Marginalisation in the classroom

Beverley Pennell's comments (in our workbook) resounded with me. In this module she talks about the risk of marginalisation of students within the cultural structures of the school...within our classrooms.  How control and exclusion has been exerted within the classroom because students may be considered to speak 'incorrectly' - and how this hales back to class differences.

Pennel comments that:
"To see from another person's viewpoint is, I consider, a feat of imagination. To see, to tolerate and respect, the ideas, values, beliefs and practices of another culture is probably the greatest feat of imagination, requiring generosity of spirit, a genuine open heartedness".  To not merely be tolerant - meaning 'we' are the representative norm, and others do not conform to the 'norm' but to respect - to acknowledge the validity and value of those different to ourselves.

Teaching has always been about modeling to our students.  Teachers need to think critically about their own cultural patterns - what and how are we judging and excluding in the classroom with our students? Are we aware of our own pedagogical discourses that we employ in our classrooms every day. Are we valuing the differences (the linguistic, cultural and knowledge) of those in our classroom? Are we giving all our students 'access to the knowledge and skills which will give them access to the dominant culture, if they should choose it....without making students feel uncomfortable about their own backgrounds, without making students feel marginalised and inadequate'? (19) Are our own histories and locations and institutional contexts (Comber, 125)  influencing how we teach and what we expect of our students?

Teachers need to critically reflect upon their teaching practices as much as our students need to reflect on their learning.

The articles by Barbara Comber (Literacy, poverty and schooling: working against deficit equations) and  G. Shopen (Challenging the achievement gap: teaching English in Indigenous schools) reinforce how marginalistion can occur when we do not take into account the cultural traditions in which our students have developed their social and cultural identities.  Shopen comments how much of the literature of English texts are part of English cultural traditions that students only access while at school. "The school discourse rarely includes reference to the children's own languages, knowledges and experiences. Indigenous cultural accounts of the world as seen as irrelevant to the process of schooling which has been conceived within a British-Australian cultural, social and economic tradition." Although Shopen speaks in relation to Indigenous students,  this is  most certainly the case also for students whose cultural background and mother language is other than English. The reality is that students are differentiated in multiple ways...as does 'Australian society have complex realities, so does schooling' (Shopen, 135).

As teachers, we need to know the 'complex realities of our children's family and community lives'.  As Comber remarks:
"Teachers need to know their school communities - the material circumstances of their lives, their funds of knowledge,  service and support networks and their cultural, language and literate practices. With this knowledge, teachers can make sensible requests of parents and use their valuable resources to build a responsive pedagogy..." (128)


At the same time, teachers also need to be aware of engaging in deficit ideologies ('expect very little' syndrome Badger et al 1993; 'pedagogy of poverty' Haberman 1991) where they simplify what is offered and demanded of students.

How and what we assess depends often on what different societies make important (Comber, 123). Student success and failure is linked to what we assess.

Both authors comment on the understanding of literacy as a social practice, situated in context, and not a set of isolated autonomous skills. Unfortunately often assessment such as testing (and national testing such as NAPLAN) are based on the latter understanding, and does not take into account the multiple differences of our students.