A Conversation with Cynthia Brock

Dr. Cynthia Brock talks to us about learning from our histories, considering our futures, the central role of listening, and the situatedness of our contexts. Cindy is known for her work in the area of opportunities-for-learning literacy. Specifically, her studies have explored children’s learning, pre- and in-service teachers’ learning in university classrooms and in professional development contexts, and her and her colleagues’ learning. Dr. Brock is a professor at the University of Wyoming where she holds the Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Chair in Elementary Literacy Education.

To cite this episode: Persohn, L. (Host). (2023, Jan. 17). A conversation with Cynthia Brock. (Season 3, No. 16) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/96A5-964F-97E6-CFE8-6557-4

Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Transcript

Lindsay Persohn: 0:10

Education research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Classroom caffeine is here to help. In each episode, I talk with a top education researcher or an expert educator about what they have learned from years of research and experiences. In this episode, Dr. Cynthia Brock talks to us about learning from our histories, considering our futures, the central role of listening, and the situatedness of our contexts, Cindy is known for her work in the area of opportunities for learning literacy. Specifically, her studies have explored children's learning, pre and in service teachers learning in university classrooms and in professional development contexts. And her and her colleagues learning. Dr. Brock is a professor at the University of Wyoming where she holds the Wyoming excellence in higher education endowed chair in elementary literacy education. For more information about our guest, stay tuned to the end of this episode. So pour a cup of your favorite drink. And join me your host, Lindsay Persohn. For classroom caffeine research to energize your teaching practice. Cindy, thank you for joining me. Welcome to the show.

Cynthia Brock: 1:36

Thank you.

Lindsay Persohn: 1:38

So from your own experiences and education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now?

Cynthia Brock: 1:46

Yeah, that's a great question, Lindsay. Thank you for asking that. One of the experiences I'd like to share happened in 1987. And in 1987, I was sitting in the office of an assistant superintendent of instruction in a school district in Michigan. And I was being interviewed for a sixth grade position. And during the interview process, I was telling the Assistant Superintendent about a teaching position that I just had the year before that, where I was working in as a matter of fact, Tallahassee, Florida, and I was teaching high school math, because because that was my undergrad focus. And I was telling him that they hired me, even though I had been an elementary teacher, they hired me to teach what was called something like compEd math. And essentially, it was for students who needed to pass a competency exam in mathematics that was required for graduation in Florida. And I think you would know about that as being a Floridian. And so when I was talking to the assistant superintendent, I spoke to him with pride in my voice saying, I was really happy that 80% of my students passed. And I was telling him how thrilled I was and he says, What happened to the other 20%? That took me aback, and I stopped, and I thought, he's exactly right. Rather than thinking about myself as the teacher and what I'd done, right, what I needed to be thinking about was the students that I hadn't reached and what I needed to do differently to reach those students. That was a powerful learning experience for me. So that's one example. And I think you said I could give you two. And another really powerful example for me, was when I worked with a fifth grade Hmong child whose name was Deng for my dissertation research, and I had been an elementary teacher as well as a high school math teacher, prior to going back to school to earn my doctorate. And what I was particularly interested in is what happens when you are an English speaking which I am an English speaking teacher, and you are working with kids who come to your classroom and speak English as an additional language. And what I wanted to get a sense of is how do they how do children who are English learners come into classrooms and make sense of what's going on in the classroom? And so that's when I started studying literacy learning opportunities, and my focus for that research was Dengs literacy learning opportunities. And I was fortunate that I had a really powerful dissertation committee including people like Taffy Raphael and Jim Gavelek and Susan Florio-Ruane, I was struggling to try to understand how Deng was experiencing his classroom literacy lessons. And Susan Flurio-Wayne recommended trying something called a viewing session. And that comes from the work of Fred Erickson and Jeff Schultz. And what was powerful about using viewing sessions with Deng is essentially just what we would do is I would video record Deng participating in his classroom literacy lessons. Then, because his first languages were Hmong, LAO and Thai. In that order. I had to enlist the help of an older person who could speak older student who could speak English and Hmong fluently, and we'd have to translate and so forth. And what was fascinating to me, was to learn from Deng during those viewing sessions where he would watch himself participating in his classroom literacy lessons, and he was in control of the remote. And he would stop the lesson when he had questions, confusions and so forth. And it was Deng was an amazing teacher, because he helped me understand from his perspective, what it was like to be in a series of literacy lessons, essentially. So those are probably two of the most powerful learning experiences that I can think of.

Lindsay Persohn: 5:19

I can certainly understand that initial moment you shared, you know, the the sense of new teacher pride that 80% of your kids had passed that test. But I mean, what a critical question, right? What What about the other 20%. And I think that really helps me to think about the experience that you described with Deng. And I can only imagine how powerful it was to sit with him as he sort of reviewed and recapped what those lessons were like for him, because I would venture to say that there aren't many teachers who have an opportunity like that, to see their own work through the eyes of their students, and just how powerful that could be. The other thing that I was really struck by in your example, there is how Deng would likely be framed and how his his literacy understandings would likely be framed in many schools, particularly around the US at some sort of deficit, right when he or he comes to school with with knowledge of three other languages. And I think so often in schools, we say, but he doesn't know English, right? Like, like, that is the only thing that really matters. And so we know it is the language of power in many places. But you know, in my mind, that shouldn't be to the exclusion or to the detriment of any other kind of literacy assets that a student might come with. So I'm really hoping that you will help us to understand and kind of unpack those experiences a bit more in response to this next question, Cindy, what do you want listeners to know about your work?

Cynthia Brock: 6:51

So I guess the main thing is that my colleagues and I have actually started studying this notion of opportunities to learn literacy, way back in the mid mid 90s. And here, I was drawing on the work of the Santa Barbara classroom discourse, community group, Judith green, and Carol Dixon and her colleagues. And across time since then, that's been the focus of my scholarship. And part of what I've done, and I know you can't see this in a podcast, but my colleagues and I have, across time have created a model that we use to help us think about the pieces that need to be in place to do the very best job we can as educators to foster the literacy learning of children, especially children from diverse linguistic, cultural and racial backgrounds. And so I guess one of the things that I that I would like listeners to know about the work that my colleagues and I have done is that literacy is crucial. Understanding literacy, the components of literacy, how literacy works, absolutely crucial. And it's one crucial component of overall thinking about how to foster kids literacy learning opportunities. And so my colleagues and I have a model with a triangle in the middle. And the vertices include the teacher with respect to what the teacher does in the context, the student with respect to what the student brings to the context and what the student does. And then, of course, literacy, which is the area that we focus on in our in our work, that triangle is situated in a circle that focuses on communities of practice. And that circle, the way we set our model up as the circle includes a past and all the components of the model, have histories, literacy evolves across time, we as teachers evolve and change across time our students do. And so there's so the past shapes, what happens in immediate context is we're trying to understand the waiting to foster the most powerful literacy learning opportunities. In one of our studies, we then added the notion of prolepses to the model, this notion of projecting the future into the present, and how does that relate what we what it is that we do as we work with children and how we work with them with respect to their literacy learning. So I guess one of the main things I'd like to emphasize is just that the complexity of all those pieces that matter when we're thinking about how we can do the very best job to foster kids literacy learning opportunities,

Lindsay Persohn: 9:08

I have a vision in my mind of what that model looks like. And certainly, we will post an image of that on your guests page, and also in the show notes, so that listeners are able to see it. But you know, so much of what you're saying, Cindy, it reminds me of how important it is for us to understand the past of the work that we're doing. And you know, certainly past guests on the show have talked a bit about you know, what that might look like and some practical applications for how we might think about, you know, the history of how literacy instruction is delivered in schools and how that impacts our present because I know even from my very first years of teaching, I heard experienced teachers talk about the swinging pendulum, right that everything comes back and I think that there there are mistakes, if you will an instruction that we, we shall be doomed to repeat if we don't understand what they were and what lessons were learned from them. And so I'm wondering if there, there might be anything else here that you could share with listeners about how we can work to be informed by the past of the instruction that we're giving or, or by the past of the work that we're doing as educators?

Cynthia Brock: 10:22

That's Lindsay, that's important. That's a really wonderful question. And I don't know that there are any easy answers to that it strikes me that one of the best things we can do is to continue to educate ourselves. And I know when I'm thinking about literacy in the history of literacy, there's some there's some wonderful work out there that a lot of us have probably read. And that a new book that I'm particularly impressed with is the new book by Robert Tierney and David Pearson, on the history of literacy. And they kind of talked about the history in terms of waves. And I just, I just find that very powerful. And, and it strikes me that knowing that history, for all of us, as educators, for teachers, for researchers, it matters, because what we're experiencing now is shaped and informed by the history of the field, by the social political context, you know, that we that we live in here in the US. And so and so it's, there's a lot to what's happening now, it's not just it didn't just happen in the moment, it comes from somewhere.

Lindsay Persohn: 11:21

Right? I think that's so important. And in fact, Rob and David are both past guests of classroom caffeine, and in particular, Rob Tierney sort of traces this history of, of literacy instruction for us, I often describe it as a 20,000 foot view of literacy, not just us based, but he also talks a bit about literacy instruction around the world. And that's a great connection for listeners, and certainly a wonderful book to check out if anyone has not. But I know that Rob also mentioned a website where there's quite a bit of that information as well. So that can be found on his guests page and his show notes. So thank you for that. Because I, I think that that sometimes this idea of what has come before us, it's sometimes can feel like so much that it is it's difficult to know where to begin. So certainly having resources like that can be just so helpful in navigating. So what about this notion of prolepses? And how we sort of project what might happen in the future? That reminds me, of course of conversations I've had for the show as well, and certainly things I've read and and in particular, this idea that we're preparing kids, for a future we don't yet know, or perhaps don't even understand or career opportunities that we can't even envision at this point. So any thoughts or tips about how educators can tap into that kind of thinking? Maybe not the particulars of it? Because as we said, we don't really know what those particulars are. But that way of thinking about the future and about preparing for the unknown, what what have you gathered? What have you learned around those ideas?

Cynthia Brock: 13:01

Yeah, that's another great question, Lindsay. And I'm going to talk about it and it's on a small scale. And then maybe you and I can collaboratively talk about it a little bit broader scale. The reason that piece came into the model for my colleagues and I is that we were doing a study, and we were looking at it, I had been teaching a teacher action research course. And we got an IRB permission to study teachers learning within within the course. And we were looking at the way that they learned across the course. And one thing that struck us is that we figured that their learning could be fostered more effectively, if I as the teacher had done a more thoughtful and careful job of thinking about this notion of beginning with the end in mind. And here, here. I'm talking about the work of Stephen Covey and his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Other Other there's a lot of other work out there on that, but But this notion of what is it that we're aiming for, and how can we use what it is that we're aiming for, in our immediate context, to try to do a more productive job of fostering learning opportunities to bring about some of what it is that we're aiming for? Now, your question, I think, is a little bit different from that. Because I think your question is broader than that. And it's, it's complex, because what are we aiming for? Yeah, what are we aiming for in literacy? I mean, it strikes me that those those would be some good questions for us to think about. I think not I'm not suggesting people haven't thought about that. But maybe, you know, those are some important questions for us to think about people who are nimble in terms of using different tools to achieve meaningful purposes. I'm also thinking of this notion of the work done by the National Academy of Education, the civics project, and then by that those folks, I mean, what is it that we want our world to look like in our in our engagement with one another to look like? I know, as literacy scholars, our focus is literacy. But But how can we use literacy as a tool to foster some of that kind of learning? So those are some of the broader ideas we might think about. You might have others

Lindsay Persohn: 14:59

in your response, you mentioned the word nimble. And I think that that, for me is something I've always aspired for education to be. And I'm not real sure how we get there, because we work within systems that are so deeply rooted in, you know, ideas around industrialization and convention and standardization. And that certainly does not lend itself to being nimble and responsive to an unknown future. And so, you know, I think it really does take the Bright Minds of educators in classrooms to think about what those futures look like. Because I also think that it can be in some ways, a localized concept, right? Whatever, you know, your community, you'd have some idea of the path that many children take because of their, you know, their foundations in that community. And I think that that actually puts teachers in a really great position to think and to to envision what the future might look like, or what it might hold for their students. But it is a big question. And it's certainly not one that can be answered in a simple kind of way. But I think even before we get to those kinds of answers, we we do have to envision schools that are more nimble and more agile and can can adapt to new ways of thinking, rather than sort of being stuck in rigid structures and outdated models that really teach to the past rather than the future.

Cynthia Brock: 16:29

I think that's well said, Lindsay.

Lindsay Persohn: 16:31

Thank you. So in your model, you also talk about communities of practice, and the the teacher and the student being sort of side arms with that triangle with literacy at the bottom. What have you learned about communities of practice? And how might teachers be able to take up those kinds of guiding structures in their own work?

Cynthia Brock: 16:50

Okay, so that's another powerful question. The way in our work, the way we've been thinking about communities is, of course, we've drawn on the communities of practice work and the liev and Wanger work. But the other thing that we've done is we've thought about communities in terms of classroom communities, school communities, district communities, my colleagues and I, here in Wyoming do a lot of work in our state. We're situated in our state, which is situated in international norms and standards and so forth. So, so we're not thinking of community, I don't think in a narrow way, but more of an Bronfenbrenner nested way. And one of the things that I that I think we're learning as we work, for example, and Dana, Dana Robertson, and Leigh Hall, and I just finished editing a book, looking at literacy, professional learning. And we worked with some amazing colleagues across the US in New Zealand and in Australia, who contributed chapters from their work, where they're focusing on really powerful professional learning initiatives. And one of the things that we're learning is that situating ourselves in that community, and paying attention to the histories that the students bring to the classroom, and school context and district context that the teachers bring to the context, and then working hard to develop relationships. And then together trying to understand how to promote literacy learning, it's labor intensive work, that can be really powerful. If we take the time to try to collaboratively do the work and make it make it count for kids.

Lindsay Persohn: 18:17

That's so important to acknowledge that even when we situate ourselves, I think sometimes it is in sort of in a narrow kind of way. And so thinking about yourself as an individual in a classroom, within a school within a district within a state within nationwide kinds of contexts. I think that's, that's helpful in thinking about who we are and what kind of thinking we bring to our teaching. And also, I think it's helpful in better understanding affordances and limitations of that situatedness. Because it certainly seems as though teachers who are teaching near me here in Florida may be working in a very different kind of context than teachers where you are in Wyoming because of not only external pressures, but I think also external opportunities, and also the types of resources we may have access to the kind of leeway we may feel that we have in our teaching. And so yeah, I think that's just it gives me sort of this long view of what our situatedness is, and that it's not just immediate context, but those nested contexts, as you mentioned,

Cynthia Brock: 19:30

I guess I would add one of the things as you're, as you're talking in terms of working in those complex nested contexts, one of the things that we're learning in our in our work is the central role that listening needs to play in collaboratively working with others to try to foster kids to see learning opportunities. And here we've drawn on the work of our friends and colleagues Mary McVie and Denise Boyd, who've written beautifully about the power of listening when you're trying to collaborate with others to foster learning so I We just we find that central to our work.

Lindsay Persohn: 20:02

Thank you for adding that because I think that's one thing that we may forget to do sometimes is to listen to others, whether it's listening to our students, and what they are interested in, and what they want to learn, and listening to their families or community stakeholders, and then also a broader view of what that listening might look like, which actually, it really makes me think to what we were talking about earlier around past and histories, you know, when we take those opportunities to listen, I think we tap into different types of histories and different understandings of the past that can help to inform us moving forward. So I think that that's, to me, those two ideas really connect, listening to others and thinking about the past. So is there anything else Cindy, that you would like listeners to know about your work?

Cynthia Brock: 20:51

The I guess the only other piece is that we keep trying to understand more and more. And it's it's this iterative, recursive process of continuing to learn, working in context, learning more trying to do a better job. And here, I'm talking about literacy, professional learning, but it's true for any aspect of literacy research that we do.

Lindsay Persohn: 21:11

And I find that that is one thing that I think can re energize us around teaching is this idea that the work is never finished, there's always more to learn. And there are always different ways that we can support different and important ways that we can support students, that 20% that you mentioned earlier, that we may not have been able to reach with what we already know. Thank you for that. So Cindy, yeah, given the challenges of today's educational climate, what message do you want teachers to hear?

Cynthia Brock: 21:41

I guess, one of the one of the central messages that we've been learning in our own work, and that my colleagues and I learned from reading the work of others and working in schools on a regular basis, is that, you know, in the field that we've you and I've talked about this, the field of literacy has shifted and grown across time we've evolved. And we've talked about the Tierney, Pearson book and that powerful way of thinking about the way the field has shifted across time. And one of the things that I think we do know as a field, is that something Richard Ellington told us in his book, no quick fix decades ago, that there aren't easy answers or quick fixes. And in working in schools and districts, we often hear oh, now we have the answer. Here's what the answer is. And I guess one of my questions whenever I hear that is who's selling what? Because because we know as a field, that high quality literacy instruction and pedagogy, if that's what we're aiming for, to really reach, like you said, not just 80% of the kids, but all the kids that we aren't going to find quick fixes, and we don't have easy answers. And we have to continue to work to try to reach all the kids that we serve. And so I guess my main message is, I think we want none of us to be sold a bill of goods, because there aren't Quick Fix fixes. There aren't silver bullets. There's just hard work.

Lindsay Persohn: 22:56

What an important reminder, because I think, as you said, it's easy to get wrapped up, particularly if we are being sold something thinking that this is the thing, or I think it can be discouraging, when that quick fix wasn't what it was sold as. And so, you know, for me that remaining curious and and thinking about the complexities of it all and how those ideas are intertwined, and and how they inform each other? And also what's missing from what we're being sold. And how do we seek that out ourselves, particularly if it isn't provided to us? I think those are really important questions that can either I think sometimes they can feel defeating. If we do believe that we've that we have the silver bullet, but I also think that can be really energizing if we think that there is always something new to learn, and certainly sharing that mindset with our students, I think is one of the biggest gifts we can give them. I agree. Well, Cindy, I thank you so very much for your time today. And I thank you for your contributions to the field of education.

Cynthia Brock: 24:01

Thank you, Lindsay. It's been a privilege to talk with you today. I appreciate the invitation.

Lindsay Persohn: 24:04

Thank you. Dr. Cynthia Brock is known for her work in the study of opportunities for learning literacy. Her Various studies have explored children's learning pre and in service teachers learning and university classrooms as well as professional development contexts. And her and her colleagues learning. She explores the literacy learning opportunities of elementary children from diverse cultural, linguistic and economic backgrounds, and she studies ways to work with pre and in service teachers to foster the literacy learning opportunities of children from non dominant backgrounds. She has conducted qualitative research in cross cultural contexts, including the United States, Australia, England, Fiji, Thailand, Laos, Spain, Chile, and Costa Rica. Her work has been published in journals such as Reading Research Quarterly, teaching and teacher education, the International Journal of qualitative Studies in Education, curriculum inquiry, urban education, the elementary school journal, and pedagogies and international journal. She has published her work in numerous books and handbooks. Dr. Brock has provided service at the local state national and international levels as a board member for the literacy research association area chair for lfra. As a member of LRH Early Career Award Committee, she's also a member of the International Literacy Association's nominating committee and ILA's research grants program, as well as a member of the National Council of Teachers of English Standing Committee on research, and a member of NCTE's promising researcher award committee. Dr. Cynthia Brock is a professor at the University of Wyoming where she holds the Wyoming excellence in higher education Endowed Chair in elementary literacy education. For the good of all students classroom caffeine aims to energize education research and practice. If this show provides you with things to think about, don't keep it a secret. Subscribe, like and review this podcast through your preferred podcast provider. I also invite you to connect with the show through our website at WWW dot classroom caffeine.com where you can learn more about each guest. Find transcripts for many episodes, explore episode topics using our tagging feature support podcast research through our survey, request and episode topic or a potential guest or share your own questions that we might respond to through the show. You could also leave us a voice message or a text message at 1-941-212-0949. We would love to hear from you. As always, I raised my mug to you teachers. Thanks for joining me