieu’s terms of cultural capital,
economic capital, and social capital were used as labels. Briefly, cultural capital
referred to the cultivation of particular temperaments associated with positive
school and classroom success, material items, and academic credentials. Economic
capital referred specifically to monetary funds available to the teachers, and
occasionally students, for conversion into cultural and social capital. Social capital
referred to times when students and teachers used the relationship networks
available to them (e.g., teachers’ professional and friendship networks outside of
school, students’ social networks inside and outside the classroom). Data from
teacher interviews, student focus groups, and field notes were used in this set of
coding.
As with the prior two sets of coding, once these initial categories were
sorted, I re-read each quote and made a list of examples from each form of capital
mentioned. These lists became important in making connections between this set of
information and the previous sets. Comparison of these data with the data initially
53
organized in discreet sections showed multiple points of overlap, providing an
ultimately continuous story of Penguin Cluster at a particular point in time.
Chapter Summary
Olive Avenue School and Penguin Cluster were unique sites purposefully
selected for this case study. Multiple methods of data collection, including both
primary (field notes, interview transcripts, and focus group data) and secondary
(relevant school documents and student work) sources, were employed to ensure
both a thorough investigation and triangulation of the data. Analysis consisted of
open codes based on prevalent trends and assigned codes based on the premises of
the two theoretical frameworks. Once this analysis was complete, findings
addressed individual research questions and the relationships between the primary
question and the two subquestions.
54
CHAPTER 4
FINDINGS
This chapter presents the findings of the study. While an account of how
and when students chose to draw upon the resources of their peers as they com-
pleted literacy assignments could be told from a variety of perspectives, in general,
the report of findings focuses on data that highlighted the points of view of the
students. This focus was chosen because student perspectives are so often obscured
in educational research, particularly at the elementary school level. Students in
Penguin Cluster were often articulate and reflective about their experiences. Of
course, teachers’ insights were also valuable, and their understandings are also
represented, particularly in addressing the two subquestions.
The findings are divided in three main sections. The first section discusses
the role of the teachers and the classroom environment, with particular attention
paid to how Penguin Cluster was designed to function as a community of practice.
The second section provides information regarding the generation and use of
economic, cultural, and social capital resources in Penguin Cluster, tying the data to
Bourdieu’s (1986) theoretical framework of capital exchange. The third section
addresses the primary research question, How and when do students choose to draw
on the resources of their peers in a classroom community of practice as they solve
problems in their literacy work?” The chapter ends with a summary of the
overlapping predominant themes of the findings.
55
The Role of the Teachers and the
Classroom Environment
Describing the role of the teachers and classroom environment to address
the first subquestion establishes how Penguin Cluster operates as a community of
practice. This elaboration is especially important since that aspect of this classroom
is taken for granted in the research questions. After a brief review of the com-
munity of practice framework, I present how Wenger’s (1998) assumption that
people are social learners plays out in the teachers’ design of the classroom. Next I
demonstrate the ways in which students are expected to participate actively in their
learning, as well as how they acquire knowledge through what is valued by their
teachers and the classroom setting. This section closes with discussion about how
learning has been personally transformative for some students and ripe with
unresolved tensions for others. When appropriate, these topics are presented both in
terms of the teachers’ intentions and students’ perspectives as a way of looking at
both the planned and the emergent curriculum.
Penguin Cluster as a Community of Practice
Based on Wenger’s (1998) description, communities of practice involve
some basic assumptions. These assumptions include beliefs that people are social
learners and that knowledge is the result of both active participation in ongoing
activity and what is valued in context. The process of learning, then, is ultimately
about the creation of identities, meanings, and a sense of social belonging. In this
way, learning has the potential to be something that can be personally transform-
ative. This process plays out through three key elements: (a) mutual engagement,
which provides opportunities for authentic participation in meaningful activity;
(b) joint enterprise, which encompasses a process of negotiation among group
56
members as they respond to a goal; and (c) shared repertoire, which refers to the
resources that the group has at its disposal. Communities of practice are engaged in
multiple inherent tensions as they work through and with each of these factors.
People as Social Learners
Although Bonnie and Cecilia never specifically used Wenger’s work in
creating their classroom, their talk about it paralleled Wenger’s community of
practice assumptions in multiple ways. Their version of the “social-ness” of learn-
ing came through a strong belief that students should be doing work that was both
personally and socially meaningful. This stance was reflected in the fact that many
curricular activities were accompanied by an event in which students were expected
to share their final product with an outside audience. For example, after writing
picture books concerning environmental themes, students invited family and
friends to school one evening to hear them read their creations aloud. Through
professional connections, Bonnie also arranged to obtain space at the downtown
public library for a display of the texts. The teachers agreed that sharing one’s
knowledge in this way helped to engender a sense of pride among students. To
account for her students’ sense of self-respect, Cecelia explained that it was
because, as teachers, they were
Engaging them in a curriculum that’s unequal. Something to be proud of.
It’s not just learning for learning sake, but this is real-life application. . . .
They [class projects] are a meaningful way to tie all your curricular areas
together for a kid, but it’s not just a trick. It’s not a trick to make it work.
It’s more meaningful for the teachers, too.
By sharing classroom learning with a wider audience, students and teachers gained
a sense that what they do has relevance in the larger social world.
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Knowledge Through Active
Participation
The second assumption in the community of practice framework is the
notion that knowledge is produced through students’ active participation. Since
every project in Penguin Cluster involved reading and writing to some degree,
students’ literacy learning consistently occurred through some kind of project or
endeavor. Bonnie explained her instructional philosophy as rooted in “a Frank
Smith approach . . . . Kids learn to read by reading and kids learn to write by
writing. They learn to refine it with some instruction.” She explained that this
process of instruction was not as simple and straightforward as it might sound:
And so I think that’s my literacy philosophy. A lot of exposure. Reading out
loud to the kids so they can hear it, so they can hear how it sounds, they can
hear the different voices . . . talking about what the words mean, having
them read and not have to do ditto pages behind it, but just read because it’s
a pleasure, or read because they learn something. And so it is sometimes
chaotic. I would never say I have a structured program. I’ve never been
completely happy with what I’ve done. I’ve tried a thousand things and I’m
still not totally happy with it. Nothing has really worked the way in my
imagination or my fantasy I would like it to work. And yet kids read better
when they read, so something’s working.
She explained that this strategy helped her to teach students to become
“literate in the world.” Because the boundaries between reading and writing for
solely school purposes and reading and writing for use in the broader community
were blurred, students’ active participation was not a stretch, even if it was, as she
described, “chaotic.”
The focus on projects that incorporated reading and writing was a large part
of the Penguin Cluster folklore. As students participated in these opportunities for
mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire, it became part of how
they identified themselves as class members. Although data collection took place at
the end of the school year, many of the projects undertaken by the group at earlier
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stages were still active in their collective memory. Both teachers and students
referenced these experiences frequently in the context of their more current work;
over time, the experiences had become part of the group’s shared repertoire.
Standout activities included a week at the county outdoor science camp at the
beginning of the school year, a study of systems theory, and performing a musical
production about the Gold Rush. Systems theory and the experience of play are
elaborated in later sections. At this point role of the county outdoor science camp
provides an example of the type of planned curriculum that was typical of Penguin
Cluster.
Teachers saw the trip to science camp as important on both academic and
social levels. As Bonnie said, it was a way to “begin the school year with a com-
mon experience that we reference all year.” As part of students’ preparation for the
trip, they read fiction books about survival so they could think about how others
had weathered difficult situations like the one they were about to face together.
Bonnie explained that a week away from family for many fourth and fifth graders
was like
a rite of passage; they’ve never been away from home. They’ve never gone
to the mountains. They’ve never slept with other kids in a cabin before.
They’ve never been out walking around at night in the wilderness. So it’s a
big growth for them.
Cecilia added that such an experience galvanized them as a group since, “They
learn a lot about each other. They have to have a certain amount of compassion.”
The experience of outdoor science school gave the students a way to learn about
themselves and their peers on a personal level as they negotiated a potentially
difficult new experience together. The novels that they read helped them to process
beforehand what that might be like.
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Preparation for camp also involved plenty of content learning. Another
literacy-related aspect of this goal included spelling tests in which pairs of students
outlined an important science concept, for example, draw and label the water cycle,
being sure that their spelling was accurate. Bonnie explained that a team activity
such as this was important for reinforcing content knowledge. While she agreed
that proper spelling was one of her primary goals of this activity, she also
acknowledged,
Part of it is a review of the material once again, and then having a peer
coach next to them. And so they’re able to talk about the answers and share
information. I want them to get it right . . . so the room is loud during the
spelling tests. But what I’ve learned is “56 visitations to a concept,” and we
re-visit it over and over, and then we go and visit it again. And if I don’t
keep visiting it all year, come February. when I think they know it because
they’ve seen it, they’ve touched it, they’ve done everything that you could
possibly do to learn a concept, they still sometimes don’t remember. So
those important concepts you just have to keep revisiting forever.
As they negotiated curriculum that would help the students prepare for
science camp, both as people and as learners, the students were engaged repeatedly
in opportunities for joint enterprise, whether it was their response to a character’s
choices in a work of fiction or an argument with a peer over the proper spelling of
“evaporation.” In doing so, they learned about their roles in the group, created
relationships of accountability, and produced resources critical to their success at
science camp and beyond.
The legacy of science camp continued throughout the year in the classroom.
For example, during a read-aloud of the Lois Lowry (1993) book The Giver,
Bonnie prepared students for a chapter in which the main character has a memory
about snow sledding. She stated, “When I’m reading this chapter, I want you to
think about how his snow memory relates to your experience at [science camp,
where it had snowed] since we don’t have snow in [our city].” After the section
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was read, students shared the similarities and differences between the character’s
and their own memory of snow. In ways such as this, the collective experience
created by the students’ attendance at science camp—its shared repertoire—
allowed their participation in new activities, such as making personal connections
with the read-aloud text.
Knowledge Through What Is
Valued in Context
Knowledge also came through what was valued in this classroom. During
interviews and focus groups both teachers and students made comments that
reflected a strong set of classroom norms. For the teachers, these standards were
represented by a particular set of values that included needing students to think by
making connections, having high expectations, requiring students to do their best,
being engaged to the point of a willingness to stretch beyond comfort level, sharing
ideas, asking questions, getting work in on time, being respectful, and being
prepared to work. Bonnie provided a set of examples as she explained how she
knew when students had integrated their curriculum knowledge with their selves:
I need to see in your work that you’ve understood the whole idea of sys-
tems, that you’ve understood the connection of everything in the natural
world, that you understand how all of that is interdependent, that when you
read a book you understand what’s invisible in that book, that you’ve read
carefully enough that you have empathized with the character and you
understand what their motivations are, if they aren’t spelled out, that you
can visualize the setting, that you understand the vocabulary. If you don’t
know the words, you’re going to find out what they mean. A good student is
someone who’s curious and asks really hard questions, or who challenges
me. I love to be challenged by kids.
What became valued was not only the components of a particular skill set
(e.g., vocabulary, visualization skills) but also particular dispositions associated
with an ability to acquire and demonstrate knowledge, such as making connections,
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curiosity, and a willingness to challenge the information and ideas brought forth by
collective study.
Further evidence that a combination of skills and academic dispositions was
valued and therefore cultivated in students came through in a comment made by
Bonnie about the nature of a “good” student.
Absolutely. I want kids to do that, “Well, I don’t agree with you.” Then I
know that they’re thinking. I know they’re engaged. I know they care
enough to argue. I’ve learned tons from kids because they see it differently
than I do. A child that will respectfully banter with me about an idea
because they think that they know something I don’t, they’re an amazing
student. A child who risks being wrong, risks saying, “I think it means this”
even if they don’t know because they have a reason for it, not just because
they’re guessing, that’s a good student to me. Someone who will learn from
other people, like Layla and Tanner, they feed off each other all the time.
And that’s what makes them such good students. And students who are self-
starters and who will go look for the extra information because they’re
curious about how things work or what things mean.
The understanding that students in their classroom needed to be risk takers
with what they knew seemed to be particularly key for success in Penguin Cluster.
Cecilia explained that, in many ways, risk aversion behaviors in students were a red
flag to her that a student might not be working to his or her potential in the
classroom. “A not-good student is . . . someone who is fearful of trying things, so
fearful that their parents might do their work for them . . . . They can’t get all they
can out of the classroom.” Teachers needed to do all they could to get students to
stretch themselves; such an endeavor required a great deal of action on their part.
Cecilia made this point:
They [students] don’t always do their best or they don’t know what their
best is yet. They need a little prodding to figure it out, but sometimes
they’re very willing to just give you anything and then you have to kind of
pull it out of them rather than [allowing students to] have that pride and
saying, “I only just want to show you what I know.”
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For the Penguin teachers, having particular norms might be one thing, but
bringing them to fruition was the result of their ongoing conscious efforts.
Student understanding of classroom values. Students’ understanding of
what was expected of them in Penguin Cluster mostly matched their teachers’
values. Their list of classroom values, derived from their comments about what it
was like to be a student in Penguin Cluster, was headed by two primary descriptors:
hard work and fun. With hard work came an explicit understanding that successful
students had to be organized, manage their time well, and take responsibility. Fifth
grader Jasmine explained, “Penguin Cluster is a really challenging cluster and I
think the most challenging cluster of all the clusters here. And you don’t really
want to get behind on anything. You’ll be in piles and piles of work.” Still, there
was a sense that students understood that they should be working at their appropri-
ate level and that there was room to negotiate with teachers about what exactly that
meant. There was also awareness that the hard work was necessary for students to
be ready for higher levels of education. As fourth grader Sara put it,
I think that Penguin’s hard. I’m not that sure, but I think I heard them say
that Penguin Cluster is a sixth-grade level. They teach sixth-grade things.
And it’s really hard. But there’s a lot of fun things to do. And lots of people
say that they give a lot of homework at Penguin, but they don’t; they just
give a lot of projects.
The notion that the work was meaningful and fun, as well as necessary for the
future, helped students to endure the difficult aspect of having to put out greater
levels of effort than they had in prior years.
Students mentioned three additional aspects of the classroom experience
that made them feel that the hard work and subsequent time management skills that
they needed to acquire were not impossible: time, social support, and the
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curriculum. First, students who had participated in the cluster for more than 1 year
seemed to achieve a balance much more easily. As fifth grader Layla explained,
This is my second year in Penguin . . . . When I first came into Penguin
Cluster, I was really comfortable until we got a lot of work. But I got used
to it. I’m on top of my time this year. Last year was really hectic.
Layla’s classmate Samantha, a fourth grader, could see changes in herself during
the course of only 1 year in Penguin. “I think that you don’t have very much
homework if you plan it out. But still at some point you feel kind of overwhelmed.
But I really like it and I want to stay [next year] again.” Such statements supported
Cecilia’s point that it took a long time and a great deal of effort to get students to
adjust to classroom norms.
The second source of support that students mentioned was the social
structure of the classroom, in which both teachers and students were looked to as
potential resources in getting work done. An example can be found in one student’s
description of the literature discussion group experience,
You might think, oh, [Bonnie’s] going to give me such hard books I won’t
understand and she’s going to get mad at me if I don’t understand it. But the
books aren’t going to be hard if you’re not ready for it yet. She always puts
you up to your right level. And if you don’t understand she will always
explain it to you or somebody else in the group will. And Bonnie, she won’t
just skip over mistakes because she thinks oh, that’s not that much of a
problem. If you make a mistake, she will tell you so you won’t make it
again in the future.
The idea that students were not alone in a sea of hard work seemed comfort-
ing to them. In turn, they came to see learning as a collaborative process, which
seemed to relieve some of the pressure that they felt from being a member of
Penguin Cluster.
Third, students described the curriculum as helpful in working to achieve
the high standards required of them by their teachers. One example of the
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curriculum serving as a means of support for students came through a study of
systems theory. This framework, the fundamental principle of which is that every-
thing in the universe is connected in some way, borders on quantum physics. It is
the first thing studied in Penguin Cluster as part of the teachers’ mission to get their
students to think about connections. Its entrance into the classroom knowledge set
was the result of the personal interest and study that Bonnie had undergone with the
help of a science mentor at the state level and her former teaching partner 2 years
prior. Its enduring effect on students came as the result of constant references by
teachers throughout all curricular and social areas. According to Annabel, “If I
were to tell a third grader about Penguin, what Penguin was all about, I would tell
them that it was a lot about systems and how everything is connected.” Her friend
Layla elaborated on its presence in the classroom:
Penguin Cluster is a lot about connecting everything to everything else.
So if you’re learning about math, it would be doing equations about the
environment . . . if you’re doing a play [as the class had done about the
Gold Rush earlier in the year], you’re studying what you’re performing so
you know everything about it. They never leave you not understanding.
With the curricular content linked, students connected information that they had
developed across content areas.
Studying systems theory also provided students a new way to think. For
James, this meant thinking “big.” This approach to viewing the world helped him a
great deal in his language arts work.
And really, most of the classroom is reading and writing, doing lots of
experiments with putting stuff on paper and doing projects with different
kinds of books so we learn more about books and authors. And for me
writing, I like it when I start off with something and then think big and
make it into something huge so I understand the whole thing. Just like one
little thing I can start writing a whole bunch of things to make a great story.
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With this description, James pointed to two key factors in the development
of expertise. First, he described taking the conceptual framework of making con-
nections provided by systems theory and applying it to his brainstorming process in
creative writing (“one little thing I can start writing a whole bunch of things to
make a great story”). In this way he drew on his science understanding to solve
new problems in literacy. Second, he discussed the importance of having multiple
opportunities to rehearse skills, in this case reading and writing skills, repeatedly.
Ongoing occasions such as these provided another source of curricular support for
students in Penguin Cluster.
Valued norms associated with literacy development. While the general
norms and values of Penguin Cluster have been outlined, it is important to docu-
ment norms and values specific to literacy. Even in this broad academic area,
students’ talk about reading and writing reflected their understanding of the need to
both acquire particular skills and adopt particular dispositions. Often, these two
aspects of becoming literate were inextricably linked in their minds. Savannah
described herself as a reader during one focus group. “I think I’m a good reader
because I really love to read and I also don’t read because I have to, I read because
I want to . . . . And I try to take in everything that I read and not just skim through
books.” Here Savannah tied the notion that good readers use skills such as reading
carefully to ensure comprehension with the complementary disposition of reading
for enjoyment. This mutual reinforcement of skills and habits allowed Savannah to
take on an identity of “good reader.”
Students often talked about reading and writing as reciprocal processes,
ways to acquire understandings and process information. Tanner put it succinctly,
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“The thing I learned about Penguin’s reading and writing assignments is that
they’re connected. You always write about what you read.” In a separate focus
group conversation Jasmine elaborated, “When we read, we normally read about
things that are environmental or something about the world. Something like that.
And we usually write on a topic that we just studied or something like that.” By
seeing reading and writing as two sides of the same coin, students identified valued
skills and dispositions associated with literacy in general. These included views of
literacy as a vehicle for learning content as well as a creative and enjoyable process
that often led to making connections to students’ personal lives and the world at
large. Students also described literacy as something that required careful thought
and hard work and was integral to future success. Finally, they noted that it often
required a collaborative effort.
The norm of collaboration was reflective not just of a view of literacy as a
social process but especially as a way to improve one’s own abilities. Cassidy, who
was credited by her teachers as having made considerable academic progress
during her time in Penguin, made this point.
I’ve learned about reading and writing that reading is fun, but if you don’t
understand something it’s okay because there might be people that don’t
understand the same thing . . . about the book like you do. And I learned
that people learn at different times. People learn slower and faster than each
other.
With this statement Cassidy spoke directly to the notion that peers could be
resources as they worked through texts, combining their talents in the effort to
achieve meaning. Tina also emphasized the role of the social environment in her
own literacy development: “To become a better reader and writer, you have to get
practice and get better by reading somebody else’s paper or another book to get
better.” This theme was also evident in some of the official writing work in the
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classroom. Christine provided the following example of one reflective writing
assignment about “how we tap into our groups. Like we do in reading groups, and
like how do we fit into there.” Seeing both oneself and one’s peers as resources in
the effort to become a better reader and writer was both an explicit and implicit
theme in Penguin Cluster.
Even though students seemed comfortable in making connections between
reading and writing processes, they were aware of key aspects pertinent to each act.
For them, upper-grade reading skills included, among other things, building
vocabulary, understanding reading content, thinking about why characters do
things, reading fluently, making connections between texts and the real world, and
re-reading to clarify meaning. Skill development in these areas came through
students’ participation in daily reading acts, not through separate activities. For
example, fourth grader Mathias talked about his acquisition of visualization skills
and vocabulary though books.
One thing I learned about reading is . . . when I really, really get into a
book, man, I just imagine a TV screen right in front of me and like I’m
watching it if I’m reading. . . . I’ve learned that [by reading] you can learn
new words you didn’t even know. And the dictionary can also help, too.
Students saw multiple purposes and outcomes for and from their reading work. It
was something that they did for pleasure as much as something that was helping
them to develop the skills that they understood to be important in their academic
development.
Students also valued complementary dispositions in reading. These
temperaments involved a willingness to practice reading in order to read at
progressively higher levels, reading for enjoyment, reading large amounts of text,
reading as a way of learning about something, and employing particular strategies
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to solve problems while reading. Layla described a good reader in Penguin Cluster
as “someone who isn’t afraid to ask questions if he doesn’t understand the content
and doesn’t skip over things in a hurry to finish the book but takes his time.” Both
of these behaviors signified a reading identity. Another student stressed the
importance of taking a personal stance in declaring oneself as a reader: “A good
reader is somebody who . . . considers, okay thinks they are a reader, not somebody
who’s just reading because they were told that they needed to read.” Thus, not only
must a student acquire skills and demonstrate behaviors typically associated with
the ability to read, but she or he also must take on a particular identity to be
recognized by Penguin Cluster peers as a member of the reading club.
Listening to Penguin Cluster students talk about writing gave the general
sense that this was an academic area that they saw as both particularly challenging
and rewarding. Students identified necessary writing skills: the ability to
demonstrate what one has learned with authority to a public audience, ongoing
rewriting and editing, the development of personal expression and reflection, and
the employment of newly acquired vocabulary, perfect grammar, plenty of detail,
and neatness. Julie explained, “I just want to say that there’s a lot of studying
involved for your reading and writing, so you can’t just think of something off the
top of your head. You have to study your topic to make a really good report.” In
following the classroom literacy norm of writing as a way of demonstrating
knowledge, a great deal of effort was required ahead of presentation time.
Other students emphasized the revising and editing work as being the major
task for them as writers. Annabel described a typical writing process.
You can write one thing once and you can think it’s very good, and then
once you go back again, you can find even more mistakes and rewrite it
again, and then you can think that that one is really great, and then you go
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back and edit it again, and rewrite it again, and then, then you can get it
approved by teachers and stuff like that.
The idea of “there’s always something you can fix,” as Molly put it, continued the
idea that literacy skills development came through participating in ongoing pur-
poseful work. Learning in such a contextualized way also supported students’
learning the skills needed to develop as individual writers, rather than forcing
everyone to practice the same skill simultaneously, regardless of whether they had
already mastered it (Tuyay et al., 1995).
Of course, good writers also needed to develop certain habits. In Penguin
Cluster particular ways of being writers included being creative, knowing how to
communicate ideas clearly, enjoying writing, and being willing to work hard at
developing a written piece. For some students, these types of dispositions were the
key. Jimmy explained, “My dad said that I have a creative mind, but I could never
put it on paper, but then the teachers taught me how to harness my creative instinct
and put it on paper.” Jimmy understood that his creativity was an asset, but learning
how to channel that into his work—not the spelling, grammar, or neatness skills
that he already had—had been what had helped him to make an important break-
through as a developing writer. Another student talked about the key to writing
success: “You have to love it, you have to use your imagination a lot . . . you write
from your own perspective and don’t copy people’s things.” The intangibles of
enjoyment, creativity, and personal expression were seen as critical aspects in the
composition of a quality written piece.
An overall signal that students had internalized identities as readers and
writers came in the form of comments about how they read and wrote at home.
Sometimes students offered their home practices as evidence of their literacy
competency. Tanner shared,
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When I read, I enjoy it, and I’m a quick reader. Like I read the Harry Potter
book in 4 days. But that’s just because I use most of my spare time, when
I’m not playing or doing homework, to read because I enjoy it. So I think
that makes me a good reader.
Other students discussed the number of books they had read as proof of their
abilities. Molly bragged, “I actually think I’m a pretty good reader because I read a
lot. Probably over the summer I read as many books are there are in Borders, the
bookstore.” Still others talked about how the literacy skills that they had acquired
in school applied to independent projects that they had initiated at home. Simone
talked about her home practices:
I like to read but it depends on the book. I’ll read it and sometimes I’ll read
under my covers when it’s time for me to go to bed. . . . I think I’m a good
reader. And I like to read above my level, too, if there’s interesting stuff to
read about. . . . I’m a pretty good writer. Depends on what I’m writing. I
like to write. I write my own songs. I have six songs that I wrote in a little
book. And [my friend’s] read them and she likes them.
Layla saw her home practices as a positive influence on her schoolwork.
“I’m not afraid to write what I really think down on paper because I do it a lot at
home.” Comments such as these reflect a meeting of the teachers’ objective of
literacy instruction for purposes that traveled beyond the classroom.
Students in Penguin Cluster had a collective understanding that the notion
of being literate involved both skill competency and associated habits and disposi-
tions. They also saw reading and writing as reciprocal processes that informed each
other. These perceptions were supported by the fact that they were able to name
multiple individual components of each, many of which overlapped. Students built
these competencies through their ongoing participation in reading and writing acts
that were holistic and social in nature. As they learned to coordinate and balance
their developing skills and habits in such an environment, they were in a position to
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take on identities as readers and writers. They also recognized their peers as having
done the same.
Learning as Personally
Transformative
Teachers were keenly aware that the learning that transpired in their class-
room had the power to change children’s views of themselves, even if such a
transformation occurred only in sets of moments. While in general they believed
that the experience of Penguin Cluster had the potential to build confidence in
every student—as Bonnie put it, “It’s sort of like if you can survive Penguin, you
can survive anything”—a few choice activities and a few particular children stood
out for them.
One of the things for which Penguin was known at school was its annual
production of an original musical based on their social studies and science content
learning. Despite it being a great deal of work and requiring a great deal of time,
money, and effort on the part of many adults, Bonnie remarked, “The self-
confidence, the change in children from the experience of being on stage and doing
the play—I don’t have the words to describe it. And it’s been the case since I’ve
been at this school.” Even children who did not have a speaking role seemed to
gain a great deal from their experience as part of the team. Bonnie reiterated,
Every year, the musical has changed kids lives. Every year. They feel
beautiful, handsome, special, empowered. Like last year, Tanner chose not
to have a role because he was in [an after-school] play, and he said, “It’s
going to be too much for me.” But he knew how important he was to the
show because he ran the spot[light], so it didn’t matter to him if he was on
stage, he knew his contribution was valuable.
Bonnie told me about how that year a fourth-grade boy with social diffi-
culties in the classroom had earned the lead and the subsequent respect of his peers,
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how a meek fifth-grade girl had learned to become more assertive as she nagged
adults about the historical details of her costume, how the class clowns found a
vehicle for their talents through humorous dialogue, and how a high-achieving
fifth-grade girl discovered that she had a beautiful voice, even after her parents had
begged the teachers not to have her embarrass herself by singing onstage. While
these were only a few of the many stories of transformation that occurred during
the production, activities like the play allowed students to apply existing nonaca-
demic talents—sometimes ones they did not even know they had—to a deep
exploration of the curriculum.
Even students’ everyday work in the classroom had the potential to trans-
form them in important ways. Cecilia told about one boy, Paul, who had seen
himself as strictly a “math kid” before coming to their classroom that year. She
explained that, as students learned to enjoy reading and writing, children like Paul
began to take on new views of themselves. Since Paul had consistently attempted to
fill every spare second of class time with a new book that he had brought from
home, the idea that he had only recently come to see himself as a “reading kid” was
something of a surprise. Similarly, during the focus groups many students told their
own stories of transformation. Savannah explained,
Before I came to Penguin, I really didn’t read that much. Barely at all.
Because I only read like . . . three chapter books a year. And when I came to
Penguin, I got an interest in books and now I’m reading a lot more . . . I’d
say like 30 [a year].
Kareem confessed that his change from a nonwriter to a writer took a little while.
Last year, when I was in this cluster, I hated writing . . . . Sometimes when I
had a book report, I would go home crying. But now . . . because they made
me write and write and write, I got used to it. And now writing’s kind of
fun.
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Such stories reflect very real payoffs from a classroom that was all about “hard
work.”
Tensions and Conflicts
One of the inherent qualities of communities of practice is conflict, which
has the power to propel the group forward or hold it back. As Cecilia mentioned,
the teachers experienced a variety of tensions as they wrestled with how to get the
most out of their students. However, the predominant tension that they identified in
their classroom had to do with concerns about the abilities of individual students to
broker themselves to others as valuable intellectual members of the classroom
community. Bonnie had a prevailing philosophy: “I don’t let a kid not be smart. I
mean, they can choose to not behave smart, but I don’t think I will let them not be
[smart].” However, it was difficult to get every student both to recognize his or her
own academic talents and to learn to develop, apply, and acquire new expertise in
the social atmosphere of the classroom. For this reason, both teachers expressed
doubt that their classroom environment would work for every type of student. For
some students, the issue was an overstimulating classroom environment—62
children in one place with so much activity made it difficult to focus on their work.
For others, the issues were more nuanced, as was the case with fourth-grader
Victoria.
Victoria had moments of inclusion as a valued member of Penguin Cluster
but more often seemed to lack confidence in her abilities. The result of this attitude
meant that Victoria, despite her abilities in grammar and spelling, was passive
about offering academic assistance to others. Instead, she worked hard to get people
to help her with assignments. In this way she positioned herself as someone who
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was helpless and had little to offer. One example of this pattern happened during an
activity when students were to write original picture books with environmental
themes based on the work of a prominent author/illustrator. Bonnie described
Victoria’s participation:
Some kids come to school with a lot of really challenging stuff [from
home], like Victoria. And it’s so awful that she just can’t . . . it doesn’t
matter how much help she has, she can’t get [her work] done. . . . I helped
her with her [picture] book. Cecilia helped her with her book. [The teaching
assistant] helped her with her book. [An adult volunteer] helped her with
her book. All of us, like afternoon, afternoon, afternoon. Then finally it got
written, and then she had—because I don’t know if you were ever here for
that—a whole committee of girls after school helping her. . . . and if you
look at her book, it’s hysterical. Every picture is different because she had
all these girls, each of them doing a page for her to get it done.
Although one assumption about Victoria, after hearing this description,
might be that she had few literacy skills to draw upon, that was not the case. In
many instances I observed Victoria and found that she had strong literacy skills; a
letter that she wrote to a museum director after a class field trip was exceptionally
well done. She was also interested in participating in class. For example, in the
library one day she had a conversation with another student comparing their own
work to that of the professional author/illustrator whom they had studied. Instead,
the issue with Victoria seemed to be that she did not trust herself, making it diffi-
cult for her to take both academic and social risks. In turn, she was not recognized
by others as having valuable expertise to offer; for the most part, this relegated
Victoria to the margins of the classroom.
Situations like this one presented the teachers with dilemmas. As they tried
to decide whether Victoria’s picture book should be part of the display at the down-
town library (apparently not all books could be included because of limited space),
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many of the issues surrounding Victoria’s participation in the classroom came to
the surface. Cecilia described their quandary:
So, we discussed that and [Bonnie] said some kids’ [books] I wouldn’t put
out because they’re embarrassing. Look at Victoria. Five people worked
with Victoria. She finally got a story. Then she did pictures by committee.
They don’t match each other. And I said, “But I believe that Victoria did the
best that she could. I really do.” Bonnie doesn’t. Bonnie thinks Victoria
would be embarrassed to have it shown, that to show her work would be
saying we have lower standards for you, Victoria, because [you] can’t do
any better. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I don’t know if she wouldn’t
just be proud to have her work up there. . . .So she’s pulled a committee
together to draw pictures for her. Look at the power of that. Look at what
she learned from that. Is that as valuable a lesson as the kid who could do it
all themselves and it wasn’t an effort for them and there was no stress? . . .
The thing is she is really smart. . . . I don’t think she spent as much time at
home, but she spent a lot of time in school. Was it always productive time?
. . . She has good ideas. . . . But I think what happens is, she goes in and out.
So, I think she can be with us and she can lose it and be with us. . . . I don’t
know what that is, but I mean it’s almost like a brain thing. . . . [Next year
in fifth grade] I’m just going to try and nurture her as much as I can.
Individual situations like the one with Victoria point to the complexities with which
teachers have to struggle as they attempt to discern how best to socialize students,
set standards, and evaluate their academic performance, even in light of a strong
classroom culture.
For students, pressing conflicts mostly came with the struggles associated
with their own changing and conflicting views of themselves as participants and
nonparticipants in classroom activity. A few students seemed comfortably
entrenched in their identities. In these cases, declarative statements about them-
selves as nonparticipants came as the result of what they termed boredom but what
seemed to really be about feeling overwhelmed and alienated by the norms of the
classroom. For example, fifth grader Andrea described Penguin Cluster in this way:
I think it’s boring because [the work] takes a long time. And then we have
to schedule our time on doing homework and can’t go anywhere and do fun
stuff. Like this weekend I wanted to do fun stuff but I didn’t, and my story
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wasn’t done, and so then I had to go and then I couldn’t because I was
reading.
Rather than feeling pride as a result of the hard work of the classroom, Andrea felt
resentment. This reaction, which came despite the fact that her reading and writing
skills were adequate, meant that she often distanced herself from an identity as a
full participant in the classroom. This stance shut her off from reaching her full
academic potential, even if she completed her assignments.
The theme of not buying into particular classroom norms was true for each
student who talked about his or her own role in the classroom in a dissociative way.
For some, not knowing how to manage time was the problem; for others, it was the
lack of understanding of the norms. Max, who had been identified as having learn-
ing disabilities, described classroom literacy norms only in a skills-oriented way.
To be a good reader you should memorize what you are reading. And what
you write, you should look it over and spell everything right. Look it over
and try to write the words correctly. Just keep on looking it over.
The rigidity and limited nature of his description, which was focused on the literacy
skills that were part of his particular set of weaknesses, implied that Max had diffi-
culty in seeing himself ever fitting in as a competent reader and writer. In fact, he
shared that, although people told him that he was good at reading and writing (he
was in fact a very complex thinker), he did not agree, even though he knew he was
supposed to “believe in [himself].” By not acknowledging the whole picture of
literacy competency encompassing both skills and dispositions, as many of his
classmates did, Max limited his vision of himself as a participant in the community
of literacy practice.
More often, the willingness to see oneself as a participant shifted through-
out the duration of an activity or changed across activities. Fourth grader Jessica,
who like her peers did not completely understand the classroom norms (“It’s like
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you have to do what the teachers feel like, but you don’t know what they feel
like”), could still point to moments of accomplishment. Although Jessica reported
that her mother regularly did her schoolwork for her because it was too hard, she
admitted, “I do think I’m a good reader because I understand the book and one time
I read nine chapter books in 6 days. And I was really proud of myself.” Although
during observations Jessica mostly opted to position herself as a nonparticipant, she
was suddenly a contributing member to classroom endeavors when she saw an
activity that would allow her to utilize her strengths, particularly artistic ones.
These moments of self-initiated inclusion seemed to boost her enthusiasm for
learning, even if they were infrequent.
These descriptions illustrate the kinds of tensions present in Penguin
Cluster. Some students, such as Victoria and Jessica, may have challenges that they
might be able to overcome after another year of experience and guidance from their
teachers. During that time, the expectations of their teachers may become clearer,
and the fact that they may be put in a position where they could mentor younger
students might assist them in building the confidence that they need to be more
consistent participants in the classroom. For others, such as Andrea and Max, the
need to explicitly build a better understanding of Penguin’s shared repertoire was
more pressing for their success. Although in these examples tensions seemed to put
particular students at a disadvantage, it is important to remember that they could
often propel a child forward, as Kareem had noted when he described himself as
going from crying to feeling confident about writing book reports. Nevertheless,
the choices that teachers and students made in the social context of the classroom
had real consequences for the group’s ability to bring marginalized students into
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the fold. They also mattered for the future trajectories that students imagined for
themselves.
Summary of Penguin Cluster as a
Community of Practice
Penguin Cluster functioned in a way that closely paralleled Wenger’s
(1998) framework. First, it operated on the assumption that the work that was done
in the classroom should connect to the outside world, giving students an oppor-
tunity to develop ownership over what they learned as they shared it with others.
Consequently, their elementary school work carried a larger social meaning.
Second, knowledge in Penguin Cluster was obtained both through active participa-
tion and through understanding of what was valued in the context of the classroom.
Students’ active participation in classroom activities was necessary in the develop-
ment of literacy expertise, which was part of language arts work as much as it was
a part of all content area learning. Accompanying this ethic was a strong set of both
classroom and literacy-specific norms that emphasized the acquisition of particular
skills and dispositions suited to classroom and literacy success. Affiliation with and
adoption of these norms and values served some students quite well, as they talked
about the ways in which they had been personally transformed as readers and
writers during their time in Penguin Cluster. Those students who had difficulty
were more likely to experience tensions that threatened their ability to participate as
a valued member of the classroom community. Three key sources of support were
identified by students as helpful in the learning process: (a) time to develop in the
classroom over a 2-year period; (b) the social setting of the classroom, in which
students were encouraged to learn from both their teachers and their peers; and (c)
the interdisciplinary curriculum, which became a part of students’ shared repertoire.
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The Nature of Students’ Capital Resources
in Penguin Cluster
To answer the second subquestion, “What is the nature of students’ eco-
nomic, cultural, and social capital resources and how do these come into play as
students undertake and complete literacy assignments?” data were coded according
to instances in which forms of economic, cultural, and social capital, as Bourdieu
(1986) defined them, were highlighted in teachers’ and students’ collective class-
room work. Since most classroom settings are meant to pass on traditions and
information valued by the dominant culture, it was not surprising that instances of
cultural capital development and exchange were seen everywhere. Teachers and
students also frequently utilized social connections to their advantage. Economic
capital, by contrast, appeared only a few times in conversation, and then only by
adults. Still, just as Bourdieu had pointed out, these resources were often converted
in some way to maximize possibilities (e.g., a social connection provided important
cultural commodities or economic resources were turned into social ones).
In the first section of this chapter forms of capital exchange were certainly
hinted at but not explicitly labeled as such. This section draws on what has already
been said about Penguin Cluster and elaborates with new examples about the role
of the forms of capital in classroom learning endeavors. A brief review of
Bourdieu’s (1986) frame precedes a discussion of the ways in which teachers
acquired the financial resources they needed to facilitate their curricular plans. This
is followed by a review of the nature of both teachers’ and students’ cultural capital
resources and a look at the workings of social capital resources in Penguin Cluster.
Capital exchange, according to Bourdieu (1986), happens in the context of
what he called fields, or settings that have their own idiosyncratic rules about social
interaction, values, and ways of behaving. These guidelines in turn foster the
80
development of relationships and the distribution of economic, cultural, and social
resources within the field. Economic resources refer primarily to money. Cultural
resources are present in three primary forms: (a) embodied, which refers to one’s
habitus, or long-lasting set of mental and physical temperaments developed over
time; (b) objectified, which is represented by material goods and the knowledge of
how to use them; and (c) institutionalized, which comes in the form of formal aca-
demic credentials. Social capital resources are the result of a person’s membership
in both formal and informal networks, which are made to exist through social
investments that encourage exchange of material or symbolic goods. Only when
these resources are coordinated can they reach their full potential, as one such
resources can easily be exchanged for another resource for a particular purpose.
The Role of Economic Capital
in Penguin Cluster
Economic capital was primarily mentioned by teachers; only twice during
the study did students mention its role as a resource for them. This fact is not
surprising, since the children’s ages ranged from 9-11 years. However, teachers
were keenly aware of the importance of money to their work, and they actively
sought to piece together enough of it to fund the projects and activities that they
understood to be important to students’ learning. For them, financial resources
came about in three primary ways: through the school, through their own initia-
tives, and through the work produced by the students in their classroom.
Economic Resources From the
School
Olive Avenue School was unusual in that it had its own parent-run fund-
raising arm. This group brought in financial resources in addition to the ones
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provided by the school district. Money raised through multiple fundraisers (e.g.,
magazine drives, Silent Auction, etc.) and donations from children’s families and
businesses comprised an annual budget of approximately $190,000; this fund
allowed the school to spend about an extra $500 per student. Most of the money
from this fund went to pay personnel to run schoolwide enrichment programs
during the school day in art, PE, garden, music, drama, and technology—the same
programs that provided teachers with time during the week when they could plan
together or have smaller groups of students in their room for instruction. The
foundation also paid for technology support, funded some field trips, and provided
each cluster with a small budget to be used at teachers’ discretion. Bonnie and
Cecilia used their money to pay for books; as a result, their classroom was rich in
print resources.
The second form of economic support from the school came through its
affiliation with the large school district, which afforded it the ability to apply for
public school grants. Bonnie discussed the impact that a grant from a local non-
profit group had had on her institution and its students:
Our [school] library is a [local nonprofit] library. We got a [local nonprofit]
grant, and they totally pay. Not for the books, but they pay for the all the
inside design of the library, the little amphitheater and the furniture and the
carpet and the little study carrels. They did provide some books, not a lot.
And so they just do that. It’s a wonderful organization and schools apply for
their grant, and then if they get it, they get a revamp of their library and
these people that come as a part of the package. It’s been phenomenal. All
the kids that we’ve ever had that have had [local nonprofit] reading buddies
to come, we’ve seen so much difference in their progress. That’s just once a
week. Imagine if you had that two or three times a week just for half an
hour, just you and that person. It’s comparable to having a mom or a dad
that reads to you every night. . . . It’s lovely.
Bonnie explained that the reading volunteer who worked with Cassidy
during her years at the school had been a key factor in helping her to “get over the
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hump” in reading. In this way the school’s initiative in applying for the library
grant garnered its students not only money to renovate the library and add to its
shelves, but also important social resources that assisted struggling readers in
making significant academic progress.
Economic Resources From Teacher
Initiatives
Although the school’s economic resources were a source of support for
teachers, a more significant money supply for them came through a state grant that
they had initiated. In this case, Bonnie’s social connections (ones that she had
developed through her active participation in environmental education efforts)
resulted in her attending meeting where a state government organization was
attempting to recruit middle school teachers to develop curriculum that would raise
student awareness of ecological issues. Although Bonnie immediately volunteered
to participate, the group initially rejected her request because of her status as an
elementary school teacher. However, after a middle school that had been chosen
failed to comply with requirements, the group contacted Bonnie and said that she
could have the grant without having to go through the formal application process.
Although she could not recall the specific amount of money involved, Bonnie
reported what she was able to do with it both in her classroom and across the
school:
It paid for the extra time that Cecilia and I and [the garden teacher] put in.
And it paid for the extra time that [two other teachers at Olive] put in. It
provided every classroom with $200 worth of books that they could choose
. . . it paid for outdoor tables we’re getting. It paid for the video [which was
produced by one of Bonnie’s sons, a documentary filmmaker] . . . and the
script for the play that [Bonnie’s other son, who is involved with pro-
fessional theater] wrote. The [state agency] commissioned that to distribute
to other schools. So he got paid for the rights to that script. . . . It paid for
getting two new tables for our patio. It paid for [the garden teacher’s] green-
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house, a lot of equipment for the garden, books and other things that [the
garden teacher] needed. Really, primarily, I’d say that most of it went to
support [the school’s] garden project because [the garden teacher’s] really
was the stepchild, so we tried to really put in whatever she wanted, anything
she wanted, from the grant, because nobody is really providing for that
garden.
The grant was the perfect example of capital conversion. The result of Bonnie’s
social capital, it provided funds for Olive Avenue School and Penguin Cluster that
were immediately converted into more social and cultural capital resources for
students.
Not only did the grant pay for material items—objectified cultural capital—
that supported students’ science work both in their classrooms and in the school
garden; it also afforded students the opportunity to share their learning with an
outside audience in three important ways. First, Penguin Cluster’s attempt to start a
schoolwide recycling program that year was documented by filming important
events during the planning and implementation of the project. Once the video was
properly edited, Bonnie and Cecilia commissioned students Tanner and Layla to
write and record the voiceover script; the final product was sent for wider distribu-
tion to schools across the state. Second, the writing of the script for their original
musical about the Gold Rush, incorporating themes about the environmental impact
of mining, was funded. Penguin Cluster students benefited from performing the
play for a local school and community audience, and the script was then sent to the
state for wider distribution in schools, along with a curricular outline. Third, the
grant provided the impetus for the fourth graders to write brochures that outlined
how to start a schoolwide recycling program. These pamphlets were also eventually
distributed to a larger public school audience. In each case, money was converted
into curriculum—with the help of outside specialists, which helped students in
Penguin and beyond acquire important information about environmental issues.
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Penguin students also profited from the opportunity to develop their literacy skills
in the context of these projects.
Economic Resources From Student
Work
The third way in which teachers accumulated economic resources for their
classroom came through the private fundraisers by the class that helped to pay for
curricular experiences, such as science camp. In these instances, students’ learning
produced merchandise, such as a student-produced calendar full of daily facts
derived from their totem animal reports, a class cookbook featuring home recipes
and the student-produced family stories behind them, and sales of tickets to the
class play, which was performed three nights at the school. These attempts to fill in
some economic gaps (ticket sales paid for Bonnie’s playwright son to cast and
direct the production, for example) were seen as highly controversial by colleagues,
making it a tough political issue for the Penguin Cluster teachers. However, Bonnie
argued,
I think [my son] gets a lot of satisfaction from doing it, but he also of course
needs to be paid as a professional . . . if you don’t pay someone for doing
that kind of service, people don’t value it as much either. Unfortunately,
that’s the basis of our society. And he should have been paid a more pro-
fessional rate, but that’s all the money we had.
Undoubtedly, money was a key factor in allowing Penguin teachers to produce the
kind of learning that they desired for their students. Thus, these activities were
strategic in generation of the economic resources and their conversion into
important social and cultural resources for children.
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The Role of Cultural Capital Resources
in Penguin Cluster
Embodied cultural capital was predominant in Penguin Cluster. The
development of students’ habitus as scholars was an ongoing process, facilitated by
the norms and values of the classroom as well as the projects and activities that
students were expected to undertake. Since the specifics of these classroom com-
ponents have already been discussed at length, this section begins with a look at
how cultural capital was developed in Penguin Cluster, including the role of
cultural capital from students’ homes. This is followed by examples of what its
exchange looked like in context and a discussion of the nature of objectified
cultural capital in the learning environment.
Cultural Capital Development in
the Classroom
Certainly, the cultivation of students’ habitus as academic people—what
would eventually culminate in institutionalized cultural capital—began primarily
with the teachers’ values and expectations regarding scholarship. The vehicle for
acquiring the relevant skills and dispositions came through curriculum content that
was based on teachers’ personal interests and intellectual passions. Bonnie’s love
for the environment, theater, children’s literature, and writing were prominent
factors in her curriculum design, and the incorporation of these interests into the
classroom was supported by the school’s expectation that teachers create their own
units of study. One example of how teachers’ own learning became a curriculum
topic for their fourth and fifth graders was provided by Bonnie as she shared how
she and her former teaching partner had developed the idea of a study of systems
theory.
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When we did the year where we were videotaped by the [state environ-
mental education group], it was the second year that [Bonnie’s old teaching
partner] and I had taught together. We both had the idea of systems from
different summer learning experiences, and once we understood the idea of
systems, it took off. You had mentioned Margaret Wheatley . . . we both
had read her book and talked about it all the time, and talked about what it
meant and what applied to learning and to the classroom. And Daniela
Meadows—I don’t know if you know her. We read her. There were a lot
more systems thinkers, environmental thinkers who were really talking
about that same kind of interconnection. And we were educating ourselves.
As we read and understood it more deeply ourselves, we were able to begin
to seamlessly integrate all of those ideas into what we were teaching, that
whole idea of systems, of things being connected and dependent on one
another. We continued to revisit that with the children—I think what they
receive then is a way of viewing the world. And so when they’re learning
about anything, they’re going to begin to see, well, how does this connect to
something else? What if this breaks down? What’s going to impact that?
We re-circle and re-circle the ideas of interdependence. That makes what
we do unique, the systems idea, the systems approach.
What was an intellectually transformative experience for Bonnie had turned into
something that she shared with her students. As she noted, the study of systems
theory not only resulted in students’ acquisition of scientific information but
embodied cultural capital, “a way of viewing the world.”
Although curriculum often started with the teachers’ interests, students were
not relegated to a passive role in the learning process. The constructivist philosophy
adhered to by the teachers and the school played a key role in how students learned.
Specifically, they were expected to work through the content on their own, bringing
in their own experiences and expertise. In the case of learning systems theory,
Bonnie stated,
So when we do the systems thinking in the beginning of the year, we don’t
explain to them what a system is. They just figure it out. They have to
wiggle their way through what a system is. They have to wiggle their way
through, “Oh, wait a minute, what are we talking about here?” And in that
process of having to figure it out, they do figure it out. And then they claim
ownership of it. So what’s interesting is year after year the words that
children use to define systems are different but the systems principles are
always the same.
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An example of one way students were asked to participate in the construc-
tion of their own learning came from an activity in which they worked in teams to
map the origins of a manufactured good that they had brought to school. As they
created elaborate written webs containing the types of raw materials, human labor,
and energy supplies required to create the product and bring it to their homes,
students gained a sense of the interdependence of multiple systems. In this way, as
the teachers described, students achieved ownership over one systems concept
while tying that learning directly to their personal lives.
The meeting of the teachers’ interests and students’ learning via a con-
structivist approach resulted in the creation of a shared knowledge base that was
critical for participation in Penguin Cluster. Content was revisited so often in so
many different contexts that it was almost impossible to avoid; this was not a room
where something was studied, tested, and forgotten. Most striking, the revisitation
of content occurred in both academic and social contexts. One example of the
curriculum being tied to everyday life came in the form of a brief conversation
between Bonnie and her students one morning in early June. New student chairs
ordered by the school had arrived; before replacing the old ones, Bonnie used the
moment as a teaching opportunity. Here is an excerpt from field notes:
They get new chairs in the classroom. Bonnie says that she does not want to
just put the old chairs out, which they’re doing because they’re dangerous,
without thinking about something we learned this year.
Parvati: All the systems it took to make chairs.
Bonnie: We could make a systems chart across the room for one chair, and
we threw out 18.
Becky: But I have a point. If you don’t eat chicken, but the chicken’s
already dead, what’s the point?
Molly has an answer, but loses it.
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Blake says that maybe parts of old chairs can be reused.
Molly: Can we recycle them?
Bonnie: That’s something we need to investigate. We can talk to [the
secretary] in the office to get the company’s name.
Bonnie has Becky repeat her question at Molly’s request. . . . Maybe it will
jog her memory about what she wanted to say.
Layla: If you take care of the chair, you don’t have to throw it away or it
has to go to the landfill.
Bonnie: There’s a phrase called, “The buck stops here.”
Tanner: Wasn’t that from a president?
Bonnie: Yes. Harry Truman, who has the same birth date as me, but I’m
still here.
Jimmy: Doesn’t it mean that it’s gotta stop?
Bonnie: If people stop needing chairs, then they’ll stop making them. Okay,
another issue . . .
Moments like this were frequent in Penguin Cluster. Here, learning was
brought full circle: As teachers’ interests met students’ experiences, a shared set of
knowledge was created and became part of students’ embodied cultural capital,
which then could be applied to new situations, academic or social.
The Role of Cultural Capital From
Students’ Homes
Because this shared set of knowledge was such a dominant force in Penguin
Cluster, when I wondered about the role of students’ home cultural capital in the
classroom I had to ask teachers and students directly about it. Certainly, the
students in Penguin were a culturally and economically heterogeneous population,
and since Olive Avenue was not a neighborhood school, there was little common
experience for teachers to rely upon outside of what they created together. Cecilia
talked about how they utilized students’ knowledge and experience in this way:
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I think we’re often asking them to look at what they know or what they’ve
experienced to make connections to what they’re learning and that comes
from their home lives. I’m trying to think if I’m being fair in saying this. I
think we ask them about their feelings a lot and so that relates to what they
know and why they think things might be important. . . . We ask them to
share their experiences and validate what goes on, what’s special and differ-
ent in each of their homes.
When we get into some of the cultural stuff like when we do our
cookbook, we ask them to look at what they do and recognize that it’s
special because I know growing up I thought everyone else had an interest-
ing culture, but I had nothing. I take my own experiences a lot and assume
that a lot of kids feel the same way. So, to try to get them to see what about
how they grew up is special and different and unique, to take the pride in
that and then have that pride transfer over to their new learning and what
they’re doing.
For the most part, student knowledge was drawn upon in the context of what they
were learning, or facilitated by it, as was the case with the family recipe stories.
However, students’ cultural knowledge was also cultivated by experiences
in the classroom. For example, prior to putting on the play, the students were asked
to research their roles on stage and write a character analysis. Because the play had
told the story of the Gold Rush from the perspectives of multiple ethnic groups
(which, since it was an original production, corresponded to the ethnic groups
represented by the children in Penguin Cluster), it was apparent that this writing
often included cultural perspectives. Bonnie pointed out, “It’s not their cultural
knowledge. That’s what’s so surprising. Joshua’s come in and had to give them that
cultural knowledge.” She explained that, over the years, she had witnessed him
doing two things to facilitate such understandings in students. First, Joshua some-
times asked parents to discuss their heritages with their children to develop under-
standing that students could apply to their performances. Consequently, the play
became a vehicle for families to discuss cultural issues that may not have come up
for them in the past. Second, Joshua did extensive research to write the play from a
historically accurate point of view. Not only did students learn through the dialogue
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written for them, but Joshua employed them to do research on costumes so that
they gained their own understanding about how people lived during a particular
historical period. In this way, the curriculum became a bridge between home
learning and the learning that was done in school.
While the curriculum may not have originated with children’s home
experiences, there was evidence that the students did not seem to feel intimidated
about sharing what they knew. Teachers often used students’ personal stories and
understanding as an opportunity to validate and/or extend their points of view. One
example of these types of classroom exchanges occurred during a read-aloud of the
Lois Lowry (2000) novel Gathering Blue. In this book, the sequel to The Giver
(Lowry, 1993), female members of the community were not allowed to learn to
read and write but had to sign a contract adhering to the societal rules anyway.
When Bonnie asked students why they thought this structure existed, they replied:
Cady: Female gender is weaker.
Justin: They don’t value [women].
Shani: Contract can’t be read so they just take away from themselves.
Jessica: If they could read it they would be all freaked out.
Bonnie: We have that stereotype but I’m not sure that actually happens.
Cady: You know how we have those stereotypes, like the manly thing to do
is hunting.
Briselda: My grandma in Guatemala when she got married, instead of
signing, she put her fingerprint.
Bonnie: That’s common in many countries.
Samantha: A man rules the community, so he wants all the men to
overpower, so if women can’t read or write and have to sign a contract they
just have to sign and get overruled.
Bonnie: Let’s move on.
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Kareem: Isn’t it true that African Americans used to not be able to read and
write and they would just put an X?
Bonnie: Not African Americans, slaves. There were African Americans in
the north who were very well-educated. It depended on where you were in
this country.
Austin: It’s like what Kareem said, but with gender.
As students offered their opinions, Bonnie first used the opportunity to
bring up issues of stereotyping as a way to get students to question the cultural
assumption that women are weaker than men. She also validated other experiences,
as she did with Briselda’s story about her grandmother. Finally, Bonnie challenged
Kareem’s understanding that all African Americans were not literate historically by
pointing out that an educated class of Black people has existed in the United States
for a long time. By making this distinction, she tried to get him (and his classmates)
to see African American cultural heritage as a diverse set of experiences rather than
as a unidimensional one.
Students’ talk about their personal literacy practices extended this notion
that curriculum was at the center of cultural capital exchanges between home and
school. At times they credited home practices as a way of furthering their develop-
ment of the valued habits and skills defined by classroom norms. Parvati explained,
Well, when I read and write at home I have a stronger level of reading at
school, and that helps me. . . . Because if you read a lot, you can learn to
read faster and faster and faster. And when you write, you practice getting
your ideas on a page and then you can have stronger writing, more detailed
writing.
A more specific example of the connection between reading for personal enjoyment
and school was provided by Robert: “I mostly . . . read magazines sometimes, like
car magazines and how cars are going to look in the future and stuff. And it helps
me . . . because I become a stronger reader if I read more.” Kareem connected his
personal literary interests with the development of his overall habitus as a reader:
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“At home . . . when I read it just gives me a point of view of opinions of other
things, the facts on other things that I don’t really know about a lot, so that helps a
lot.” Tina offered that the reading that she did at home helped with the development
of her summarization skills. “At home I read the newspaper to my grandma
because she doesn’t know how to read English, and then I explain it to her in my
language, and then that gives me practice for school.” In these statements, class-
room literacy norms are clearly connected to home activities. As students drew on
the norms of reading for practice, enjoyment, understanding, and for the purpose of
learning something new, they linked home and school literacy settings.
Other students discussed how classroom literacy norms broadened their
home practices. This circumstance was usually the result of students learning to
love to read and write. Jasmine commented,
At home I like to read a lot of books that most people wouldn’t read . . . like
books people don’t see on the shelves anymore, like older books. Like one
that I read during the summer last year called The Upstairs Room, and that
one was really interesting to me. And that helps me at school because I
normally didn’t like to read before, and now I kind of do. So that really
helps me at home.
Julie mentioned how she brought school literacy into her home in this way:
If there’s a book that has a sequel and Bonnie’s reading it in class or
something, and then I usually read that. Like right now I’m reading The
Messenger (Lowry, 2004) and I think that helps me because then I under-
stand reading and that author’s writing style, like when we’re reading it in
class. And then sometimes I’ll have a really good idea for a story and so I’ll
just start writing. I’ll go to my computer and start writing my story, even
though I know it’ll never get published. I just want to write.
Because of interests they developed in Penguin Cluster, these girls began to initiate
their own related reading and writing activities in their leisure time.
The second way in which students connected academic cultural capital with
home knowledge came through the viewing of existing literacy tools in a new light.
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Since many of the literacy projects conducted in Penguin Cluster required knowing
how to utilize particular forms of objectified cultural capital, such as reference
materials, students were now starting to notice that these items were already present
in their homes. Now armed with the know-how to employ such materials, students
began to recognize their usefulness to school endeavors. For example, Mason
learned to utilize the dictionary function on his computer while he read (“it’s
faster”). Jared started to see the books on his shelf in a new light.
When I’m at home computers help me with work and I look at books to get
help. . . . There’s . . . science books and picture books and homework books
and math books. . . . That’s like my research.
As they acquired new expertise in relation to forms of objectified cultural capital,
students were able to broaden the kinds of literacy that they did at home, which in
turn assisted them in the completion of their schoolwork.
All in all, students’ home cultural capital was something that was mostly
drawn upon in the context of furthering existing curricular goals. Still, there were
instances in which it was the basis of the activity and instances in which the curri-
culum helped the students to further develop personal cultural understanding at
home or in class because the instances related to a topic of study. Although it may
not have been the driving force behind the curriculum, students nevertheless
seemed to understand tacitly that the perspectives and information that they had
brought from home were welcome in the classroom. As students acquired new
literacy skills and habits, such as using the dictionary or conducting research for a
writing project, they also came to see the materials in their home as useful for their
schoolwork.
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Cultural Capital Exchange in
Context
Once sets of shared knowledge, or embodied cultural capital, were created
in the classroom, the opportunities for exchange between the students were avail-
able. As Cassidy had noted earlier, because students learned different things at
different times on different levels with different interpretations, they had frequent
dialogues about what they knew in both open-ended and more purposeful
endeavors. This section explains what this looked like in each context with two
specific examples: a field trip to the Natural History Museum and a small group
activity of brochure writing.
The local natural history museum had put together an exhibit based on
geographer Jared Diamond’s theory of the collapse of civilizations. Because Olive
Avenue School was known in the community for its environmental focus, the
museum asked the school to offer a faculty member to serve on the advisory board
for the exhibit. In exchange, the museum offered to pay for a class field trip to tour
the final product. The exhibit’s five tenets regarding the success and failure of
societies—(a) natural change in climate, () environmental damage caused by
people, (c) decline and support by neighbors and trading partners, (d) hostile
neighbors, and (e) how society anticipates and solves problems—fit nicely with
Penguin’s overall themes. Consequently, Bonnie represented the school on the
board and her students took the trip.
On the day of the trip I shadowed a small group of students chaperoned by
Bonnie’s son Joshua. As students walked through the exhibit, they read placards
and studied displays. Joshua led them through short discussions to process the
material. Below are examples from field notes regarding the kind of talk that
happened during their tour of the exhibit:
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Kids look at illustration of climate change. Joshua asks them to describe
what they see.
Tara: This part is broken down.
Joshua: And what do we know about systems theory?
Shani: If one part of a system breaks down, all systems break down.
They look at the hostile neighbors illustration. Shani explains what he
thinks is happening in the mural.
Joshua: A chain of war, well-phrased. What happens from left to right?
(The illustration progresses.)
Student: Chain reaction.
They look at the choices illustration. They talk about what the choices
mean.
The next room has a big Mayan temple and wall photographs of Mayan
civilization. Joshua asks: Do you recognize this from class? Remember that
lesson we did on Mexico? Joshua remembers that someone had asked
during that lesson if they really wore jaguar skins, and points to the one on
the wall.
Simone: Who was in Iguana [Cluster] here? Remember that Mayan thing?
Tina: Yeah, that was cool.
Bonnie: You might notice the stairs on this temple are narrow. It was
designed so that you’d walk zigzag so you’d never turn your back on the
Gods. Just like in California, the miners cut down all the trees and the
Mayans also cut down all the trees.
Joshua: Remember that Mayan civilization went from the Yucatan all the
way down to Guatemala, for some of you who have Guatemalan heritage.
Anthony: Oh yeah!
Shani: They used a ceremonial ax.
Joshua says that’s what you should be doing, reading about displays.
Cassidy: The stairs are very narrow.
In this case, with adult leadership, students used their own inference skills
and existing knowledge about systems theory and the Mayan civilization. In
addition, adults modeled making connections between existing knowledge and the
new content from the exhibit, as Bonnie did when she connected the Mayans’
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destruction of trees with the behaviors of the miners in California during the Gold
Rush. Adults reinforced particular literacy habits associated with museum attend-
ance, as Joshua did when he publicly acknowledged Shani’s reading of the placards
in the exhibit.
Since Joshua’s group had some extra time before meeting the rest of the
class for lunch, he allowed them to explore other parts of the museum on their own.
As the group looked at exhibits of various animals, Joshua led informal discussions
about the connections between these displays and what they had just learned in the
Collapse displays, but talk here was unstructured and students could choose to stay
with him or explore the pavilions on their own. I followed two boys, Brent and Joe,
as they drifted off to look at what interested them.
Brent to Joe, pointing to grizzly bear display: “Hey look, my totem animal”
[referring to the reports students had written in November on an animal of
their choice].
Joe: Weren’t you a black bear or brown bear?
Brent: So, who cares?
Joe describes the grizzly display to me. “That’s the mom. The mom is a sow
and she’s trying to protect the baby. Dad is the boar and he tries to eat the
cub. He lives on his own.”
I ask, “How do you know?”
Joe: My totem animal was a bear.
Two things are striking here. First, Joe held Brent accountable for his
learning by not letting him equate a black or brown bear with a grizzly. As an
expert on these animals based on the research and writing that he had done on them
earlier in the school year, he seemed to have little tolerance for Brent’s casual
lumping of all bears into one group. Second, as he described the display to me, his
ownership over what he learned was evident. He went beyond the information on
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the museum placard to explain grizzly bear behavior, using his own embodied
cultural capital, expertise that he had acquired 6 months earlier.
As with other content in Penguin Cluster, the trip to the museum and, in
particular, the five principles from the Collapse exhibit were brought into the
everyday curricular fold. Students wrote letters providing feedback to the museum
curator about the exhibit itself, the five principles were regularly discussed in
relationship to a read-aloud text about a dysfunctional society, and they participated
in additional writing assignments and discussions connecting Diamond’s theory to
current events. An excerpt from field notes captures the nature of this last activity.
After giving students 15 minutes to write about how one of the Collapse principles
connected to something that is happening today, the following exchanges occurred:
Bonnie says, “If you’re still writing come to the rug. I’m going to divide the
rest of you up. I want you to exchange papers and share what you’ve
written.” Samantha and Kennedi, Lily and Cady are paired.
Samantha: This is supposed to be “they.” She fixes it on Kennedi’s paper.
Samantha makes other grammar changes, adding in “the,” a period, and
“they” instead of “the.”
Bonnie: Take your own paper back and having read someone else’s idea, is
there something that you need to add that you might have forgotten?
Samantha borrows Tara’s sharpener again.
Lily says to Cady: You know what’s gross? When you recycle a water
bottle and get a new one, someone’s spit is on there.
Cady: They clean them.
I say that when they melt the plastic, the bacteria are killed. Lily says “oh”
and smiles.
Bonnie: Now, at your table, move so you’re all together. (Girls are all on
one side of the table now. Lily is writing a note, “I love you.”) Talk with
your group about the most important idea about collapse.
Lily: Cause people choose.
Cady: The most important is climate change like tsunamis and stuff. It
wipes out so many people and the environment.
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Lily: But you can help that.
Cady: I know but it’s still collapse.
Samantha: Are you Republicans or Democrats? Okay, we’re all Democrats.
If you vote for George W. Bush, he wants war and stuff. But if we have
another president he can give them money and everyone’s okay.
Cady: Okay, we’re done.
Lily: No, let’s go around again. So if someone litters, someone else can pick
it up. (It’s getting loud because people are arguing) We’re the most
organized group.
Samantha: So if people decide to protest like if they put up a sign to
demonstrate and other people make them stop doing it then…
Kennedi: I agree with Samantha.
Bonnie (because of the noise): This discussion is collapsing. What are the
reasons?
Shani: Choices.
Annabel: Hostile neighbors.
Bonnie: A big human impact on the environment. People were writing,
people were being thoughtful, trading papers and then . . . . So maybe you
can see just in this moment, why they would put together a community like
Jonas’ [from the read-aloud book, The Giver, where the society has strict
rules of conformity and order].
Cady: We didn’t have a collapse in our group.
Bonnie: On the back of your paper, write three sentences about how you
observed a collapse in our classroom.
As students incorporated the relatively new ideas from the Collapse exhibit
into their shared repertoire, multiple exchanges of embodied cultural capital were
observed. As they traded papers, Samantha seized the opportunity to focus on
reinforcing writing conventions of spelling and grammar for Kennedi. Bonnie
gently reminded students of the classroom norms of sharing ideas by giving
everyone the opportunity to revise written concepts after exchanging papers. Lily,
temporarily sidetracked by thoughts of potentially recycled germs and love notes,
was brought back into thinking about the idea of collapse through the group
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discussion. She went on to hold Cady accountable for making the most of the
opportunity to discuss ideas by insisting that they continue with another round.
Although her particular group was more amicable than others, Lily and her class-
mates were once again charged with thinking about collapse in a more personal
way as they underwent additional writing about the structure of their own inter-
actions. In this instance, the nature of the exchange of cultural capital happened at
various levels and for various purposes, depending on what students perceived that
they needed, no doubt with direction from their teacher.
The second example of capital exchange in context occurred during the
fourth graders’ writing of brochures about how to start a recycling program in
school. This activity was the last writing assignment of the year and took place in
the classroom over a period of a few weeks while the fifth graders were rehearsing
for culmination in the auditorium. Students had chosen their own groups of three or
four and had begun the assignment. As Bonnie read their initial thoughts, she
became frustrated with the results and decided to jog their memories about what
they knew about recycling with a short video. As they watched, students com-
mented on aspects of the video that resonated with them. A pan shot of a landfill
prompted Austin and Bob to remark, “We’ve been there” (the class had taken a
field trip to a local landfill earlier in the year). Samantha and Molly were upset
when the video showed someone recycling a cottage cheese container without
washing it first, something they had learned was necessary. Bonnie reminded the
class that the costumes they used for the class play were recycled, and when the
video announcer asked, “Does your school have bins for recycling?” students
responded affirmatively. After the video, James, Joe, and Jared set out to revise
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their rough draft, and a few days later they were ready to meet with Bonnie about
their work.
During the conference, Bonnie applauded the boys for the work that they
had done so far but took issue with the group’s statement that groundwater goes to
the ocean. James argued that he got that idea from attending a children’s science
camp at a local community science center, but Bonnie was not convinced and had
the boys go back to the classroom supply of science books to see whether they
could confirm James’ statement. When James, Joe, and Jared were unable to locate
an answer in the texts, they turned to the Internet, finding a Web site called
groundwater.org with Bonnie’s help. The following excerpt from field notes
captures their discussion.
Bonnie: Here it says “What is groundwater?” Should we click that?
James and Jared read it. Joe comes back.
Bonnie: So here’s what it says. (Reads about groundwater being what you
drink)
James: I have a question.
Bonnie: Let’s look at the diagram and see what it says.
Molly comes over. “Bonnie, are there any glue sticks we can borrow?”
James: Yeah, over there (points).
Bonnie: Joe, ven aquí. Mira. [Joe, come here. Look.]
The boys talk about the diagram.
Bonnie: So the water table is here.
Joe: Underneath the ground.
Bonnie: I want you to study this and see what you can discover for
yourselves.
Jared reads information aloud.
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Bonnie: See, groundwater can run into a lake or a stream. It does not say
ocean, my friend.
Jared continues to read aloud. They rearrange seats.
Joe: We’ll read it to you and you write what’s important. (James writes.)
James: So which one do I say?
Jared: Write them both.
James: Guys, while I write . . . .
Bonnie comes back. “So are you learning something?”
Jared: Since lakes, rivers, or oceans all have surface water, it could be any.
Bonnie: But if we drank ocean water, it would be different. It’s a biome all
by itself. [To Jared] That’s right, your sister studied biomes last year. So
James, I don’t see any evidence for the ocean having groundwater.
James continues to make his case.
Bonnie: Well, some places do have desalinization--in the Middle East—but
we don’t have them here in [southern California]. It would be a good idea.
James’ attempt to bring in outside knowledge was reshaped by Bonnie’s
suggestion that the group continue to do more research on the topic of groundwater.
When the initial source of information—classroom science books—were found to
be inadequate, Bonnie assisted the boys with Internet research and checked in with
them regularly to be sure that their interpretation of the information was correct.
The boys were ultimately left on their own to transfer the new learning to their
brochure. This type of training in scholarship, searching for evidence to back up
statements, served as an important step in the boys’ acquisition of the kind of
embodied cultural capital valued by an academic setting.
On the second-to-last day of school, the boys submitted their final draft of
the brochure to Bonnie. She liked everything about it but wanted them to add a
sentence at the end to answer the “so what?” question. The boys took her on as a
group, using cultural capital that they had acquired during the school year to make
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their own arguments. James reminded her of the time a prominent children’s book
author (and former Penguin parent) had come to class to talk about his writing
process before students began writing their own picture books; he had told them to
leave the audience wanting to read more. Jared drew on advice that Bonnie had
given to the class while they were writing their family recipe stories: “It’s like
paragraph two . . . . You don’t give all the information because you want your
reader to keep reading.” Given such compelling arguments, backed up with
evidence from the training that they had received over the course of the school
year, Bonnie acquiesced and approved the brochure as complete. The boys
celebrated as if they had climbed Mount Everest.
Regardless of the setting—adult-led, student-led, formal, informal, inde-
pendent, or group activities, capital exchange was abundant in the social context of
Penguin Cluster. Various members of the classroom community drew upon cultural
capital for multiple purposes: complete assignments, confirm hypotheses, challenge
intellectual beliefs, and reinforce classroom norms and values. While these
exchanges happened in the context of strong adult leadership, students actively
facilitated cultural capital exchanges both among themselves and with their
teachers.
Objectified Cultural Capital in the
Classroom
While the dominant form of cultural capital present in the classroom was
the embodied form, students also discussed the usefulness of material items to their
work. It is particularly interesting that, when listing the tools that they saw as
necessary to get their reading and writing work done, they frequently connected
material tools to social ones. For example, when Annabel was listing the items that
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she needed to get her work done, she included important reference materials such
as a dictionary and a thesaurus so that, “in case I keep on using a word over and
over and over again I can think of another word.” This thought jogged Layla’s
memory:
Like Annabel, I always need a thesaurus when I’m writing. But when I’m
reading, I really like to have someone who has already read the book just to
help me out if I don’t understand something in the text, because they
wouldn’t explain it in any other book or something that’s been written
down, so I always get it from somebody else who’s read the book already. I
also look at things on the wall that we have, like we always have posters . . .
and sometimes that gives me ideas of what to write.
Layla’s statement reflected not only her understanding of the usefulness of certain
forms of objectified cultural capital, but also their limits. In these cases she needed
to turn to alternative, and often social, sources such as peers who were already
familiar with a book or the collection of student work on the walls.
The connection between material forms of cultural capital and the social
environment of the classroom was fluid in a second way. Because students were
required to bring school supplies from home, they often had dialogues about their
acquisition and frequently borrowed objects from each other. For example, as
students illustrated their picture books in class, they sometimes discussed where
they had obtained their art materials. In one instance Mike was curious about a
particularly impressive set of colored pencils that Molly was using. She shared that
she had got it at the same place as Jane and Julie had and named the store. Cassidy
offered Mike directions to the store and Julie mentioned that he could also purchase
the same set in another art store closer to the school. On another day a group of
girls staying in during the recess period to finish their picture book illustrations
gave each other tips about the best techniques for using watercolor paints. Fifth
grader Karen shared, “Don’t put two watercolors together until the paint dries.
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Don’t get the brush too wet. Don’t rinse the brush if you’re using the same color.”
This type of instrumental knowledge about where to acquire and how to use
particular tools served as another form of capital exchange in Penguin Cluster.
The borrowing of objectified cultural capital resources was generally
smooth in the classroom, but it was not without conflict. Members of one focus
group mentioned their multiple frustrations with how their classmates treated
important material goods. While they acknowledged that sometimes things were
not returned to their owners because of honest mistakes, they also admitted deep
disappointment in classmates who were disrespectful of possessions. Cassidy
remarked, “People borrow my pencils and never, never return them, and then I find
them around the class broken into little pieces, and I find the erasers bitten off.”
Her friend Kennedi explained that, while sometimes she did not mind sharing to
help someone, there were other times when she was so upset that she had to resort
to revenge tactics:
I gave Cassidy a pencil box at the beginning of the year because she needed
it really bad and I never got it back and now it’s broken. But also, when
somebody takes my pencil and they don’t give it back, I will go spy on
them and take all their pencils. Because if they just wanted to borrow my
pencil because they’re like too lazy to go get their own pencils, I might do
this. I might go into their pencil box and take all their pencils.
For students, the circumstances of borrowing—who needed something and
who was just lazy, who would take care of something and who would not—
factored in to students’ willingness to participate in the exchange of objectified
cultural capital.
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Summary of Cultural Capital
Exchange in Penguin Cluster
The development of embodied cultural capital was a common byproduct of
students’ participation in learning activities guided by the norms and values of
Penguin Cluster. As teachers’ interests met with students’ related home experi-
ences, a shared repertoire of knowledge was created in the group. Opportunities for
exchange of information and expertise within the classroom space were open
because children’s understandings varied. Teachers supported these types of
exchanges through questioning techniques, modeling, making connections, and
reinforcing literacy habits based on the norms and the context of the activity.
Students shared and requested cultural capital information based on their percep-
tions of what was needed for a particular purpose. As they gained ownership of the
material, they held each other accountable, reinforced the literacy norms and values
set by their teachers, and made connections to their personal lives. They talked
about the reciprocal nature of home and school environments as well. The mutual
influence between these two institutions meant that home literacy practices often
supported academic efforts, that classroom norms and values influenced the kinds
of reading and writing students did at home, and that the students came to view
artifacts in their homes as important tools for their schoolwork.
In terms of objectified cultural capital, students seemed aware of the
connection between material tools and social tools. This relationship was evident in
dialogues about the acquisition of items and their use, and with respect to frustra-
tions with peers’ treatment of objects that had been loaned. The nature of these
social connections is further explored in the next section.
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The Role of Social Capital
in Penguin Cluster
Social networks have come up informally in the context of prior examples;
this fact speaks to the reality of ongoing capital conversion in the classroom. This
section discusses more explicitly their function in the Penguin Cluster. The first
part briefly reviews and expand on how teachers utilized their social capital
resources to advance learning opportunities for students, as well as how the
teachers saw networks operating among their students. Next, the students’ students’
views of the nature of the social environment in Penguin Cluster are presented,
including how they used their teachers, their peers, and their personal outside-of-
school networks to advance their academic progress. The consequences for students
are addressed in the context of each section.
Teachers’ Social Capital Resources
Teachers utilized social capital connections to further their work in the
classroom in many ways. Bonnie’s personal and professional networks afforded
Penguin Cluster students multiple curricular opportunities, as well as introductions
to people in the community who offered alternative perspectives. These people
sometimes provided important economic resources. They also shared critical
expertise, as one former Penguin parent did when he came to talk to the class about
his writing process as a children’s book author. Teachers’ social connections
helped them to take the students’ work into the community. Cecilia’s friend, an
artist and gallery curator, helped to organize the class exhibit of original picture
books at the downtown library, and Bonnie’s son wrote, cast, and directed the
students’ musical production. Citing multiple casting disputes with Joshua over the
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years in which he overruled her to put struggling students into lead roles, Bonnie
noted,
It’s good to have another adult [who] sees the kids through different eyes
. . . who evaluates them differently, because then I get a chance to see the
child as more of a whole person. And I’m not just looking at them as a
student. I mean Blake [the fourth grader who had the lead in this year’s
play] is certainly the example of who would have ever known just watching
him . . . that he had a voice?
Other adults were helpful in both furthering classroom goals and providing
teachers with a way to expand their own views of students. Their presence had the
potential to expand the children’s notions of what was available to them in the
world, giving them more options for “fitting in.” At the fifth grade culmination,
Fiona specifically mentioned that she wanted to be a writer like the author who had
come to speak with them in class; a concerned Blake asked his teachers whether
Joshua would be back to direct the play the following year despite Bonnie’s retire-
ment. In doing favors for a friend or relative, these adults had had an impact on
both teachers’ and students’ work.
Teachers also used important social capital resources within the school.
They had each other to rely on and collaborate with through their partnership, and
the support of the two classroom aides helped to keep the bookkeeping side of the
classroom running smoothly. On occasion the teachers collaborated with enrich-
ment teachers to ensure fluidity between their courses and regular classroom work.
They also often called on parents from both present and prior years to assist with
particular classroom projects. The school kept track of the talents that parents had
to offer via a form that was completed by families at Back to School Night and kept
in the office. Bonnie and Cecilia remained aware of whom they could solicit when
they needed help. For example, for the play, parents with entertainment industry
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jobs helped with set building and facilitated donations of light and sound equip-
ment. One parent was a member of a city choral group and her mother had been a
music teacher; their combined efforts helped students to prepare songs for a school
assembly. Parents with artistic abilities assisted in the making of totem animal
masks for the holiday performance. When I asked whether parents may have been
more involved due to the fact that they had to apply to get into the school (the
assumption being that they might be more inclined to participate), teachers doubted
that this was the case. Never the less, teachers’, particularly Bonnie’s, activation of
their social connections inside and outside of school were clearly critical to the
success of Penguin Cluster.
Teachers’ Views of Student
Networks
In general, teachers saw students’ school friendship networks as only
beginning to solidify in the upper grades. After years of playing together on the
yard indiscriminately, students were just starting to notice differences in each other
and were at a stage at which they were each trying to figure out where they fit in
socially. For this reason, they noted that friendship groups were based more often
on common interests than racial, ethnic, or social class criteria. Students sometimes
segregated themselves by gender (girls tended to be friends with girls and boys
with boys) and, occasionally, by home language when their English skills were still
developing. Cecilia explained:
I think the kids often split along interests rather than race, although some-
times those are tied together. So our basketball players tend to be African
American boys more often, not always. The real smart good student kids
tend to hang out together, although there are some really interesting mixes
on that. A lot of the artistic kids kind of hang out together . . . but the words
that come out of their mouths show a bit of racism on every end. Not
everyone’s, but . . . and the boy/girl tension really starts building up.
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In most cases, even these emerging cliques seemed to still be somewhat malleable
as students searched for their own comfort zones based primarily on their personal
interests and secondarily on gender, race, and language factors.
Like Cecilia, I heard students discuss racial issues from time to time,
although these discussions seemed to occur in the context of helping each other to
figure out boundaries. For example, as Mike, who was White, and Savannah and
Kennedi, two African American girls, were working on their picture books in class
one day, the following conversation occurred:
Savannah: Kennedi, if Mike made a racial comment, would you gang up on
him?
Kennedi: Yes.
Mike: But I didn’t say anything.
Savannah: I know but Tara [an Asian-American girl] did. We went and
talked to [the principal] about it.
Kennedi: Don’t say it.
Topic gets dropped.
Later that afternoon, Mike and Victoria, an African American girl, traded
racially tinged jokes as they worked, letting each other know what was funny and
what comments had crossed a line into being racist. Conversations like these seem
to back up Cecilia’s assertion that, while social groups in and out of the classroom
were for the most part open to anyone who shared common interests, students’
emerging understanding of social structures and differences were also beginning to
become a factor in their associations with one another.
Only once during the study did a student mention race as a factor in his
academic work. Bob, an African American middle-class boy, noted during one
focus group conversation that he thought that the teachers designed groups in a
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racist way. (Teachers had split the class into four primary groups that were
balanced by race, gender, and academic ability before the school year began.) Bob
explained that the division of students in this way meant that there were only four
Black people in his group, making it so, “I look around and see people who aren’t
my kind and it feels like an uncomfortable place to work, harder to ask questions.”
When I asked him whether he had discussed this issue with his teachers, he said
that he had not but he felt that he could talk to them about it eventually. Bob also
noted that he would sit next to anyone in class so long as they were not “ugly girls
and goody-goodies.” Observations of Bob supported this notion; he definitely saw
himself as a “cool kid,” and being with other “cool kids” seemed to override racial
factors in working with others in class. Still, his thoughts about the difficulty of
putting himself forward in academic situations in which he was the minority were
sincere.
Regarding how teachers saw students working together in class, they did
not mention friendships as being a significant factor as much as the school and
classroom culture. Bonnie stated that the project-oriented work throughout their
experience at Olive Avenue School had taught students to hold each other account-
able as members of a team.
They have to take initiative. That’s how projects get done. And so the kids
that have strong leadership skills, it gives them an opportunity to really
excel. . . . I don’t know if you noticed, about halfway through the group [the
person who does nothing] is ostracized. . . . They don’t even have a voice
anymore. They become invisible. It’s like, “You’re baggage and we’re not
going to deal with you.” . . . Personally, I think that’s a good lesson. You
aren’t helping the group, then the group’s not going to acknowledge you or
give you what you need from them, because it’s reciprocal.
While students did need to offer themselves as participants in the class-
room, it was not as though less-capable students had no role in academic activities.
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Peers offered help freely, regardless of academic status. As Cecilia explained, “In
most cases, the kids who really get things are really willing and eager to share their
expertise with kids who need help. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of snobbery
about it.” Still, some of the social tensions mentioned earlier were becoming a
factor. Cecilia stated, “I think there’s a pride that starts showing up at this age, so
the kids who start getting it don’t want other people to know what they don’t
know.” The combination of a collaborative learning environment and students’
social development meant that students needed to act strategically as they navigated
the academic terrain of the classroom.
Student Views of Their Social
Networks
It was not surprising that students talked about their social networks as
including their teachers and their peers, as well as their families and others. They
saw each of these groups as being helpful for different purposes, and they acted
strategically in terms of how and when they activated particular social resources. In
other words, they had good reasons for calling on different people depending on
what they needed; not all children and adults were created equal. Furthermore, the
social circumstances of the classroom influenced their decision-making process as
they sought assistance.
Teachers as members of students’ social networks. The teachers’ role as
academic experts and evaluators made them important resources for students; they
were the ultimate authorities when students were unclear about content or expecta-
tions. Peers might be helpful but, as one student pointed out, “Let’s just say that if
you go to the teacher and [she has] a different answer than your friend, you should
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always believe the teacher.” Students were often grateful for all that their teachers
did for them, the Penguin Cluster teachers in particular. Fifth grader Chris
expressed his appreciation in this way:
The teachers, they help you if you ask for help. . . . If we need anything, like
if we have any questions about any of our homework, she would answer
them and sometimes even go beyond answering, like helping us, and that’s
pretty cool. Not a lot of teachers go that far. Like instead of just answering
the question, they actually help you with it.
Teachers were also good people to negotiate with when students felt that they were
ready for more challenging work. Cassidy noted, “If you think [you’re ready for a
book] higher that what you are reading now, you tell Bonnie and she will move you
to your next level.” Some students also found the teachers’ role as coaches particu-
larly helpful. As one student explained,
Our teachers help us in too many ways that I can’t count them. For me,
when I sometimes rush through my work to get it done, I hand it to the
teachers and they say it is not as quality, then they sometimes correct it. So
then I look at it and read my work over and then I find the mistakes, so that
is very helpful. . . . And then they encourage me to find out the answer, and
then that helps me a lot.
Overall, students found that their teachers’ high expectations and faith in their
abilities were crucial to their academic success. They were the people to go to for
the “final word,” in-depth explanations, new challenges, and support.
Teachers were also helpful to students by facilitating peer-to-peer con-
nections. Their encouragement of student networks sometimes came in the form of
grouping strategies. Kennedi shared, “If some kids have trouble reading, Bonnie
will put them with a really, really smart Mr. Know-it-All person so they will have
an easier time.” Bonnie was often observed pairing students for specific purposes,
as when she told Shani to look at Simone’s picture book story for ideas or when she
asked Lily to fill in Jasmine on the plot points that she had missed from the read-
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aloud when she was absent. The “bully pulpit” that teachers enjoyed also allowed
them to highlight good ideas or reinforce classroom norms by using students’ ideas
and experiences as examples. When Mike used an innovative illustration technique
for his picture book, Bonnie let Alexandra know that she could use it, too. At
another point she asked “old Penguin” students—those who had already been
through a year of picture book writing as fourth graders—to explain the conse-
quences of procrastination for the project.
Annabel: Last year my story was late and I was up until 10:00 pm the night
before it was due finishing my drawings.
Savannah: I wasn’t finished and needed to get to bed on time so my pictures
were a little messy.
Bonnie: And how did that feel?
Savannah: Not very good.
As they connected students with one another, teachers implicitly communicated the
importance of cultivating and activating social resources as an effective avenue for
learning.
Despite students’ general feeling that their teachers were accessible and
supportive social resources, there were times when it was unhelpful or too much of
a bother to select teachers as a primary source of assistance. Some students viewed
teacher remarks such as “you’ve got to think” or “go look it up” as unhelpful; in
their view, these statements did not answer their questions. Others blamed their
peers for preventing their own access to their teachers. Julie described her
experience:
They’re [teachers] always there like during recess and lunch if you want to
ask them . . . and they’re there after school. But sometimes . . . they’re
working with other kids and then I try to come over and say, “Hi, can I get
some help?” And they say, “I’m helping someone else.”
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Tanner described the realities of a 62:2 ratio as getting in the way of his access to
teachers as well. He pragmatically expressed, “At this school there’s such full
classes and it’s easier to figure it out yourself than ask the teacher and waste half an
hour.” He also acknowledged times when teachers explicitly did not make them-
selves available because they wanted students to try to work through something on
their own first.
Other students talked about the risks involved in activating their social
capital connections to teachers. Parvati confessed, “Sometimes you need to say,
‘Okay, I get it,’ even though you don’t get it, because you don’t want to bother
them.” Another student explained, “With the teacher, they don’t really understand
why you don’t get it because they feel like they explained it enough, even if they
haven’t.” When circumstances or risks in accessing teachers seemed too great for
students but they still needed adult guidance, they turned to teachers’ aides
(“They’re in the middle of a kid and a teacher,” said Molly) or utilized other social
connections to get their questions answered. Fears of being misperceived by
teachers as troublemakers or as not intelligent enough caused some students to
hesitate before going to them for help.
Peers as members of students’ social networks. Students were clear on the
benefits of seeking out assistance from their peers as well. When expressing the
advantages of student support, Cassidy succinctly put it, “If it’s their second year
here or something like that, they’ll give you ideas and explain it to you in a better
way than the teachers do…because they’re kids. They understand it the way we
do.” Peers provided ideas and perspectives that often helped others to create better
products and develop necessary strategies for getting their work done. Julie was
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certain that she and Jane had written picture books of which they could be proud
“because we helped each other.” Jewel and Victoria shared with James that staying
after school to work on their books was their secret to success (“Cecilia helps you a
lot”). Other students learned about the benefits of coordinating efforts with peers
accidentally. Joe mentioned that his awareness about the value of student help was
heightened one day:
I didn’t understand what the question meant, so I asked the person sitting
next to me, and then that person was able to understand. So I learned and
now I know how to improve my work by reading it carefully and it’s okay
to ask questions.
For other students, peer pressure regarding behavior was key. Lily noted, “My
friends, they sometimes help me work because they tell me, like when I stop
working, they make me work again to help me like stay going.” The camaraderie
involved in getting work done was motivating for many students.
As with the case of activating the social capital of their teachers, students
sought help from classmates in calculated and strategic ways. For most students,
friends were trustworthy sources of information and were the best choice for
several reasons. One student expressed, “Your friends always understand you, and
if you don’t get it they actually understand. And your friend may not get it but it’s
still a little more welcoming.” Samantha explained that surrounding herself with
friends as she worked was important because “I feel more comfortable, because if
I’m with boys I’m just kind of inching away every five seconds because they’re
scaring me. So I usually sit next to girls who are nice.” The affective reassurance
that came with working with friends was exacerbated by common goals. Joe
remarked that his friends “listen a lot, so that helps me focus, and I ask questions of
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them and they help me with it. So I have a nice time doing that.” Molly expressed
the benefits of familiarity in terms of maximizing efficiency:
When you’re working on a project, you know what they’re [friends] are
going to be like so you can plan ahead of time. Like say they like drawing
then they can do most of the pictures so they won’t be bored.
Students noted these reasons as advantages to having smart friends with whom they
could hold dialogue frequently. Fortunately for the students in Penguin Cluster,
they were consistently expected to select their own seating arrangements as they
worked, making these kinds of exchanges relatively easy and common.
According to the students, working with people outside of one’s friendship
group carried risks of being distracted, feeling unhappy, and experiencing conflict.
All of these risks meant that getting assistance from people they did not trust was,
as Alexandra put it, “only a last resort.” Julie explained, “If you’re put with some-
one who’s not your friend it’s even worse because they don’t do the work or any-
thing. But that’s my experience . . . they don’t do the work and they’re really
annoying.” In these ways students seemed to be making the point that the circum-
stances of friendship acted as leverage as students held each other accountable,
both for more reliable information and for a reinforcement of healthy work habits.
However, observations of the students revealed few children disrupting this
assumption. For example, Samantha often looked to Cady, a fifth grader, for
assistance, despite the fact that the two were not necessarily “friends” in the
playground/play date sense. Cady repeatedly answered Samantha’s questions and
offered her advice, as in the following instance:
Samantha thinks she found a clue in her mystery book. She calls Cady over
and reads it to her. Cady must be ahead in the book. She says, “Yeah, that’s
a clue but you’ll find out more about it later so don’t write it down yet.
Write it down when you find out a little more.” Samantha says okay and
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reads a little more. Samantha asks, “Is it this page or what?” (showing Cady
her book). Cady says, “It’s on 136, 137.”
In one focus group, Cady mentioned that, outside of her friends, she found herself
helping Samantha just because Samantha sat next to her.
Even if the upsides of friendship connections in the classroom resulted in
multiple rewards, there were downsides, too. Soliciting help from others, even
friends, carried risks of looking stupid or less capable.
If you don’t get something your friend can help you, or if you need help on
something they can give you a pointer . . . .But it’s also not so good because
then that shows that if you need their help that you weren’t really listening.
(Mike)
Becky, a fifth grader and one of the smarter students in the class, had the opposite
issue of not wanting to seem like a show-off in the eyes of her classmates. She
pointed out, “The not-smart kids are often smart too, and they don’t want to show
it, and they’re fun too.” Becky admitted that she took to heart the teasing for being
a “nerd,” which discouraged her from offering help to friends unless they asked her
directly. The considerations that students took into account pointed to their aware-
ness of potential connections between offering and receiving academic assistance
and its impact on their friendships, for better and for worse.
The students were also keenly aware of the potential ethical dilemmas
involved in helping friends.
A lot of people, they sometimes may copy off of other people’s work, but
the best way usually is to think. But you’re allowed to help, I guess, if
you’re just helping them spell a word or . . . you know what I mean, right?
So it’s kind of hard to explain, though. (Tara)
In a classroom that valued collaboration, students still needed to make important
decisions about when their help was truly help and when it could be detrimental to
the learning process of their peers.
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An additional risk came with the timing of assistance. Many students
related stories of getting in trouble with teachers as they were helping someone.
Usually, this was because they were talking during a teacher-mandated quiet work
period or independent work time, or while the teacher was talking. Other times,
students claimed that the teacher was simply unaware that their talking was pro-
ductive and not off task. In these cases, Anthony explained, “When I ask someone a
question they get in trouble so I say it was me [talking] because I don’t want them
to get in trouble. So I ask questions when teachers aren’t talking.” Activating social
capital for academic purposes involved careful thought and planning on the part of
the children in Penguin Cluster.
Even as students described working with friends as the most productive
scenario, observations revealed instances when students’ conversations drifted into
nonacademic terrain and work stopped. Students provided several reasons for these
occurrences, from simply being distracted to it being a part of a normal work
process. Cady rationalized, “You talk about other stuff because in the whole entire
world, school is like a little teensy bit. There’s so much other stuff, more important
stuff to talk about, not just school.” Becky pointed out that, with students coming
from all over the city, they did not often spend time with each other outside of
school, prompting more social talk. Parvati commented that the nature of the
assignment had something to do with off-task conversations.
Sometimes it’s hard, because if you’ve got an interesting assignment, you
all talk about it, and that’s okay. And then sometimes the assignments are
really boring and that day you shouldn’t sit next to a friend [because] you
start talking because it’s boring.
Other students saw off-task talk as assisting them with particular goals. Jane
confessed, “Sometimes you change the subject on purpose because you don’t want
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to let them borrow something or help them.” One day when Mike and Chris were
talking about everything but their work, they offered sharp insights:
Mike: You get tired of doing something, talking about other stuff helps you
keep going.
Chris: Sometimes when you talk about the other stuff it gives you an idea.
Not that it’s boring, after a while it gets annoying like if you can’t solve a
problem you take your mind off of it and then come back it makes sense.
Mike: Writing and writing all year, working so hard that you don’t feel that
you always want to work that hard. If you’re really into what you’re doing,
there’s less talk ‘cause you need to concentrate.
While nonacademic talk is often a source of frustration for adults, the
students viewed it as serving various and often deliberate purposes. It was one
more thing about which they were strategic in the social context of the classroom.
Families and others as members of students’ social networks. While cer-
tainly the immediate context of school made teachers and peers important members
of students’ social networks, the students also mentioned family members and
others as being key academic resources. Siblings and neighbors, especially ones
who had recently been through the fourth or fifth grade, were mentioned as poten-
tial sources for help. Parents, babysitters, and tutors were also noted for their sup-
port with typing, correcting, and general academic assistance. Students frequently
cited a family member’s profession or special talent as helpful. One day in class,
Alexandra offered to help Jessica and Samantha with a computer issue, explaining,
“My dad is an electrician so [I know] about electronics.” Students who had parents
or grandparents who were teachers felt especially lucky. Parvati commented that
she had the best of both worlds, bragging, “My dad is perfect because he’s good at
math and also he’s an English teacher at [a local middle school].” Mason noted,
“Outside the school my sister helps me and my mom because they draw very good.
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They’re designers. And my dad helps me in math because he could do everything
in his mind.” For many students, though, family talents were less meaningful than
their role as caregivers and sources of unconditional love. One student stated
simply, “If I need help on math or something, I ask my mom and dad because my
parents will always help me.” People outside of school, particularly those who in
students’ eyes had experience and credentials, were additional valued members of
their social networks.
Summary of the Forms of Capital
in Penguin Cluster
All three forms of capital—economic, cultural, and social—factored
prominently in the daily operations of Penguin Cluster. Teachers utilized multiple
connections, both within the school network and outside of it, to garner money that
they could use to purchase materials, develop curriculum, and bring in additional
adult assistance for high-scope projects.
Embodied cultural capital development in Penguin was often facilitated by
the norms and values of the classroom and developed through students’ participa-
tion in curricular projects and activities. While class content was often based on
teachers’ interests, students’ home experiences and knowledge were brought into
the classroom in the context of what they were discussing or studying. Students
reported that, with respect to literacy, their home practices strengthened their
school literacy. They also mentioned bringing some classroom practices into their
homes, particularly habits and dispositions associated with classroom literacy
norms and values. Adults scaffolded students’ cultural capital exchange via ques-
tioning techniques, modeling, and reinforcing literate skills and habits. Students
shared their knowledge depending on their perceptions of the needs of their peers.
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They reinforced classroom norms among each other, gained ownership over
curricular material, and made personal connections between learned content and
their own lives. Objectified cultural capital also played a role in the classroom.
Both material tools and information about how to use them were exchanged freely
between students, despite frustrations when items were broken or not returned.
Teachers and students utilized their social capital connections in strategic
ways. Teachers’ personal and professional connections allowed them to enhance
curricular opportunities through the presence of nonteaching adults in the class-
room. These additional adults offered both alternative perspectives and opportuni-
ties for teachers to see their students in new ways. They also helped to facilitate
classroom connections with the community. Teachers’ in-school social networks,
including colleagues and parents, helped them to complete their curricular goals in
a traditional manner, such as curricular planning and gathering volunteers to assist
with projects. Student networks were developed and accessed purposefully;
students were aware of both the benefits and the risks of accessing teachers, peers,
and family members for academic help. They saw teachers as important authorities,
sources of academic assistance, partners in the learning process, and suppliers of
encouragement. Teachers also helped to facilitate peer-to-peer connections. How-
ever, students were sometimes fearful of looking bad in the eyes of their teachers,
and the large class size interfered with students’ ability to get help when they
needed it.
Peers, particularly friends, were also seen as trustworthy sources of expert-
ise and information. In fact, the circumstances of friendship helped to reinforce
positive behaviors, acting as leverage that ensured good advice and accountability.
However, students also noted disadvantages to working with friends. Risks
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included development of a negative reputation in the eyes of others, ethical
dilemmas about how much help was appropriate to give, and potential social
distractions.
The students’ third source of social capital came through family and
community networks. Siblings, neighbors, babysitters, tutors, and parents were all
important sources of information. Their assistance was drawn upon particularly for
purposes that connected with the person’s background, experience, talent, or
professional status. Overall, capital exchange was an ongoing and strategic aspect
of the classroom experience in Penguin Cluster.
How and When Students Access the
Resources of Their Peers
In the context of answering the two subquestions, many insights have been
gained as to how and why students looked to their peers as resources in learning to
read and write. Penguin Cluster had a strong and, for the most part, well-under-
stood set of norms and values that encouraged students to develop and balance a set
of literacy skills, habits, and dispositions. Teachers’ explicit valuing of collabora-
tion and networking, which they modeled, facilitated, and expected in their
students, made their classroom a fertile ground for capital exchange. School
projects, all of which involved literacy to some degree, required students’ active
participation throughout the process of completion and during culminating events
in which they were expected to share their learning with an outside audience. As
they undertook these assignments, they gained a sense of personal ownership over
their work. Because students learned at varying paces and levels, they were often
able to coordinate their competencies, trade ideas and information, and hold each
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other accountable as they developed and refined the shared repertoire created
through the leadership of their teachers.
An in-depth look at students’ social capital resources made it clear that,
when looking for assistances, students deliberately selected people whom they
trusted and whose knowledge they valued. They were also sensitive to the risks that
came with asking, and occasionally offering, academic support. This section looks
more closely at the trends associated with students’ accessing of their peers as
resources as they complete their classroom literacy assignments. A focus of interest
was the workings behind students’ requests and offerings of help, as well as the
particular kinds of assistance sought and received from classmates. Thinking about
each of these issues in the context of independent and group work assignments, as
well as in light of what has already been learned about Penguin Cluster as a com-
munity of practice and site for capital exchange, was helpful in answering the
primary research question of this study, How and when do students access the
resources of their peers in a classroom community of practice as they solve prob-
lems in their literacy work? The section closes with an analysis of how these two
sets of coding and their ties to the two theoretical frameworks intersected, using
two representative examples from classroom observations.
Accessing and Guiding Each Other in a Community
of Literacy Practice: Trends
Coding for instances of students either requesting or offering help to each
other revealed trends associated with each type of assistance, both within and
across independent and group work situations. Three major patterns were identified
during independent work. First, students asked each other for help with content-
oriented questions. Second, they went to their peers to obtain material goods
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necessary for getting work done. Third, they requested assistance about understand-
ing classroom procedures, usually specific to an assignment. When students offered
help to one another during independent assignments, they provided guidance
regarding a peer’s behavior, pointed out ways to improve each other’s content, and
advanced each other’s understandings of procedures. Group work assignments
usually involved times when teachers directed how students worked with one
another and times when students guided their own collective work process.
Independent Work
Just because students were responsible for an individual product did not
mean that their work occurred outside of a social context. In fact, the prevalence of
taking initiative to secure necessary content and procedural information as well as
materials speaks to the fact that converting social capital into cultural capital fit
nicely with established classroom norms and values regarding sharing ideas, asking
questions, and collaborating with one another. Students were allowed to sit where
they wanted in class, which seemed to facilitate informal exchanges. Chris
explained, “How we help each other is like if we have a question or we didn’t quite
understand what the teacher said, and then the person next to you understood it,
you could ask them and get the information you needed.” Because friends often
chose to be together (unless separated by a teacher for disciplinary reasons), the
students took advantage of the comfort and convenience of the situation by asking
for help freely and frequently.
The only exception to this pattern came when students needed to locate
material resources for their work. In these cases they sought out the person who had
what they needed, even if that person was not in proximity and/or was outside of
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the immediate friendship circle. In one instance, fourth grader Georgia asked her
friend Christine for some paper to draft a storyboard for her picture book. The
following exchange occurred:
Christine shakes her head no, then says, “Oh, wait, I have this paper.” She
pulls out an old storyboard draft of her own. “You can erase this.” Georgia
decides to walk around the library asking other children for paper instead—
the one Christine gave her is pretty marked up. Georgia comes back with a
clean piece of white paper and starts to sketch boxes.
Despite some students’ previously noted frustrations with the borrowing of
pencils, markers, and other items, rarely were students reluctant to share what they
had with classmates. In these cases, as Jane mentioned earlier, they were more
likely to change the subject or claim that they did not have the necessary item in
order to avoid conflict and/or hurt feelings.
Although it happened less frequently, students also offered guidance to their
peers during independent work assignments. In these cases, students reinforced
classroom norms for one another. This insight is reflected in the fact that guidance
was offered most frequently in terms of behavioral redirection. Whether they were
honestly bothered by a classmate’s behavior or they were just trying to prevent
their friends from getting in trouble, students utilized both verbal (“Shh!”) and
nonverbal cues, such as moving away from someone, to indicate that a change was
necessary. One example of this type of guidance occurred when a group of students
worked to shape Ahmad’s behavior as he was conducting an Internet search for
illustrations made by his picture book author:
Ahmad finds something on the internet. I look over and he clicks out of it.
He says to the others at his table, “It says click here and win a free iPod.”
Chris, Bob, & Mike: Don’t click on it!
[A few minutes later Simone comes over to the table]
Simone: What are you guys doing?
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Ahmad: It says you can buy it at Wal-Mart for $14.99.
Simone: What are you doing, Ahmad? You’re shopping online!
Ahmad: No, I’m not.
Simone: I’m saving my money for [inaudible]. (She holds up her foot, talks
about cost. Must be a certain kind of shoe she’s talking about.)
Mike: Everything you look at [on the internet] goes across [the principal’s]
desk. He doesn’t know which computer it’s from.
Ahmad is reading the screen.
Simone: What are you doing? You’re shopping online!
Bob: You’re looking for match.com.
Simone: For girls.
Cecilia comes over to question Ahmad about what he’s doing.
Simone: He’s shopping online!
Cecilia: Do one of your drawings right now. (She helps him with his
search.) You can draw from there [an Ezra Jack Keats illustration they
found]. You’re all set.
In this situation students utilized multiple tactics: calling Ahmad on his behavior
directly, using both commands and indignation, attempting to scare him by
invoking the principal’s name, and teasing him—all to no avail. While it may not
have been true in this particular example, for the most part peers responded to
behavioral advice through compliance. When they did not do so, as noted above,
teachers resolved the issue.
Guidance was also offered to reinforce academic skills and dispositions,
such as a suggestion to a friend that his or handwriting should improve or a
comment on substandard work habits. At one point, Mathias tried to see what Paul
was writing during an assignment when students were asked to make a prediction
about what would happen next in the read-aloud book, The Messenger (Lowry,
2004). The following exchange was documented:
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Mathias: You know what happens?
Paul: Yeah. [Paul had already read the book.] But it’ll ruin it. You can’t see
it.
Mathias persists: I know what happens too. Matt gets into some kind of
trouble. But that’s all I know.
Paul turns his lapboard over on the floor to make sure Mathias can’t see it.
They write.
By not sharing what he knew, Paul seemed to reinforce for Mathias import-
ant literacy skills and dispositions, such as the importance of making predictions
and the fun that comes with hearing a story play out over time. He also was clear
on a classroom code of ethics that frowned on copying. Overall, as this example
demonstrates, this type of guidance usually was given as students worked side by
side on a project, and it was offered in friendly way out of concern rather than as a
taunt.
Regarding content assistance, students often offered their expertise in
equally caring ways. Rather than acting as knowledgeable experts as they seemed
to when asked, students who took the initiative to provide guidance to their peers
did so in order simply to help them finish their work, kill time while they were
waiting for teacher assistance themselves, or because their own work had been left
at home or was already completed. For example, at one point early in the picture
book writing project, Mike had pulled some Marcus Pfister (the author/illustrator
he was studying) books out of his locker to get ideas on how to draw a puffer fish.
Jared offered to help him with the drawings, since he had left his project at home.
This collaboration, which lasted for a few days, resulted in some of the illustrations
in Mike’s final book. Mike commented,
Jared had nothing to do and offered [to help] and then said that I could use
the drawing if I liked it and I did . . . .I never knew he was [a good artist]
until this and he’s been in my class since first and second grade.
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The contrast in the ways in which students helped each other when asked versus
when they offered to help suggests that the motivations behind student actions in
each context came from fundamentally different perspectives.
Group Work
There were also a few basic differences between the ways in which students
worked together during independent assignments and during group assignments. In
independent work students were clear that they alone were responsible for the final
product, even if they were to gain assistance during the process of completion.
During group projects these lines of responsibility were much less clear. Ideally,
students had to work together to determine ways to coordinate their various
strengths instead of relying solely on one or two students to do the work on behalf
of everyone involved. When one recycling brochure writing group was having
trouble getting its final product together, Bonnie repeatedly helped them break the
project down into smaller steps. After sitting them down to confer as a group,
Bonnie asked,
So do you think this is accurate? That you have enough information? Sit
down. So listen to this (she reads the brochure aloud). Do you think that
sounds right? . . . “Landfill” doesn’t give me enough information. Imagine
the audience doesn’t know a thing. I want each of you to sit down with a
pencil and a paper, not on the computer, and write.
Kids each have a copy [of the brochure] and edit it silently.
Blake: Okay, I’m done.
Sara: Blake, you didn’t add anything. You have to add information, not just
correct mistakes.
They work quietly.
Sara: Christine, are you finished?
Christine: Not yet.
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Sara: Blake, are you done?
Blake: Yes.
Sara: Christine, are you?
Christine: No.
Bonnie tells the group that they need to be having a conversation.
Sara: Even though we’re not finished, let’s just say what we have.
Blake reads his changes.
Sara: Wait wait it’s actually three because you just need one trash bin.
He continues reading.
Sara: Is that all?
Blake: No (he finishes)
Sara: Okay. I changed it to capitals because Georgia forgot to do that. (She
keeps reading.)
Bonnie comes over to observe. “So remember, what’s the purpose of the
audit?”
Blake: To help the school recycle trash and not put recyclables in the
landfill.
Bonnie: But an audit is a count. What we’re throwing away. We check to
see what’s being thrown away. Do an audit once and then do a recycling
plan.
Blake: So a school waste audit counts up what kids are throwing away and
what they’re reusing.
Bonnie’s frequent reminders to the group about what they needed to be
doing in turn gave Sara a way to guide her peers more ably. Teacher-directed
guidance was therefore often necessary to help students to figure out how to hold
each other accountable, allow everyone to participate, and work together in
productive ways.
As students guided themselves during group activities, they often experi-
enced tensions that could either eventually pull them together or break them apart.
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Although students had a great deal of experience in working together on projects
throughout their time at Olive Avenue and in Penguin Cluster, each new experience
brought its own set of dynamics that challenged students to determine not only how
to complete an assignment but how to do so as a team. As the group in the prior
example continued their work, they communicated as follows:
Sara: Now we can put our ideas together. (She gets a new piece of paper.)
You know, its’ not supposed to be “this school audit,” it’s supposed to be” a
school audit.” C’mon you guys, why aren’t you helping me?
Christine: Let’s see who draws the best.
Sara: But first we have to do this . . . why aren’t you guys helping me?
Blake dictates his text to Sara.
Sara: Why aren’t you guys helping me?
Blake: Do you want me to say it again?
Sara: No.
He does anyway. Christine jumps in with wording.
Sara: We do a recycling program and then we do another recycling
program? That’s dumb.
Blake: But that’s what Penguin Cluster does. We put it in one area and then
in another year we do another area.
Sara: Why aren’t you helping me?
Blake: Tell us what to do and we’ll do it. Bonnie?
Bonnie: Blake, as soon as I’m done with Austin I’ll help you.
Sara: What do you want to ask her?
Blake: If Penguin Cluster does the recycling program every year.
Sara: Yes they do.
Sara hands Christine a paper: Can you write this? All the ideas combined.
Blake comes back. “Christine, you’re writing it?”
The conflicts experienced by this group resulted in progress that ebbed and
flowed. Sara’s ongoing pleas for assistance sometimes went unheard, as was clear
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by Christine’s initial attempt to switch the agenda from writing to illustrating.
Eventually, her persistence helped them to move forward again, as shown by
Christine’s attempt to pitch in with writing ideas. In the next moment, Sara’s
challenging of Blake’s work eventually produced a brochure containing more
accurate information. Although some groups worked more successfully than others,
even incidents of conflict were learning experiences in some form.
The Kinds of Assistance Students
Accessed and Guided
As outlined in chapter 3, eight main trends were associated with the kinds
of assistance and guidance students offered to each another. These trends were
similar in independent and group project situations. They also often reflected the
norms and values of the classroom. Each of these trends is briefly reviewed in
terms of its presence within both independent and group work contexts before
moving to a culminating discussion of how these kinds of assistance intersected
with students accessing and guiding the actions of their peers.
By far the most common type of assistance that students received and
offered had to do with getting feedback and information from their peers regarding
their assignments. Students were often concerned with issues such as the quality,
appropriateness, and accuracy of their work; these concerns echoed their collective
understanding that their teachers had high expectations of them and would rarely
overlook mistakes. For example, after completing his storyboard for his picture
book, Mathias showed his draft to Justin for an evaluation. Justin let Mathias know
that Mathias had unnecessarily included the text at the bottom of each thumbnail
sketch, giving Mathias the opportunity to correct the situation before going to
Cecilia to get it checked. Knowing that they would have to make revisions until the
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product met adult standards may have been a contributing factor to students’
frequent checking in with their peers regarding their work. Certainly, it was easier
to have inaccuracies caught before going to a teacher for final approval.
Second students looked to each other for collaboration. Although students
discussed common projects and brainstormed ideas most frequently during group
endeavors, they also did so during independent assignments. Collaboration in this
context was most effective when what they were working on had some kind of
shared element. Mike described a time when he had worked with James on a book
report in which they each had to write about the Shoshone tribe. After discussing
ideas, “He made it [easy] to understand more and I gave him my information, and
then I took over, and then he was the dumb one and I was smart.” The frequency
with which collaboration occurred also speaks to students’ understandings of the
norms of the classroom in which they were expected to work collectively to solve
problems and where they had developed a shared repertoire of information from
which to draw upon as a group.
Third, students looked to each other for ideas to inform their work. Usually
a one-way process rather than a dialogue, students gathered inspiration from what
their classmates had done with regard to how they had approached their assign-
ments, issues of what counted as quality, and/or for content information. They also
accessed work in the class archives to gain similar insights. In one instance, a group
of girls looked through boxes of picture books from prior years to see what they
could learn:
Layla asks if she can see old picture books for ideas--a William Steig [her
author/illustrator] book specifically. [A teaching assistant] shows her the
box. She and Alexandra are looking though boxes for samples.
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Layla: [A former student], hers is in that box. She had a real book flap and
everything. Look at what she did.
Cassidy comes over to look.
Alexandra: Where’s the other box?
Layla: (Still looking at [a former student’s] book.) I wonder who she did.
Alexandra: (to [teaching assistant) Is there any other box?
Layla: [Another former student] did a really big one on William Steig.
[Teaching Assistant]: You need to make sure that your text is big enough. A
lot of kids don’t do that. You’ll earn extra points with Bonnie.
Layla: The only problem is his (Steig’s) text has many words. Oh, I see
what he did. He drew it, cut it out, and copied it (referring to student’s
work). Allen Say, is anyone doing Allen Say [the author/illustrator]?
[Teaching Assistant]: It’s another [former student].
Cassidy looks at the book. “This one’s good.”
Layla: That’s just a scrapbook (binding). (To Alexandra) Your mom should
have plenty of those.
Because students were expected to bring something of themselves to a
project through a constructivist teaching philosophy, whether that came in the form
of how they approached it or in the content itself, rarely did two student products
look alike. As a result, there was much to be learned from studying what others had
done as a way of making one’s own work better.
Fourth, a less independent version of learning from peers came in the form
of asking for or offering assistance. In these cases, students relinquished control of
their work to peers by asking them to do something for them or asking to be told
what to do to get the job done. Usually, assistance was requested or offered in
nonacademic contexts, such as getting help with a computer problem or having
someone else do an illustration. It was also used when someone was completely
blocked, usually while writing. One day, when students were creating Father’s Day
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cards, Karen experienced writer’s block on a poem that she was crafting for her
father. She requested assistance from her friend Lily:
Karen: Tell me what to write because I have to write another verse.
Lily: I think this one’s okay. Plus this is not how you spell guy.
Karen: I’m not going to put “grow up now” so tell me what to put. I’m not
going to do airplanes so tell me what to put. “You love the Red Sox” What
rhymes?
Lily: Lox, like you put on a bagel. Botox. No that would be mean. (She
explains to Karen what that means.)
They go through possibilities.
Karen: I like the last line (reads it) . . . I need to figure out another verse. . . .
Lily, tell me!
Lily: I love you so much.
In some cases, asking for and receiving assistance in this way reflected a
lack of understanding of what needed to be done to such a high degree that they
literally needed peers to model for them what to do. In the example, Lily attempted
to do this by brainstorming rhyming words for Karen. Of course, in other cases,
asking for assistance could also represent a lack of interest in wanting to do the
work altogether.
Fifth, students liked to show off publicly what they had done. In a class-
room where hard work and high standards were valued and expected, students often
took enough pride in what they had accomplished that they would brag about it
informally to their peers. On occasion, there would be some type of peer response
to these demonstrations, but usually students were satisfied just making the
announcement that they had done something well. During one independent work
period, a group of girls sat around a table putting the finishing touches on their
picture book dummy copies. Jane, after working on her “about the author”
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paragraph, became eager to read her ideas aloud, telling her friends, “Listen to it so
far.” The girls giggled when she wrote that she was “raised in a warm house.” After
such a positive response, Jane read her work to Bonnie as well. When the girls
commented that they thought the phrase “warm house” was funny, Bonnie
responded that to her it was sweet. Jane then again read her work to another friend
who had come over to borrow something. Often, these instances of showing off
were less about one-upsmanship than just a sincere public expression of
accomplishment.
Sixth students traded information related to basic spelling assistance.
Following Bonnie and Cecilia’s recommendation at the beginning of the year, some
students had purchased small electronic devices called Franklin Spellers™, which
resemble a calculator but with letters instead of numbers. Students could type in
spelling approximations to see whether they were accurate. In turn, the machine,
functioning as a spell checker, provided the accurate orthographical information as
well as a definition of the word so that the student could confirm that they had the
appropriate selection. Although dictionaries were present in the classroom, the
efficiency that came with asking another student how to spell something or
borrowing a Franklin Speller was understandably attractive to students.
The final two ways in which students interacted during independent and
group assignments were through the trading of work and copying. These types of
exchanges were very infrequent and copying was not seen during the observation
sessions. When students chose to trade work, it was a reciprocal process in which
they just read what the other had done for fun and ideas; no commentary on the
content or quality was given or expected. This was the case one day when Julie and
Alexandra decided to trade picture book drafts out of curiosity. It also tended to be
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a spontaneous act on the part of students sharing a workspace. Students twice
reported in focus group conversations having witnessed copying by others. The
students made it clear that they were aware that it was wrong and was not benefi-
cial to their learning. Perhaps copying was infrequent because it broke with valued
classroom norms. As one student confessed, “Me and [another student] copy each
other and I’m very ashamed of that. Because I’m not supposed to be doing that, and
then I might get held back . . . and [the friend, from whom she copies, is] not going
to be there.” However, because these students also reported that it was difficult to
keep up with their work, the copying may have been the last resort for those who
felt desperate to get things done.
These eight trends—feedback/information, collaboration, getting ideas,
assistance, showing off, spelling, trading work, and copying—represent the various
kinds of assistance and guidance that students sought and received in the context of
completing their literacy work.
The Bigger Picture of Peer Assistance
and Guidance in Penguin Cluster
This section reviews how the patterns described in the previous section
intersected with how they asked and offered this kind of help in the context of
independent and group work assignments, using two representative examples.
During independent assignments, peers most frequently requested peer
assistance regarding feedback or information about their work. They also collabor-
ated, showed off, and gathered ideas from each other in this context. As these types
of exchanges occurred, it was striking that, once their questions were answered,
students most often changed or added to their work on their own, rather than
relinquishing control of the product to peers. This fact is reflective of multiple
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factors, including an understanding of personal responsibility as part of classroom
norms, their consideration of ethical factors as friends worked together, and their
concerns about the impact to their personal reputations resulting from seeking help.
The following excerpts from field notes reflect the most prevalent kinds of assist-
ance and the ways in which it was sought while the students worked to construct a
copyright page for the picture book assignment.
In the first instance, Samantha and Annabel swapped their dummy copies
(the technical term for a rough draft in children’s book publishing) for fun.
Samantha noticed that Annabel had a copyright page in hers. She then went to one
of the books written by her author/illustrator and found a copyright page there, too.
Samantha asked Cady, “Is this the copyright page?” Cady responded affirmatively
and talked Samantha through her own work process. “Here’s what I did,” she said.
“Copyright is c in a circle, 2005, and then I just made up [her last name] Inc.” As
Cady started to read Annabel’s dummy, Samantha wrote, “Copyright c 2005 by
Samantha [last name]. All rights reserved. Published in the United States.” She had
combined the information provided to her by Cady with what she saw written in
Annabel’s and the author/illustrator’s book.
A few days earlier, another group of students had also worked out the
written conventions for a copyright page on their own.
Jewel: [Looking at a book by her author/illustrator] Look, he doesn’t do a
dedication. (Hands book to Layla and she looks)
Layla: Yes he does. On the same page as the copyright.
Jewel: So I put them on the same page?
Layla: As the copyright? You don’t have to do as much.
Jewel looks confused.
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Layla: The copyright? It’s the date that no one can copy your work. You put
the same date as you printed it. Nobody can copy the stories or the pictures.
Jewel: So published 2005, what else?
Layla: What kind of printer you have. Just look (shows her dummy copy)—
same information, my wording.
Julie: Actually, there’s…did you know that on a Mac there’s symbols and
you can make a copyright?
Layla: Man [Jewel’s author/illustrator] is old. (She’s reading the copyright
page.)
Jewel: He’s dead. (Asks more questions about copyright.)
Layla: Just don’t worry about the copyright right now.
Jewel: Would you put your phone number?
Cassidy: Your phone number?
Like Samantha, Jewel worked to reconcile the information that she received
from Layla with what she saw displayed in the text. In this case, what started as an
investigation of how to write a dedication also became an exploration of the written
conventions of a copyright page. Through dialogue with Layla and reading her
author/illustrator’s text, Jewel worked to understand the purpose and form of a
copyright page, something she needed to know as a picture book author.
In each of these instances, students accessed the cultural capital resources of
their peers to gain insights about how to construct a copyright page. They also drew
on texts, a form of objectified cultural capital, as an additional resource that they
could reconcile with the information received from their friends. Students asked
peers for information and feedback, traded work, gathered ideas, and collaborated
during the process of learning. These four behaviors in particular matched nicely
with the norms and values of the classroom, including sharing ideas, asking ques-
tions, and knowing how to find needed information. They also coordinated well
with students’ understandings of literacy strategies that included working with
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peers to achieve meaning and using peers’ work as examples to enhance one’s own
written product.
As active participants in their own learning process, the students came to
expect in themselves the personal initiative required to reconcile various sources of
information and create copyright pages, all without teacher guidance. Since the
students had various levels and types of expertise, they coordinated their knowl-
edge in useful ways. In this case, fifth graders Cady and Layla, having already
written a picture book a year earlier, had knowledge about how to write a copyright
page that fourth graders Samantha and Jewel were just learning about for the first
time. The activation of social capital resources in this way indicated that the fourth-
grade girls acted strategically in their quest for mastery of a new literacy form.
Their status as newcomers to the assignment minimized their risk of looking
uninformed in their eyes of peers. In these ways, independent work was not an
isolated process, but rather a social process.
During group work activities, peers most frequently received guidance from
their teachers about how to collaborate and give each other feedback and informa-
tion. When they were left on their own, they worked to carry out this advice
independently, rehearsing what they had learned and learning to internalize these
processes through dialogue and conflict. The following example of three girls’
experience in working together to write a recycling brochure illustrates what
assistance and guidance looked like in the context of group activities in Penguin
Cluster.
After receiving an introduction to the recycling brochure writing project
from Cecilia, in which the class collectively brainstormed ideas for the project and
discussed the conventions of print associated with this particular form of writing,
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the fourth graders split up into groups and began to work. (This project occurred
while the fifth graders were preparing for culmination.) After a few days of
working on the assignment, Samantha, Jessica, and Victoria brainstormed ideas for
illustrations. When Bonnie came by to let them know that writing needed to occur
before the artwork, Samantha and Jessica brushed off her suggestion and kept
drawing anyway. Without saying anything, Victoria located some professional
brochures on recycling and brought them back to the table. The following con-
versation took place:
Jessica: How do you [draw] a can?
Victoria: I’m writing about compost right now.
Jessica: I’ve already got an illustration. (To Samantha) What does this look
like to you?
Samantha: A peach.
Jessica: Capiche?
Samantha: No. A peach. P-E-A-C-H. They giggle.
Victoria shows Samantha her writing. “Should I do more?”
Samantha reads and replies: It’s really good but it sounds like something
you’d read in a real book and we’re kids. Make it sound simpler. Make it
sound like it’s your friends and they’ve never heard a drop of English.
Jessica: They’re Chinese.
Samantha: And you make it so simple that even they can understand it.
Victoria has no idea.
Samantha takes brochure: Read the whole thing, capiche? Capiche.
Victoria: Well, I don’t want to do compost. This is hard. Where do I get
information?
Samantha: The whole packet! Capiche. Jessica, make her capiche.
Victoria: I’m saying it’s going to be hard and what if there’s information
that children don’t know?
Samantha: Put it in your own words.
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Jessica: Just copy it.
Samantha: That’s illegal.
Victoria reads a sentence from the packet and asks: Is that good?
Samantha: Yes. Just put it in your own words.
Jessica: I’m doing macaroni and a piece of cheese. I’ll do a hamburger.
Now I’ll do a hot dog.
Samantha: You guys should get to work.
Jessica: Now I’ll do a smoothie. Jamba Juice. (She shows it to Samantha)
What else do you want me to draw?
Samantha: Some meatballs.
Jessica: And spaghetti. (Draws.) Does that look like spaghetti?
Victoria has made no changes but shows it to the group again.
Samantha: You’re supposed to write it in your own words. Do you want to
write the landfill problems? We haven’t done that one yet.
Victoria: Where do I get that one from? (Victoria goes to get a piece of
paper.) Bonnie, there’s a group in there playing around.
Bonnie: I’ll go over right now.
Samantha: Use the knowledge in your brain to write about the problem.
Bonnie’s comment that the girls should be concentrating on writing rather
than drawing gave Victoria license to break away from what her peers were doing
and follow her teacher’s lead. As she did so, she pulled Samantha in the same
direction with her initial request for feedback on her work and her further request
for assistance on how to put the recycling packet ideas into her own words. After
the girls struggled for intersubjectivity and failed, Samantha suggested that Victoria
try to work on a different topic instead in the hopes that it would be easier for her.
As they worked together, the girls were figuring out how to coordinate their
competencies and use each other’s strengths to get the brochure done.
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A few days later, the same group seemed to improve with regard to how
they could work together. Unfortunately for them, they needed to complete the
brochure because a representative from the environmental education grant com-
mittee was coming to school to collect it. As the girls edited and revised various
sections, Samantha glanced at the clock and noticed that recess was approaching.
Samantha: Let’s stay in (10:00) for recess.
Victoria: I’ll stay in.
Jessica: But then we’re wasting our play time!
Samantha: So, what’s better than doing a good job, getting a good grade,
going to a good junior high, good high school, good college, and having a
good life, or play time?
Jessica: Play time.
Samantha gives her an annoyed look.
Jessica: I keep having to do this over and over.
Samantha, So, we all do.
Jessica claims she’s finished. Asks Samantha what to do next.
Samantha: Pictures.
Jessica: I love pictures. I just have to do a polluted river and a poster and
then I’m done.
James brings over a birthday card for Mike for the girls to sign.
Jessica draws: Is this a good polluted river? It looks like a piece of bacon.
Victoria says they’re celebrating Mike’s birthday at recess but she’s staying
in. “Jessica’s not though.”
Samantha: Yeah, she doesn’t care about that. I might even stay in at lunch.
Jessica: But we have more time today to work on this.
Samantha, Yeah, just an hour though.
Jessica: Well, I’m not staying in to do something I hate. Is that a good
polluted river?
Samantha: Yeah.
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Victoria: Who hasn’t signed? (She gives card to Tara.) Jessica, can I use
your sharpener?
Jessica: I don’t know where it is. It’s lost.
Victoria goes to the electric sharpener and comes back.
Jessica: This doesn’t even cut. (She’s cutting out her illustrations.)
Bob smells donuts for Mike’s birthday.
Jessica: So what is the poster going to say?
Samantha checks brochure: It should say the date, time, and place. (Shows
her the dummy copy.)
Victoria: But Samantha, should she actually say all that?
Samantha: Only if there’s room.
Victoria: Can somebody help me (with Bonnie’s comments)? I don’t
understand “when, where, why.”
Samantha says sure. She gets up to come help but sees Bonnie and asks if
they can stay in at recess. Bonnie says she guesses.
Victoria: So the when is what?
Samantha: The when is during the audit. (Victoria writes) The why is so
they know what to do and the where is at the lunch tables. (I can’t write fast
enough so Victoria repeats Samantha’s’ answers for me after revising her
writing.)
Samantha: Victoria, are you almost done?
Victoria: Yeah. Just the last part I need to do.
Samantha: Yeah, me too. And we’re staying in at recess, right?
Victoria: Yeah.
Although their recess plan did not work out (Bonnie could not check their
work because she was celebrating Mike’s birthday), Samantha and Victoria formed
a coalition that demonstrated their commitment to the classroom ethics of hard
work and doing their best. Jessica, although comfortable in her role as the group’s
illustrator, did not show any interest in participating beyond the minimum that she
had do. She even began to punish Victoria subtly for putting the pressure on her to
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stay in by refusing to lend her sharpener, something she actually had in her pencil
box. Finally, the girls returned to a state of collaboration in which they discussed
what should go on Jessica’s poster illustration and what Bonnie meant with her
comments on their rough draft. In these ways, group work consisted of moments of
inclusion and exclusion of members (Lareau & Horvat, 1999) as they struggled to
meet the goal of getting their work done.
The rest of the day consisted of a frantic scramble to assemble a final draft.
The girls met with Bonnie, got feedback, rewrote and proofread their work again,
argued with each other about wording, and went through emotional cycles of
determination and discouragement together. The following excerpt is representative
of the kind of discussions that took place through the end of the school day.
Jessica: Do we keep this that I’ve crossed out? This is way too much. It’ll
be more than 6 sentences for a paragraph.
Samantha: That’s okay. Find the periods that you can.
Jessica: 7 lines.
Samantha: Make periods.
Jessica: So it goes like this (reads aloud—it doesn’t make sense).
Samantha: We didn’t write “supervising.”
Jessica: That makes no sense.
Samantha takes paper and rewrites it.
Jessica: That’s not how you spell “environment.”
Samantha: Bonnie wrote that. It’s right.
Jessica: So I just keep on going?
Samantha goes over to Bonnie and shows her Jessica’s piece.
Bonnie: It doesn’t make sense. Bags got stuck in trees? How? It gets in the
ocean? How does it do that? And sea turtles?
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Jessica goes and joins Samantha. Jessica says her friend uses applesauce
containers to store jewelry.
Bonnie: But your title is “Landfill Problems.” It needs more information
about landfills and examples.
Samantha comes back: I’ll write this.
She and Victoria show Bonnie the rewrite of Victoria’s work that Jessica
did.
Bonnie: I wrote how to spell “environment.” She writes it again on the
board, points out the word “iron” is in the middle. She sends Samantha back
to the table. Samantha fixes it and races back to Bonnie. Victoria has her
hands on the desk. Jessica is drawing. She goes to sit with Samantha for a
second and comes back. Victoria goes to listen in as she’s reading a book.
Bonnie: See if this makes sense to you (reads).
Samantha: But I didn’t write that part.
Bonnie: Your whole group is responsible for making it make sense.
After being the only one to stay in at lunch to work, Samantha eventually
took the lead and directed her peers in explicit ways, all the way to the final bell of
the day. As she pushed forward to complete an assignment on time that was
personally and socially meaningful to her, she held her indifferent (Jessica) and
more passive (Victoria) group members accountable by making sure that they knew
what font to use and which sections should be rewritten, based on Bonnie’s new
comments.
Throughout the brochure writing process, many classroom literacy values
were reinforced. Literacy was a vehicle for learning content and demonstrating
knowledge of a topic. It was creative and collaborative, and it required the careful
thought and hard work for students’ future success. At various moments throughout
the examples, the girls informally took turns modeling and highlighting for each
other particular literacy skills and dispositions. For example, Victoria demonstrated
how to access texts as sources of information for writing, Samantha showed
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sensitivity to issues of paraphrasing and plagiarism, and Jessica paid close attention
to issues of spelling, grammar, and meaning. In these ways, the girls coordinated
their competencies and learned from each other. They also argued. As each other’s
social capital resources in this common endeavor, the girls were forced to take risks
that often resulted in tensions and conflicts. However, rather than seek peers
outside of their group when they were blocked, they relied on their teacher to help
with feedback and assistance. These stressful moments, which they tried to avoid
during independent activities, had become a source of learning for them in groups.
Group activities forced students out of their comfort zone and encouraged them to
take both social and academic risks that they might not have initiated on their own.
Summary of Peer Assistance and
Guidance in Penguin Cluster
Peers in Penguin Cluster often accessed friends for assistance with content
questions, the location of material goods, and inquiries about classroom procedures.
However, when they took initiative to guide each other, they were more likely to
focus on behavior. They helped each other with content and procedural assistance,
usually in caring, constructive, and well-received ways that helped to reinforce the
norms and values of the classroom. During group activities, when the lines of
responsibility for a final product were less clear, students required more teacher
support as they worked together toward a goal. Nevertheless, during both independ-
ent and group activities, students helped each other through offering or providing
assistance in eight ways: feedback/information, collaboration, ideas, assistance,
showing off, spelling assistance, trading work, and copying.
During independent assignments students took responsibility for their own
work but were not isolated from the social environment in the process. In fact, they
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drew on peer social capital resources to reconcile information obtained from their
own embodied and objectified cultural capital resources, namely personal under-
standings and texts. In doing so, they were acting in line with classroom norms and
values, such as sharing ideas, asking questions, and seeking necessary information.
They were also behaving in ways that coordinated well with literacy-specific
values, such as working with others to achieve meaning and using peers’ work to
inform their own processes and products. Group literacy activities also allowed
students to coordinate their knowledge in strategic ways. In these cases, a great deal
of teacher guidance was often necessary to help students to learn how to use each
other’s strengths purposefully. As they did so, students reinforced classroom norms
and held each other accountable. They also experienced multiple tensions that often
served as important springboards for learning and encouraged students to take
social and academic risks that they could usually avoid during independent
activities.
Chapter Summary
The fact that Penguin Cluster functioned as a community of practice
allowed it to nurture and promote a set of strong and well-developed values and
norms that anchored teachers’ and students’ efforts to activate and convert forms of
economic, cultural, and social capital in productive ways. Classroom work that was
closely connected to the larger social world and encouraged students’ active
participation gave it purpose. In turn, the development of a shared repertoire was
encouraged through curricular explorations that began with teachers’ leadership but
also incorporated relevant student knowledge and experiences. In terms of literacy
specifically, collectively fostered understanding included the need to balance both
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skills and dispositions in order to take on personal identities as readers and writers.
Students and teachers both noted that having 2 years of time and the freedom to
utilize the social setting of the classroom to work through the interdisciplinary
curriculum was central to the cultivation of a literate “habitus” (Bourdieu, 1986).
Significantly, capital exchange did not happen randomly; it was deliberately
taught and made to work through the strategic efforts of both teachers and students.
Teachers used multiple social connections to enhance curricular efforts through the
securing of economic resources. Outside adults assisted in meeting various goals
and facilitated community-classroom connections. Over time, as teachers asked
questions, reinforced literacy skills and habits, and modeled cultural capital
exchange, students internalized these processes. This sense of ownership over
curricular content and affiliation with classroom norms helped the students to
facilitate reciprocal exchanges of cultural capital between their home and school
contexts. In terms of social capital resources, students recognized teachers, peers,
and family and community members as part of their personal networks. They
accessed these members in deliberate ways and weighed the risks associated with
doing so in each particular context.
In the classroom the students looked to peers as resources for content
questions, procedural questions, and material goods associated with their work.
They also guided each other’s behavior and offered advice on content and pro-
cedural issues. During both independent and group activities, the students looked to
each other to get feedback and information, to collaborate, and to get ideas for their
own work. They received assistance from one another, showed off their accomp-
lishments, and saw each other as efficient resources for spelling help. Less often
but still present were times when students traded work to read for fun and copied
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each other’s answers. The fact that students activated and converted their social
capital resources in these ways during independent activities—ways that allowed
students to reconcile their own cultural capital knowledge with that of their peers in
a manner that was congruent with classroom norms—indicated that individual
learning was heavily informed by the social context of Penguin Cluster. Group
work activities were influenced by the social context as well, but they provided
students the added challenge of learning how to coordinate their strengths to
produce a collective product representative of everyone’s efforts. For this kind of
learning, the students relied heavily on teacher guidance. They also struggled
through various conflicts and tensions that forced them to take social and academic
risks that they could usually avoid when working on their own. The experiences of
the children in Penguin Cluster demonstrate the multiple ways and sources of
learning available to students in a classroom community of literacy practice.
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CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION
This study considered multiple dynamics in one upper elementary grade
classroom as they related to an overall goal of closing an achievement gap in
literacy between students of diverse backgrounds. Many qualities of Penguin
Cluster made a significant difference in this effort, including the teachers; the
structure of the classroom; forms of economic, cultural, and social capital; and the
types of peer interactions in class. Noting what children thought and did as a result
of adult planning provided insight into the nature of the relationships among
student agency, classroom environment, and the use of resources in a community of
literacy practice. This chapter presents a review of the study’s intentions, ties the
findings reported in chapter 4 to the literature, and addresses the contributions of
this inquiry to the field. The chapter closes with a discussion of the implications for
policy and practice and directions for future research.
Intentions of the Study
The idea for this study came as a result of two primary interests. First, I
wanted to explore more deeply the social aspects of literacy learning, particularly
between children at school. Second, I sought ways to disrupt inequitable patterns of
student achievement in reading and writing among students from different social
class and racial/ethnic backgrounds. In order to investigate these two areas, I
looked for an innovative elementary public school classroom that had a history of
success in teaching children from multiple family contexts to read and write. I
utilized two complementary theoretical frameworks to ground the work: (a) socio-
cultural theory, particularly Wenger’s (1998) community of practice principles; and
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(b) Bourdieu’s (1986) notion of capital exchange. The community of practice frame
served as a foundation for thinking about how children become literate in the con-
text of a particular classroom structure that highlights the role of social interaction.
The idea of economic, cultural, and social capital exchange among people focused
attention on the role of teachers’ and students’ cultural and social class back-
grounds as they conducted purposeful learning activities at school. The following
general research question guided the study: How and when do students choose to
draw on the resources of their peers in a classroom community of practice as they
solve problems in their literacy work? The general question was addressed through
two subquestions? What are the roles of the teacher and the classroom environ-
ment in this process? What is the nature of students’ economic, cultural, and social
capital resources and how do these come into play as students undertake and
complete literacy assignments?
Data collected from a variety of sources, including classroom observations,
student focus group interviews, interviews with teachers, student work samples,
and school and district documents, were analyzed to describe the students’ experi-
ences in Penguin Cluster, both in relationship to each theory and in an open-ended
manner. As a result, a primary contribution of this work is description of the ways
in which aspects of each theory are empirically grounded. The findings provided
opportunities for thinking about each framework in a new light.
Ties to the Existing Literature
The primary purpose of a case study is to inform theory. Findings in the
present study are connected to aspects of Wenger’s (1998) and Bourdieu’s (1986)
work. Although links to empirical studies are embedded in discussions of the
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theoretical frameworks, I elaborate on the relationship between this study and ones
exploring peer interactions during elementary school literacy learning before
considering implications for policy and practice.
Connections and Insights Into Communities
of Literacy Practice
The design of Penguin Cluster incorporated the assumptions stated in
Wenger’s (1998) description of a community of practice. This was not a surprise,
since part of the reason for looking at Penguin Cluster was precisely because it
functioned in this way. However, it is also important to note that Penguin Cluster is
an atypical example of an urban public school classroom at this point in time.
Based on their own experiences as teachers, parents, and learners, Bonnie and
Cecilia believed in children taking an active lead in the learning process and
connecting newly acquired knowledge to a broader social environment. Guiding
students in this process was a set of values established and reinforced by the
teachers—and over time by the students themselves—that were intended to shape
the children’s development as academic beings. The teachers and students both
recognized personal transformation as a key result from a 2-year classroom
experience in which mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire
were a part of daily learning life.
In Penguin Cluster mutual engagement, which provided opportunities for
the students to participate in meaningful learning activities, was constituted by
several curricular elements. These included long-term and open-ended projects,
teachers’ utilization of constructivist teaching methods, the ongoing recycling of
acquired knowledge through an interdisciplinary curriculum, and opportunities for
the students to share their learning with an outside audience. This combination
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encouraged in the students a sense of ownership over their work that was critical in
helping them to build a set of knowledge and expertise—at an appropriate level for
each individual—that they could then potentially broker in the process of joint
enterprise (Manyak, 2001). Since the social process of learning was officially
valued, as shown by the teachers’ encouragement of the development and activa-
tion of peer networks, the students drew on the resources of their classmates and
offered assistance with respect to content, procedures, behavior, and the sharing of
material goods regularly. As they negotiated independent and group assignments,
the students worked to explore the potential of their own roles in the group,
experienced moments of unity and tension in their relationships with one another,
and came to hold each other accountable for learning. Over time, they built a shared
repertoire of knowledge, based both on what they had created collectively and what
they had brought from other sources outside the classroom. In these ways, the
operations of Penguin Cluster closely paralleled Wenger’s (1998) description of a
community of practice.
Documenting what a classroom community of literacy practice looks like
leads to extrapolation of the consequences of this type of learning environment for
students. This analysis meets the original goal of the study, of exploring the poten-
tial of this particular design for learning. Chapter 1 noted the contrast between the
paradigm of knowledge transmission in Penguin Cluster—one based on the above
notions of a how a community of practice operates—with the one implied in
current district policy. This study showed that, in the former setting, students were
active, purposeful participants in the learning process, and that providing room for
them to interact within parameters set by teachers helped to make the classroom
efficient and individualized. Not only were there many opportunities to learn as the
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students coordinated their competencies in open-ended, project-oriented activities
(Gutierrez & Stone, 1997; Tuyay et al., 1995; Wenger, 1998), but students could
focus on what they needed to know rather than what was in the teacher’s guide that
day. Furthermore, learning was facilitated even during classroom moments when
the teacher was not teaching (Larson & Meier, 2000; Stone & Christie, 1996; Tharp
& Gallimore, 1991).
This was the case despite an ongoing presence of conflict, which often
helped the students to make progress in a struggle for intersubjectivity and under-
standing (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991; Wenger, 1998). While it is easy to consider
conflict useful on a theoretical level, the disorder and perceived inefficiency that a
classroom of 62 students might create seems unsettling. Most helpful in keeping
these disruptions productive in Penguin Cluster was a guiding set of commonly
practiced norms and values that were constantly reinforced by adults (Moller,
2004/2005) and often taken up (and further reinforced) by the students (Fassler,
1998; Larson, 1995, 1999; Larson & Maier, 2000). The teachers’ ability to be
responsive to the students (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991) was of critical importance.
Not only could they assist in guiding the students through interpersonal conflict;
they could also help the students to negotiate bridges between in-school and out-of-
school contexts through instructional techniques that linked home environments
with academic content.
If it is taken for granted that schools are social institutions by nature (a
correct assumption, since the purpose is to socialize children), then maximizing,
and not limiting, the potential of the social environment makes sense. Certainly, the
differences between the two paradigms of knowledge transmission are closely tied
to assumptions about what literacy is, how it should be learned, and for what
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purpose it is to be learned. In the unidirectional teacher-to-student design the
assumption is that literacy is a fixed set of measurable skills that can be acquired
and precisely reproduced on a test. This type of knowledge display is useful but
limiting, as it serves only school-related purposes. In Penguin Cluster literacy was
seen as a dynamic and social process. This outlook meant that it was constituted by
both a mastery of standard skills and by the acquisition of particular habits and
dispositions. The combination and coordination of these two aspects of reading and
writing eventually allowed children from all backgrounds the opportunity to
embody the kinds of cultural capital associated with academic literacy that can be
easily recognized by the larger society (Bourdieu, 1986; Carrington & Luke, 1997).
Because of their teachers’ guidance, the students in Penguin Cluster were clear that
both skills and habits were necessary, they knew specifically what they were, and
they had multiple occasions to rehearse their coordination in the classroom and
with an outside audience (Monkman et al., 2005). This learning help them to
perform not only on standardized school measures of success but in broader com-
munity contexts as well.
These consequences of instruction for the students in Penguin Cluster are a
result of a learning design that was carefully crafted and constantly renewed by
teachers. Bonnie and Cecilia made purposeful connections among their plans, how
they were to be carried out, and the desired outcomes in students. They also worked
hard to maintain and adapt their plans when necessary. Multiple teaching tech-
niques that incorporated notions of assisted performance, activity settings,
instructional conversations, and the Five Standards for Effective Pedagogy (Tharp,
1993; Tharp & Gallimore, 1991; Tharp et al., 2004) were particularly useful
because the teachers were responsive to the students’ needs. Although the teachers
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also allowed for a triadic model of assistance (Tharp & Gallimore) to operate
within the classroom by providing space for the students to draw on the expertise of
their peers as well as encourage student ownership over their work (which in turn
encouraged independent self-reliance), the students built on this notion by incorpor-
ating social resources from their out-of-school lives, including family members and
others (Bourdieu, 1986). This occurred most likely because of the project-driven
curriculum that traveled between home and school contexts as the students worked
to create a tangible, meaningful product over an extended period of time.
Connections and Insights Into
the Forms of Capital
With a classroom structure that worked to capitalize on the social environ-
ment to encourage the development of embodied, and eventually institutionalized,
cultural capital, it is not surprising that the facilitation of capital exchange was a
common strategy for these teachers and students. In this way, Penguin Cluster
served as an example of a democratic approach to schooling rather than as a place
that worked to replicate existing social hierarchies. However, it is important to note
that the strategic use of resources by the teachers played a pivotal role in allowing
the students to do so. Bonnie’s personal, professional, and community connections
were repeatedly coordinated and converted into economic, social, and cultural
capital for her students. Her own extensive institutionalized cultural capital helped
her to function as a role model for students. As an insider in the worlds of science,
creative writing, children’s literature, and theater, among others, she was keenly
aware of the kinds of cultural capital that needed to be developed in children to
provide them with similar access to these domains. Rather than trying to do this on
her own, she capitalized on social resources that brought other expert individuals to
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the classroom setting to assist with projects. Because these outsiders related to the
children in a nonacademic sense, they made various kinds of connections that
allowed the class members to shine in alternative ways, as was the case with the
casting of the play. These kinds of connections were helpful in meeting an object-
ive of helping the students to take on participant identities that could be recognized
as such by their peers (Wenger, 1998).
Two points about the cultivation of the forms of capital in Penguin Cluster
are especially important to note in light of Bourdieu’s (1986) outline. First,
although the development of embodied cultural capital in the students began with
the teachers’ instructional agendas, it did not come at the negation of the children’s
home experiences. Instead, the teachers worked to integrate the students’ thoughts,
feelings, experiences, cultural histories, and family expertise into what they were
learning (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991; Tharp et al., 2004). This strategy was critical
because it not only assisted the teachers in fostering a dialogue between home and
school that encouraged the students’ ability to broker themselves in multiple
contexts (Wenger, 1998), it also helped the students to see that they did not have to
choose participation in one setting at the expense of the other. The students’ talk
about the reciprocity between home and school with respect to their reading and
writing habits serves as evidence for these points.
Second, it is important to recognize that access to academic forms of
cultural capital was made available to the students through their classroom partici-
pation. Rather than rely on home contexts to provide the students with skills,
habits, and dispositions, the teachers worked to construct them within the class-
room setting. As the students explained, the 2-year time period, the social orienta-
tion of the classroom, and the interdisciplinary curriculum assisted in this process.
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The community of practice operations of mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and
shared repertoire enhanced cultural capital development in the classroom space.
Not only did the teachers work hard to maintain social connections that
could be converted into other forms of capital; the students did so as well. Their
own friendship networks were sources of academic support and accountability. The
students constantly took advantage of what their friends had to provide, and they
did so strategically. They developed relationships with people who had similar
interests, values, and work habits, sat next to those friends in class, and made
important decisions about when to draw on the resources of their peers and when to
hold back and/or find alternative sources. They evaluated the use of peers’ informa-
tion and advice as it related to their own ideas and the ideas of teachers, family
members, and others in their social web. Conversely, the students thought a great
deal about how they could position themselves as useful to others as a way of
maintaining good social relations with both peers and adults. Depending on the
situation, this might mean highlighting their role as a friend to offer constructive
criticism; it could also mean sharing techniques, information, behavioral advice, or
strategies with others during the course of a class project. Some students even
noted that inaction was useful when they did not want others to see them as unin-
telligent or not displaying behavior in line with the norms and values of scholar-
ship. Finally, recognizing the importance of peer networks for learning, the teachers
supported and sometimes facilitated their development in the classroom as yet
another way of cultivating cultural capital in the children.
The conscious attention given to capital conversion in Penguin Cluster was
a primary factor in the easing of an achievement gap between students of dominant
and minority classes, racial groups, and ethnic statuses. While there was still
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diversity in the classroom with respect to academic achievement, it was not
predictable or static. The honoring of multiple forms of participation in the field of
Penguin Cluster—the result of the teachers’ decision making and the classroom
structure—shaped the students’ actions with respect to capital exchange. As a
consequence, individuals were in a position to work toward upwardly mobile
achievement at an appropriate pace rather than remain relegated to academic
pigeonholes.
Connections and Insights Into Peer Interactions
During Elementary School Literacy Learning
This section explores the role of peer interactions in Penguin Cluster as they
relate to prior studies. The purpose is to address more specifically the contributions
of these findings to the larger field.
The results from this study corroborate findings from other studies of peer
interactions during classroom literacy learning. Like students of younger age levels,
the fourth and fifth graders in Penguin Cluster students often collaborated during
unstructured classroom work periods (Stone & Christie, 1996), using such oppor-
tunities to rehearse and reinforce for each other literacy behaviors and skills taught
to them by their teachers (Fassler, 1998). However, they also demonstrated a
variety of other related strategies, including soliciting and offering feedback,
information, ideas, and assistance, showing off work of which they were proud,
helping with spelling, trading work, and copying. Furthermore, nuances of peer
guidance and assistance in Penguin Cluster were closely tied to the context of the
activity (whether it was a group or independent assignment, for example) as well as
to the broader social environment. Although there were certainly times when a
child’s particular academic and/or social status enabled or limited his or her
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participation (Matthews & Kesner, 2000, 2003), frequent teacher intervention,
shifting participation structures as a result of a community of practice design,
repetitive and interdisciplinary experiential curriculum, self-selected seating
arrangements, and a 2-year classroom experience all helped to mitigate ongoing
negative consequences. In instances where particular children seemed to be stuck in
nonparticipatory ruts, a lack of understanding and affiliation with classroom norms
and values seemed to be a larger factor than overall social and academic status.
As with prior studies, the experiences of the children in Penguin Cluster
disrupted many “common sense” notions about teaching and learning. The teachers
were most effective in closing a participation gap between students of various
academic levels by being responsive to individual needs (Moller, 2004/2005) and
by designing open-ended learning structures and activities in which the children
could find their niche (Gutierrez & Stone, 1997). However, their interventions
seemed to be more necessary during group work scenarios, when lines of responsi-
bility were less clear to students. Based on the students’ frequent use of peers as
informants and sounding boards for their work, it was also plain that “independent”
activities were directly influenced by social factors (Larson & Maier, 2000). Signi-
ficantly, drawing on social resources rarely meant that the students relinquished
responsibility for their own work. Rather, they tended to reconcile socially obtained
information with what they already knew to enhance personal understandings. This
consequence most likely took place in the context of well-understood classroom
norms and values, as well as the students’ awareness of what was socially accept-
able as a result. Similarly, common projects in Penguin Cluster produced myriad
results; often, these were tied to idiosyncratic learning needs of students (Tuyay et
al., 1995). Here the role of interpersonal conflict—something that had the potential
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to be destructive—often moved the children forward (albeit in messy ways) as they
worked to achieve intersubjectivity and coordinate competencies. Furthermore,
group projects fostered risk-taking behaviors in the students that they could more
easily avoid during solo activities.
Studies of peer dynamics and power also connect well to the findings in this
study. Inevitably, the students created and accepted social positions for themselves
and others that in turn had consequences for their academic development (Rowe et
al., 2001). However, with each activity shift there were new opportunities for them
to explore new and different ways to participate. This was the case with the play,
where some socially and academically marginalized children took lead roles, earn-
ing them new kinds of attention from their peers. Because group learning activities
were so diffuse in terms of individual lines of responsibility, strong teacher leader-
ship was necessary to create spaces for the participation of all group members;
students were less able to manage these scenarios successfully on their own without
reproducing larger social structures (Evans, 1996; Lewis, 2001). The operation of
the classroom as a community of practice that encouraged capital exchange took
teachers and students far in the struggle to disrupt typical patterns of participation.
In bringing many aspects of Wenger’s (1998) and Bourdieu’s (1986)
theories to life, this study assists in understanding in specific terms how capital
exchange in one community of practice operates. Ties to existing empirical work
also provide a window into the actions and subsequent consequences of teachers
and students in this particular setting.
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Implications of This Study and Directions
for Future Research
This section addresses in concrete terms the implications of these lessons
for policy practice before considering related directions for future research. As a
result of this in-depth look into literacy learning in one innovative fourth- and fifth-
grade classroom, there are many potential considerations for both policy and
practice.
1. Thinking comprehensively about the goals of education in the creation of
classrooms. Overall, this study points to the fact that educators should think com-
prehensively about the goals of schooling. In other words, educators should con-
sider what they want for students in a tangible sense (demonstrable skills) and an
intangible sense (habits, dispositions, worldviews, etc.). One of the lessons from
the Penguin Cluster students was that these intangibles mattered greatly for their
embodied cultural capital. It helped them to broker themselves in multiple settings
and eventually take on identities that allowed them to see themselves as lifelong
readers and writers. This outcome was significant because, as Wenger (1998)
contended, learning is inevitable. As a result, it is in educators’ best interests to
control the development of the intangibles as much as possible. In Penguin Cluster
this took place because the “what” question—what to teach—was coupled with
other questions, such as “Why is it important?” “How does it connect to existing
curriculum?” “How can we get there in the most meaningful way?” and “What
resources will help us get there?” Thinking about teaching and learning in this more
complex manner was what set Penguin apart from a typical school experience,
transforming students in the process, not just testing them. This type of approach
reinforces Luke’s (1998) point that the focus should shift from simply what
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works—because everything works—to a larger question of to what end does a
instructional method function.
Although this implication is presented for teachers’ practice, it might also
apply effectively to policy at large. However, if this were case, the policy would
have to be flexible enough that teachers would had greater control of instructional
decision making, as the conscious development and reinforcement of norms and
values can happen only in the context of responsive teaching. In the critique of the
current district policy in chapter 1 it was noted that considerations of the larger
consequences for students were not present in the standardized approach, other than
a vague reference to preparing students for the 21st century. The district would be
served well by studies similar to this one in which the consequences of their
instructional methods were empirically established so that it could comprehensively
consider the success of its reform (Carrington & Luke, 1997; Luke, 1998).
2. Paying attention to identity development in the classroom. Knowing that
students either create their own social hierarchies or default to existing societal
ones (Evans, 1996; Lewis, 2001; Matthews & Kesner, 2000, 2003; Rowe et al.,
2001), a classroom structure that explicitly pays attention to social issues is critical.
In a community of practice that emphasizes the importance of capital exchange,
these students had to coordinate competencies to get their work done. The social
aspect of school was therefore critical to academic success. For this reason, it is
especially important that teachers help students to recognize what the students have
to offer others as well as recognize each other for what they have to offer to the
group. Certainly, this happened often on its own in Penguin Cluster because the
students could participate at their level in multiple ways as they located their
particular niche. However, for students who were experiencing conflict in
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unproductive ways, it was important that they learn about their strengths and how
to share them. For this reason, more attention should be paid to notions of identity
formation in relationship to classroom participation, as it can be an avenue for the
disruption of patterns of inequitable achievement (Manyak, 2001; Toohey, 1996).
Extending this idea of identity a little further, if the cultivation of disposi-
tions and habits is so key to success in the development of academic literacy,
teachers must consider which students are coming to the classroom with these
already in place and which students have to cultivate them through participation in
school. The idea of a 2-year stint with the same teacher(s) is attractive in the
development of embodied cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986), especially after hear-
ing the Penguin Cluster students talk about how it became easier over time to adjust
to classroom norms. Furthermore, teachers should become aware of the disposi-
tions and habits that they are valuing and make an explicit effort to develop them in
their students. Bonnie and Cecilia did this well, as shown by their students’ ability
to name what was valued in their class. Even for students already familiar with
some of the valued behaviors, the school context adds a layer that might make a
direct transfer of certain dispositions from home to school more challenging.
3. Paying specific attention to the role of conflict in classrooms. In addition
to paying attention to role of conflict as it relates to individual identity develop-
ment, more needs to be known about how it might function as a productive force in
classroom learning. This study touched on the role of conflict as it related to the
students’ struggle for intersubjectivity as one avenue for learning in a community
of practice. However, studies that specifically focus on conflict might produce
additional insight into what makes some disputes productive and others
problematic for learning.
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4. Cultivating and activating economic, cultural, and social capital
resources strategically. The role of economic, cultural, and social capital resources
in both teachers’ and students’ work cannot be underestimated. In Olive Avenue
School, resources were a critical part of teaching and learning, not just because
there were more of them but because they were employed strategically. This point
is particularly important in light of rhetoric that more money will not fix schools.
The learning from Penguin Cluster is that more money can have an effect if it is
used in purposeful ways that advance toward tangible and intangible goals. As
shown in this study, economic resources were often converted into social and
cultural capital resources that resulted in transformative experiences for some
students. For example, outside experts made great contributions to the classroom
curriculum as they assisted teachers in the blending of school and community
contexts. Field trips provided the class with important shared experiences that
assisted them in building a shared repertoire of knowledge. Most interesting in this
case was the fact that Penguin Cluster teachers had a great deal of control of how
these funds were spent because they had obtained the grant. Further exploration of
this issue has the potential to merit results that might better inform policy on issues
of how education budgets are spent, by whom, and for what purposes.
Another lesson from this study in relation to capital exchange is the
importance of teachers’ involvement in both personal and professional communi-
ties outside of their particular school. The social capital that came as a result of
these teachers’ active participation in these networks had real consequences for
their students. This finding raises questions about how teachers can position
themselves in the community in ways that can bring forms of economic, cultural,
and social capital to their classrooms. It also points to the need for them to
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recognize and activate their own existing personal and professional networks for
classroom use, as well as those of students’ families. The development of social
capital resources among students in the classroom was also important for learning.
In particular, the students’ propensity to play it safe and rely on friendship net-
works—which at this point in their development were just beginning to solidify—
brings to mind a need to know more about how the role of friendship relates to
students’ academic progress as they grow older. The students’ talk about the reci-
procity and mutual influence between home and school literacy practices raises the
question of how common this might be across multiple contexts, particularly with
respect to culture and social class.
5. Thinking about what is replicable. This study documented many useful
strategies—often the results of multiple reform efforts over time—that could be
applied to other school contexts. At Olive Avenue, teachers, like their students,
enjoyed curricular flexibility within the parameters of a strong school culture
whose values guided their work. These efforts were partially supported financially
through the granting of some personal control over school foundation funds and
through school structures that allowed them time to collaborate with their teaching
partners. Teachers were encouraged to develop community connections that had the
potential to bring additional resources to the classroom, although these were often
left to individual initiative. Since these aspects of the organizational pattern of the
school matched closely those present in Penguin Cluster, it would be interesting to
explore the impact of administrative leadership on teachers’ classroom designs.
Looking at how other classrooms at Olive Avenue responded to the school culture
would be an intriguing way to learn more about relationships between school
culture and practice.
167
Something that might be less likely to replicate are the specific ways in
which Bonnie, because of the longevity of her teaching experience as well as her
personal thirst for learning, came to develop theories of knowledge that impacted
instruction. How she thought about curriculum, students, and learning was unique,
even if important resulting elements such as interdisciplinary content, recycling of
knowledge, and joint productive activity are strategies that can be applied to other
classroom contexts. Thinking about her as a teacher, one possible implication is the
recognition of the importance of a teacher’s own learning and ability to reflect as a
part of professional growth. Perhaps, in contrast to other professions, who a teacher
is as an individual really matters for his or her work.
Conclusion
This study took an in-depth look at the consequences of one type of instruc-
tional approach in a unique fourth- and fifth-grade classroom. It explored student
perspectives, finding that their points of view offered valuable insights into how
planned curriculum is experienced by children. The focus on classroom operations
at the micro level, including both intentional and unintentional aspects of teachers’
and students’ everyday work, had important implications for how to think about
and operate schools on a broader scale. Teachers, administrators, policy makers,
and other stakeholders are encouraged to consider the object lessons of Penguin
Cluster as they work to create and produce better educational opportunities,
particularly in the area of literacy development, for all students in public schools.
168
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172
APPENDIX A
TEACHER INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
• What professional credentials do you hold? How many years have you taught?
• Describe your teaching experience at Olive Avenue School. What resources do
you have at this school? What resources do you bring to your classroom person-
ally?
• Tell me about the philosophy of the school. How do your own views fit with
this?
• What is the impact of the multiage setting on your instruction?
• How would you describe your classroom routines and expectations in literacy?
• What has influenced your preparation and goals for literacy instruction this year?
• What successes and challenges have you seen with literacy instruction and
achievement in your classroom this year? What are the reasons for successes and
challenges? What modifications have you made as a result?
• How do the students participate in literacy activities?
• What do you observe about how students interact academically and socially based
on issues of race, class, and gender?
• Do you draw upon students’ resources from home to inform the literacy curricu-
lum? In what ways?
173
APPENDIX B
STUDENT FOCUS GROUP INTERVIEW PROTOCOLS
Week 1 focus group
• Tell me what it’s like to be a student in Penguin Cluster. What kind of reading
and writing work do you do in this class? What have you learned?
• What makes someone a good reader in this class? A good writer?
• Do you think you’re a good reader and writer? Why?
Week 2 focus group
• Who do you choose to sit next to in class? Why?
• How do kids help each other get their reading and writing work done in this class?
Is it easier or harder to work with your friends?
• How do your teachers help you?
• Tell me about a time when you helped someone with their reading and writing
work. What happened?
• Tell me about a time when someone helped you with reading and writing work?
What happened?
Week 3 focus group
• What tools help you get your reading and writing work done?
• What kinds of reading and writing do you do at home? How does that help you
with reading and writing at school?
• Who from outside of school is helpful to you when you’re completing you
assignments? How do they help you?
Week 4 focus group
• What do you imagine for yourselves in the future? How has what you’ve learned,
what you’ve read and written in Penguin Cluster helped you for the future?
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
As an investigation into the social aspects of literacy learning between peers in the upper elementary grades, this study addresses the primary research question, "How and when do students choose to draw on the resources of their peers in a classroom community of practice as they solve problems in their literacy work?" Two subquestions were also addressed to determine potential ways in which historically inequitable patterns of student achievement can be disrupted in the context of an innovative public school classroom: What are the roles of the teacher and the classroom environment in this process?" and "What is the nature of students' economic, cultural, and social capital resources and how do these come into play as students undertake and complete literacy assignments?" Two complementary theoretical frameworks were employed to think about how a diverse group of fourth and fifth public school students learned to read and write: Wenger's notion of a community of practice and Bourdieu's forms of capital. Students' experiences were analyzed in relationship to each theory and in an open-ended manner, using data collected from a variety of sources.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Ardell, Amy Louise Lassiter
(author)
Core Title
Backing each other up "like in basketball": an examination of literacy and the forms of capital among peers in an elementary school classroom community of practice
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Education
Publication Date
04/23/2007
Defense Date
06/22/2006
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
community of practice,economic, cultural,,elementary school,Literacy,OAI-PMH Harvest
Language
English
Advisor
Datnow, Amanda (
committee chair
), Astor, Ron Avi (
committee member
), Rueda, Robert S. (
committee member
)
Creator Email
amyardell@hotmail.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m443
Unique identifier
UC1473982
Identifier
etd-Ardell-20070423 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-491906 (legacy record id),usctheses-m443 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-Ardell-20070423.pdf
Dmrecord
491906
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Ardell, Amy Louise Lassiter
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Repository Name
Libraries, University of Southern California
Repository Location
Los Angeles, California
Repository Email
cisadmin@lib.usc.edu
Tags
community of practice
economic, cultural,