Sarah Jean Johnson
The basis of my research agenda is to better understand how learning environments can be designed to support the richly diverse populations of children in our schools, and to nurture in children a deep appreciation of learning. My research is theoretically and methodologically informed by linguistic anthropology, and studies in intricate detail the cognitive and social processes of children’s development. It is further informed by my experiences teaching in elementary schools in the South Bronx, New York, and in East Oakland, California, and my concerns about children’s learning experiences in schools (such as those I taught in) that are failing to educate the children they serve.
Attending to the micro-processes involved in social interaction and learning, I investigate a number of interrelated issues in my research, including:
• Peer social worlds as a context for learning to read and write.
• Ways teachers can create an expansive and imaginative pedagogy that draws from and builds upon children’s own experiences, backgrounds and language practices.
• Ways we (as researchers and teachers) can better understand and support students’ thinking.
• Arts environments as a context for meaningful learning experiences and social and cognitive development.
I am also interested in how we can use various methodological tools for studying the complexity of the social, linguistic and cognitive processes involved in learning.
Supervisors: Frederick Erickson, Marjorie Faulstich-Orellana, Kathryn Anderson-Levitt, Teresa McCarty, Marjorie Goodwin, and Amy Kyratzis
Attending to the micro-processes involved in social interaction and learning, I investigate a number of interrelated issues in my research, including:
• Peer social worlds as a context for learning to read and write.
• Ways teachers can create an expansive and imaginative pedagogy that draws from and builds upon children’s own experiences, backgrounds and language practices.
• Ways we (as researchers and teachers) can better understand and support students’ thinking.
• Arts environments as a context for meaningful learning experiences and social and cognitive development.
I am also interested in how we can use various methodological tools for studying the complexity of the social, linguistic and cognitive processes involved in learning.
Supervisors: Frederick Erickson, Marjorie Faulstich-Orellana, Kathryn Anderson-Levitt, Teresa McCarty, Marjorie Goodwin, and Amy Kyratzis
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Papers by Sarah Jean Johnson
[sociocultural theory, arts education, access and equity, participation, child development]
demonstrates: a) that reading together is achieved through children's use of complex, embodied resources (e.g., bald directive forms and touch) that close off activities competing for a peer's attention and which are calibrated in response to the child's non-compliance, and b) that the social force of directives is dependent on the way children overlay verbal directives with affective displays. Attention is also given to the way the teacher emphasizes how children organize their bodies for peer reading. By considering the instructional context along with children's own practices for maintaining order, this paper argues that children creatively adapt aspects of the adult culture to fit the goals of the peer social group, effectively imbuing learning to read with the pleasures of human sociality.
statements to consider the value of the course – and the engagement
it requires with anthropological methods and multilingual and multicultural
children – in supporting students’ cultural competence. In doing so, the authors demonstrate what they believe to be a worthwhile approach for cultivating cultural competence in higher education in a socially just and culturally responsive manner.
interaction and those who influenced his work, alongside historical developments in the use of video methods for the close study of human social interaction. He further explains how his use of a quasi-musical transcription method avoids what he considers to be a tendency for logocentrism
in empirical studies of face-to-face interaction. The highlight of our conversation with Dr. Erickson is his revelation of an alter identity or “Clark Kent” underneath both his teaching and scholarship. Lastly, we ask the inevitable question, “What intellectual pursuits he will follow upon leaving the Westwood campus” and also seek his advice for future generations of scholars interested in the study of language, interaction and culture.
changing views of children and childhood. We then consider how this discursive space (and its accompanying social and cultural context) impacts advocacy for social justice for immigrant youth. In the contemporary context, in which thousands of young people
are coming of age without the legal rights of citizenship, and in which the Dream Act is being debated, circulating discourses about immigrant youth have tremendous force.
Secondly, within these mutually accountable reading frameworks, children are observed apprenticing one another in learning to read. They help peers read a new word, work out the meanings of a passage, engage in word play, and more. These collaborative activities are made more complex, however, by their peer status, and thus children are working out power and status dynamics as they build their friendships through reading.
To examine children’s learning interactions, multiple theoretical frames are applied, including socio-cultural theory, John Dewey’s approach to experiential learning, and interactional sociolinguistics, as influenced by the work of Erving Goffman. Close observations of children’s activities are additionally contextualized with rich portraits of classroom life and instruction. The goal here is to better understand what gives rise and constitutes these positive learning interactions between children.
The portraits of children’s peer reading show how fluidly children move between reading and social interaction. Peer reading is not a disembodied school-based task occurring in an individual mind, or through the words on the page, or within a child’s talk alone. Rather, learning to read with a peer is intimately related to children’s social relations and, thus, to their development of an identity as someone who enjoys reading. This dissertation argues that more robust theories of children’s learning and development will come from analyses that consider the rich complexity of human sociality and interaction. Additionally, such an analyses will help guide teachers’ efforts in supporting peer learning.
Conference Presentations by Sarah Jean Johnson
[sociocultural theory, arts education, access and equity, participation, child development]
demonstrates: a) that reading together is achieved through children's use of complex, embodied resources (e.g., bald directive forms and touch) that close off activities competing for a peer's attention and which are calibrated in response to the child's non-compliance, and b) that the social force of directives is dependent on the way children overlay verbal directives with affective displays. Attention is also given to the way the teacher emphasizes how children organize their bodies for peer reading. By considering the instructional context along with children's own practices for maintaining order, this paper argues that children creatively adapt aspects of the adult culture to fit the goals of the peer social group, effectively imbuing learning to read with the pleasures of human sociality.
statements to consider the value of the course – and the engagement
it requires with anthropological methods and multilingual and multicultural
children – in supporting students’ cultural competence. In doing so, the authors demonstrate what they believe to be a worthwhile approach for cultivating cultural competence in higher education in a socially just and culturally responsive manner.
interaction and those who influenced his work, alongside historical developments in the use of video methods for the close study of human social interaction. He further explains how his use of a quasi-musical transcription method avoids what he considers to be a tendency for logocentrism
in empirical studies of face-to-face interaction. The highlight of our conversation with Dr. Erickson is his revelation of an alter identity or “Clark Kent” underneath both his teaching and scholarship. Lastly, we ask the inevitable question, “What intellectual pursuits he will follow upon leaving the Westwood campus” and also seek his advice for future generations of scholars interested in the study of language, interaction and culture.
changing views of children and childhood. We then consider how this discursive space (and its accompanying social and cultural context) impacts advocacy for social justice for immigrant youth. In the contemporary context, in which thousands of young people
are coming of age without the legal rights of citizenship, and in which the Dream Act is being debated, circulating discourses about immigrant youth have tremendous force.
Secondly, within these mutually accountable reading frameworks, children are observed apprenticing one another in learning to read. They help peers read a new word, work out the meanings of a passage, engage in word play, and more. These collaborative activities are made more complex, however, by their peer status, and thus children are working out power and status dynamics as they build their friendships through reading.
To examine children’s learning interactions, multiple theoretical frames are applied, including socio-cultural theory, John Dewey’s approach to experiential learning, and interactional sociolinguistics, as influenced by the work of Erving Goffman. Close observations of children’s activities are additionally contextualized with rich portraits of classroom life and instruction. The goal here is to better understand what gives rise and constitutes these positive learning interactions between children.
The portraits of children’s peer reading show how fluidly children move between reading and social interaction. Peer reading is not a disembodied school-based task occurring in an individual mind, or through the words on the page, or within a child’s talk alone. Rather, learning to read with a peer is intimately related to children’s social relations and, thus, to their development of an identity as someone who enjoys reading. This dissertation argues that more robust theories of children’s learning and development will come from analyses that consider the rich complexity of human sociality and interaction. Additionally, such an analyses will help guide teachers’ efforts in supporting peer learning.