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Reframing the Achievement Gap: Lessons From Puzzling Students
Author(s) -
Ballenger Cynthia
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the reading teacher
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.642
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1936-2714
pISSN - 0034-0561
DOI - 10.1002/trtr.1810
Subject(s) - cognitive reframing , sociocultural evolution , psychology , reading (process) , pedagogy , mathematics education , social psychology , sociology , linguistics , philosophy , anthropology
The achievement gap has been the focus of a good deal of research, attention, and hopeful new practices, yet it has hardly decreased. Using insights from sociolinguistic and sociocultural studies of classrooms in concert with practices developed by teacher researchers in the tradition of the Brookline Teacher Researcher Seminar, the author proposes a radical reframing of the position, and of the intellectual strength, of students not successfully engaged in school by exploring reading group interactions, focusing on two of her students and her own response to what they said. Considering details from the talk of these students, the author suggests ways in which teachers often miss or misjudge the full understandings and the intellectually rich intentions of many ostensibly less successful students.