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Inclusion, Power, and Community: Teachers and Students Interpret the Language of
Community in an Inclusion Classroom
Ruth A Wiebe Berry. American Educational Research Journal. Washington:Fall2006. Vol. 43, Iss. 3, p. 489-529 (41 pp.)
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Inclusion, Power, and Community: Teachers and Students Interpret the Language of
Community in an Inclusion Classroom
Ruth A Wiebe Berry. American Educational Research Journal. Washington:Fall 2006.
Vol. 43, Iss. 3, p. 489-529 (41 pp.)Subjects: Special education, Students, Processes, Educational
services, Administrative
support, Behavior, Community, Researchers, Language
Author(s): Ruth A Wiebe Berry
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American Educational Research Journal. Washington: Fall2006. Vol. 43, Iss. 3; pg. 489, 41 pgs
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Abstract (Document Summary)To illuminate the processes of creating learning communities, this study investigated the
social context of an inclusion classroom by examining (a) how teachers established a
community ethos, (b) how students responded with regard to the positioning of students
with disabilities, and (c) how macro discourses possibly shaped interactional processes.Teachers used discourse and participation frameworks in whole-class lessons to
encourage participation and collective responsibility for "helping. "Nevertheless, the
teachers' inclusive language was manipulated to harass and exclude in small-groupcontexts. Benhabib's conceptions of "general" and "concrete " selves and Cornelius and
Herrenkohl's aspects of classroom power-assigning ownership, creating alliances,
engaging in persuasion-frame a discussion of contexts of inclusion and exclusion.
[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
Full Text (18485 words)
Copyright American Educational Research Association Fall 2006
[Headnote]
To illuminate the processes of creating learning communities, this study investigated the
social context of an inclusion classroom by examining (a) how teachers established acommunity ethos, (b) how students responded with regard to the positioning of students
with disabilities, and (c) how macro discourses possibly shaped interactional processes.
Teachers used discourse and participation frameworks in whole-class lessons toencourage participation and collective responsibility for "helping. "Nevertheless, the
teachers' inclusive language was manipulated to harass and exclude in small-groupcontexts. Benhabib's conceptions of "general" and "concrete " selves and Cornelius andHerrenkohl's aspects of classroom power-assigning ownership, creating alliances,
engaging in persuasion-frame a discussion of contexts of inclusion and exclusion.
KEYWORDS: discourse, inclusion, learning community, participation, social interaction
Students with disabilities increasingly receive educational services in general education
contexts. Several factors explain this decades-long shift. Parents and educators concerned
about equitable treatment of these students (Lipsky, 2005; Reid & Valle, 2004) regardedinclusion as an antidote to what they considered to be exclusionary education practices.
In addition, researchers found that special curricula designed for students with disabilitiesfailed to achieve desired academic outcomes (Zigmond, 2003), with the result that special
educators now recognize that instructional practices effective for most learners are alsoeffective for students with disabilities if they are delivered in an explicit and systematic
manner (Landrum, Tankersley, & Kauffman, 2003; Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2003).
At the federal level, the recent No Child Left Behind Act (2001) and the current and
previous versions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1997, 2004) require
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1134850321&Fmt=3&clientId=65085&RQT=309&VName=PQDhttp://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1134850321&Fmt=3&clientId=65085&RQT=309&VName=PQDhttp://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1134850321&Fmt=3&clientId=65085&RQT=309&VName=PQDhttp://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1134850321&Fmt=3&clientId=65085&RQT=309&VName=PQD7/29/2019 scoala integrata
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access to the general education curriculum for students with disabilities. The 2004
amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act further propose that
student responses to research-based instructional methods, presumably occurring in
general education contexts, be used as a data source to augment or replace exclusive
reliance on the IQ-achievement discrepancy model for identifying students with learningdisabilities (Danielson, Doolittle, & Bradley, 2005). Taken together, these developments
have resulted in the practice of inclusion or integration becoming the rule rather than theexception. Responding to this trend, general education teachers expect to teach students
with disabilities in their classrooms and need to be prepared to do so (Cook, 2002).
Inclusion may be defined as 100% placement in age-appropriate general education
classes (Idol, 1997) or as a range of learning opportunities both within and outside thegeneral education classroom (Baker & Zigmond, 1995). A number of educators and
researchers have investigated the impact of inclusive arrangements on students'
educational experiences as well as the effectiveness of these arrangements. In their
review of the literature on inclusion, Salend and Garrick (1999) concluded that benefitsof inclusion for many students with disabilities include gains in academic achievement,
increased peer acceptance and richer friendship networks, higher self-esteem, avoidanceof stigma attached to pull-out programs, and possible lifetime benefits (e.g., higher
salaries, independent living) after leaving school. They also found that the practice of
inclusion could benefit students without disabilities and that teachers' responses to
inclusion were often associated with their perceptions of the availability of training,resources, and administrative support.
While much of the research in the area of inclusion has naturally focused on instructional
strategies and academic achievement outcomes, investigations have also been directed
toward specifying the beneficial components of inclusive contexts, and thus many havecome to see inclusion as more a matter of context than place (Pratt, n.d.). Indeed, it is
likely that few would question notions such as "institutional access alone-the creation of
physical spacedoes not answer the call for educational inclusion" (Sayed, 2002, p. 29)and "what goes on in a place, not the location itself, is what makes a difference"
(Zigmond, 2003, p. 198). Thus, while location-that is, presence in a general education
classroom-may be implicated, inclusion also connotes cognitive access to the curriculumand, perhaps more important, the institutional ethos (Sayed, 2002).
Consequently, researchers have widened their lenses to include examinations of
classroom culture or social climate represented by teacher beliefs, classroom
management, social relations, rules for speaking and participating, classroom dynamics,and the like (Bennacer, 2000; Berry, 2006; Montague & Rinaldi, 2001; Turner & Meyer,
2000). Attributes of classroom culture underlying successful inclusive classrooms are
believed to include valuing of student voices, authority sharing, accountability of studentsto each other, presence of relevant resources, attention to individual differences, positive
interpersonal relationships, preparation for integration, participation in shared routines,
school-wide community spirit, and high levels of acceptance and expectations for all
students (Carreiro King, 2003; Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004; Erwin & Guintini, 2000;
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Freeman & Alkin, 2000; Noblit, 1993; Parsons, 2003; Vaughn, Elbaum, Schumm, &
Hughes, 1998).
The desirable classroom attributes just listed would probably be endorsed by a number of
researchers who have used a sociocultural framework to theorize "community oflearners" models of classroom culture as particularly supportive of inclusivity (Berry &
Englert, 2005; Gutirrez & Stone, 1997; Rogoff, 1994). Such learning communities are
typified by a "sense of belonging, of collective concern for each individual, of individual
responsibility for the collective good, and of appreciation for the rituals and celebrationsof the group" (Noddings, 1996, pp. 266-267).
The present study examined the social context and interactions observed in an urban
elementary inclusion classroom to (a) define and understand the operative communityethos; (b) determine participation patterns characteristic of student-teacher interactions,
as well as interactions among peers, in the case of students both with and without
disabilities in both whole-group and small-group contexts; (c) examine how thesepatterns affected the learning identities of students with disabilities; and (d) formulatehypotheses regarding the effects of power relationships in the classroom as well as
connections between classroom practice and dominant or competing traditions or
discourses (Noddings, 1996) influencing teacher and student behavior and relationships.
Theoretical Background
Special education research regarding effective instructional interventions has tended to
focus on specific learning objectives (Barab & Duffy, 2000), typically employing a
behavioral theoretical framework and including the social context of learning only
tangentially, if at all (e.g., quantitative measurements of type and frequency of teacherattention to students with disabilities; see, for example, Bulgren & Carta, 1992).
However, multidimensional examinations of a social context require a different
theoretical basis, one that permits the individual-in-social-context as the unit of analysis(Trent, Artiles, & Englert, 1998). Sociocultural theory provides such a foundation.
Role of Social Relationships in Learning
A sociocultural perspective holds that learning is social even to the extent that "all higher
mental functions are internalized social relationships" (Vygotsky, 1981, cited in Wells,2000, p. 54). Following Vygotsky, whose theoretical influence on current thinking and
practice in special education is enormous and pervasive (Gindis, 2003), theorists in thefield of education defined learning as both individual and social, occurring "dynamicallyand fluidly through discourse mediated in social contexts with knowledgeable others on a
momentto-moment basis and over time" (Manage, Paxton-Buursma, & Bouck, 2004, p.
542; McDermott, 1993; Slee, 1997). In Vygotsky's view, the basis for learning and
development at school age rests on facilitating the child's emerging abilities to reason andthink conceptually to the point at which the child can deploy these psychological
functions effectively and independently (see Chaiklin's, 2003, discussion of Vygotsky's
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often misunderstood and misapplied theory of the zone of proximal development).
Taking Vygotsky's viewpoint that this type of instruction is best carried out in the social
mainstream, even in the case of children with disabilities (Gindis, 2003), a number of
special education researchers have come to hold that social contexts and interactions mustfigure into theories of causation and intervention regarding students with disabilities
(Skidmore, 1996; Trent et al., 1998). With social relations implicated in the learning
process, "even a small change in the patterns of interaction-effected through changes inthe shared activity or teacher's actions-can have a significant effect on students' learning
identities" (Dudley-Marling, 2004, p. 489). Failures to learn, then, may involve complex
dynamics such as exclusion from aspects of community life (Forman & McCormick,1995), teacher evaluations of a child's learning potential as static and unchanging (Kaniel
& Feuerstein, 1989), deliberate social positioning (Harre & van Langenhove, 1999), and
power relationships (Fairclough, 1989).
In the classroom, students need to be engaged in active conversations with teachers andpeers if they are to learn effectively, and teachers must employ participation structures
that encourage collaborative involvement (Barnes, 1993; Englert & Mariage, 1996;
Rogoff, 1995; Tharp, Estrada, Dalton, & Yamauchi, 2000). Such participatory contextsnot only run counter to models of teacher-student dialogue typically found in classrooms
(Mehan, 1979) but also may present particular difficulties for students with disabilities,
many of whom have difficulty with social pragmatics, exhibit low overall verbal skills,
and are less engaged in social interactions than are their general education counterparts(Alves & Gottlieb, 1986; Mathinos, 1991; McIntosh, Vaughn, Schumm, Haager, & Lee,
1993). Accordingly, students may require explicit instruction in the social skills involved
in functional relationships such as "seeking help, giving help, taking turns at talk in a
classroom conversation, doing work individually, [and] doing work collectively"(Erickson, 1996, p. 96). For these reasons, teachers may seek to avoid placing students
with disabilities in academic situations heavily dependent on verbal interactions.However, doing so may, at the least, underestimate the extent to which these students
might benefit from social interactions and, at the most, deprive them of critical
opportunities for learning and participation that can lead to autonomy and empowerment
in classroom interactions (Goldenberg, 1993; Wells & Wells, 1984).
Classrooms as Communities
The project of exploring interactive and community-based theories of learning and
teaching from a sociocultural perspective has motivated the work of a number of theoristsand researchers, many of whom are mentioned in the following review. In fact, sometheorists find the proliferation of uses of the community metaphor to be problematic. To
bring a degree of clarity to the situation, Beck (1999) examined the language of
academics and practitioners in an attempt to understand the beliefs, meanings, andimplications conveyed by various uses of the metaphor. Nel Noddings, well known for
her work around the ethics of caring (Katz, Noddings, & Strike, 1999; Noddings, 1992,
2002), has explicated the history as well as the philosophical and political underpinnings
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of what she calls "the longing for community" as a "social good" to combat perceived
social crises of loneliness and helplessness (Noddings, 1996, p. 245).
Linehan and McCarthy (2001) theorized contrasting uses of the metaphor: (a) communityas a descriptive metaphor representing normative patterns of practice that view
collaborative relationships as constitutive of learning and that are relatively
unproblematical as long as all involved align themselves with the norm and (b)community as a metaphor for the dynamic participatory processes, often "complex,
personal, and potentially conflictual" (p. 145), inherent in the production of such
relationships. This view of community is concerned with the negotiated nature of the
"individual and community as mutually emerging from particular relations, which entailthe sociocultural and personal historical contexts from which they emerge" (p. 146).
Winkelmann (1991) argued that a view of community that assumes an essentially
homogeneous entity centered on the teacher's beliefs and theories has the potential to
marginalize individuals who fail to conform by denying the importance of diverse voicesand the positive, dynamic role of difference. In her view, the term collectivity better
denotes a thriving community characterized by the positive effects of diversity anddifference in shaping the interactions and participation of its various members.
Also apprehensive about the implications of homogeneity and diversity in community,
Linehan and McCarthy (2001) argued that community as normative practice "call[s] out
certain kinds of student identities" (p. 136) and thus limits what we can learn about "howparticular identities are produced in classroom practices" (p. 135), an important issue that
should be included in evaluations of the outcomes for students with disabilities of
learning in inclusion contexts. However, Linehan and McCarthy perhaps rejected too
quickly the usefulness of the normative view of community, as they themselves impliedin their use of Benhabib's (1992, 1994) conceptions of the self as both "generalized" and
"concrete." The "generalized other" self is a sort of universal ideal or norm that ascribes
the same rights and duties to all human beings and is concerned with justice for all. The"concrete other" self affirms the uniqueness of every individual, with a specific history,
character, gifts, and needs, and is situated and narrative. Relationships with concrete
others are based on norms of love and care (Benhabib, 1992).
Rather than considering these conceptions of self to be incompatible, Benhabib arguedfor different contexts in which the standpoints are relevant; the view of the generalized
other is a useful standpoint for articulating institutional justice, whereas the standpoint of
the concrete other is useful "at the level of application of moral principles" (p. 183).Linehan and McCarthy's analysis of classroom interaction foregrounds the situated self,
as students negotiate the relational aspects of classroom lessons. Benhabib's concepts of
the generalized and concrete other assist in formulating an understanding of therelationship between the teacher's intentions and the students' actions in the classroom
that is the focus of this analysis.
Participation in the Community
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In the context of this article, "participation" implies a confluence of social relationships
with academic engagement and responding (Greenwood, Delquadri, & Hall, 1984).
Wenger (1998) suggested that, in classroom communities, the construct of participationlocates learning activities at the intersection of social interaction and academic
accomplishment, the latter being enfolded within the joint enterprise (i.e., the work) ofthe community. He characterized participation as mutual, because it shapes theexperiences and identities of all individuals party to the process. It is also reciprocal, in
that both individual and community are shaped by and shape each other. Thus,
participation is transformative for both individual and context (Lave & Wenger, 1991).
A form of participation compatible with a community of learners model, mediation oflearning via peer interaction and collaboration is specifically recognized as an effective
approach for increasing academic achievement and helping students with disabilities gain
access to the general education curriculum. A number of researchers who, following
Noddings (2002), locate caring in community emphasize participation in a range of active
roles in the learning process for both more mature and less mature members (Englert,Raphael, & Mariage, 1994; Gutirrez & Stone, 1997; Rogoff, 1994). These possibilities
for multiple forms of assistance and participation create a range of educationalopportunities with obvious advantages for students with disabilities, who are often seen
chiefly in terms of need and deficit. In such a community, all members may make
significant contributions to the emerging understandings constructed by the group in spiteof having unequal knowledge regarding the topic under study, because all knowledge is
equally valued. In addition, all members benefit from opportunities to direct and assist as
well as to receive assistance. Although there may be an asymmetry of roles, this is notstatic, varying from one situation to another as various participants take the lead at
different times (Rogoff, 1994) in shifting dyadic, small-group, or largegroup
arrangements rather than relying on a single adult to be in charge of the entire group(Tharp et al., 2000).
Expanding Vygotsky's ideas of mediation of learning and developmental assessment
(Gindis, 1999), Feuerstein contended that the learning potential of a child with learning
difficulties is not static but modifiable (Kaniel & Feuerstein, 1989) and can be identified
through dynamic assessment, that is, appraising the child's thinking processes and workstrategies to discover the learner's "latent learning ability" (Kaniel & Feuerstein, 1989, p.
170). The teacher then tailors instruction to the needs of the child, focusing on teaching
learning strategies to aid the development of metacognitive functions (Lurie & Kozulin,n.d.). Feuerstein's methods have had positive results for students with learning disabilities
in the areas of math computation and concepts as well as cognitive strategy developmentin reading and math (Kozulin & Presseisen, 1995).
Types of Community Involvement: Center, Periphery, and Margin
While the construct of community may be almost universally appealing, the process of
creating social relationships within a community is often difficult and complex, and it is
likely to contain "moments in which conflicts between lived participation and normative
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practices may emerge" (Linehan & McCarthy, 2001, p. 136) or, even more negatively, a
"dark side" (Noddings, 1996, p. 258) characterized by parochialism, conformity,
exclusion, and coercion. Social contexts allow for the possibility that some individualswill occupy positions of greater or lesser value, influence, or activity in the interactions
occurring there. Two theoretical models of noncentrality guided the understanding of thesocial interactions and outcomes that were the focus of this study. The first wasperipherality as a legitimate but temporary phase in the advancement toward full
participation in the discourse (Gee, 1992; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1993; Wenger,
1998). Peripherality is a legitimate form of participation in a world where learning is
viewed as active involvement with others in culturally organized activity that has as agoal the development of less experienced participants (Gutirrez, 1995; Rogoff, 1993,
1995). As included rather than sequestered members of the community, individuals on
the periphery are able to "develop a view of what the whole enterprise is about, and whatthere is to be learned" (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 93).
The second model of noncentrality, marginality, may, in some classrooms orcommunities, be a result of "counterscripts" (Gutirrez, Rymes, & Larson, 1995) that
play a negative role in classroom interactions by actively undermining classroom normsof inclusivity. For example, the use of positioning moves that mark some community
members as incompetent (Dudley-Marling, 2004; Wortham, 2004) or, worse (in the
community-of-learners view), nonparticipatory is likely to result in marginalization, thatis, exclusion from the social and academic advantages of community life (Gitlin,
Buenda, Crosland, & Doumbia, 2003). In contrast, positive aspects of counterscripts
include the prospect of disrupting entrenched power to allow the expression of diversevoices or create opportunities for change and development (Trent, Artiles, Fitchett-
Basemore, McDaniel, & Coleman-Sorrell, 2002).
Positioning, Power, and Ideology
Participation in social contexts involves individuals in negotiation for "positions." The
question about positioning is not whether individuals are positioned, in that positioningand attempts to position are implicit in social relations. Rather, the issue is who attempts
the positioning and by what means. Individuals may be consciously or unconsciously
positioned by others or themselves; however, positioning others always entails self-positioning, and vice versa (Harr & van Langenhove, 1999). Reflexive or self-
positioning (Davies & Harr, 1990) involves a story we tell ourselves about who we are,
for example, a "writer." We recognize in ourselves the characteristics we consider to
mark the position we claim, such as "spells accurately," "writes neatly," or "has creativeideas," as opposed to our notion of what a "nonwriter" might be. Furthermore, we claim
attendant rights, for example, "authorized to take a turn at being scribe" when scribing is
scheduled by turns.1
Interactive positioning (Davies & Harr, 1990) involves being positioned by another. If
self and other(s) agree, the positioning-whether reflexive or interactive-remains
uncontested. A conflict between reflexive and interactive positioning may indicate
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incompatible perspectives, and negotiation, resistance, or contestation may follow
(Davies & Harr, 1990; van Langenhove & Harr, 1999). For example, people believingthemselves to be writers may request a turn to scribe, only to be denied because their
spelling skills are deemed inadequate by someone else. They then have several options,
some of which may be undesirable to them: conform (with new insight, or feel angry oroppressed), withdraw, or resist. Individuals vary in their mastery of positioning
techniques, in their willingness or intention to position or be positioned, and in their
power to achieve positioning (Harr & van Langenhove, 1999).
When relationships involve competing agendas or discourses, issues of power are alsoimplicated, though not necessarily overtly. Researchers who have examined this construct
in general education contexts have drawn on Foucault's characterization of power as
directed toward domination, controlling either directly by means of force or more subtlythrough cajoling or persuading (Ford, 2003). In collaborative arrangements, however,
power, shared and shifting, functions through mechanisms of ownership of ideas,
alliances formed, or persuasion that appeals to shared criteria for acceptance or rejectionof ideas (Cornelius & Herrenkkohl, 2004).
Social relationships-tested and contested, constituted through use of power and
positioning strategies, and emergent in local, micro contextseither reproduce or resist
dominant discourses or ideologies that are evident at the macro level (Ferri, 2004; Reid &Valle, 2004) and that, in classrooms, speak through teachers and students. Both micro
and macro scripts allow for the construction of individuals as central, marginal, or
peripheral to the activities of the community. One such macro script that is often highlyconsequential in general education classrooms when students with disabilities are present
is a concern with "fairness" or equity (Hutchinson & Martin, 1999; Kamens, Loprete, &
Slostad, 2003). Unexamined perceptions of fairness may create barriers for both teachersand students. For example, general education teachers might fail to implement particularinstructional adaptations that they believe are preferential to students with disabilities and
therefore "unfair" to other students in the class.
Creating Participatory Classroom Learning Communities for Students With Disabilities
The application of sociocultural theory to the architecture of an instructionally productivesocial context in a community of learners has a substantial literature in both general and
special education research.
Community Participation: Peer Strategies
A powerful and well-researched peer mediation strategy, reciprocal teaching (Palincsar,
Brown, & Campione, 1993), rests on the principle that talk results in mental processesbeing visible for both students and teachers. Organized around comprehension skills
(predicting, questioning, summarizing, and clarifying), the structure of reciprocal
teaching dialogues provides cognitive tools for students to use in comprehending text andmaintaining their engagement in the activity. The teacher's role is to support student
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involvement by linking current and prior knowledge, prompting students to elaborate on
their ideas, managing the direction of the discussion, and working with students'
contributions to make them fit into the discussion.
Other programmatic research on types of peer collaboration strategies has achievedreliable success in the case of students with as well as without disabilities, although not
all researchers in this area draw specifically on sociocultural theory in pursuing their
research goals (Maheady, Harper, & Mallette, 2001) or provide a focus on the role ofdiscourse in establishing and maintaining community solidarity. Johnson and Johnson
(1987) pioneered cooperative learning techniques, wherein students are grouped to
promote individual learning, interdependence, and interpersonal skills. Greenwood andcolleagues' work on classwide peer tutoring (Greenwood & Delquadri, 1995), shown to
be effective for both general and special education elementary school children, can be
applied to reading or math programs to improve academic outcomes as well as on-task
behavior. Fuchs, Fuchs, Mathes, and Simmons (1997) developed a version of classwide
peer tutoring-peer-assisted learning strategies-in which student partners assist each othertwo to four times weekly on individualized learning activities. This approach has been
shown to be effective in improving academic achievement in general and specialeducation contexts from preschool through high school.2
Community Participation: Teacher Strategies
A number of researchers working from sociocultural and community perspectives on
teaching and learning have focused on teacher discourse strategies supportive ofincreasing academic achievement among students with disabilities in both general and
special education contexts. Researchers associated with the Research Institute to
Accelerate Content Learning through High Support for Students with Disabilities inGrades 4-8 (REACH Institute) have focused on helping middle school students withhigh-incidence disabilities achieve in the content areas (math, science, social studies, and
language arts) in general education classrooms.3 They have found the following
strategies to be effective in increasing students' involvement in whole-class math andliteracy lessons: modeling the particular skills being taught, posing questions that
encourage differing viewpoints, calling on students to answer questions or when they
volunteer, restating students' contributions to make them more accessible to otherstudents, and keeping the discussion on point (Baxter, Woodward, Voorhies, & Wang,
2002; Morocco & Hindin, 2002).
In association with the REACH Institute, Palincsar and colleagues (Palincsar, Collins,Marano, & Magnusson, 2000; Palincsar, Magnusson, Collins, & Cutter, 2001; Palincsar,Magnusson, Cutter, & Vincent, 2002) studied the participation of students with learning
disabilities and emotional impairments in science inquiry lessons using guided inquiry
supporting multiple literacies (GIsML). Central to instruction were conversations aboutscience that allowed students to share interpretations, defend claims, and generally try to
make sense of their data. Teaching strategies involving debriefing, revoicing, rehearsing,
and pacing provided access to student thinking, affirmed the value of students' ideas,
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made ideas available to all class members, and provided a pace of activity that addressed
attentional requirements.
In special education, Englert, Mariage, and colleagues associated with the Early Literacy
Program and the Literacy Environments for Accelerated Progress (LEAP) project haveprovided multiple examples of the application of sociocultural and social constructivist
theory to instruction in special education and inclusion settings in the area of literacy
development (Berry & Englert, 2005; Englert, 1998; Englert, Berry, & Dunsmore, 2001;Englert & Dunsmore, 2002; Englert et al., 1995; Englert & Mariage, 1996; Englert,
Mariage, Garmon, & Tarrant, 1998; Englert, Raphael, & Mariage, 1994; Englert &
Rozendal, 1996; Englert, Rozendal, & Mariage, 1994). This work has focused oneffective instruction provided by experienced teachers modeling the language and tools
of readers and writers and incorporating student voices into lesson processes. For
example, students are encouraged to nominate themselves for turn taking and to
challenge each other's interpretations. Results from these studies show consistent positive
outcomes for students with disabilities in the experimental conditions over those incontrol conditions.
Extending this line of research, Mariage (1995, 2001) examined teacher talk in bothsmall- and large-group settings, exploring the complex topic of how teachers orchestrate
cognitive and social participation. In a whole-group lesson format in which text
construction was the focus of the lesson, Mariage (2001) found that a teacher in a special
education classroom used eight student involvement moves-rereading, repeating, floor-holding, revoicing, humor, direct call, permission, and supporting-to provide reflection
and processing time, allow opportunities to monitor the clarity and accuracy of the text,
allow time for the speaker to present an idea, and give speaking rights to particular
students.
Emanating from this program of research, a summary of indicators of teaching
effectiveness (Englert, Tarrant, & Mariage, 1992) described the contributions of both (a)
process-product research (in the areas of classroom management, time and instructionalmanagement, and seatwork management) and (b) social constructivist theory (e.g.,
embedding instruction in meaningful activities, promoting classroom dialogue for
learning, using responsive instruction, establishing a classroom learning community) tothe knowledge base regarding effective teaching. The summary was accompanied by
observation checklists for rating teachers' use of effective teaching strategies and
behaviors.
Working in a similar vein with a focus on diverse general education classrooms, Tharpand colleagues, as well as researchers associated with the Center for Research on
Education, Diversity, and Excellence (http://www.crede.org), have developed what they
call "five standards for effective pedagogy" (Tharp et al., 2000, p. 20): joint productiveactivity, language and literacy development, contextualization/making meaning,
challenging activities, and instructional conversation. Taken together, these distillations
of effective teaching practice offer both principled and pragmatic bases for effective
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education.
Goals of the Study
Linehan and McCarthy (2001) suggested that focusing on differences between people asthey negotiate their context is theoretically useful because it reveals possibilities foridentity construction that are overlooked when the conceptions and processes of
community production are assumed to be normative and unproblematic. In this
investigation of social interaction in an inclusion classroom, I pursued both theoretical
and practical goals. While much of the work described earlier sought to understand thepositive potentials for students with disabilities of membership in a community of
learners, little of this research examined explicit facilitative or inhibitory discourse
sequences with regard to (a) assessing evidence of teachers' expectations regardingclassroom ethos and the "generalized other" self they believed students were likely to
develop as a result of living and learning in their classroom community, (b) offering
examples of the ways in which students' "concrete other" selves either corroborated orcontradicted teacher conceptions of the "generalized other," or (c) hypothesizing possible
other "discourses" or "traditions" (Noddings, 1996, p. 261) unique to the teachers or
students in the classroom and the potential of these macro discourses for shaping
engagement in the practices of the local classroom community.
In the remainder of this article, I describe the classroom context for the study and
teachers' understandings of and expectations for classroom community, use a selected
lesson ("Morning Message") to illustrate teacher strategies for encouraging academic andsocial participation in a typical whole-group literacy lesson, demonstrate the function of
the "helping ethic" as a basis for classroom interaction norms, and provide evidence of
both community and exclusion in small-group interactions. Also, I discuss mechanismsof power and positioning pertaining to social interactions in the study classroom and offerhypotheses regarding the influence of competing traditions or discourses possibly linking
the micro classroom context with institutional or societal beliefs regarding teacher and
student behavior and relationships.
Method
Seeing past happening,
Hearing between words,
Touching heart stories.
This haiku (Gouwens, cited in Janesick, 2000, p. 392) artfully describes the work of the
ethnographer. Because ethnographers seek to familiarize themselves with theirinformants' perspectives in an attempt to propose interpretations and explanations
(Geertz, 1973), ethnography is particularly well suited for examining the classroom
experiences of children and teachers. While quantitative methods address questions of
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"how much" and "to what extent," naturalistic methods such as ethnography seek toilluminate "how" and "why" individuals behave as they do in particular contexts.
One method for illuminating perspective is analyzing the talk that occurs in contexts ofinterest. Talk is never "just" talk; it has the potential to make visible the social
relationships present and to confirm or refute observable facts or situations (van derAalsvoort & Harinck, 2000). Classroom discourse is at once both constitutive and
indicative of the types of teaching and learning that occur in classrooms. As constitutive,
discourse patterns allow creation of knowledge, appropriation of ways of speaking andways of knowing congruent with that knowledge, and granting of social identities that
together define the classroom context (Hicks, 1995; Michaels S O'Connor, 1990). As
indicative, classroom discursive practices can tell us about the "real" learning that goes
on in classrooms. For instance, despite what a teacher believes to be true and regardlessof the curriculum materials used, inquiry learning may not occur in classrooms where
recitations are the norm and where the teacher and classroom texts are considered to holdthe key to knowledge in the form of the "right" answer (Hicks, 1995; Mehan, 1979).
As a research tool, discourse analysis allows examination of recurring communicative
tasks representative of the discourse patterns in a particular classroom so as to make
visible the nature of teacher and student roles in community life and in the process of
knowledge construction (Mehan, 1979; Tuyay, Jennings, & Dixon, 1995). In addition,applying a critical perspective to the selected method of discourse analysis provides a
tool for looking at how discourse patterns that either instantiate or challenge classroom
cultural norms are both reproduced and resisted (van Dijk, 2001).
While a number of approaches are suitable for the analysis of discourse (Schiffrin, 1994),this analysis draws on Hymes's (1972) speech act theory to examine the interplay among
classroom settings (whole class, small group), participants (teachers, students), and their
stated and apparent ends (purposes, outcomes), as well as tender hypotheses regarding theinfluence of local and societal norms on participants' behavior, for the purpose of denning
and understanding an ethos and its interpretations and consequences for individuals and
the community. Results are presented as a telling case, that is, one that is more concernedwith in-depth exploration of theoretical issues (Putney, Green, Dixon, Duran, & Yeager,
2000) than with the generalizability of the instructional interventions.
Setting and Participants
Data for the study were provided by members of a classroom located in a midsized urbanschool district with a student body that was approximately 46% Caucasian, 33% African
American, 12% Hispanic, 5% Asian, and 1% American Indian. More than half of the
students received free or reduced lunches. Participants included two teachers, Angie and
Rhonda, and 29 students (all teacher and student names are pseudonyms).
Teacher Participants
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Experienced teachers, both Angie (special education) and Rhonda (general education,
former Chapter I teacher) were highly sensitive to the nuances of their students' peer
relationships, particularly occasions of perceived exclusion. When they became aware ofeach other's classrooms as "safe" places for students with disabilities and discovered their
shared interests in innovative, student-centered teaching methods and inclusive, multi-agesettings, they obtained their principal's consent, if not wholehearted support, to combinetheir caseloads in a full-time teaching collaboration. They were pleased when their
assigned classrooms were adjacent, but there had been several years when they were at
opposite ends of the building. That they persisted with a collaborative, inclusive teaching
model despite marginal institutional support attests to their commitment to this mode ofservice delivery. The issue was not one of philosophical congruence with the school and
the district, in that teachers generally were free to select their preferred teaching
approaches without interference or direction from the district. However, there were nostrong district-wide initiatives promoting innovative, child-centered approaches, although
classrooms that operated in interesting ways "outside the box" (e.g., special projects or
activities) were highlighted from time to time in the local newspaper.
The teachers shared whole-class instruction by teaching together or by taking turnsleading the lesson. They grouped students in either heterogeneous or ability groups for
instruction, depending on the lesson. Both teachers accepted responsibility for instructing
all students; there were no "my" students or "your" students. According to teacher reportsregarding student learning, reports of parents' opinions, and informal and formal
information from other researchers, their classroom was considered to be an effective,
exemplary inclusion classroom.
Rhonda and Angie believed that relational processes provided the means by which
students became accepted and valued members of a learning community. They describedtheir classroom as a place where "definitely, everything we do is building community"
(this quotation and those to follow were taken from interviews with the teachers). In theirview, students with special needs required a protected context of trust and safety as a
foundation for improving academic achievement. Such a context "empowered" students
to "take risks and try things." The curriculum entailed development of tools (e.g.,
communication, writing skills, social relationships) that enabled students to be self-directed in the world (see Berry, 2006, for a discussion of their epistemological beliefs).
Student Participants
The students were second, third, and fourth graders composing both Angle's caseload,which included "lower elementary" special education students (no kindergarten or first-grade special education students during the study year) in a kindergarten through sixth-
grade elementary school, and Rhonda's "Grade 2/3 split," which relieved the pressure of
large class sizes in the other second- and third-grade classrooms in the school (see Table1). Of the combined enrollment of 29 students, 12 received special education services.
These 12 students met state and local guidelines used in identifying students with
learning disabilities or emotional impairments, as determined by a district
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multidisciplinary evaluation team. The wide range of student characteristics was seen by
the teachers as both (a) a natural consequence of combining existing case loads and (b)providing desirable heterogeneity with attendant benefits, for example, the opportunity
for students of varying abilities and levels to assist one another and to share different gifts
and strengths.
A portion of this analysis focused on Marta, a female European American third grader
who was in the class for her third year, making her a veteran of routines and instruction
typical for the classroom. With light-colored hair, a slight build, and a pixie face, she
appeared to be a quiet, reserved individual. She scored in the average range, althoughtending to be withdrawn, on a teacher-report measure of student temperament (Keogh,
Pullis, & Cadwell, 1982). Her teachers also reported that she was very familiar with the
Writing Workshop process used in this classroom: draft, peer conference, teacherconference, revise/edit, and publish. Maria's score on the Slosson Oral Reading Test-
Revised (Slosson & Nicholson, 1990), a word-recognition test, increased from 1.8 to 2.4
grade equivalent from the beginning to the end of the year, resulting in a gain score of 0.6grade equivalent. Her 3-year gain score on the test was 2.2 grade levels.
Data Sources and Analysis
Data for this investigation, drawn from a 9-month study conducted by the author,
included (along with other data not contributing to the present analysis) audiotaped
teacher interviews and videotaped observations of classroom activity, data typically usedin studies of classroom context (Turner & Meyer, 2000). Classroom observations began
with 3 consecutive days in which the entire day was videotaped to obtain a sense of the
classroom ethos and interactional patterns. This was followed by 2 additional full days of
videotaping, 2 months and 4 months later. Eight half days over a period of 17 calendardays were videotaped to capture literacy instruction, including a 7-day instructional unit
on writing a "persuasive paragraph," from which the specific data for this analysis wereselected. Teacher ratings of the writing behavior of target students were also collected.
Classroom Observations
Observations combined focused and selective open-ended observations (Angrosino &
Mays de Ferez, 2000). Selective observations centered on peer interactions. For instance,
if peer interactions appeared to occur during an academic task, the camera and recordingequipment were focused on those interactions. Criteria for selection of observational data
for this analysis included (a) whole-class lessons in which teacher-student dialogue wasprominent, (b) small-group interactions between general education and special educationpeers around an academic task, and (c) representative interactions for this classroom as
observed by the author.
During taping, the author logged as much of the dialogue and other classroom activity on
a notebook computer as possible. Later postobservational summaries were added to thesefield notes. This cataloging process facilitated the selection of suitable videotapes for full
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transcription and analysis. Selected videotapes were transcribed, read, and reread to
acquire a sense of the data, and key phrases were marked. The transcripts were examinedfor themes, such as "community," that characterized classroom climate and social
interactions. A second layer of analysis included a close examination of teacher
utterances, thought to provide observational evidence of interactional styles as well aspedagogical beliefs and practices (in addition to the self-report data elicited by the
teacher interviews). Teacher utterances were extracted from the wholeclass lessons and
coded at several levels, initially as content related or procedural and then by function, forexample, reviewing, clarifying, scaffolding, or problem solving. For this analysis,
particular attention was paid to procedural utterances in an attempt to understand how the
teacher encouraged and supported participation in the classroom dialogue, particularlyamong students with disabilities. Two consecutive small-group episodes were analyzed
with a particular focus on the patterns of interaction between a specific student with
disabilities and her nondisabled peers.
Teacher Interviews
Two formal semistructured interviews conducted just prior to the beginning of datacollection and again at the end of the school year were audiotaped and transcribed. The
teachers were interviewed together as a result of their avowed similar beliefs. This claim
was corroborated during the interviews, when they often finished one another's sentences.The initial interview covered topics regarding (a) teaching background, (b) the nature of
the writing instruction used in the classroom, (c) attitudes and beliefs about special needs
students, and (d) attitudes and beliefs about inclusion. The other interview focused on theteachers' perceptions of the success or failure of their instructional programs for the just-
completed school year. The interview procedure allowed additional questions,
clarifications, and extensions to move beyond the protocol. Several techniques wereemployed to establish confidence in the credibility of the larger study from which thesedata were drawn (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), including prolonged engagement with the
participants and setting (9 months), multiple sources (teachers, researcher) and methods
(interview, observation), and member checks (the teachers were asked to review a draftof their case results).
Results
This section provides data describing the teachers' efforts to establish community and
inclusivity as operating norms in whole-class lessons and students' interpretation and use
or misuse of the norms in small-group interactions.
Teacher Intent: Community and Participation
Rhonda and Angle's instructional practices derived from a strongly articulated belief in
the value of social cohesion and mutual responsibility. This view is consistent with
metaphors of classroom as community, the overarching motif on which they drew indescribing the purposes of instruction and social interaction in their classroom (Beck,
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1999; see Berry, 2006; Westheimer, 1999).
Implicit in the notion of community, for Rhonda and Angie, was the participation of all
members in both the social and academic aspects of classroom life. Sometimes this was
an explicit goal as well, as the following vignette demonstrates:
In Morning Message the other day, we tried a little new thing where we said, "We're
going to see if everyone can participate today." . . . Ned, so he's like leaning way over to
make sure that person [who was inattentive] participated. He made sure everyone in his
group got their hand up. Of course, he's telling them what to say ... but still, it gets thatperson that may not get that issue going. At least the participation part was there. They
saw, "Oh, I can say something and the teacher's going to make a correction," even
though, you know, it was told for them to say. It was the feeling of "I have the power todo that if I participate." That was neat to see happen.
Thus, participation was expected, whether or not the contribution was one's own. Forthese teachers, "the participation part" was powerful. It not only served the social needs
of students who might be less sought out in friendship relationships (Salend & Garrick,1999; Vaughn, Elbaum, & Schumm, 1996) but also was necessary as an entry point in the
learning process, on a par with acquisition of understanding and knowledge.
In the view of these teachers, community membership and participation included
responsibility for the well-being of other members. Rhonda noted that "as a part of ourcommunity . . . we do not allow other children to embarrass or humiliate [each other]
either. It's the tone you set and keep." They expected students to help one another:
Children that are capable understand pretty quickly that they are expected to help others.That's part of being in this community. . . . Somebody came up to me today, said to me,"Can I read alone? I'd rather read alone." I said, "No, some people can't read this. That's
part of our job in this community, to help other people."
This view of community supports lesson types involving shared goals and activities ininterpersonally interactive contexts with peers and teachers wherein all students have
opportunities to both provide and receive support aligned with individual skill levels so
that their learning needs can be appropriately met (Gutirrez, 1995).
Morning Message: A Template for Academic and Social Participation
What does such a lesson look like? This section describes "Morning Message" (seeMariage, 1996, for a detailed examination of this event type), a recurring event that
served as a template for academic and social participation. As an academic template, it
was a site where many writing dispositions, skills, and conventions were first introducedand later reviewed. As such, it provided a standard by which other text construction tasks
were measured. As a social template for participation in whole-group lessons, it reflected
teachers' expectations for social interaction that promoted student autonomy. The
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teachers often referenced both the academic and social objectives and norms of Morning
Message during other lessons, as in "Do you remember this morning during Morning
Message when we talked about using capital letters?" or "I'm kind of helping you outhere, because of time, a little more than I would normally do." What the teacher would
"normally do" referenced Morning Message behavior wherein the teachers pulledthemselves "back ... allowing the children to take over."
Morning Message was a regularly recurring, whole-group multilevel instructional activity(Vaughn, Elbaum, & Schumm, 1996). A student was selected to assume the role of chief
author and editor of the text to be jointly constructed, often in the narrative genre, while
the teacher recorded on large chart paper the oral text verbatim (i.e., replete withgrammatical errors), omitting the conventions that transform oral text into written text
(i.e., capitalization, punctuation). All other class members (who constituted the
immediate audience, as opposed to the eventual audience, the parents, who read the story
in the class newsletter) served as resources for the author/editor, prompting content and
editorial changes. As the lesson progressed, the teacher supported the author's authorityto make decisions about the text, provided appropriate prompts for audience and author
when needed, and recorded revisions suggested by the author or the audience. Asstudents negotiated story content and applied editing and writing conventions, the teacher
exploited opportunities for introducing new skills while maintaining a careful balance
between allowing student authority over the text and directing learning, all the whileskillfully scaffolding children who might have difficulty participating in these types of
interactions (Cooper & Valli, 1996). The teacher's assumption of scribing responsibilities
permitted students to attend to other elements of text production (Englert et al., 2001).Even lower performing students who might tend to be less involved in the give and take
of this type of lesson benefited from the observational opportunities for learning inherent
in this format.
Morning Message often served as an entry point into the literacy discourse of theclassroom for students who were low performers. For example, students with low writing
or reading skills might be able to join in with, or even request, a rereading of the text, a
recurring act in which everyone could participate as the teacher pointed to each word
while she and the students reread the text. Another typical contribution of low-performing students was to suggest a period at the end of a sentence. Students with more
developed skills might address more complex issues, such as coherence, even to the point
of moving text from one location to another. With the teacher's duty being chiefly that ofscribe, students had a large space within which to operate, selecting content and editing it
for conventions and coherence. In this way, students were empowered as decision makerswhose contributions shaped both the oral discussion and the written text (Nystrand,1995).
General Participation in Morning Message
The following transcript sections, taken from one instance of Morning Message, illustrate
the nature of typical exchanges during Morning Message lessons. Kevin, a general
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education student, was the author of this Morning Message, and Angie was the teacher-scribe. In this segment, Paul, a general education student in the "audience," sought to edit
the topic sentence.
Paul: The first [sentence] is sort of long and confusing. [Angie and Paul reread: "Kevin
already has his soccer game last Tuesday night at 6:30"]
Angie: Well, that's the one that Kevin really liked, and then we took this "soccer" out.
Paul: It puts in too much information in the beginning.
Angie: Well....
Paul: Telling specifically that makes it too long.
Angie: What do you think, Kevin? [Kevin wants to leave it as it is] Okay. . . . One of the
rules that they try and teach you when you have a writing class is that you should try toshorten your writing and make it more concise, so it's up to Kevin, but . . . I don't think
"Kevin already has his soccer game last Tuesday night at 6:30," I'm not sure that's too
long [or] too much information, but Kevin, I'm going to let you make the final decision,because that's kind of a judgment call.
Angie thought the sentence could be left as it was, but she stated a possible reason for
Paul's request to shorten it ("one of the rules that they try and teach you when you have a
writing class"). Nonetheless, she left the decision to Kevin. Angie emphasized the
premises upon which the knowledge was based rather than offering a single correctinterpretation (hers). By so doing, she not only removed herself as final authority but also
represented the teacher-student-knowledge relationship as indeterminate, in that
knowledge was contestable rather than determined and could be contested by eitherstudent or teacher rather than defined by the teacher for student consumption.
Participation of Lower Performing and New Students
The following segment illustrates how lower performing students were afforded
opportunities for participation and how new students entered into the discourse. HereAngie prompted the class members to use the question words they had previously
learned. Marta, a student with learning disabilities, was keeping track of the participants
in the discussion by means of a list. MiIo was a new student in the class, and Mark wasalso a student with learning disabilities.
Angie: There are question words that I was hoping to hear, and I've heard some. What are
our question words? Just call them out. [Students call out randomly: who, what, where,
when, why, how. Angie lists these on the board] If you're stuck, and you can't think ofsomething to ask, you can use one of those question words to ask some questions.
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Kevin: [to Marta] You could call off the names. [Marta, with the help of Kevin and
Angie, reads the names of students who have not yet participated]
Marta: Milo is not here.
Angie: Yes, he is. He's very quiet over here. He hasn't raised his hand yet, but I'm sure he
will. Okay, we're waiting for questions, suggestions, comments. If there's someone [who
is raising his or her hand] who hasn't been called on, you need to call on them.
Kevin: Mark?
Mark: Where did you go and play soccer?
Kevin: At Lakeside. We could write that. "Kevin has a soccer game at Lakeside." [Angie
gives Mark a thumbs-up sign and then writes the sentence on the chart paper, omitting theperiod at the end]
Kevin: Milo.
Milo: It needs a period.
Angie: Very good. Another period.
In this segment, Angie created discursive spaces later occupied by students on the
periphery of the dialogue, in this case, new students and students with disabilities. Angie
asked students to list the "question words" typically used by the class to generateinformation. A short time later, Mark used one of the question words to elicit important
information regarding the setting of the narrative. Angie created a potential discursive
space for Milo to step into when she stated her expectation for his generalized other self,that is, verbal participation in the lesson. Only three turns later Milo, having been
positioned by Angie as a potential participant, entered the discussion with his
contribution of "It needs a period." In so doing, Milo appropriated a discourse move used
earlier in the lesson by another student. In this way, Milo's participation in the discoursebegan to be transformed from a participation of observation to a more active role in the
conversation, simultaneously transforming the outcome, as his contribution was
necessary to the correct editing of the written text.
The "Helping" Ethic: Basis of Classroom Interaction Norms
As stated earlier, participation in the academic and social activities of the classroom
extended, according to the teachers, to being responsible for the actions of others. What I
call the "helping" ethic, and others have called the "ethic of cooperation" (Linehan &McCarthy, 2001), illustrates the extent to which interdependence was the expected norm
in this classroom.
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A particularly interesting method of oral participation, called "helping" by Rhonda,
evokes Bakhtin's (1986) notion of "heteroglossia," or speaking with multiple voices.During whole-class lessons, students literally spoke through their peers. Such "helping"
in other classrooms might run counter to a "don't tell the answer" ethic, but here it wasseen as a natural aspect of an interdependent community of learners.
For example, during another whole-group lesson, students reviewed the parts of apersuasive paragraph. Qi, an English-language learner, had raised her hand to respond to
a teacher question but hesitated when called upon. Cassie whispered the correct response
to Qi, who then repeated it aloud. Rhonda accepted both answer and behavior: "Okay, alittle help from a friend." In another classroom, Cassie's action might have been
considered a preemption of Qi's bid to speak, or even a form of cheating. However,
without the security of this safety net, Qi might have failed to attempt a response at all.As the lesson progressed, other students were "helped."
Rhonda: And our last thing we would put in our paper would be? [Mark, a student with
learning disabilities, has raised his hand but hesitates. Ned and Kevin both whisper: core
democratic values]
Mark: Core democratic values.
Rhonda: Core democratic values.
Ned's assistance enabled Mark to contribute to the activity, and Rhonda incorporated
Mark's contribution into the lesson as if he had answered without help. Such ad hoc
sharing of response opportunity was typical in this classroom and unsurprising in light ofthe community metaphor appropriated by the teachers. However, Rhonda did, on one
occasion, acknowledge this unusual practice when she noted, "Well, part of me says I
don't mind the help because that's the community thing." This statement implied anuneasiness about her own view of this "helping" behavior. When the "helping" occurred
again, Rhonda provided both a boundary on "helping" and an explanation of its purpose
as she explained to the students:
Okay. I saw a lot of helping going on, and sometimes, if we don't want that help, teachersshould remember to say, "Okay, I'm going to ask a question and you can't help." Other
than that, I think if people are helping each other, that's a good thing to do. In fact, as far
as social studies goes, that's about what we all want you to start doing and do all the rest
of your life, is to help people, so why should we tell you not to help people now. Justdoesn't make sense to me. So thank you for all that help from everyone.
Rhonda clarified conditions under which "helping" may and may not be appropriate.
However, the subtext in Rhonda's comments reflects a possible positioning of herpersonal belief about community as resistance to societal conventions regarding what
constitutes cheating, at least in the specific context of a whole-class lesson.
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In contrast to the examples of ad hoc helping just described, a more formally planned
type of helping allowed students to call on someone else to speak for them. Marta, oftenhesitant and reserved during whole-class lessons, was a frequent recipient of this type of
helping. In the following exchange, Rhonda called on Marta to suggest a sentence for a
paragraph being constructed in a collaborative participant format similar to MorningMessage (slashes indicate 1-second pauses).
Rhonda: Marta? [Marta had raised her hand but hesitated when called upon] You want a
sentence about clothes getting dirty and/or how much they cost? [no response] Do you
want to make a sentence about getting dirty? [Marta nods] Okay. We may be able to putthese two together. And we may need to add this one on in here somewhere. Marta, do
you have a sentence about them getting dirty? [Marta nods] What is it? /// Someone help
Marta? Marta, choose somebody to help you in your sentence about getting dirty. Do notchoose someone who's bugging you. /// Hurry.
Marta: Dustin.
Marta apparently either did not have a sentence ready at hand or could not produce one
fluently. Despite her raised hand, Marta failed to respond verbally when called upon. Shesimply sat and gazed at Rhonda. Perhaps she had lost the thread of conversation, or
perhaps she was stymied by the complexity of the required response. Rhonda attempted
to simplify the task for Marta by prompting possible appropriate responses; however,
Marta remained mute. At that point, Rhonda invoked the class "helping" norm and askedMarta to nominate someone to "help," which, in fact, meant suggesting a sentence. Given
the opportunity to select the next speaker, Marta was allowed to participate in the class
activity by designating a proxy, surely a method of participation found in few classrooms.
In this classroom, community as an expression of participation was both norm andprocess. Participation was considered essential for community membership (norm);
participation also created community (process), for example, the "helping" ethic. Because
participation was in a sense optional (invited), the teachers constantly encouragedparticipation by asking students to involve their peers in shared learning tasks, by
scaffolding participation, and by noting participation when it occurred (e.g., "That's good;
thank you").
Small-Group Peer Interaction: The Marginalization of Marta
If participation was the teachers' norm for classroom social interaction, at least at thewhole-class level, what was the effect of this norm on small-group interactions in the
teachers' absence? A number of instances of peer interaction at the small-group level
could have been included in the analysis to answer the question "Was the teachers''helping ethic' realized in peer interactions?" This question, however, was not the interest
of this study as much as was the question "In what ways did students interpret the
teachers' norms and with what result?" The following example of peer interaction aroundwriting a shared text, although negative, was selected for its particular clarity in showing
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how the teachers' inclusive language was commandeered for hostile purposes, illustratinghow some students apparently operated under norms at variance with those of the
teachers while others were more closely aligned with the teachers' frame of reference
(Windschitl, 2002).
Models for peer collaboration have been well researched and developed (see Note 2).Cooperative learning models (Johnson & Johnson, 1999) encourage the assignment of
group members to various roles: encourager, materials getter, timer, writer, and so on. In
this classroom, roles for small-group interactions were not assigned; however, teachersexpected norms for whole-class interaction to function during small-group activities.
Perhaps the teachers assumed too much. In any case, they later acknowledged the
difficulties described subsequently: "We see that they needed another seat change and wewere trying to hold out." Thus, students were largely on their own, at least during the
sequence of lessons that produced the events described next, to develop relationships
within their groups that the teachers hoped would allow work to continue and to involve
everyone in the task.
Students worked in established heterogeneous table groups for this activity. The
following data and analysis focus on the collaborative work of a group of five students:
four third graders and a fourth grader (Cole), four boys (one male student was not aparticipant in the study), one African American (Danny). Danny and Arnold were high-
performing general education students. Marta and Cole received special education
services. The group's task, pursued over a 3-day sequence of lessons, was to develop and
write an essay describing the need for soccer goals on the school playground. Theproduct of the collaboration was to be a single, shared text; thus, task requirements
included taking turns to scribe and contributing content (e.g., arguments in favor of
having soccer goals) and resources (e.g., spelling). This event occurred in the spring ofthe academic year, so all members had experienced multiple collaborative text-
production events of the Morning Message type throughout the year, as well as several
small-group collaborations of the type now assigned. The social requirements forcompleting the exercise were familiar.
Disputes need not necessarily rend the community fabric; however, they may. A
disagreement ostensibly over spelling skills ultimately excluded Marta from the writing
activity on all 3 days. On the one hand, the task of spelling inherent in producing writtentext may provide a natural site for productive interactions. For example, Marta was able
to assist with spelling the word "because" by using the words posted on the Word Wall:
"It's up there! B-e-c-a-u-s-e." On the other hand, Marta was a victim of the stratificatorypurposes to which literacy skills could be applied (Cohen, 1994).
Marta would have welcomed a turn to scribe. When it became evident that this was
unlikely to occur, she unveiled the inequities in the group by accusing Danny and Arnold
of monopolizing the scribing task. Danny defended their actions.
Marta: [unhappily gesturing to Danny and Arnold] Just you write. All [inaudible]
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Danny: That's because we know how to spell better.
Arnold: I know how to spell better.
Marta: Why are you taking over the paper?
Danny: We spell gooder. We spell better.
Marta's comment, "Just you write," was an unhappy observation, not a command. She
wanted a turn at writing but was excluded from the role of scribe on the basis of her
inadequate spelling skills by Danny, who, with Arnold, assumed leadership roles in thegroup. In fact, Marta's level of writing skill would have allowed her to participate in this
task with Danny's and Arnold's assistance. Marta seemed to equate scribing with a
leadership role as she observed that Danny and Arnold were "taking over" the paper.
Arnold and Danny seemed quite clear about the consequences associated with perceivedspelling skill. Whether or not she agreed with them, Marta apparently understood this
reasoning. In fact, she seemed to appropriate their notion of spelling-as-qualifying-skill
as she sought to align herself with the good spellers when the current scribe requestedspelling assistance.
Marta: [to Danny] He doesn't know how to spell it!
Danny: [to Marta] He can spell better than you. He's in a bigger spelling group.
Student: [to Marta] Yeah, and you're [inaudible] in second.
Marta: No, I ain't.
Danny: Yes, you are.
Marta: Shut up.
Marta's attempt to join the power structure failed. To emphasize Marta's perceived low
status vis--vis this criterion, Arnold and Danny rapidly fired spelling words at her that,
of course, she could not spell. Rather than fight back, Marta put her head down on herarms. This exchange ended her attempts to assume a key role in the text construction
task. Spelling in this classroom was a stratified activity, with students assigned to variousspelling groups. This stratification may have allowed Danny to position Marta, even
though Danny's judgment was not likely based on an overt awareness of specificdisability.
Thus was Marta excluded from the writing task. Unfortunately, her exclusion was social
as well, as exemplified in off-task conversations. For instance, when Marta commentedon the lunch menu, she was quickly and decisively shut down.
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Marta: I wish we had hot dogs for lunch.
Danny: [to Marta] Please! Participate!
Arnold: We're not talking about lunch. It's not lunch.
Danny: Put you in the dumb department.
Here the final irony is exposed. In what seems the ultimate manipulation, Dannyrepeatedly commandeered Angie and Rhonda's inclusive rhetoric to enforce Maria's low
position in the group, as in the following.
Danny: Marta, it's your time to participate.
Marta: I am.
Danny: No, you're not. . . . Now participate! Especially you, Marta. . . . Just saying you'reparticipating and then not participating.
Danny's statement, "Marta, it's your time to participate," was not an invitation; it was a
provocation. While Malta's assumptions and objectives seemed to reflect the teacher's
goals and expectations of equitable participation, Danny and Arnold seemed to operatewithin a different framework. Commenting later on Danny's behavior, Angie explained
that he, in his first year with the class, had not yet learned the community ethos: "Danny
we have to work on. . . . Especially toward the end of the year we had more problemswith his attitude. We'll work more on that next year."
Marta saw herself as part of the activity and the community and demanded a participatory
role but was denied full participation in the work of the group. In view of so very few
possibilities for meaningful involvement in this event, Maria's tenacity was remarkable. Ifshe could not participate in text production, she could at least nag the other group
members: "You guys ain't working." To her credit, she continued her attempts to interact
with the others, apparently continuing to see herself as a member of the collaboration.This, according to Angie, was a sign of growth and positive development for Marta, who
in earlier years might have withdrawn in tears.
Discussion
In this article, I sought to describe the community ethos and participation patterns
characteristic of interactions between students and teachers, as well as among peers, toillustrate and understand how moment-to-moment interactions may positively or
negatively reflect characteristics of the learning context (Gutirrez, Baquedano-Lopez,
Alvarez, & Chiu, 1999) and result in the inclusion or exclusion of students withdisabilities in community activities. I discussed normative and emergent views of
classroom community: normative, as an ideal to be achieved, and emergent, as shaping
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and shaped by actions and attributes of community members, "open-ended and always
revisable" (Benhabib, 1994, p. 180). It is tempting to insist on an answer to the query"Did it work? Were the communitarian intents of the teachers instituted as social
practices among the students?" This is a legitimate concern; nevertheless, this question
privileges the normative conception of community, which contains within itself thepotential to conceal information about and understanding of the relational affordances
and constraints experienced by students with disabilities. These issues concern
researchers who hold the emergent view and ask, as I do in this article, "What is going onhere? By what means do individuals come to be positioned within the group at a
particular moment and over time?"
Inclusion and Exclusion: Mutually Exclusive?
From the data presented here, it is apparent that Marta did not occupy a position of
centrality (Gitlin et al., 2003) in classroom lessons and activities. However, that position
did not preclude her productive participation in classroom activities. Two concepts-marginality and peripherality-nuance the understanding of her participation in the lessons
and activities of the classroom.
On the surface, it may appear that Maria's low level of participation marked her as
marginalized in the classroom. Danny effectively excluded her from, or at least severely
limited her involvement in, the small-group writing activity by (a) retaining control over
the material representations of power (paper and pencil), (b) dictating what was to bewritten, (c) establishing threshold criteria for participation that excluded low-performing
peers, and (d) using the inclusive language of the teachers to enforce exclusion. In this
situation, the operative mechanism for exclusion was social closure, that is, restriction of
access to resources and opportunities on the basis of a group attribute (Sayed, 2002),specifically-and typically for students of this age (Cohen, 1994)-low literacy skills
instantiated, in this case, in a lack of spelling proficiency.
However, in the whole-group lesson, Marta was not marginalized. As an apprenticeoperating on the periphery of whole-class activity, Marta was included. In the whole-
group context, the operative mechanism for inclusion was the "helping ethic," which
supported the participation of students such as Marta. Therefore, simply juxtaposingthese two conceptually coupled constructs-inclusion and exclusion-as a duality does not
fully describe Malta's experiences in this classroom. In the sections to follow, I first
examine mechanisms of power implicated in the positioning of students with regard to
academic and social participation in this classroom community. Second, I link perceivedvalues and beliefs operational in the classroom relationships to the dominant or
competing discourses that may have originated them, as instantiations of those discourses
or of resistance to them.
Power and Positioning
Marta's position as marginal or peripheral can be seen as highly dependent on personal
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traits and disability characteristics (Teglasi, Cohn, & Meshbesher, 2004); nevertheless,
another view argues against the notion of disability as an individual problem and seeks to
shift the onus to determinative societal views of disability (Longmore, 2003; Michalko,2002). Therefore, it would seem that notions of power are inherent in the processes of
inclusion and exclusion in the classroom (Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004; Sayed, 2002) inthat "inclusive education . . . asks direct questions: who's in, and who's out?" (Slee, 2001,p. 116), and, equally important, who decides?
Traditionally, power in the classroom is seen as a stable attribute of teachers as they
define and enforce conditions of learning. Teachers may bridle at the idea of sharing their
"professional-who-knows-best" power with students who are seen as needy recipients ofvaluable knowledge. To make legitimate demands of or to cajole students (Ford, 2003)
seems a reasonably defensible position as teachers deliver mandated curricula.
Conversely, teachers who see their authority in the classroom as mediated by the
relational requirements of specific participant frameworks (e.g., collaborative dialogue;Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004) may be in a more ambiguous position as power shifts, is
shared, and is negotiated among participants. Rhonda acknowledged this when she
commented on the teachers' need to clarify when helping was to be allowed and when itwas not. When helping was allowed, Rhonda, as teacher, could not sanction students who
engaged in it. If she had wanted less helping, she should have established different rules
prior to the lesson. Collaborative dialogue, in this case, represented an exchange of power
as teachers relinquished their prerogative to arbitrarily change the rules in the middle ofthe game just because they could.
Power in the classroom is implicated in the social status of individuals as well as in
academic activities. In the whole-group lesson, Marta left uncontested her positioning asa peripheral participant, possibly because she would not have considered contesting ateacher's positioning act (negative view) or possibly because being peripheral was better
than being marginal (positive view). However, in the small group, Marta resisted Danny's
attempts to revise her reflexive positioning from "speller" to "nonspeller" by criticizinganother student for lack of spelling skills. Danny, however, did not accept her attempt
and reminded her that "he can spell better than you." Marta's feeble effort to negotiate,
"No, I ain't," failed as Danny stuck to his position, "Yes, you are," to which Marta couldonly respond, "Shut up."
While the teachers' power to promote the "helping ethic" and position students as writers
(according to the teachers' preferred definition) rested on their privileged position asauthoritative classroom leaders, Danny drew his power to position from his skill at usingthe available cultural repertoire. He established an us/you dichotomy denned by spelling
skill level. In so doing, he attempted to position Marta as a poor speller, and thus not
eligible to act as scribe. From the assigned task, Danny extracted a reason to marginalizeMarta ("We know how to spell better"). From the teachers' discourse of participation, he
appropriated both the tone and the vocabulary of authority to harass Marta ("Marta, it's
your time to participate. . . . Now participate!"). This perhaps unexpected move either
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completely escaped her or left her without recourse.
Uses of Power to Include or Exclude
To understand how power can be used in the classroom to include or exclude, I draw onCornelius and Herrenkohl's (2004) aspects of power-assigning ownership, creatingalliances, and persuasion-to discuss the behaviors of the teachers and Danny. However,
the reader is cautioned against reducing the argument to the implication that use and
abuse of power are aligned with teacher and peer use, respectively. Although the teachers
and Danny are useful cases in point for discussing possible uses and abuses of power, notall teachers will act in these ways, just as all students will not.
Ownership of Ideas
Power often resides in ownership of ideas or a task (Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004). In
Morning Message and similar lessons, the teachers protected the authority of the studentauthor relative to content and the editing process by deferring to the author. In these
lessons, knowledge was contestable, and anyone could contest it. Students were expected
to share tasks, as in the smallgroup activity. The teachers' stance regarding sharedauthority aligns with descriptions of constructivist teaching, for example, the importance
of studentcentered learning, facilitation of group dialogue, and establishment of learning
communities (Englert et al., 1992; Richardson, 2003).
In the small group, Danny sought to maintain control of the task and the content. Hecontrolled who was allowed to write. He made unilateral decisions about the text
message. These actions excluded Marta and other members of the group. Left
uncontested, the exclusions would stand.
Alliances
Alliances, or relationships of power (Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004), can haveinclusionary or exclusionary effects. Grounded in their notions of community, Angie and
Rhonda encou