Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Self/Knowledge
- 2 Social Identification and Local Metapragmatic Models
- 3 Academic Learning and Local Cognitive Models
- 4 Tyisha Becoming an Outcast
- 5 Maurice in the Middle
- 6 Denaturalizing Identity, Learning and Schooling
- Appendix A Abbreviations of Names
- Appendix B Transcription Conventions
- References
- Index
5 - Maurice in the Middle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Self/Knowledge
- 2 Social Identification and Local Metapragmatic Models
- 3 Academic Learning and Local Cognitive Models
- 4 Tyisha Becoming an Outcast
- 5 Maurice in the Middle
- 6 Denaturalizing Identity, Learning and Schooling
- Appendix A Abbreviations of Names
- Appendix B Transcription Conventions
- References
- Index
Summary
This chapter traces Maurice's emerging social identity across the academic year in Mrs. Bailey and Mr. Smith's classroom. Maurice's trajectory of identification resembled Tyisha's in three important ways. First, Maurice's classroom identity also emerged against the background of the local metapragmatic model of promising girls and unpromising boys. Maurice was the only atypical boy with respect to this model. The other boys rarely contributed to class discussion, but Maurice participated actively and successfully throughout the year. Second, despite his gender, Maurice also began the year being treated by teachers and students as a typical promising student. In the first two or three months of the academic year, the teachers and many female students accepted and even praised his regular contributions to class discussion. After a few months, however, the vocal female students and sometimes the teachers began to identify him in a less flattering way – not as the same sort of disruptive outcast that Tyisha became, but as an outcast nevertheless. Third, the local metapragmatic models teachers and students used to identify Maurice also overlapped with their emerging local cognitive models of the two curricular themes. As they did with Tyisha, teachers and students incorporated categories from the curriculum into the local metapragmatic models they used to identify Maurice. Categories from the second curricular theme were more important to Maurice's emerging identity.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Learning IdentityThe Joint Emergence of Social Identification and Academic Learning, pp. 217 - 272Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005