A Justice Site
Program
The Workgoups grew from our actual classroom discussions as we discovered how similar our discussions were to the kinds of activities envisioned for professional conference meetings in which colleagues are given the opportunity to exchange views with each other, on topics of mutual concern to their work and interests. Our students were already presenting in formal professional conference meetings, as part of our Moot Court Program. Their experiences, combined with the experiences in our class discussions, convinced us that student academic discourse holds tremendous potential for shifting dominant discourse away from the structural violence of institutional bureaucratization and ritualization of learning outcomes. Introduction
The Workgroup also appeared to be a good vehicle for presenting the final reports of learning from our classes, in which students were permitted to respond to any essay question of their design to illustrate their learning in that class. The themes of this collection of essays, abstracted here, and accessible in their entirety on the Dear Habermas site, provided the structural framework for the Workgroup held by the class. The Workgroup, held on the last day of class, provided a forum in which their could be discussion, professional exchange, and sharing of substantive information that had been addressed in the course. This meant that students were able to formulate their thoughts orally, visually, and in writing, and exchange these communication modes in their final workgroup. We hypothesized that this might prove fruitful in eliminating the structural violence of "testing" in the academy, strengthening a healthier respect for learning.
The Workgroup Programs for each class permit students and teachers from any campus to access our "texts" for incorporation in their own studies and works.
Notes on statistics workgroup on Wednesday, December 6, 2000. Issues
- Relevance to our structural context. Marion pointed out the importance of being able to relate the material to our own experience and activities.
- Agency and choice. Several of you pointed out the importance of your having had enough material to choose issues of interest to you.
- Application to current events. Many of you mentioned the importance of our analysis of the Presidential election. I think that might matter in the sense of being able to share with friends and family what you're learning. That rather recommends current events as a section of the course that should be included, doesn't it? Consider our discussions of the Yanomami, and of postcolonialsim.
- Speaking out. Rosie smiled a lot. I think that means she was seconding what most of you said. Rosie is not shy in terms of her deterimination to achieve and aggressiveness in taking on work. So I was surprised to realize that when it came to joining the discourse, she had more of a tendency to smile than to jump in to the discussion. Same thing for Sherell. But she turned to smile at Rosie instead of smiling at us! Curiouser and curiouser, the more I listen and watch in good faith. Does dominant discourse limit my imaginary of shyness?
- Computer literacy. Literacy for us meant developing ease with movement around the site and finding our way back when we ventured out to the Internet. Cheryl Wilson and Jeanne Anderson were particularly delighted to discover that the Internet offered much that intrigued them. Jeanne created an impressive notebook of materials and a series of links she discovered on her own by following some of the leads on the site. And Cheryl on our last evening was off to that Canadian University art gallery to check out the painting that illustrated one of the discussions we had had in theory class. But, I hadn't written an explanation of the discussion, and she and Lola needed one. You're making me go back and correct my omissions, just like I make you go back and correct yours. But you graciously accepted my oral submission until I could fix the link.
- The importance of rejecting prior labeling. Jeanne Anderson began to vie with her husband for computer time. She has begun to see the structural violence of an instructor having given her an "A" for a sham computer performance when she could have managed that computer quite well. Kindness can be structurally violent, too, when it is governed by an unwarranted unstated assumption, such as the assumption that Jeanne couldn't learn because she was scared by her misconceptions of mathematics.
- Understanding statistics within the context of dominant discourse. Helen had never thought about the structural violence of dominant discourse before, but now she is aware of our adversarial tendency. She said that that orientation will stick with her now. Many of us noticed how much the adversarialism of our dominant discourse induced a fear of mathematics. Jenny did a wonderful illustration of how we could
- The source of the data and the conclusions. Tyron. Most important for him was looking at who did the measurement. Who made the graph? How did they get the data? So we learned that many graphs can be drawn on the same data, and that each portrays the results from a different theoretical perspective. Perhaps the most poignant example of that this semester was Bush declaring that "I won," with Tyron responding "And who drew that conclusion?"
- The order of learning. Many of you recognized the importance of becoming familiar with statistical terms, graphs, tables through topics that interested us, and then moving into SPSS, SDA, GIS, etc. We had tried recoding in the beginning of the semester with the Babbie and Halley book. Made no impression. But when I reintroduced it late in the semester, you took to it like ducks to water. Message: application and understanding first. Then using the software. I had been trying to teach the software first. BIG MISTAKE.
- Putting intertextuality into practice. Sharing across classes, across campuses. Carolyn: Mary said "it's all in your head." Carolyn had taken that discussion from distributive justice and racism, and had shared it with statistics classmates, who were readily agreeing with it. We managed to cross over the barrier of separate classes, and share the learning. Carolyn also applied her understanding of dominant discourse and stuctural violence all semester to the structural violence her daughter was experiencing in school with mathematics.
- Overcoming fear. By the night of our workgroup, when we moved our chairs to a circle for the first time, you knew each others' names; you knew each other. You surprised me by your relative calm and by letting me speak some, too. Theory and distributive justice were much more emotional, involved, and no one could manage to get a word in edgewise, least of all, me. So when I sat down this morning to put up these notes, I was amazed at how much you had to say. I must have equated turmoil and affect with level of contribution. How easy it is to measure inaccurately. Another example of dominant discourse affecting my imaginary: students, in large classes, when engaged in discourse, are noisy and eager, not quiet and reflective. BIG MISTAKE.
- Thinking looks "different" in different contexts.The noise and tumult must be related to the affect of the context in question. In theory we were talking about agency and the constraint of the imaginary. That was a little less noisy than the discourse on racism and the constraint of the imaginary in distributive justice. But in statistics we were reviewing the way we had transformed that constraint from adversarial to cooperative and non-structurally violent.
- Supplementing discussion time with the Internet. And I found that the decibel level and the competition for time to speak was uneven. As the issue is frist introduced, many want to speak, then as we progress, fewer persist. Those who were guiding the forum (me in statistics, Michael in theory, Jai Tee and Jaime in distributive justice) were struggling to make sure that everyone got to speak. But the natural pace of argument precluded that in many instances. Sometimes the argument passes the point at which your contribution makes sense. That made Marlene Veliz' contribution terribly important. She wrote the comment she didn't get to fit in, and it focussed the discussion the following week at our workgroup. The forum on Dear Habermas provides us with some means of balancing the need to participate within the limited time framework we have for face-to-face interaction.
Contributors and Abstracts
Latanya Britt and Valencia Ross. Respect for Learning and for Each OtherAbstract:Joanna Carillo. On Agency and Structural Context.Abstract:Kiesha Cheatham. On Reasoning Through the Definitiion of "Dominant Discourse."Abstract:Samara Kenney. Where Do I Even Start to Define "Dominant Discourse?"Abstract:Bobby Martin. Fellman's Text Provides a Base to Fall Back On.Abstract: Looking at theory in terms of adversarialsim and mutuality gives me a base on which to judge the theories. So Rambo and the Dalai Lama gives me something to fall back on, a toe-hold so I can explore further. (jeanne's rephrasing)Valencia Ross and Latanya Britt. Respect for Learning and for Each OtherAbstract:
Concluding Remarks
I was impressed at the level of trust that we had developed over the course of the semester. I had learned to trust you. I was more willing to see that fear of "Statistics" motivated some of your reactions, and that fear of making the wrong choice in presenting the material or in trusting you motivated some of my reactions. Which of us will ever forget the alternate syllabus? To have come from that point to the point when midsemester you kindly migrated to the center of the classroom, and to the workgroup in which we knew and trusted each other was remarkable. I thank you for the experience.I watched Jenny move from working alone, to working in small groups, to helping others, and to moving clear across the lab to work on GIS maps with Gary, then back to catch up jeanne and Patrice on what they had missed. Jenny, who started out so very precise, insisting upon checking and rechecking everything, was venturing to explain what I had covered in two lectures! And she was doing it softly, without arrogance, without possessiveness. I thank you all for making cooperative learning work for us.
My conclusions are that trust and cooperation helped us all learn statistics more effectively. And it helped me learn that I had been remiss in not teaching GIS and SDA in earlier semesters. By working together to eliminate structural violence, we managed to cover much larger amounts of material, with a pretty good sense of what we would have to go back and work on intensely if we chose to work with statistics. I had just never approached the teaching of statistics that way, and probably never would have without the experience of this class. I even learned how to apply that broad experience approach to our graduate students who were struggling with research. Using our imaginary to overcome some of the normative expectations we have come to accept as "inevitable" worked for me in this course. I hope it did for you, too.
Planning the Workgroup
Stuff we have to know for Workgroup on last day of class.