Question: C144 Native American Languages and Cultures-Study Guide #4
Philips, Susan U. 1974. Participant Structures and Communicative Competence. In Cazden et. al. (ed.) Functions of Language in the Classroom, 370-94. New York: Teachers College Press.
Note: The author was a student of Dell Hymes when Hymes moved from Anthropology and eventually wound up as the Dean of the School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. For a significant period of time the University of Pennsylvania was like the Mecca of an emerging, fortified form of Linguistic Anthropology which Hymes helped to create. Also at Pennsylvania were such social science luminaries as Erving Goffman (Sociology) and William Labov (Linguistics) as well as anthropologists of the ethnoscience school such as Ward Goodenough. Warm Springs as a field site was probably motivated by two things. One, it is in Oregon, Hymes's own home state among the indigenous population, the Clackamas Chinook, that were closest to his own birthplace, and a group that Hymes had some connections with. Two, the Warm Springs had a reasonable amount of educational and other resources. Unlike some-even many-- reservation communities where economic underdevelopment and marginalization makes them hotspots of poverty and socioeconomic deprivation, Warm Springs was resourced in such a way that the biggest differences between their students and those of the mainstream were not economic but rather cultural. Finally this chapter which represents an abbreviated version of her influential book-The Invisible Culture-has had a profound influence both on later research and on the actual classroom practices in Native communities. It is an older article but it is hard to find one in this field that has had a bigger impact even to this day.
1. What are the goals of the article as stated by the author.
2. What are participant structures?
3. What is a teacher-centered classroom?
4. What is the Warm Spring "ideal learning" sequence look like when one observes family and community interaction?
5. What are the participant structures that Philips finds in the classrooms attended by Native students?
6. Do Native students do equally well in each of these participant structures? Are some more appropriate contexts for learning and displaying knowledge? Are some less appropriate?
7. How does Philips explain the differences? In other words how does she account for why Indian students perform well in some contexts but not in others?
8. She concludes by saying two things. One of these is that even though Warm Springs Indian students speak English, teachers should not assume they use it in accord with the communicative styles of the majority society. The other is that different pedagogies have different implications for how students turn out. Who is responsible for making this choice in Philips's view?
Mohatt, Gerald and Fred Erickson. 1981. Cultural Differences in Teaching Styles in an Odawa School: a sociolinguistic Approach. In Henry Treuba et. al.(eds.) Culture and the Bilingual Classroom. Rowley, Mass: Newbury House, pp. 105-ll9.
Note: Mohatt was a Native Educator and administrator in the Odawa community. Odawa is a language related to Ojibwe and spoken on the northern shore of Lake Huron in Ontario, Canada. Fred Erickson, was also trained at the University of Pennsylvania and was working at UCLA's School of Education until his retirement last year. This is another classic study of research done in bilingual/bicultural classrooms.
1. What do these authors mean by a "universal child" model?
2. What is spotlighting or search-lighting in terms of teacher-class interaction?
3. What are the biggest differences between the Native teacher and the non-Native teacher as judged by the time-allocation table presented on p. 111.
4. How do the authors establish that a communicative pattern is more familiar to the Native students?
5. What might be some practical uses of the video recordings used by researchers to study teacher behavior? Could the videos themselves be of value in teacher training? Can aspects of communicative style be taught?
Barnhardt, Ray and Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley. 2005. Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Alaska Native Ways of Knowing. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 36:8-23
1. What is the paradigm shift that the authors discuss on p. 9?
2. What is the value of documenting and teaching indigenous knowledge systems to Indigenous people? To non-indigenous?
3. What does the article, and especially the Figure on p. 16, suggest about the wisdom of a binary approach to Western Science vs. Traditional Knowledge Systems?
4. What are the three broad themes into which recent research on indigenous knowledge systems may be categorized?
5. What is place-based education?
6. Why is educational self-determination important and whom does it benefit?
Eder, Donna J. 2007. Bringing Navajo Storytelling Practices into Schools: the Importance of Maintaining Cultural Integrity. Anthropology and
Education Quarterly 38:278-296
1. The author begins the article by stating that when she began the study she had certain (Western) assumptions about storytelling. Which three (p.281) does she mention?
2. How is storytelling regarded in Navajo culture?
3. What is the association of storytelling with morality?
4. How did the gradual language shift to English in many Navajo communities have an effect on people's feelings about bringing Navajo culture, including storytelling, into the schools?
5. How many Navajo consultants were interviewed and what variation did they show both in personal characteristics (age, gender, education) as well as beliefs about storytelling?
6. What are the key practices of Navajo storytelling?
7. What does the author see as the connection between cross-cultural research and decolonizing methodologies? How has the author employed a decolonizing methodology?
House, Deborah. 2002. Navajo-ization of Navajo Schools. (Chapter 5) Language Shift Among the Navajos, 57-83. Tucson:U Arizona Press.
Note: Deborah House was trained at the University of Arizona and she had considerable teaching experience at Dine College (formerly Navajo Community College) in Tsaile, NM. Her book is an appreciation of the colonization of the Navajo and the way that Navajo institutions of higher learning have decolonized the Navajo language and contributed to its maintenance.
1. What are some of the key events in the comparatively brief history of Navajo (formal) education?
2. How did Christianity as represented by missionaries and early Navajo converts affect the Navajo students attending boarding school?
3. What were some of the outcomes of the period when Navajos began to exercise self- determination over the schools that served their children?
4. What innovations occurred at the Rough Rock Demonstration School and Navajo Community College?
5. Who do most parents blame for the language shift from Navajo to English that is occurring in younger generations?
6. Describe the educational philosophy at Dine College (aka NCC) as embodied in their mission statement?
7. In practice, how much Navajo is actually used on the Dine College campus?
8. How successful has Dine College been in providing a counterhegemonic institution that promotes Navajo language and culture? (What is a counterhegemonic institution and why would it be important for groups like the Navajo?).