Education research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Classroom Caffeine is here to help. In each episode, I talk with a top education researcher or an expert educator about what they have learned from years of research and experiences.
In this episode, Dr. Mark Dressman talks to us about reading the research, reclaiming autonomy, and making space for kids to do things on their own. Mark is known for his work in the improvement of educational theory, research, and practice, specifically in secondary English and native nations and international settings. Dr. Dressman was a Fulbright Senior Scholar working in Morocco to improve the teaching of English in universities and to study the informal English learning practices of university students. Dr. Dressman is Professor Emeritus in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, and formerly served as Professor and Chair of English at Khalifa University Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. For more information about our guest, stay tuned to the end of this episode.
So pour a cup of your favorite drink and join me, your host, Lindsay Persohn, for Classroom Caffeine research to energize your teaching practice.
Mark, thank you for joining me, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
So from your own experiences and education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now.
Yep, Mark, you've said so many things that really resonate with me and make me think about how we learn English and how we learn any language that isn't our first language. I can certainly sympathize with having three years of high school formalized training in another language and being really I would say barely able to speak it. Maybe I can understand it better than I can speak it, you know, my receptive skills are a bit better than my productive skills.
That's always true. Yes, they all your social skills are always better than your production. Yeah.
Yeah. And so your story of these students who have come to you with perfectly fluent English, when they quote unquote, shouldn't have it right, I think is very intriguing. But I'm, I'm kind of further reminded of the tensions between how we as humans learn and our potential or capacity for learning, particularly in these informal, kind of socially driven sort of settings, versus what we are told in schools that said, the research says, right, I think there and I think that this is a tension that I have a feeling many teachers have felt themselves, but maybe don't necessarily know what to do with these ideas. How do we approach this whenever so often, in schools, we are given a standardized curriculum that doesn't really include informal learning, or or maybe it doesn't even acknowledge informal learning as a real learning space?
Yeah, so I'll let me follow up by saying, I think there are two implications of about what I've said. The first is, you know, for bilingual education in the United States, and bilingual education policy, you know. So when I hear these politicians going on, about how they're afraid that all of these immigrants are going to come to the United States, and they're not going to learn English, I just find it bizarre, you know. I mean, the United States, anywhere in this country is so saturated with the English language, and it has such power and prestige, that it's almost impossible that you wouldn't learn it, you know. Maybe an adult who was resistant, and who sort of stuck in their own community and spoke just, you know, their native language with with members of the family and stuff, maybe they would have a problem. But young little kids going to school, even even teenagers, it's just no way. And so you know, that's one, that's one thing. I really think that the great danger to the United States and to and to bilingual students in school, it's not that they won't learn English or become literate in English, it's that they will lose their first language, right? Their home language, and that that loss of language and that ability to sort of for the United States to sort of to function in a cosmopolitan world will be lost. You know, I mean, that's the that's the real danger. It's just the opposite, I think of what policy tells us. The other thing is, and I think that we, I should qualify my description of my Moroccan students learning of English, because they were really fluent speakers, right? They were great at listening to you. They were great at asking questions and having conversations with you. But they were not great in terms of their literacy. I actually gave the students a reading comprehension test in in Arabic, in French, and in English, which are the three literate languages in Morocco, because I wanted to see how literate they were in these three languages. And one of the things I found was that they really struggled to read simple paragraphs, like a one page story, he would sit there and they would, they would sub vocalize meaning, you know, as they're, as they're reading, they were mumbling and speaking out loud, right? And a page that would take an American college student, probably three minutes to read would take them 10 or 15, even if it was an Arabic, right, it didn't matter what language it was, they just struggle with literacy. They also struggled mightily with writing. And so you know, I'm not saying and one implication of this research that I'm doing in the research that other people around the world are doing with informal language learning is not that we don't need schools, and that you know, in classrooms are obsolete, and we don't need lang- foreign language education anymore, but that there needs to be some sort of balance. And we need to find to find ways of bridging students spoken skills with their written skills. Just to clarify a little
Yeah. Well, I think that's really intriguing. But at least in my understanding, that speaks to language development period, right? We know that young children learning let's say, their first language, they typically sub vocalize until they the progression in their development, where they then transition to silent reading.
Is that Vygotskian idea of you are trying you're struggling to internalize things, right.
Right.
You're speaking is essentially an attempt to sort of move that into a more, a more cognitive mental space, right, where you're doing things completely, silently. Yes.
Well, Mark, what else do you want listeners to know about your work?
In my career, I think I've had two major contributions to the research literature at least. And the first is to throw seeds of doubt on any piece of literature, any piece of research that claims that it has found the truth about how to read and write, or how to how to teach English, or how to read. That this started for me early in my career. I mean, I said earlier that, you know, I really went back to graduate school because I wanted to learn what this research was and let people you know, why why did he have so much authority and power over the us? And so, you know, I got into this and I, as I started to read the research myself in graduate courses at the University of Texas, I started to wonder if the people who were claiming that research says, actually read the research, because some of this research made little or no sense to me. And I just couldn't follow the line of the logic in it. You know, and some people who were regarded, for example, in English education, as ultimate authorities, on reading, like Louise Rosenblatt, for example, it made no sense to me. And I could explain why it made no sense to me and why the if you followed the logic of what she was saying, or what somebody else was saying, you could see that the logic was not very logical. It was there was some there was some real logic there. And then if you trace back the historical origins of the arguments that she was grounding her argument, and you found that she had misread, you know, she misread Dewey, for example, in big in big ways. And so that seemed to be a huge problem, but not just not just sort of English education side, right, reader response, writing workshop sorts of things, but also on the you know, I would say probably on the more political right, right with phonics, right, for example. So a big paper that I published in 1999, it was about the implications of phonemic awareness for the teaching of students to learn to read was by a guy named Keith Stanovich, who citeed all kinds of research on phonemic awareness, and argued that what Americans needed was the surgical strike to come in. And not just just to teach phonics. But for phonics to teach students how to segment spoken language into constituent sounds. He also argued that there was the reason that middle class kids, middle class white kids, mostly learned to read better than and had better test scores on reading tests than children of color and bilingual kids, because of their genetics. He actually said that in the article that, you know, these children have come from homes with superior genotypes. And I was shocked, right, because this is what he says. I also went in and looked at the research that research, and it was very clear that, you know, phonemic awareness is a it's a real phenomenon. I'm not denying that, but it is, it is a phenomenon, that depends on the language that you grew up with, right? So your target your your first language, is the language that you have the most phonemic phonemic awareness in, right? Because every language has a different phonology. And it identifies different sounds differently, right? So in all of this research with bilingual Spanish speaking kids, you have monolingual English speakers testing the kids in English, right? If my phonemic awareness were tested in Spanish, I'd be pretty weak too, right? Because it's Spanish is my fourth best language. You know, people, why didn't people read this? Why didn't they see this? Right? You just wonder, like, I began to wonder if people actually read the research that they claimed was authorizing their policies. And that was true in a lot of other cases. It's also true in this the, in the literature on multi modality and multi literacies. A lot of there's just enormous problems with the logic of that, to believe in multi literacies and to follow the argument of this, you have to also agree to that English, not not just English, but languages in general, that they're arbitrary and unmotivated. Because and the reason that's that's done in the theory is because they want to claim that words and images use the same, the same semiotic rules and system and in fact, they don't, words are essentially symbols, right? But pictures are not symbols, pictures are icons, they are they resemble the thing that they represent, whereas language doesn't. So you know, that's the that's the first thing. You know, I would argue to any teacher that, you know, I would read the research with a grain of salt and with doubt. It doesn't mean it's not true in some part, but it what it means is that the implications of any any particular point of view are limited. And so, you know, I would argue that probably reading is not just, you know, having reading quality literature with children and letting them pick it up on their own. But at the same time, it's not about skilling and drilling them in phonics all day long either, right? The real way is somewhere in the middle. And that's true for all, all of these sort of extremist positions that people in use research to take.
What your, what your saying here to get to kind of bring those ideas together. What I think I'm hearing you say is that so often, research approaches a particular topic with probably some social and cultural blinders. Right?
Yes. Yeah.
We we see what we want to see, we ask the questions that obviously we want to ask or are motivated to ask. But, you know, all research comes from a researcher standpoint, from a particular viewpoint. And so if you have...
With cultural and religious and socio economic blinders on in many cases.
Right, yeah. And without acknowledging that, we're only seeing the ideas and reinforcing those ideas with what we see in the research, right. So so yeah, I think the idea of blinders is, is really important to highlight here, because I think that that can help all of us, teachers and researchers to approach the research that we're reading with a critical eye, right? What is missing from this conversation?
What's wrong with this theory? That's what people should be continually be asking themselves, and they don't. So I will also say that, you know, what you see in literacy is a kind of continuing ongoing, binary opposition between two two ways of thinking about texts, right. And one way is to say that a text is the ultimate authority, and it has a literal meaning, and you have to conform to what the text says, and you have to conform with what particular ways of reading it. The other says that a text is an open, you know, it's an open thing, and it's all about interpretation, right. And those two points of view about what reading is, are incredibly, historically, deeply ingrained in our cultural psyche. And it's just true. I mean, this is this goes back to, you know, it goes back to Martin Luther, right, it goes back to the Reformation, and discussions about whether, you know, people should be have the right to read the Bible and interpret it on their own, or whether they should have a priest stand up in church every Sunday and tell them what it says. And at some fundamental level, that that is what undergirds the discussion between top down versus bottom up ways of learning to read. It's what drives this idea of, you know, in English education, of, you know, closed, close reading versus, you know, reader response, versus disciplinary literacy. It is, you know, it is essentially the paradigm that we are all sort of locked in to psychically, and culturally, and we need to be aware of that, right? Because neither side has the entire truth, there's got to be something in the middle, right? Where people say, Yes, I am free to interpret this text. But on the other hand, the text doesn't say anything I want it to, right. So, I mean, that would be that would be my first point. That's, that's my first point about doubt. The second point, it goes back to this idea of, from my dissertation, seeing watching kids in the school library, and from my current research with students teaching themselves English, digitally, is that you know, there's a real need, in classrooms for teachers to find a way make space for kids to do things on their own. How we learn and what we learn and how much we learn and how motivated we are, really does depend on the amount of freedom that we might have. And, and also some of the resources that we might have to do things now. And when I say freedom, it's not just do whatever you want, kid. But the real skill of teaching is to create spaces, and create opportunities for kids to learn things on their own and to teach themselves, because eventually, and when it really comes down to it, that's sort of how we learn everything is through a decision to to learn it on our own. And so that would be my second point for teachers and why they think my major contribution is this idea of the need for space and for learners to be autonomous.
I think that's really great advice. And it also reminds me of sort of the nature of the world and the nature of research as always unfinished. And I think sometimes we forget that right that that the conversation has never really conclusive or concluded there are always new questions to ask and new ideas to pursue and new new versions of truths to pursue, right?
That's true but by the fact is that those questions are always being shaped by the past. Right?
Absolutely.
So we can't we, the past is always present in our present and in our future and we can never neglect that. We need to understand what's come before us because that the patterns just keep repeating themselves over and over again, history does repeat itself. And we, you know, it's going to continue to repeat itself. And we need to be prepared ourselves for how to deal with that right not to pretend that we can escape it.
So in my mind, the advice you're sharing here, the ideas that you've uncovered, through your own work and through your own observations are, again, sort of polar opposites between what you're saying and what is often happening in schools, right? We're...
What's happening in research, too, right? Within the research discourse community, people have people have become very rigid and very, very ideologically bound. You know, and if you don't conform to their way of thinking, you don't, you know, you don't deserve to be published. And that's a huge problem that yeah. And in schools is the same way, you know, principals and school districts that say, the research says, I would, you know, I would, I would just argue with teachers should ask to see the research. They should find out what that research is, they should go to the local university library and look it up for themselves. And they should read it for themselves, because they would probably be very surprised that you know, what it really says.
And all ideas, particularly in those kinds of conversations about professional development, so to speak, they tend to be abbreviated and highly selective. And so you're right, understanding the context from which those ideas were even born, I think gives us a much better understanding of the research and what it is actually telling us.
Absolutely, absolutely. My first advice to teachers working in schools today would be to read the literature themselves, the research literature themselves, and to question it and always question. If you're a teacher in a in a school, you are probably as smart as the people who are running the show. Don't be intimidated by them. You can read this stuff, and you can figure it out for yourself, and you should go to the primary sources, instead of allowing people to sort of distill it for you. The second point I would make would be again, that you know, the way to survive, and the way for your kids to to survive in educational contexts that are increasingly very driven by programmed instruction, is to just see if you can't find some space, or make some space for you and for your kids to do the things that are important to you, in terms of learning. When I was in Texas, doing my dissertation, you know, I was in Texas. And it was a you know, you go into elementary schools, and yes, there's a lot of testing, yes, there's a lot of control. But you can find spaces and the the ability of some teachers to find ways to create space in their classrooms, especially in the afternoon to do things on their own and have really, really engaging, authentic teaching and learning was often you know, what was possible. So for example, there's a there's a, there's an article that I wrote, and I think it was published in 1998, or 99. In English Language Arts. It's called Mrs. Wilson's University. And it's the story of a third grade teacher in one of the schools that I was doing research in, who said, We have to teach for the tests, we have to practice for the, for the test, I can't remember what was called in Texas at the time, but in the afternoon, when we finish studying, right, then we have time in the leftover time, right? We have we have some some opportunity. And she what she did was she organized her class into what she called Mrs. Her name was Mrs. Wilson. She called it Mrs. Wilson's University. She put the desks in three big groups, in rows in the classroom. And she had a College of Science, a College of Math, and I think a College of Arts or something. And kids organized themselves and sorted themselves into whatever college they wanted to belong to, right. And then she had for them a default research activity, or they could come up with something themselves, right. So they, they would spend this time which is like, just sort of went, you know, time that we would otherwise be wasting, she said, to do these research projects, and they would go to the library, and they'd find these nonfiction books, and sometimes fiction books on things that they, you know, wanted to study, right? They got very interested in sharks. At one point, this College of Science did and so she went to the school library and got all the books on sharks and the, the kids did research and they had to do projects. And then she, you won't believe this, she she showed them the movie Jaws. And you would think that that was crazy, right? It's an R rated movie. How does this teacher get away with showing third graders an R rated movie, but she showed it to them, and she would fast forward past the parts where there was language they weren't allowed to hear and things like that, but she essentially deconstructed the movie with them while they were watching it. So the really horrible parts were at somebody's getting chewed up. They would stop, and they will talk about the special effects and how they how they did that. Right. So which sort of, you know, remove the, the horror of it for them. And she, you know, and there's there's a kind of political subplot in this movie where you know, it's the summer, and the mayor doesn't want to close to the beach because they're going to lose business, you know. They have this whole discussion about that she did science with them, because you know, there's a point where there's the shark's mouth, and they measure the radius of the shark's mouth. And so she talked about how you measure the radius, and how that couldn't have been the shark because the bite marks on the victims, you know, were on a wider curve than the sharks jaw. It was it was amazing that what she did, and she, but the point is that she did all of this, when she said, we have time to waste, right. And of course, the irony of all of this was, this was actually the time in the day when there was the most learning going on with these kids in the classroom. So that's, that's an article I would, I would urge everybody to read and get maybe maybe get some inspiration from Mrs. Wilson's University in Language Arts, published in 1998, or 99.
Thank you so much for that, Mark. And we'll we will link to that on your guest page as well. We'll put that full title of the article and the journal there as well for listeners.
Thank you.
Sure. That response actually segues really nicely into our last question. Given the challenges of today's educational climate, what message do you want teachers to hear?
Oh, well, I think I just answered that question, right. I mean, two things, learn to read the literature for yourself, right. And the second thing is, find spaces. And you might have to engage in some sort of some sort of creative rhetoric to do it. But find spaces in your day, where right where you can encourage kids to do things autonomously, and talk to read and go to the library and do more than what's programmed, right, the programmed instruction that you're sort of being forced to do all the time. I think it's really important for teachers to find ways to begin teaching social studies, again in elementary schools. I think it's really important for them to find ways to do art and literature, through the use of things and through kids doing things that are really interesting and engaging for themselves, that they acquire the skills and literacy and numeracy that they're supposed to be learning for the test. Right. So that's the irony of it. I mean, I would guess my, my final word would be to think ironically. Look for the irony in the situations, right, and look for how you can exploit that space between what you're supposed to be doing, and wasted time, right?
Hopefully, in looking for that irony, it does bring a little bit more of a playful nature back to education.
Yes. Have fun, you know, you gotta find a way to have fun. The world is not fun right now. Right, War in Ukraine, crazy decisions by the Supreme Court, a president who wants to, you know, overturn the United States government. We got to find a way to to laugh and see the absurdity and all of this right, otherwise, we are lost.
Right? Otherwise, it's just a very, very heavy place to be right now.
Exactly.
And certainly, that's, while I think we always want to be realistic with our students, we also have to acknowledge that this is their childhood, and this is their opportunity to to be curious, and you know, to have a sense of wonder about the world, rather than, than it being so scary.
Yeah. You know, I got probably 20, 30 years left in my life. But these kids have 70, 80 years left in their lives, right, 90 years left in their lives, we cannot bog them down with a sense of hopelessness about the world. We just can't it's it's unfair to them. And it's it's a miserable way to exist.
Right. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. Well, Mark, thank you so much for your time today. And thank you for your contributions to the field of education.
Thank you very much. It was great talking to you today.
Thank you.
Dr. Mark Dressman is known for his work and the improvement of educational theory, research, and practice, specifically in secondary English and in Native nations and international settings. His research projects have engaged multimodal texts, including print, image and sound as he works to help improve educational websites and multimedia. He is also engaged with poetry, social theory, literacy policy, literacy in school libraries, and English language acquisition. Dr. Dressman's work has been sponsored by the Fulbright Foundation. His work has appeared in reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Literacy Research, Journal of Curriculum Studies, and many times in the Research in the Teaching of English. Dr. Dressman is the author of Using Social Theory and Educational Research A practical Fuide and more recently, an editor and contributor to the Handbook of Informal Language Learning, and he is also an author of the forthcoming English Language Learning in the Digital Age Learner Driven Strategies for Adolescents and Young Adults, published with Wiley Blackwell. He also contributed to the Routledge International Handbook of the Arts and Education, Handbook of Qualitative Research in Education, and Literacy Research Methodologies. Mark is formerly an editor of Research in the Teaching of English. Dr. Dressman was a Fulbright Senior Scholar working in Morocco to improve the teaching of English in universities and to study the informal English learning practices of university students. Dr. Dressman is Professor Emeritus in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and served as professor and chair of English at Khalifa University Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
For the good of all students Classroom Caffeine aims to energize education research and practice. If this show provides you with things to think about, don't keep it a secret. Subscribe, like, and review this podcast through your preferred podcast provider. I also invite you to connect with the show through our website at WWW dot classroom caffeine.com where you can learn more about each guest, find transcripts for many episodes, explore episode topics using our tagging feature, support podcast research through our survey, request an episode topic or a potential guest, or share your own questions that we might respond to through the show. You could also leave us a voice message or a text message at 1-941-212-0949. We would love to hear from you. As always, I raise my mug to you teachers. Thanks for joining me.
