There are four main kinds of status that seem to play a strong role in classroom encounters. Group work seems especially affected by the roles that various children seem to fill.
Expert status: This refers to the ability of children to make fine distinctions among individuals to determine who is the “expert” in the chosen field. [...]
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The upcoming election has spawned the cyclical jockeying of special-intrest groups for public exposure. The unfortunate side of this is that a lot of elbows are thrown with little to show for it. Tempers flare, lines are drawn, and things quiet down while wounds heal; four years later, the cycle repeats. On the plus side, [...]
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This is an odd time for educational theory. On one hand, we have No Child Left Behind touting standards-based testing and statistical measurement. These tests are “fair” and “valid” because they level the playing field, according to supporters. And yet teachers must simultaneously deal with the fact that a level playing field [...]
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I am a firm believer that the linguistic code of a learner plays a direct and powerful role in the educational opportunities available to that student. The idea of linguistic capital, proposed as a subset of cultural capital by Bordieu, essentially states that a person possessing the linguistic codes of the higher-class can exchange this [...]
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