A room full of readers?University of Nottingham PGCE ‘Cognition and Learning SIG’

– 20th October 2015

Jessica MasonUniversity of Sheffield

j.l.mason@sheffield.ac.uk @DrofletJess

HOLES Year 7 Mixed

ability 29 students 5 ‘re-

readers’ Teacher 15

years experience

1st year at school

ANIMAL FARM Year 9 Top set 34 students 2 ‘re-

readers’ Teacher 5

years experience

1st year at school

THE DATA2 full Schemes of

Work46 hours of classroom

recordings450,000 words of data

BOOK TALK FROM OTHER SOURCES

Study guides Teacher resourcesGraduate reading

groupOnline discussions

Fanfiction

Schemas

Schema theory makes claims about how we organise and draw on our background knowledge.

Schemas can be adapted via the following processes: Tuning: the modifications of facts or relations within the schema. Restructuring: the creation of new schemas. Schema reinforcement: where incoming facts are new but

strengthen and confirm schematic knowledge. Schema accretion: where new facts are added to an existing

schema, enlarging its scope and explanatory range

(Stockwell 2002: 79–80)

Narrative schemas > Knowledge schemas

Schema theory can be extended/adapted to account for our knowledge of

particular narratives (Giovanelli & Mason 2015; Mason 2014).The same principle can be applied to any classroom topic.

All the information you attach to a text forms your ‘narrative schema’ for that text.

Everything you remember is there, everything you’ve forgotten, isn’t.

Schemas are elastic rather than fixed.

Your narrative schemas change over time, things can be added (accreted), forgotten

things decay. A narrative schema is your version of a text. A knowledge schema is your

version of a topic. ------

This application of schema theory allows us to begin to describe and think about individual difference and subjectivity in students’

knowledge and understanding.

Tappers and Listeners: The Curse of Knowledge

- Newton (1990) conducted a study exploring our confidence in other people’s ability to recognise patterns we already know.

- Never Mind the Buzzcocks style experiment: - ‘Tappers’ tapped out a popular tune for several ‘listeners’;- ‘Listeners’ tried to guess the song based on listening to the

tapping;- ‘Tappers’ were asked to predict how often the listeners would be

able to correctly identify the song. - Newton was interested in how accurate the tappers’

predictions were. This is what she found….

Over-confidence of pattern recognition

‘Typically, the tappers predict that about half the listeners will guess correctly. In fact, only about 3% guess correctly.

Once you have the song in your head, you hear it when you tap the rhythm and you project that knowledge […] to the listener, or at least

you project it more insistently and more often than is warranted.

It is very hard to imagine that other minds are not hearing what you are hearing from the sound of one hand tapping.’

(Turner discussing Newton in Turner 2014: 50)

Schema imbalance in the classroom

Teachers = re-readers/tappers: Complete, rich, comprehensive narrative

schemas.

Often have to try filter schema to match where

students are up to in the text.

Students = (mainly) first-time readers/listeners: Working with incomplete narrative schema for

most of period of study

Accreting from re-readers as well as own reading

Likely to view teacher as ‘expert’ reader with the

‘right’ interpretations and most valuable text

knowledge

Compression and decompression Concept taken from ‘blending theory’ (Fauconnier and Turner 1999: The

Way We Think; Turner 2014: The Origin of Ideas) We often don’t elaborate our underlying thought processes in what we

actually say: this is compression.

Animal Farm allegorically represents the Russian Revolution: Napoleon the pig is

Stalin.

Romeo and Juliet is a tragic love story.

If students accretes their schema on a given text or topic from their teacher’s discourse, they may well be able to repeat these ‘learnt compressions’ in their own work but be unable to decompress it for themselves.

Why are learnt compressions a problem?

Teachers are primed to understand learnt compressions derived from points they originally made themselves, even if students’ explanations are poor. As ‘tappers’, teachers cannot ‘un-know’ the tune. As though students are just tapping on the table but you’re sure you can hear the

song! Risks the presentation of ‘false positives’ because they can create the illusion

of understanding. Even if students can decompress learnt compressions, responses are still likely

to be extremely similar. Teachers are more likely to get bored marking the same thing 30 times: arguably a

contributor to ‘burn out’ Basic knowledge of word meanings can look like successful interpretation. Technical terminology and key words are easily learnt, making it very difficult

for teachers to differentiate ‘learnt compressions’ from true comprehension.

Students aren’t necessarily engaging in any authentic interpretation at all: learning a critical reading rather than how to do one. Learnt

compressions can offer the illusion of understanding.

What does this look like in practice?‘Suddenly, early in the spring, an alarming thing was discovered. Snowball was secretly frequenting the farm by night! The animals were so disturbed that they could hardly sleep in their stalls. Every night, it was said, he came creeping in under cover of darkness and performed all kinds of mischief. He stole the corn, he upset the milk-pails, he broke the eggs, he trampled the seedbeds, he gnawed the bark off the fruit trees. Whenever anything went wrong it became usual to attribute it to Snowball. If a window was broken or a drain was blocked up, someone was certain to say that Snowball had come in the night and done it, and when the key of the store-shed was lost, the whole farm was convinced that Snowball had thrown it down the well. Curiously enough, theywent on believing this even after the mislaid keywas found under a sack of meal. The cows declared unanimously that Snowball crept into their stalls and milked them in their sleep. The rats, which had been troublesome that winter, were also said to be in league with Snowball….

… Napoleon decreed that there should be a full investigation into Snowball's activities. With his dogs in attendance he set out and made a careful tour of inspection of the farm buildings, the other animals following at a respectful distance. At every few steps Napoleon stopped and snuffed the ground for traces of Snowball's footsteps, which, he said, he could detect by the smell. He snuffed in every corner, in the barn, in the cow-shed, in the henhouses, in the vegetable garden, and found traces of Snowball almost everywhere. He would put his snout to the ground, give several deep sniffs, and exclaim in a terrible voice, "Snowball! He has been here! I can smell him distinctly!" and at the word "Snowball" all the dogs let out blood-curdling growls and showed their side teeth. The animals were thoroughly frightened. It seemed to them as though Snowball were some kind of invisible influence, pervading the air about them and menacing them with all kinds of dangers.

(Orwell 1945)

Miranda’s essay

Animals follow Napoleon's rules to avoid punishments. Might be Orwell showing that the pigs have to scare the animals into believing them because they are bad leaders and without fear they wouldn't follow their rules or trust them. Might also be fear of Jones' return - as long as Napoleon is in charge they have animalism and the 7 commandments.

Re. “following”: the animals are like Napoleon's shadow, always doing exactly what he says. This suggests the animals have no freedom, are scared of what Napoleon is capable of. Re. respectful: suggests the animals have respect for Napoleon and trust him. Could also suggest they are scared of him.

Gary B’s essay 'Illustrates that the animals respected Napoleon, despite everything that he had put them through, and that they looked up to him. However, it could also imply that they were scared of him, and did not want to go near him because they disliked him or feared what he might do, because they did not trust him.

Mark W’s essay‘Orwell's way of proving the success of [Napoleon’s use of the dogs to intimidate the other animals is] shown when he says "the animals following at a respectful distance.” Through this quote, it is shown that the other animal follow Napoleon and have accepted him as a leader.

Furthermore the word “respectful” has connotions of great power, something both Stalin and Napoleon had. On the other hand, the power that "respectful" implys a power in which one has earnt the respect of peers who, in turn, lifted them to the top. This is not what Napoleon or Stalin did. They both cast aside their own in a furious scramble for power and the word respectful could be Orwells way of penalising their rise to power or it could be mocking the word itself. As well as this, the word “distance” makes implications that the animals It also implys that Napoleon won't let anyone near him. This mirrors the behaviour of Stalin who, especially after he moved the palace of the Tsars, saw himself as too important to make contact with commoners. At this point in time, as Orwell wrote, "the dictatorship was complete."

References Du Maurier, D. (2003 [1938]) Rebecca. London: Virago Press. Fauconnier, G. & Turner, M. (2002) The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden

Complexity. New York: Basic Books.

Fincher, D. (1999) Fight Club. USA: Twentieth Century Fox.

Giovanelli, M. & Mason, J. (2015) ‘“Well I don’t feel that”: schemas, worlds and authentic interpretation in the classroom’, English in Education 49(1):

Mason, J. (2014) ‘Narrative’ in P. Stockwell & S. Whiteley (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.179-95.

Lockhart, E. (2014) We Were Liars.

Newton, (1990) The Rocky Road from Actions to Intentions. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Stanford University.

Orwell, G. (2013 [1945]) Animal Farm. London: Penguin Books.

Palahniuk, C. (1997) Fight Club. London: Vintage Books. Stockwell, P. (2002) Cognitive Poetics: An Intoduction. London: Routledge.

Turner, M. (2014) The Origin of Ideas. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jessica Mason j.l.mason@sheffield.ac.uk

@DrofletJess

Thank you for listening!

Any questions?