Cut children to identify themselves as teachers distributes authority and class expertise. When the teacher is the only one in the room with knowledge, there is a bottleneck. We will see a line of children at the teacher’s office, pending approval, correction or problem solving. It’s not just lost time. He limits independence and the student agency.
“As scientists, how should we manage this?”
To answer the question, children, at least temporarily, must imagine themselves in this identity and could choose to maintain the possibility of wearing this coat. Notice, once again, how the assertion that students are scientists (“as scientists”) are provided as indicated (already agreed) rather than new information, which makes it less open to protest.
The only identity label will not accomplish everything necessary, of course. We must build an understanding of what scientists do (or mathematicians or authors), how they speak and act. In a classroom, the teachers qualified as “senior researchers” and the children sometimes “Tom researchers” and started the lessons reiterating that “we are researchers, do the research”. When the children argued that the role of the teacher is to tell the children the answers, the answer was that “it is a characteristic of the researchers that they try to answer the questions themselves”. The answer encourages the collective identity of a community of practice, that “people like us” do things that way. He also denies the framework presented by children that “we are traditional students and that you are a traditional teacher and we do school”. This answers, indeed, “I’m sorry but you have to be in bad theater. I don’t know these actors or this intrigue. This is how this script goes.” This says: “When I say that we now have in these conversations, it is the kind of people I am referring to.”
Identities such as the researcher in the research commune are an important achievement of schooling, but also a tool to shape the participation in children’s class. These identities give students a feeling of their reasonable responsibilities and means of acting, in particular towards others and the object of study. Community concepts are implicit in these identities, because identity is linked both to uniqueness and affiliation. In such classrooms, teachers therefore did not try simply to teach materials. Rather, they are, as Ed Elbers and Leen Streefland put it in mathematics, “mathematizing: transforming daily problems into mathematical problems and using mathematics evolving from these activities to solve realistic problems.” Learning science, writing, mathematics, etc., in this way breaks the division between school and the “real world”, a division that limits the importance and impact of children’s learning.
“What are you doing as a writer today?”
This request has several features. First, he supervises what the student will do in terms of what writers do and invites a conversation to these terms rather than in terms, let’s say, a student making a task for the teacher. Second, once again, by presenting as “given” the affirmations according to which a) the student is a writer, who b) will do something that writers do, it is difficult to reject identity or action. They are not to be discussed. The student must say something like “(as a writer) I am looking for tigers for the book I make.”
The opener of the conversation insists on a commitment to a particular character (me, a writer) engaged in a particular type of story (doing writer). The student is slowly pushed – well, well, pushed – to repeat a story with herself as a writer / protagonist, opening the possibility that the teacher developed history with details and suggestions of intrigue.
“I wonder if, as a writer, you are ready for that …”
This asks both the child to think about learning in terms of development or maturity, and invites the desire to be considered as having extended maturity. He relies strongly on the student to consider himself an author and to pick up the challenge of the challenge. If she picks up the glove and overcomes the challenge, in the context of the teacher’s words, it will be difficult for her to avoid composing a story on the upcoming self-author. Overcoming obstacles in this way provides an attractive invitation to adopt identity. If the teacher asks her how she did it, she will re -article history – with herself as a successful protagonist.
“I bet you are proud of you.”
It feels good to be proud to do something. Feeling feelings can strengthen internal motivation in the future. But pride is a delicate emotion to attract attention because it presents itself in two forms: authentic and proud. Hubristic pride is the pride of the chest that we often see during sports meetings. He has a drawback. It is generally associated with aggressiveness, hostility and social anxiety. People with a feeling of artistic pride tend to be more interested in lowering others, to gain a feeling of superiority and to dominate others than to offer them support. The feeling of authentic pride is associated with being creative and having a prosocial position focused on the community, pleasant, and good self -esteem. Unsurprisingly, it is often accompanied by a degree of popularity. So, if we will draw attention to pride, we must make sure that it is the good type of pride – the pride of strategically overcoming the obstacles to achieve something difficult, the pride of prosocial behavior focused on the community or the collaborative problem of problems.
We avoid comments or situations that set up a feeling of artistic pride, those who invite pride through interpersonal comparisons and a feeling of self-value, or simply by success itself whatever the struggle. Instead, we focus the invitation of pride on the process of achieving something positive. So, if we want to invoke pride, we could add: “I bet you are proud of you (so as not to abandon this project) or (to help your partner solve this problem).” The idea is to build a story about the triumph of a problem, adversity or its own limits, rather than triumph over others. The general “I bet you are proud of yourself (appreciated process, strategy, struggle …)”, affirms independence and an agent story. At the same time, this does not affect the feeling that the teacher is also proud with empathy with the child.
We want children to take care of the process and the agency he offers, and we want children to build positive identities, recognizing their agency in this construction.
