Situated Language and Learning with Bryan Brown

In this interview Bryan Brown, we discuss the importance of language in education. In particular, we discuss the role of language in teaching and learning, discursive identity, situated language and learning, the importance of representation in education, the role of language on stress, how smartphones and virtual communication platforms (e.g., Zoom) could change learning, and many other topics relevant to CS education and learning.

Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
in this week's episode i am interviewing
brian brown in our discussion we
primarily focus on the importance of
language in education
in particular we discuss the roles of
language in teaching and learning
as well as some concepts such as
discursive identity and situated
language and learning which
are some things that i have kind of
mentioned in some of the other podcasts
we also discussed the importance of
representation in education
and some of the research that brian has
done in that area as well as some of his
research on the role of language on
stress
and how smartphones and virtual
communication platforms such as zoom
could actually change
learning and has already changed
learning as well as many other topics
related to education
and learning as always you can find a
link to the show notes in the
description of the app that you're
listening to this on
or by simply going to jaredaler.com
where there is nothing for sale no
advertisements
just hundreds of free resources probably
even thousands
with all that being said we will now
start the interview with brian
introducing himself
my name is brian brown i am an associate
professor of science education at
stanford university
in the school of education so if you'd
write a book about your life
what would the chapter titles be if i
had to write a book about myself the
chapter titles i'm not sure about all of
them but extraordinarily ordinary would
be one of the
captions your big ideas because in a lot
of ways the things that i do
professionally are about
representing and understanding the
things that ordinary people experience
and in some ways how to succeed as an
ordinary person
in extraordinary context so what's
something that you first believe when
you
first began working in education that
you no longer believe so when i first
started in education
one of the things that i've learned was
that it's less about the student's
ability and more about
the teacher's capacity to see students
talents i was a science teacher and a
baseball coach and i think that parallel
of those two things work really well
together
you can either believe that your team is
as talented as the players that you have
in front of you
or that they will become as talented as
you can motivate them to be
how they'll become as skilled as you can
magnify their talents
i think the same thing about teaching
and learning is we have to really
understand our students and bring the
best out of them
which a lot of times really causes us to
break our paradigms and commitments to
the things that we think education
should be
i like that i'm curious how you got into
your research interest so like one of
the things that i saw
in your webinar that you gave like now a
month or so ago
was your discussion on like the
intersections of like language and
identity
and whatnot and so how did you get into
that interest and
did that at all relate to your time in
science and
coaching baseball part of what motivated
my
interest to really focus on language had
to do with understanding
culture i grew up in oakland california
at a time when
the teen culture was to play with
language and
you could know a person where they're
from by the way that they greeted each
other by
the words that you used and i was
heightened as i moved across the world
and saw
how young people use language to
communicate who they are
then as a science teacher i'm teaching
classes
and one of my favorite examples is to
think about
chromosomes and chromatids and chromatin
is literally the same name
to describe the same thing at different
stages and so
the density of words it really causes
you to
have a sense of frustration but i knew
something different about language from
my personal experience and just that
the way we use language is as a way to
mark who we are as people
so how could you possibly use language
and not feel like a part of that
particular community and so i started my
research
at that intersection to say if language
communicates content
but we know that everything that we
communicate communicates both content
and identity then we can't pretend like
having
someone read a sentence that says inside
of the nucleus is the nucleolus and the
nucleolus is responsible for rna
production which is responsible for
protein production is the density of
that sentence you can tell a person hey
this is not a place where people like
you which goes back to the
extraordinarily ordinary thing or
ordinary people intimidated
by complex language right and the other
aspect of that
is always thought people were stupid if
you were trying to sound too smart right
if you're using really really big words
i was like you must not be a smart
person because you're trying too hard
right so
you take those things together and
that's how i ended up studying
language and learning i'm curious what
goes through your head when reading some
journal articles where it's a bunch of
like 50 words that are being placed into
certain sentences and whatnot it's
always fun reading
like seeing people and just go do you
even understand what you're saying
because that is such a complicated
sentence with many potential meanings
it's hiding in some ways i feel like the
brilliance of a new idea
is just how transcendent it is how
useful it is how it transfers from
context to context
and you can't explain it clearly
and clarity is not the goal then it must
not be a useful idea and so part of what
i had to struggle with as an early
academic is just getting through
the sentences right there's a noun
there's a verb there's a subject is not
that complicated so
i learned that there's a functionality
in language and that there's a beauty in
science language and computer science
there's a real functionality
but we have to have some wisdom about
how language poses problems for teaching
and learning it's
super important so i'm wondering if we
could unpack like one of the words
or phrases so discursive identity so if
you were to give like an
elevator speech about what it is and why
it's important for educators to
understand
how would you describe discursive
identity so discursive identity is
essentially the idea that
we have an identity that we communicate
through the words we use to the pace
of our conversation to the tone and
intonation so if i'm angry
i'm going to speak to you in a mode that
lets you know i'm angry
it has purpose it has intention and so
if that is the case then the question is
how does the way that we use language
mark us as a particular type of person
and then you do the inverse how do we
interpret who we believe a person
is by how they communicate so if a
person is a really big
person like six foot eight and you have
an imagined
image of what they should sound like so
if this person is male
and six foot eight and they speak with a
high-pitched voice
it is almost shocking it's it's
discomforting in some ways because the
image doesn't match
so the reality that we live in is we
make snap judgments about people
immediately based on the way that they
communicate so when i grew up i grew up
in an urban context and
people in my community we used to end
with though a lot
and start with though you know we say
what time we going to the store though
right and it was
a marker of just neighborhood and
culture right and so you might assume i
didn't know
how to speak the point is it just
reflected my neighborhood
my contacts the people who i was around
and it was appropriate
so the big barrier is that we have an
imagined
discursive identity or language identity
that we put on kids
that doesn't really match so here's some
interesting studies for example
there was a study about physicians that
people in the south
did not want their physicians to have
thick southern accents
and i could not get my head around it
like why would you not want a person who
lives in the south to speak with a
southern accent
and it was about stereotypes around
brilliance
and southern accents and so the question
is why wouldn't the
person who had a thick southern accent
be brilliant right
it is assumptions about what we think
brilliant sounds like so if that's the
case
then is the opposite true is it thick
northern accent
brilliance so there's a boston accent
cube brilliance of course not
we have to really start to question the
mode of communication reflects our
perception of people
and that's super important for for
science classrooms or teaching in
general because
when you go to a classroom you don't
know the idea and the teachers asking
you to communicate what you think
so their perception of who you are and
how you communicate i think serves as a
burden and we've been studying that for
quite some time so that's the long
version of discursive identity and how
it matters
i like it one of the things that i like
about
discourse and discourse analysis in
particular is there are many types of
discourse that you can look at so like
one of my professors james paul g
he talked about small d versus big d
discourse
and how like the small d discourse was
like the things that you say the things
that you're directly communicating
through like speech or text and whatnot
but then the big d discourse is like
other things so like right now
i'm wearing a t-shirt that's for a drum
core that i happen to like i'm also
wearing a necklace that's a kanji symbol
so like all these things are
representing different identities and
communicating different things
and even within discourse analysis like
there's different approaches like
there's discourse
psychology there's media discourse
analysis there's like all these ways of
looking at like body language
and like clothing and things that all
communicate different stuff
so even just starting and ending
sentences with the word though like
that's
like one thing of doing it but then if
you also are wearing
certain types of attire that will match
starting and ending with though and if
you are different types of tire that's
going to
be like whoa wait that doesn't really
work they're incongruent with each other
it's fascinating to look at
all the different ways that people are
communicating identities through
language
and through just other things outside of
language see now you're speaking my
language jim ji
is the guru of this yeah everything i
learned came from jim g's work
brilliance on top of brilliance so one
of the things we talked about in our
classes
is if that's the case if everyone speaks
in ways that are reflective of american
culture why do we have accents why would
we
in california speak different than
people from new york or people from
texas or alabama and john ball has this
work
he's retired professor from stanford and
his work talks about
variation in the power of it so for
example i can say hello
i can say hello i can say hello
same words different message and i can
send you multiple variations of the same
message but i always have the power to
determine
how i want to say it and what's the
message that i want to send
so people speak with regional accents
because i love sound like my
grandparents and my uncles and my
cousins and friends is
being from oakland i'm an oakland
california native if a person says it's
hella hot outside
i'm comforted i know you are my kind of
human being
intentionally chose to say hella because
it's a marker of community culture and
context right and so
if we understand that this is how
language works and the linguists know
this for sure
then why do we just walk into classrooms
and play these ridiculous
language games with kids right we walk
in the classroom
they're not supposed to know the one
thing that we're learning let's say it's
chemistry
walk to a chemistry class and the
teacher asks you a bunch of questions
about chemistry
and the one thing you don't know is
chemistry because that's why you're in
the chemistry class
and then the teacher uses lots of
chemistry words to teach you about
chemistry
as if the words are just inherently
understood and so i think part of
what is really perplexing about how
language works in classrooms
is that we just accept it as a norm
without creating intentional norms like
why do you have to raise your hand
to participate in the conversation in
the classroom it would be
absolutely ridiculous to do that at a
coffee shop with a group of us sitting
around talking
no one raises their hand so do you need
to raise your hand in order to have a
healthy conversation and if you didn't
what would be the benefit of a freelance
conversation where everyone has equal
power in contributing
to tight into like a classroom context
one of the things that
jim g would talk about in our classes in
a lot of his writings is
how certain types of identities and like
ways of
engaging in discourse are more socially
acceptable or less socially acceptable
in school context
and so one of the examples that he gave
is if somebody says
he be tired as opposed to he is tired so
those mean two very different things and
depending on your knowledge of that
one is quote more correct or less
correct than another
he b is i believe what he referred to as
a negative infinitive which is
basically a saying he is always tired
whereas he is tired is
in this moment this person is tired and
like in english
not a lot of people know about negative
infinitives and so they assume when you
say he be
then that is quote incorrect language
then if you look at other languages
like spanish there's el es consado or
el esta consado so like those are the
two equivalents of like
the naked infinitive and the just the
regular uses of it
so when people come into like computer
science class or enterprise science
class
and they're using these like ways of
communicating and whatnot if you're not
fitting in within that specific
discourse it's assumed that it's wrong
but it's just like it's correct in a
different context in a different setting
and it's just another way of
communicating but a lot of teachers will
kind of get into this like mindset where
they feel like they need to correct
things and they just don't understand
that it's just another way of
communicating
and what if i don't care right what if
saying it that way makes me feel
comfortable
if i'm writing and i'm writing that way
then i understand it's a formal
engagement so maybe i need to say it
that way because it's a formal writing
activity
but unless you explicitly state it that
this communication was
intended to sound like academic speech
then
what are the rules that should say that
i should speak in any particular way
particularly ones that reflect cultural
and personal heritage and so a lot of
times
kids just reject normal so-called
academic language because why
i don't want to sound like that
professor teacher
i don't want to sound like you the real
question is
how does learning work and then how do
we use classroom conversations to
promote learning
you know and i think that's where this
is most important i feel like my early
research
just dealt with language identity
relationships how we communicate who we
are
how the message and the content are
paired together and how
it shapes opportunities to classrooms
where it really matters
is when it gets in the way of teaching
and learning and if teachers have no
awareness of their own bias yep then
they're in no position to really promote
excellence in learning because they're
perceiving kids as being incapable
when all they're doing is being
resistant and those are hugely different
things
totally agree so speaking of learning
i'm wondering if you could also
talk a little bit about what is situated
language and learning
i want to start with a macro level idea
i'm actually working on a revision to a
manuscript and they were like situated
learning
what does that mean and it needs to fit
this broader idea of social constructive
is learning right so the idea is that
no one learns in a vacuum we learn
together and we're pairing our ideas
with the ideas of the academic space
and as a group as we talk about it
together as we come to make
meaning together is where we're good
clarity now
i learned what i absolutely need to
learn and the things i know
most are the things i talk most about so
you want to talk to
kids about cell phone functionality
around
software devices you know about tick
tock and you'll get a dissertation
in great detail depth because they know
those things that is what they talk
about
so the argument is in the same way we
say
you know carpenters become phenomenal at
measurement by building chairs and doors
it is the process of building the door
that teaches measurement why wouldn't we
teach in a way that requires
students to master content in the
process of doing things so let's take
computer science for
an example the question is what will we
have a student do
that will require them to master some
components of learning
the c language right and what would they
do often
and do very well because the things you
do most often are the things you do most
well
that will produce and maximize these
opportunities for learning and so that's
where the language comes into play
first is that we need to create
opportunities for students to do
something
that requires them to learn the language
second they need to use the language
often and be able to use it wrong
because the best way to master a
language is to use it
incorrectly and be corrected because
using it over and over
creates mastery and then third if
they're doing it in a way
where the product is something that they
use or see on a daily basis
then that's where they really become
masters because they'll do it over and
over again so i imagine a classroom
where we have kids
building websites and let's say the
website is
designed to do school announcements but
your job is to do it every day
school amounts announcements on a
website you're going to build this
website
and if they have to do it for each day
of the school year they will become
phenomenal
at building the page right the necessity
of the language comes to the task
so as educators we need to think what
are the situations that we can use to
really maximize students
languages and i have good news kids are
great at learning language there's
almost no way you can mess it up
if you do it often and do it well the
challenge is
you have to stop talking as a teacher
and enable them to do all the talking
yeah i like it and this is where like
the people who are exploring
project-based learning the importance of
situating it within a real world context
or problem that's why this is so
important because then kids have that
need to know and that buying into it and
can apply it in their every day
well here's the hard part though here's
the warning that the most difficult
aspect is i need to figure out
what motivates my kids what are the
things that they're doing
regularly because that's where the
teaching and learning happens and so
the problem is as educators we learn
who's in the room first and it starts
with figuring out who these kids are
and then that'll give us an opportunity
to teach things
yeah it reminds me there was one teacher
who was talking about this kid who was
really shy and was like oh yeah he never
really speaks and it's like well have
you asked him about pokemon he'll talk
to you about it like the entire lunch
break just talking about
the different strategies used in playing
et cetera et cetera
what about any surprises that you've had
in
your research specifically like around
the intersections of like race language
and culture
in relation to learning i will say we
in the past few years we did work on
identity matching
so we did a series of studies with
digital books where you can
basically ipad or any tablet where you
can touch
the text you can double tap it a video
pops up or you can manipulate the maps
within the text
and one of the emerging factors we study
what would happen if you provided
students with options
in the same way that they start a video
again and they can decide who's their
avatar when we start the unit give them
images and videos to drop into place
which of these images do you like
and these are the same images so it's
just an image of someone explaining the
water cycle
but we toggled it by race and gender so
they can pick people from different
races and different genders
we did that and one of the things that
was most striking was the gender effect
we really found that women are not only
largely represented
in the text or curriculum spaces but
they had a greater affinity
to want to see themselves teach
themselves in this context
and so it was a striking kind of
response about
who's teaching and how what we're
teaching has the secondary effect
and our lab group we like to think of
the reverse psychology
of what's happening so for example if
you see an image
and the image says women don't do well
in computer science well the stereotype
threat research would tell us that if
you give a person a task
it's simply saying you don't belong is a
psychological distractor
the analogy i use often is it's like
trying to parallel parker car
with the music really really loud like
you can do it you can succeed through
the
battle but you have to turn the music
down to be able to really focus and an
additional distractor
so in our lab the thought is if that is
the case then the alternative then must
be true
so if i'm always telling you hey people
like you succeed in this context
i don't even tell you explicitly but the
images that you see are of people like
you doing the very
thing that the world is telling you
cannot do then i've turned the music
down for you already it's much easier
for you to focus
on the academic components when you know
the belonging component is already there
and so
that was not an anticipated finding of
our initial work into kind of the role
of digital technology and teaching and
learning but it was also very profound
to say
that the affirmation just both explicit
and subtle that we can embed in our
learning technologies
really means something for different
populations and it doesn't hit everybody
the same way
and for our female students it was
really a striking response
yeah this is interesting so i work at a
non-profit that works
nationwide and we specifically focus on
elementary teachers and students and
one of the things related to that that i
really like is that because we're
training teachers and
around 80 of elementary teachers are
female
we're teaching them how to do computer
science and then they become the role
models in the classroom that says look
i can do this you can do this thing but
going off the same demographics
one of the issues that we have though is
elementary teachers about 80
are also white so we're still having the
issue of perpetuating white people going
into computer science and kind of
maintaining that form of dominance and
whatnot so be nice if we were able to
flip
some of those stats in some areas we're
literally writing the paper to say
that the curriculum doesn't have to be
monocultural it can be
extremely dynamic and diverse and so
society
structures a way where those will most
likely to be married
happen to be white women those most
likely to stay in teaching jobs
are people who are married those who are
likely to be teachers are
women in general so for people of color
to get into elementary
education there's all these huge
infrastructure societal issues that we'd
have to change
you could change the curriculum today so
as a white woman
and you roll out curriculum it can look
like anything it can represent every
culture
so part of i think what would really
benefit people seeing themselves
as being a part of let's say computer
science communities is just having the
curriculum
represent the diversity that we want to
see and not in the token way
meaning because a lot of curriculum
developers do this they just put an
image
and it's like got people from every race
and culture there
that is not cultural diversity i'm
saying
teaching about things that the students
who
are in the classroom might see on an
everyday basis teaching in
context building models that really
enable them to see
how people like themselves can succeed
and so one of the things that really is
understudied
is how a diverse curriculum can help
bridge this gap
so one of the other research interests
that i noticed
of yours is you were looking at the
relationships between
language and stress and with the amount
of stress that like a lot of people are
going on right now because of like the
chaos in the world with lycoved and
whatnot
i'm curious what did you find in those
relationships between
language and stress what have you
learned from that research so part of
what we were
doing is following up on a sequence of
studies about language and learning
and so the first tier of studies was
just to suggest that
if you talk with really really
complicated language people don't learn
well and that was pretty straightforward
so then the second question
does it do something to the people
effectively does it stress the students
out
and so in trying to design a study irb
is not excited
institutional research board who gives
us approval for research they're not
excited about
doing anything that might potentially
stress out a child so it's not
easy for us to do so of the mechanisms
we have possible
one of the things you can do is to give
the child some kind of intervention
in our case all we're doing is teaching
two ways really really complicated
language
and simple language to see how it
affected the kids so i could either do a
cortisol test
which is to get a little bit of saliva
and test the stress measures
stress releases that particular cortical
enzyme
but it's expensive and you try getting
that study approved for
public school it's just not going to
work right so we use these things called
proxy measures and so proxy measures
are measures that are associated with
stress but are not measuring stress what
they're actually measuring is
reduced mental capacity so here's one
it's called the
stroop test and you've probably seen
this before so the stroke test
is there's a word and the word will be
the word red
so there's two versions of it it's
either written in red and that's called
congruent
where the color matches the word so
red is written in red and so if you see
that you push the r button
the second is an incongruent that's when
the letters don't match the color
so the word red might written in blue so
what you need to do
is ignore what the words say and
recognize the color
so red written in blue you click the b
button and so
what that does is measure your capacity
to engage in dual
thinking to separate one idea from the
other which is a more difficult
cognitive task
so we decided to try that as a stress
measure that's called a stroop test
the second is a flanker test same
principle there's a
series of arrows maybe about 30 arrows
and what you need to do is look at the
center most arrow
and identify that center most arrow and
then click the mouse
that the direction that the arrow is
pointed so
two items congruent meaning all the
other arrows are pointed the same way as
the center arrows
pretty easy to do then in congruent
which is a more difficult task
which is all the arrows are pointed the
opposite direction so you need to ignore
all those other arrows
and focus on the center-most arrow so to
study whether or not complex language
stress students out what we did is use
these proxy measures which actually
measured mental capacity
and the analogy i like to use again i
was saying blaring loud music you're
going to parallel park
you can do it but having more focus
helps
right so we gave them the complex
language version and the simple language
version and then we asked them
the stroop and the flanker test and all
the conditions
the students who were taught with simple
language were able to make those
recognitions faster so meaning this
their brain was free it was more free to
be able to recognize this complex
cognitive task in both the flanker and
the stroop test
and we found statistically significant
differences in the
interaction now it was most profound
when the task became most difficult in
these incongruent items
so when the tasks became most difficult
those who were taught with simple
language
were quicker in their capacity to
recognize this complexity so what does
that mean for teaching and learning
something that we already knew already
right anytime someone is blabbering at
me with really really
complex science language it is hard for
me to hear the idea
because i'm struggling to fight through
the words right right
so it produces limited cognitive
capacity i can't think as clearly i
can't think as quickly
so what that suggests for us is that
what we need to do is make sure the idea
is first
and that people understand the idea and
then we give them
opportunity to practice using the
language and so we
in our lab group we've kind of come
across two basic phenomena teaching with
simple language helps people understand
ideas
and teaching with simple language
reduces any stress
that students might have at least it
frees up cognitive capacity that's what
we can say
generally yeah teaching within that
context and
situating it so that you have the
concept
experienced before you apply the label
to it that is something that it like
she heavily discusses in a lot of his
writings and whatnot
if anyone who's listening is a gamer g
has a lot of writing
specifically about video games and
education and it is very on point as
somebody who like plays a lot of video
games
it just makes a lot of sense so if
you're curious and you're listening this
and you want to learn more about
situated language learning
look at some of g's writings it'll
likely make a lot more sense
and i'm serious when i say a lot of my
early work is
reading g's work and extending it to the
context of science teaching in urban
classrooms i learned a lot
from all of his research and have tried
to leverage it to extend it and so
his work on gaming is absolutely
brilliant around
everything from representation how
situating the need to learn a task
before you can move on there's a lot of
brilliance in what video game companies
are doing
yeah i was very fortunate that he just
happened to be teaching a class at asu
and i was able to
take it from him it was well worth it so
we're talking about like discourse and
the way that people communicate when not
how has this kind of impacted your own
pedagogy or practices in the classroom
for me i want to reduce the layers of
frustration and complication around
language initially so
creating new language norms so in my
classroom i want to i always try to make
it very clear that you have the right to
talk at any point in time that i am not
the person who determined who speaks and
in fact the more i speak
the less you learn so i need you to ask
questions to speak
we're in a living room together having a
conversation speak up
i value your wrong answers because they
will bring you to a right answer and
they'll help me understand where i need
to be and so part of
the thing that we focus on is really
shifting the norms around language
practices
so that we're explicit about classroom
norms the second
is to teach with what we call
disaggregate fashion which is
we teach the idea first making sure that
there's clarity around the idea
and then teach the language but then
allow students to practice using
those words and even in graduate courses
i may
come across a learning theory or
something that we're learning about make
sure that they're clear
about it and then we spend 30 minutes
analyzing the video
how does this idea explain this concept
and what they're not clear about as
students is all i'm really trying to do
is give them multiple opportunities
within a classroom
to apply this new term this new idea
in the explanation and analysis of some
phenomena so you get
some skill i actually using the idea and
the language associated
pedagogically it's a pretty
straightforward thing let's be really
explicit about what language norms are
and let's challenge them let's break the
paradigm
of teachers talking teacher dominating
the classroom second
be explicit about the language learning
dilemma that
children and students face we need to be
clear to them that we are testing you
how well you know the language
and then we've gotta disaggregate start
with simple language and give students
lots and lots of opportunities to
use the academic language in class
context do you have
a process by which you go from simple to
more complex or do you maintain
speaking about complex issues in simple
language i'm a
firm believer in teacher professionalism
and teachers are
professionals and so part of what we
need to do is just give them the tool
and allow them to design that as they
see fit and so
i'm sure for some subject matters it
works better to do it in particular
order
even some academic disciplines where the
simpler language
is hard to come by right because
everything is new
so it's about principle first and then
allowing teachers to
adapt to their particular need how has
your understandings of language and
learning
impacted like curriculum or experience
design i'm actually
not that far advanced in curriculum
development so we are now moving towards
curriculum development
the work we do in science education has
been so siloed i realize
as a field people don't read science
education research even within education
and so there's some feigned expertise
around what happens
that drives practice in ways that are
pretty frightening and so
i think it's important to get the work
out to a broader audience and so
we're just now working on curriculum
projects to actually
put this in action at a larger scale are
you at a point where you can give us
like a preview of what it might look
like
hypothetically yeah so for sure so part
of what we're doing
is trying to think about what are the
resources that would really maximize
student
engagement and students opportunity to
use discourse right so one of the things
is
we're curious about smartphone enhanced
teaching so
people might not have four laptops at
their house
but my experience is that people pass on
cell phones and so when i get a new cell
phone
the child gets the the cell phone that's
left and there's more likely to be four
or five
smartphones around and give it a couple
years and i'm curious to see
how many kids show up in classrooms with
smartphones so to me
a smartphone is a clicker a smartphone
is a microscope
it is a simulation device it is a short
answer
device as well so part of what we're
doing is using what we've learned about
this aggregate
instruction and what we learned about
identity matching
and so i can do lessons where online
in person or at a distance i can ask the
kids
in a lesson does marinating food
actually work
give me your answer and tell me why and
so instead of one answer now i've got 35
answers
i can teach about osmosis show them the
simulation watch this video explain it
all right now that we watch this video
how does the the holes
in the sides of the meat play a role
right and then later we can talk call it
a semi-permanent membrane but now
i can have 35 people answering at the
same time and if explanation produces
understanding
then what we're doing is embedding
opportunities to communicate
what if we then do what i'm asking
people to do is towards the end of the
lesson
i'm asking to use their science word so
if we learned about marinating we can
say all right now what if we go to the
grocery store
why do they spray the vegetables at the
grocery store if the plants are already
dead
tell me the goal and in your explanation
use the words like hypotonic solution
hypertonic solution
semi-permeable membrane random kinetic
motion
and if they are using these words and
explaining it in context
then i'm arguing they'll learn better
they'll retain that information
in a more meaningful way and so we're
using smartphones
as learning devices and as a teaching
bridge to actually help teachers engage
in rich discourse practices
that's not to replace conversation but
what we can do real time is have
many many people contribute in ways that
we couldn't do before so
that's where we're headed as a lab group
is to try to find some interactive
online
curriculum that really is rooted in
culturally relevant instruction and is
really focused on this aggregate
language focus instruction as well
i think that's a really good point
because like on one hand you could do
like think pair
share but even if you're in pairs one
person is still talking while the other
person is listening so not everybody's
able to respond
in the same way and it's not a
replacement so i can say
everyone submit your answer now i have
answers on the board
all of them meaning that they've been
submitted on the phone and so i have
them on the screen so i can show them
make them anonymous share your answer
with your partner and by making everyone
contribute a singular answer then as
they share
there's a lot of research about peer
instruction out of eric mazzier's lab at
harvard that would suggest that in these
conversations they're more likely
to move towards an understanding this is
before i've even started
offering the so-called right answer is
we produce rich conversations
that can maximize learning and so i
think we have
under theorized the role of cell phones
as learning devices
partly because we see them as divisive
right they keep us from communicating
and keep us from talking
and so they actually are awesome
learning devices and so we're trying to
press the envelope on what's possible
there
i wonder if that'll change when covet is
a thing of the past so let's say
hypothetically like a year from now
now that they've used like we're
communicating on zoom so
heavily using these devices to
communicate and collaborate with people
if
it'll become just more of a norm to use
these in the classroom
yeah we were in a live group discussion
suggesting that
a lot of the future will change because
of zoom so
parent engagement parents are much more
aware of the norms and challenges of
classroom instruction and so
engaging a parent through zoom i mean
might be something completely different
like
i'm in california but snow days have to
be a thing of the past
the new generation may never experience
a snow day because you can just have
zoom days to replace the snow days and
then
people being able to get connected with
broader communities and so
the limits of your community can be
expanded significantly i just found out
just recently that they have
bioengineering groups that are trying to
compete with maker spaces and so instead
of doing engineering work you can do
bioengineering work
in one way to build that community
without having to fly a hundred people
to the one
lab that's in las vegas is getting
people online to share a shared interest
and so
we have um a new tool that i think
creativity
will win out at the end of the day and
allow us to really press
forward and being creative about what's
possible and i hadn't even thought of
like the virtual side of snow days
because like being in phoenix my whole
life
that doesn't exist we have days where
the ac goes out
for the school and they're like well we
got to close this cooldown
i was just there's got to be some kind
of heat index days where you all should
stay home
in arizona you know but we'll see yeah
there certainly are days where it's like
okay everybody has to stay inside recess
is in your classroom
play quiet ball or whatever absolutely
so thinking about like reflecting on
your own research what do you
wish more people understood about it i
don't know that there's a
different level of understanding i feel
like the audiences have been really
isolated i
also believe i do really simple research
i mean the premise is that
if you communicate in simpler words
people understand better
they don't get so stressed out and they
learn i mean that's really not
the most complicated idea ever i feel
like
i have not focused on communicating to
teaching communities and so the work
that we're doing
has really practical implications it is
intended for teachers
but we've been immersed in the world of
science education researchers
if i could shift it would be to have a
greater focus on engaging directly with
teachers and teacher communities
so i imagine with your role previously i
was like a baseball coach you've
read or at least read people who've
talked about like k anders erickson's
discussions on like deliberate practice
and like how to develop
like skills and expertise in like sports
and whatnot
i'm wondering how have you kind of
applied your understandings of practice
into your own abilities as an educator
or a researcher
well that's a great question one thing
that's is most striking
is that progress is invisible right so
we used to talk about it's just the
sitting on the bucket and so
when you sit on the bucket you do soft
toss you just toss the ball to kids and
let them hit it right
sometimes you just need to sit there and
toss 300 balls
you won't see the young person getting
better because you can't
you see the results weeks and months and
years later but you have to sit there
and toss the ball
i mean the bottom line is is enabling
opportunity
is where growth happens and so in the
same way in learning
in classroom situations it is giving the
kids opportunities to explain and
struggle
is where learning happens but it's
invisible one of the assignments i give
to my teacher at students
every day is videotape learning
happening and inevitably
it's a catch-22 is they need to see
actual learning happen so what would it
look like and they struggle with it
every year
and i do it on purpose to get at the
heart of how would i know when a person
is learning and
the only way to really get that evidence
is some formative assessments to give
opportunities for the students to
explain
and it's got to be iterative so you can
see them shifting
his explanations and so the parallels
are pretty rich in that context is
we need to be more student-centered give
the students more opportunities
and reduce their anxiety because a kid
who can't struggle and practice and get
it wrong
is the kid who's not going to grow right
and so similarly a person who
is uncomfortable offering an incorrect
answer is going to have a hard time
growing we have to be comfortable
in our discomfort yeah my ringtone for
my cell phone is
a recording of the fifth grade band i
used to teach
playing hot cross buns the first time
through and so i recorded that and then
for our final concert i'd play it for
the parents right before we then play
hot cross buns and be like
i'm sure you remember having your
clarinet it's like squeaking and
squawking
but like look at how much growth has
happened over those months and it's
something that is so gradual you don't
notice it
i love it no one ever says that terrible
music is the precursor
for the maestros right we see the end
product but we didn't hear the horrible
music that preceded it and that's
it translates to every endeavor right is
that at some level the first stage is
for us to struggle through the process
are using an analogy that
riding bikes requires us to have some
support
to do it independently and fall fairly
regularly and then you're cruising right
you're
off on your own and you're efficient and
you never have to look back
and those who are successful are the
people who can navigate that in between
process who can go through stage one and
two to get to that final stage but as a
teacher
i have to grow comfortable but all my
kids
are in those first few stages right and
i need to be so encouraging that i can
get them
there because showing up is really the
only requirement yeah i wonder if
that'll be one of the biggest
things that parents in particular will
understand just how patient teachers
have to be and are with the kids that
they work with absolutely there's no way
the respect for teaching won't change i
would argue too
and i've been thinking about this
recently there's a quote from lee
shulman
that says the most calamitous insult to
teachers is this idea
that those who cannot do teach and the
ridiculous nature of that is that
you can't teach what you don't know yeah
and you can't teach it well if you don't
know it intimately and if you don't know
how to teach it in the context of the
kids lives and so
part of what people are learning now is
that our profaned expertise what we
thought
teaching was is absolutely not what we
thought it was
and as people are at home struggling to
figure out
why their children are having a hard
time it shows just how valuable
teaching is and how difficult teaching
is and i hope there's a heightened
awareness that is met with policy and
support for teachers
as we move forward because we're never
going to get this time back and this
year
of trying to adjust to distance learning
is going to produce some positive things
but i think it's going to require us to
really be
much better as educators broadly yeah
and to be able to communicate
outside of just the field and with other
teachers but to be able to communicate
to those struggles and whatnot with
parents so that way they can better
understand it i was at a conference it
was a panel session
and one of the people on the panel was
like a hedge fund manager or something
it was very random but it was a panel
for educators and at one point this
person said something along the lines
like
i don't want people to come out of
school to become
science teachers i want them to become
actual scientists and like
people like raise their hand and like
question that like excuse me
so it was really interesting seeing the
response
and that person definitely backed down
after that they realized they made a
mistake
where do the scientists come from it is
amazing that we forget the resources
that produce the excellence
there's a false crisis in america as
well i feel like we look at
the so-called crisis in education out of
a few broken lenses and the first
is that we didn't have a way of
measuring our international success
until 1995 with the third international
math and science study and so before
that we just believed we were
tops in the world we just didn't have
any evidence right so when the evidence
showed it up we found out well maybe
we're not the best
but what we're clear about is as we
produce a highly literate citizenship
as we graduate students in high volumes
as people go to colleges and
universities in the us they're
full of talented students who are doing
world-class science and the science that
we're doing in the us
is so good the people from all over the
world come to the united states to do
research because our
research at the university level and
teaching at the university level
is the best in the world well how did it
get that way
is it because the international students
are here and i would argue we're
refusing to recognize the contribution
of excellent
science educators right here in the us
who are producing world-class scholars
now the issue
is that the volume of who those people
are right if we do an
l-shaped curve we need a larger
population
includes people from all backgrounds to
be in that group of excellent
but i think we're missing what's
actually happening right now
in the u.s schools and universities
across the country
yeah that's a good point i also see the
same thing with just education in
general so there are a lot of people
from around the world coming here
reading the research citing the research
but there's not necessarily a lot of
application of that research
in classroom context for a variety of
reasons like politicians not
understanding it and whatnot
one of the things with like the
unpacking scholarship episodes that i do
for this podcast like alternating each
week between an episode and when i like
take scholarship unpack it what does
this mean in the classroom
one of the reasons why i do that is
because i see that disconnect and i want
to try and bridge that gap
so that way practitioners can like learn
from scholars and whatnot
there's a systemic problem is people in
my position at a research one
institution
your assessment is about scholarship
recognition among scholars and so part
of what we're paid to do
is to engage in research that
researchers read and it's not that we're
not
paid to do teacher-based research it's
just that during those initial stages as
a younger scholar
there there's greater weight paid to
research that goes to researchers and so
part of what needs to happen
is greater valuing of work that goes
directly to teachers
yeah definitely agree i'm curious how do
you personally try and
take care of yourself to stave off
burnout because there's a high
burnout rate in education i think it's
like
the majority of teachers who are going
to quit will do it in the first like
three to five years
well i get that i've never had a greater
motivation in the wake up in the morning
to know
i've got 35 kids waiting on me for 7 30
start or 8 o'clock start and i need to
be ready by 7 30 and then the next hour
there's another set of kids
and then there's another prep so
completely different lesson plan for
this third set of kids that motivation
has never left me
it's always been about preparing for
kids and impacting kids and communities
and so
as now a college professor that
motivation still exists
it's easy to get motivated and prepared
for people
the research part i think the thing that
has kept me focused is that it continues
to move
so if i started doing research on
language and identity and its impact on
science
can't do that research anymore because
we've been there we've done those
studies and so the next question is what
does this mean so now as we move to
technology
there's a new level of interest and so
that part has been an enabling factor
to keep me motivated and focused because
one of the benefits of
this job is intellectual work so the
ideas have to be new so it's always
moving you know which is at least
entertaining i can say that much
what do you wish there was more research
on that could inform your own practices
not that there's more research i want
different types of evidence
if people use the exact same method you
cannot give me new information
and so i want to know what works but i
need you to do it
in classrooms with people who actually
are teaching children
i need you to to try it in multiple
contexts and so if you try something in
an
urban context i want to see if it works
in a rural context as well
i want to see what works in medicine
we would not be flashing back to
referred or marie curie all the time
right
we're still talking about john dewey our
historical foundations are phenomenal
but it's the new idea that's
transcendent it is the new practice
that will change schools and part of
what i think
education research to me needs is to
shift away from its
standard research foundations i'm a fan
of basic research but education research
is not basic research
because there's children on the other
end there's schools on the other end so
we can't be wrong
and we can't theorize where the theory
leads to
untested practice which i think has been
a problem in education research for far
too long people are building
entire schools on ideas that have not
been vetted
yeah i like that in high school we had
to read emerson
and for the start of one of his books
like the first two sentences
is like our age is retrospective it
builds on the sepulchres of our fathers
and then it just like goes on to talk
about how we keep focusing on the past
rather than building our new futures and
looking forward and whatnot so that
definitely resonates with me
where might people go to connect with
you and the organizations that you work
with well i have a website so
visit scienceinthecity.stand
we are piloting a new resource there so
there's some resources there
feel free to communicate me on twitter
at doc underscore b
brown i'm there on twitter and having
lively and entertaining conversations
at the stanford university school of
education website my information is
there
i welcome conversations and i just want
to thank you jared for having me today
i've enjoyed the
conversation and look forward to hearing
more of your podcast
and with that that concludes this week's
episode of the csk8 podcast i hope you
enjoyed listening to this interview
i know we talked about some topics that
i like to nerd out about but hopefully
you found them relevant to you and the
classes that you work with
i hope you're all having a wonderful
week and are staying safe and as a bonus
to this episode i'm going to actually
conclude this podcast with the recording
i mentioned
of 5th graders playing hot crossbones
for the first time through
if you listen really carefully one of
the clarinetists actually stops midway
through the performance and says
i can't it's pretty cute and brings a
smile to my face every time i hear it
[Music]

Guest Bio

Bryan A. Brown is an associate professor of science education and former Associate Dean at the Stanford University. He holds a BS from Hampton University, a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology from the University of California, and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the UC Santa Barbara. His works focuses on the role of language in science teaching and learning. Dr. Brown studies how race, technology, language and culture impact science teaching in urban schools.

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

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- Exploring (Dis)Ability and Connecting with the Arts with Jesse Rathgeber
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- How to Get Started with Computer Science Education
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- The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance
  - In this episode I unpack Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer’s (1993) publication titled “The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance,” which debunks the notion of innate abilities within a domain and describes the role of deliberate practice in achieving expert performance.
- More episodes related to discursive identity
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- More episodes on the situated language and learning
- All other episodes
Read publications by James Paul Gee
Learn more about deliberate practice
Here’s a digital version of the Emerson quote I slightly misremembered
Connect with Bryan
Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter