Roundtable Presentation Handout

Cloning Michelle Pfifer, Danny Glover and Hillary Swank:

 Tweaking Teacher Ethos for African American Students Perception in Urban Environments 

1. Position
1. Strategic teacher ethos will improve learning outcomes for African American students in urban environments.
2. Defining Teacher Ethos
1. Aristotle Speaker Ethos + Quintilian Orator Credibility
2. 3 Dimensions of Credibility 
1. Competence
2. Trustworthiness
3. Dynamism 
3. Implications of Urban Environments
1. Black Cultural Ethos (BCE)
2. Sociohistoric Experiences

1. Solutions 
1. Practice Black Cultural Ethos with Credibility Dimension of Competence
2. Acknowledgement of Sociohistoric African American Experience with Credibility Dimension of Trustworthiness  
3. Personal Interest and Investment with Credibility Dimension of Dynamism 

Critical Thinking About Truth in Teaching: The Epistemic Ethos Research Blog #4

Vandenberg, Donald. “Critical Thinking about Truth in Teaching: 

       The Epistemic Ethos.” Educational Philosophy and Theory        

       41.2 (2009): 155-165. Print. 

Vandenberg discusses western education is Sophist in the sense of teaching truth. This questioning of actual truth is challenged more so with controversial issues. “Socratic ignorance, [taking a neutral approach to one’s own education]” (157) is a platform for devising a solution for epistemic ethos. Vandenberg explicitly states truth should be, “...within its own operations...thinking for educational purposes should be domain specific (156). 

A solution to epistemic ethos in teaching truth lies in a adopting a Socratic sense of neutrality backed by a combination of Dewey and Plato educational philosophies. Vandenberg offers six levels of neutrality for sustaining truth particularly during controversial subjects. These levels revolve in the typical classroom and range from exclusion of controversial issues, presenting issues objectively, providing both sides of the issue, and the instructor providing advantages and disadvantages just to name a few.

Truth can be taught if the teacher stays within one of the six levels of neutrality and is in cohorts with a Neo-Modern approach to teaching truth (162).

1. Teacher is loyal to knowledge and/or skill being learned.
2. Follow Harry Broudy’s philosophy that the teacher persuades the learner to perceive, classify, and related ad does the expert in a given domain of knowledge. 
3. In respects to David Hume and Immanuel Kant, accept a loose, flexible combination of the main theories of knowledge that retain half-truth of each domain.

In the end truth in teaching for epistemic ethos must be flexible domain wise, and as Maxine Green stated “require neutrality in regards to controversies regarding various epistemologies. 

This scholarship does not seem to satisfy the original inquiry. This Socratic resolution of simple neutrality seems too simple for such a complex pedagogical concern. It is safe to say teacher ethos in very influential on teaching and learning and can impacts many domains of pedagogical practice, not just truth inquiries and critical thinking. The introduction of this article briefly suggests the influence constructionism has had on western education. Teacher ethos appears to be  directly correlated with educational philosophies and varies greatly based on shared or separate cultures experiences between teacher and student. Moving forward I will continue to inquiry about teacher ethos, but carefully examine epistemic teacher educational philosophy and the social and cultural contexts. I will also examine other forms of inquiry impacted by ethos not just the search for truth.  Two questions posed by Vandenberg provide an appropriate fork in the road:

1. What is good knowledge?
2. What is knowledge good for?

Research Blog #3

Shor, Ira. “What Is Critical Literacy?” Journal for Pedagogy, Pluralism & Practice 4.1

(1997): n. pag. Web. 3 Oct 2011. 

http://www.lesley.edu/journals/jppp/4/shor.html

Shor explicitly explains the practice of critical literacy and also “shows” opportunities for critical literacy through an ongoing narrative of social experiences in 1950’s-1990’s. Critical literacy operates on the premise that the sense of “self” globally is a social construction. Traditionally literacy is a “social action through language in a large culture” (Shor), yet the only way to question this “social construction” is to “learn to read and write as part of the process of becoming conscious of one’s experience as a historically constructed within power relations” -- the ideal practice of critical literacy. 

The narrative functioned well as a supplementary tool for the application of this type of theory, and to validate it as not just a radical subjective retaliation to social powers. Social powers were defined as the status quo guided by white supremacy. The status quo was symbolized by social connotations of the “ business suit”. The narrative described the perception of a East European minority living in the slums of New York City. The narrator’s experiences were described and opportunities where critical literacy could have provided clarity or change was inserted. For example, a classroom scene was described in a 3rd grade classroom recently integrated. The classroom teacher attempted to use real world connections to the material and orally surveyed which students’ fathers wore a “suit” to work. The narrator described only white children to have raised their hands and identified this scene as an opportunity for critical literacy. 

Shor demonstrates an appropriate familiarity with respected rhetoricians such as: Kenneth Burke, Pauls Freire, Michel Foucault and Raymond Williams. He validates the rhetorical significance for critical literacy practice by juxtaposing Burke’s “symbolic action” with language acting as a social force and critical literacy as a means to “remake ourselves and our country” (Shor). 

This article confirmed I take for granted the “no brainer” idea that everyone is aware of the social constructions of literary practices. Critical literacy seems reminds me of basic common sense. It may be a bad idea to solely rely on critical literacy during written instruction in the public sector because it seems to lack the strategies common core standards require. However, from a rhetorical standpoint the act of critical literacy is reflective of the initial stage of undergraduate rhetorical study discussed in Brereton. The intent of the discipline as Brereton cited, “...a discipline that must last the student through life, must be his resource whenever he has occasion to write...it is preparing in secret for that future when the student shall begin to think for himself..” 136. Those original intentions of rhetorical study are ideal intentions of ELA teachers in the public setting and the ultimate goal of ELA standards for communication via writing. 

Race, Culture, and the Education of African Americans

Lynn, Marvin. “Race, Culture, and the Education of African Americans.” Educational 

Theory 56.1 (2006): 107-119. print.

Lynn analyzes three approaches to the study of African American education. In his analysis, he debunks ideologies developed by Elaine Richardon, Peter Murrell and John Ogbu, all respected scholars in the field of African American education. Lynn accuses the scholars of being guilty of sociologist Charles Valentine’s  “uses and abuses culture” theory (109). This theory simply states their is an overlapping of the terms “culture” and “society”. For example, Ogbu blames Black culture’s poor attitude about education as the cause for the achievement gap and suggests changing a cultural attitude to see results. Elaine Richardson suggests pedagogical practices that avoid “banking education (forcing students to learn skills without connecting them to broader social, political, and economic processes in society)” and address social and academic needs of students instead (110). Lastly, Peter Murrell believes pedagogy should draw primarily from the lived realities of African American learners. These ideologies are all considered abuses of “culture” and not a premise for pedagogical practice to stand on. 

Lynn later provides a solution that social scientist find far more practical than approaches of the aforementioned scholars. This solution is critical race theory (CRT). CRT is “a wider body of knowledge including ethnic studies, sociology, anthropology, education and more (116). This approach is supposed to allow more flexibility to appropriately address African American learners. 

After thoroughly reading this article, I immediately began to think about classic Aristotle and Sophist practices, and how they can be useful for pedagogical strategy. As a rhetorician, how can I meet the needs of my audience? In this case the audience is African American learners who already have a distrust for “white supremacy” education. Do I think of rhetorical strategies as an educator or as a Black educator? Does my race give me an advantage in a rhetorical stand point in regards to ethos? Is this the Aristotelian practice educators need to think about when teaching minority students? It seems evident the distrust that is getting in the way of education is not one of logic but more so a judgement of intent. Findings in this article especially from Elaine Richardson and Peter Murrell suggest Black educators have an advantage over their counterparts pedagogically, although Valentine and other social scientist question the credibility of this belief. White educators may need to bring Sophist strategies to convince their audience to trust them. As a Black educator, it is important to me to maintain my credibility as a professional and would not want to rely solely on my common ground culturally as my only rhetorical resource. This article was a starting point for me to start researching rhetorical strategies I can use beyond ethos to motivate my disadvantaged, distrustful, uninterested African American learners. I must admit before reading this article I was comfortable with relying on my cultural common ground as my primary rhetorical strategy to motivate. 

Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments

Hocks, Mary E. “Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments.” 

College Composition and Communication 54.1 (2003): 629-656. Print.

Literacy demands of the 21st century cannot ignore the presence of digital writing environments. Visual rhetoric is the most common convention that makes literacy possible in non-traditional platforms. Hocks investigates how teaching and learning of visual rhetoric is possible. Visual rhetoric developed by instructors are analyzed as well as visual rhetoric designed by post secondary students. Inevitably, Hocks provides enough research and analysis for the reader to understand the cognitive process of evaluating visual rhetoric and how the result of this instructor student hypertext is a more informed, productive student. Post secondary students end up not only satisfied by what was learned, but by their contribution to the authentic learning experience. 

Hocks cited audience stance, transparency, and hybridity as the keys to the operation of  visual rhetoric in electronic environments. Audience stance is the ethos the author creates to engage their audience. Transparency is the use of established conventions such as print to help deliver the new visual rhetorical strategies. Imagine the transparency strategy as training wheels, and the development of new academic conventions as the bike without training wheels. Transparency is a tool to introduce new conventions. For example RSS feeds, would be a great example of an end result of transparency. Lastly, hybridity is a combination of visual and verbal design. 

Hocks analyzed scholarly hypertexts from Anne Wysocki and Christine Boese. These two scholars appeared to have a goal of introducing their audiences to new academic conventions. They took into the account the needs of their audience and began with linear text. The more engaged the audience became within the hypertext, the more opportunities were available for new conventions. The audiences of these two hypertexts were not analyzed, however students reactions were investigated that were exposed to similar hypertexts on the world wide web. These results documented student exposure to new academic conventions via audience stance, transparency and hybridity.  Students ended up enjoying an authentic learning experience where students were active not passive learners. 

This article was interesting and informative because I never realized how important transparency was for us to make this transition into the world of hypertext. I agree we do  use traditional rhetorical strategies from print and other sources to become comfortable in a digital environment, but we end up developing new rhetorical strategies in this setting, particularly with hypertext. As a digital native it seems natural to have these “visual literacies” that are maybe more of a conscious effort than I would have ever realized. In the past I had such a hard time understanding hypertext in print format because I was used to only reading text one way. Yet, in a digital environment the options of hypertext does provide a sense of freedom and dominance.