"What Kind of Person..." - Analyzing SLIFE Reading Comprehension Test Results

Recently, I was analyzing the results of student literacy assessments with a colleague.  We noted that reading comprehension questions which asked the reader to classify a character as a certain "kind" of person were particularly difficult for the adolescent SLIFE we had tested. Questions that began with, "What kind of person is...," were typically met with silence or with the response "good" or "bad."

I was immediately reminded of a section (pg. 53-54) from Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word by Walter Ong. In it, Ong refers to a series of interviews that A.R. Luria conducted among illiterate and semi-literate persons in remote areas of Uzbekistan in the 1930's.  Ong notes that:

Luria’s illiterates had difficulty in articulate self-analysis... Luria put his questions only after protracted conversation about people’s characteristics and their individual differences (1976, p. 148). A 38-year-old man, illiterate, from a mountain pasture camp was asked (1976, p. 150), ‘What sort of person are you, what’s your character like, what are your good qualities and shortcomings? How would you describe yourself?’ ‘I came here from Uch-Kurgan, I was very poor, and now I’m married and have children.’ ‘Are you satisfied with yourself or would you like to be different?’ ‘It would be good if I had a little more land and could sow some wheat.’ Externals command attention. ‘And what are your shortcomings?’ ‘This year I sowed one pood of wheat, and we’re gradually fixing the shortcomings.’ More external situations. ‘Well, people are different - calm, hot-tempered, or sometimes their memory is poor. What do you think of yourself?’ ‘We behave well - if we were bad people, no one would respect us’ (1976, p. 15). Self-evaluation modulated into group evaluation (‘we’) and then handled in terms of expected reactions from others. Another man, a peasant aged 36, asked what sort of person he was, responded with touching and humane directness: ‘What can I say about my own heart? How can I talk about my character? Ask others; they can tell you about me. I myself can’t say anything.’

 I couldn't see my students giving those exact answers, but the pragmatic style of the responses and the emphasis on concrete details rather than abstract categories sounded very familiar!  Ong's explanation of this tendency stands out for me as still being particularly relevant:

These are a few samples from Luria’s many, but they are typical. One could argue that responses were not optimal because the respondents were not used to being asked these kinds of questions, no matter how cleverly Luria could work them into riddle-like settings. But lack of familiarity is precisely the point: an oral culture simply does not deal in such items as geometrical figures, abstract categorization, formally logical reasoning processes, definitions, or even comprehensive descriptions, or articulated self-analysis, all of which derive not simply from thought itself but from text-formed thought. Luria’s questions are schoolroom questions associated with the use of texts, and indeed closely resemble or are identical with standard intelligence test questions got up by literates. They are legitimate, but they come from a world the oral respondent does not share.

This passage reminded me of the power of literacy and the ability of text-based education to profoundly affect how we think about ourselves and others.  It also reminded me of the need to interpret reading comprehension questions with caution.  Our SLIFE who had difficulty answering the "What kind of person..." questions could often recall specific details and events from the story.  It wasn't necessarily that the text was too advanced for them to understand and that we needed to give them easier stories.  It was just that they were thinking about the story differently and focusing on different aspects of it.  This does not mean that we should avoid teaching them the skills for character analysis or the abstract vocabulary for describing kinds of characters.  Instead, I would suggest that we continue to do so, but that we teach those things with texts at their appropriate decoding levels and with content which they find engaging.  We should not to restrict them to texts designed for less mature learners while we build those character analysis skills and vocabulary banks.


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Luria, A. R. (1976) Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations, ed. Michael Cole, trans. by Lopez-Morillas, M. & Solotaroff, L. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press

Ong, W. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London, England: Methuen

Segregation vs Inclusion? or Assimilation vs Diversity? (Part 1)

Aren't alternative programs and outreach schools for specific cultural groups a form of segregation?  I have heard this question posed explicitly several times in the last few years, but I hear it implied or even assumed far more often.  It is an accusation that stings, because for many years I have identified myself as a strong advocate for educational inclusion.  The term "segregation," with it's connotations of discrimination and bias against diversity, is the antithesis of my beliefs as an educator.  And yet the students in my small Mennonite Outreach school are in a building separate (segregated?) from the public high school in our rural community.  Is this not a contradiction?

I have spent a lot of time researching, pondering and discussing this issue, and I could probably write a book about it.  This blog is not that book.  My intentions here are more modest; I just wish to share a few key ideas that rarely get mentioned in those discussions.  It seems to me that some important considerations are too often being missed. I hope to show how these considerations have shifted my thinking away from a perspective of segregation vs inclusion towards one of assimilation vs diversity.  It may take a few posts to get there, however.

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One key component missing from the discussion has been a full appreciation of the significance of cultural heritage as a form of inheritance.  I see how important it is, for example, for the Low German Mennonite families in my school pass on their language, their faith, and their traditions.  Most of them seem to value this cultural inheritance well above wealth, social status, or educational attainment.  They know that their forebears sacrificed a great deal and endured multiple migrations to preserve that heritage, and they feel a strong duty to communicate that inheritance to their children.

At the same time, I see how challenging it is for them to maintain their heritage in the face of the social and economic pressures that they encounter when they move to Canada. In Preserving Cultural Heritage in the Context of Migratory Livelihoods, Luann Good Gingrich describes and analyzes these challenges in great detail.  She explains how language, education, and work are the primary tools of inheritance in traditional cultures and religions, but how it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, for them to use these tools for that purpose in their new context. The necessary act of migration, which helped preserve the cultural heritage in the past, now threatens to spoil the inheritance.  This double-bind which the immigrant families experience is distressing and confusing and results in divisions within families, churches and communities.  Some will end up rejecting this inheritance altogether and separating from their communities.   Others try to hold on to some aspects of their heritage while adopting other, sometimes conflicting, practices.  Still others will try to maintain the heritage as fully as possible, even if it ends up resulting in severe hardship and isolation.  None of these paths is easy, and each one comes with internal as well as external conflict.

It is easy for those of us who do not experience that conflict to misinterpret the actions and motivations of those who do.  One prime example is when we ask "Why are they so reluctant to send their kids to school?"  We can be tempted to respond out of hurt or rejection, assuming that the issue is primarily about our practices or beliefs that offend them.  We can get overly focused on whether or not to allow Halloween celebrations or books about dinosaurs, or whether to require students to change clothes for gym class.  This focus can lead us to feelings of resentment that lurk behind questions such as, "How far do we need to go to accommodate for them?" and "Why do they get special treatment when others don't?"  At other times we may respond with criticism and judgment, such as when we complain about students who take off religious holidays that they don't understand or when we accuse the parents of hypocrisy for allowing their children to party with other Mennonite teens while rejecting public schools for fear of the "corrupting" influence of the non-Mennonites.

In each of these cases, we make assumptions that miss the point. It never was about us or about their rejection of us.  Instead, it was about the challenges and contradictions that these families face in trying to preserve and pass on their valued inheritance when the old tools of inheritance are either no longer available to them or are no longer effective.

In the meantime, it is necessary to recognize that the false assumptions we make interfere with our ability to respond with empathy and respect for the families who face this dilemma.  Without that empathy and respect, we can not expect to be trusted.  And without that relationship of respect and trust, we can not expect Low German Mennonite families to participate fully in the public education system.  This, it seems to me, is the context that must be considered for any meaningful conversation about segregation vs inclusion of Mennonite students.

This is not the only consideration, however, in in future posts I will address a few other key points.

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Good Gingrich, L. (2014), Preserving Cultural Heritage in the Context of Migratory Livelihoods. International Migration, 52: 1–20. doi: 10.1111/imig.12066

What Factors Affect the Resiliencey of SLIFE?

A little while back, I mentioned the work of Christopher Browder and how I found his research on the education of SLIFE to be very significant.  Recently I have been re-reading his Phd Thesis, which focused on risk and resilience factors in the educational outcomes of SLIFE.  Some of the main findings of that study were that:

• On average, the SLIFE studied had lower achievement on the standardized tests than non-SLIFE English language learners.
• The lower standardized scores for SLIFE were largely due to their lower English proficiency at the time they took the test.
• Lower English proficiency at testing seems mainly to have resulted from having arrived with lower English proficiency and lower first language literacy.
• English acquisition, however, was also slower for SLIFE than other ELs.
• ESOL classes helped students to acquire English faster, and SLIFE generally took more ESOL classes than non-SLIFE English learners.
• Students with lower L1 literacy acquired English more slowly.
• Higher parental education was significantly associated with higher test scores for all ELs; this association was even stronger for SLIFE than for non-SLIFE.
• In general SLIFE reported lower academic self-concepts, pedagogical caring, and social integration than non-SLIFE. 
• After controlling for differences in English proficiency, students’ perceptions of social distance appeared to predict their academic achievement on standardized tests better than their academic self-concept and the other protective or risk factors.  
• Students who perceived a higher social distance had lower HSA scores, even though they had higher English proficiency.
• Low L1 literacy was not well correlated with beginner English and schooling gaps.

Each of these findings have important implications, but the real significance, it seems to me, comes from weaving them together.  In upcoming posts I will dig into those implications and flesh out the bigger picture that Browder's study paints for us.