Understanding and Negotiating

May 18, 2008
Understanding and Negotiating

As Green, Baker & Yeager (in preparation) point out, understanding subject matter in schools is a complex process and is linked to negotiating. That is, students and teacher in the classroom through discourse and action negotiate what counts as understanding, and the processes involved with interacting and negotiating understanding are complex. But how are these two constructs, understanding and negotiating, linked? Don’t teachers either inform students (e.g., through direct instruction) what is true or provide opportunities for them to discuss (e.g., through small group work) and arrive at an understanding of what is true about particular subjects? If teacher and students negotiate, how do they arrive at consensus or compromise--aspects of negotiation--of what counts as x? These initial questions raise further questions whose answers underlie the concept of negotiating understanding.

If we accept that teachers tell students what is “true” about a particular phenomenon or text, we presume that there is truth about the content in question and teachers have and impart it (or not) to students; however, how do students recognize the truth about x, or understand that questioning it is part of coming to understand? For example, a teacher may claim that in the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald that the eyes of T. J. Eckleberg (an advert on a billboard) symbolize morality among immoral actions. Is that fact? Or, is it fact according to how the teacher understands the novel based on his experiences as a reader, or based on critical reviews of Gatsby, or based on personal beliefs as a reader—or a little bit of all three? Is this claim negotiable or not? And how does a teacher signal to students whether or not the claim is negotiable?

Furthermore, is there an agreed upon process for unpacking these types of claims and questions? And is the process visible to students? For example, in a high school studio art class, a student presents a series of drawings. The final one shows a huge fly with a streak of brown beneath it. Another student asks the artist to explain what the brown represents. The artist states that the brown symbolizes a tree trunk. This acknowledgement raises another question: if the brown behind the fly is a tree trunk, then the fly must be flying up the side of the trunk; if not, the fly is flying over it, which visually challenges the observer. The artist offers an ambiguous following statement. The teacher then describes how the drawing makes the viewer flip between plausible interpretations. Therefore, it is through a description of how color works and the possibilities that appear in the drawing, particularly absent of artist’s explanation.

So how does this connect with reading, interpreting and responding to texts? What does it mean to negotiate?

Teachers assign students to read texts and prepare to discuss them in class. Through activities and discussion teachers signal to students expectations, e.g., that a protagonist is acknowledged and his or her intentions, and then signal some degree of understanding through proxemics and xxxx, e.g., nodding of heads. However, it is through pointing to specific examples and supporting claims with evidence that members of the class negotiate what counts as answers to questions about the protagonist’s intentions. In some cases, a teacher may state claim and ignore physical signals of students and decide unilaterally that understanding has occurred, or that students will ask questions if they do not understand.