Wednesday, November 5, 2008
having my say
I am really interested in looking at how teachers broach the issue of code switching in their classrooms, if they do at all, and the implications of this such as: How do students feel from dom. and non-dom. discoruses when issues of code swtiching are discussed? My secondary sources discuss the "why" of different discoureses and sometimes the "how", but not so much the "who." Meaning how code switching affects a student's sense of identity and their conception of themselves as individuals and as part of a group in the class. This is the subject matter I want to focus on, namely- how do students deal with code switching? How can the teacher handle it so that students always retain their sense of identity and competance while at the same time challenging them to see the world through a more complicated lens (meaning that there is not just ONE right way to speak or write). My research will fill this gap by getting one on one face time with teachers and studnets who deal with this everyday.
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I really like the idea of this question. I think it is really relevant in current and future classrooms. There are so many mini-"dialects" heard in everyday situations and classrooms that a unifying "standard" is necessary. Yet as teachers, we may come off as "our way is the only way" and students may reject the idea of unification in speech because it may appear as a threat to who they are, as if the school is once again trying to conform them even in the way they speak. I am unclear as to what secondary information you are going to seek, but it seems that in relation to this question, primary sources are more relevant. The ones that you are looking into are definitely good sources, but if you're talking about students' identities, I would focus on the students' perspectives. Secondary sources that might help would be case studies where teachers studied this before.
I can definitely see how this paper would help to give voice to student perspectives. It will be nice to see maybe what tactics in presenting code-switching helped students maintain their identity and respon positively to the code-switching expectation of teachers.
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