Language and Knowledge

Buehl explains “how experts think within a discipline, how they question, examine, organize, and represent knowledge through language” (p.46). I would like to point out how Buehl emphasizes the power language holds. This reminds me of my IB “Theory of Knowledge” class where one of the themes was language and knowledge. We would question how much someone can know or share if they don’t have the language to express themselves. This relationship lies heavily as well on another individual’s interpretation- how they receive the information/message and to some extent, how we make sense of the world. This can be applied to vast topics and subjects such as math and history. Within each topic/subject, there’s a large amount of terminology used that is essential to our understanding. As Buehl explains, within each classroom there are discourse communities(p.51) where teachers should support and mentor students to develop literacy skills. If students are feeling uneasy and are avoiding complex texts, teachers should work toward building confidence in the classroom through group, paired, and individual practice.

However, it is important to point out that when we think of literacy we do not assume texts or readings. Graphs and videos are examples of texts students can analyze and apply literacy skills. "Hair Love” depicts a story mainly through the use of visuals. We notice facial expressions, actions, and movements that capture how a father is learning to style his daughter’s hair. Through resilience and understanding of how important his daughter’s hair is, he was able to learn and succeed. Even though there were little to no words, I was able to comprehend what themes the producers had. This can translate into the power images hold and how individuals perceive them. Similarly to graphs, both contain numerous information but dissecting it into “images” allows for better comprehension. The language in this is the images we see and what information we take from them.

As a future math teacher, both written and visual material will be commonly used in the classroom. Conceptualizing these topics allows students to understand how everything is both independent and dependent of each other, i.e. multiplication, division, and fractions.



Comments

  1. Ed EscatelOctober 7, 2024 at 11:43 AM

    I thought chapter two did a good job at both demonstrating what Comprehensive Reading looks like and I also really liked that they mentioned that "reading" or "comprehension" is more than just written text in a paragraph, but visual information in general.

    In my subject of Spanish, I end up teaching much more than just Spanish literacy but also things like how to read a weather forecast, how to read an infograph, how to read a spreadsheet, a news report, etc. Not only do they need to be able to understand the language (English, Spanish) but also the format and how these visual medias are presented and often I end up helping them more with the format than with the actual language. Granted my students are 6-8th graders with limited experience in the world, but inter-disciplinary literacy is important in every class.

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  2. Julie ChyzynskiOctober 7, 2024 at 1:21 PM

    Hair Love is a great example of literacy that is not a text. To understand the film one must be able to use context clues to make inferences and educated guesses, it requires critical thinking to understand the message behind the film. It made me think about who will teach students to examine and understand a film in this way? English and history teachers cover context clues and making inferences, however as you mentioned, the film heavily relies on analyzing images which I feel is left to the math teachers.

    In math we need to teach students how to read images and translate symbols and signs into words. In a way, math is like a silent film where you have to use what you know and what you see to decide what's being asked of you and how to move forward with solving the problem.

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  3. Maya ViraOctober 7, 2024 at 2:29 PM

    I found it interesting that you connected this to IB "Theory of Knowledge" class. I also took the IB program, so I am familiar with the "Theory of Knowledge" class. Language is very important in a lot of ways. The way we communicate depends on our knowledge of language and if we can understand one another. It is, therefore, crucial for teachers to provide instruction in a way that people can understand at their grade level. As you mentioned, there are many different ways to spread knowledge. The different forms of literacy, for example, texts or films, serve different modes of how the information is being absorbed. In films such as "Hair Love," knowledge is communicated without language and instead with expressions, actions, and visuals. If we read a story like "Hair Love" instead of watching the film, we would get a different feeling or sense of what the author or director is trying to convey.

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  4. Emily PachecoOctober 7, 2024 at 2:49 PM

    I like that you point out literacy is not just limited to texts and readings. In math there are graphs and symbol notations that we use that will confuse someone who is unfamiliar with what it means. For example, making the connection that U is a union symbol and means that we are taking the union of 2 sets or that f(x) is a function. Like Buehl states in chapter 2, "readers of mathematics need to be bilingual as they constantly switch back and forth between reading math sentences and symbolic notation" (p.66). As future math teachers, it's important that students develop the skills to translate symbolic notation into written words and vice versa.

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