“Learning Injuries and the body”

Thursday 15/02/2024, 5-6pm, at Trinity Research in Social Sciences (TRISS), School of Education, TCD.

“Learning Injuries and the body”

Thursday 15/02/2024, 5-6pm, at Trinity Research in Social Sciences (TRISS), School of Education, TCD.

 

 

 

Art, science and language educators are invariably confronted with reluctant and underperforming students – which of course they resent. Dedicated teachers normally value the subjects they teach; they are eager to leave no child or student behind; and most of them belong to a modern generation of caring, supportive and inclusive pedagogues.  Immediate concerns and challenges include dealing with a learner’s (or group of learners’) shyness, apathy, disengagement, lack of interest, or conspicuously hostile behaviour. Such blatant manifestations of unease, unhappiness or discomfort are best regarded as symptoms of a hidden condition – not the condition itself. The problem is serious enough to generate “anti-learning” (Asher 1972) – a self-harming, self-defeating attitude towards one or more subjects taught in school, with unforeseeable consequences. What I suggest calling “the anti-learner” stands in awe of the subject he or she is being taught and develops a deep aversion or profound distaste for any learning situation associated with it. The anti-learner is just “hopeless” at doing what is expected and is overcome with an irrevocable sense of defeatism which counters all attempts at assistance or “remediation” on the part of well-meaning instructors. This eventually translates as “French sucks”, “Irish sucks”, “Maths sucks”, “I’m no good / terrible / hopeless at spelling, gym” in casual conversation, and much more.

 

So, we are left with observable symptoms and the prospect of using “remedial strategies” if any. But are we really sure we know the nature and origin of the condition? Those of us who teach maths or languages, and care about the well-being of their students, know that anxiety, reluctance or defeatism are very common and hard to “heal”. Why is that? Why should it happen to us in particular? Have we done anything wrong? Or is there something particular about the subjects we teach, both at the personal, cultural and the socio-cognitive levels, that puts us (and our pupils) in special danger? How deep should we dig to find the roots of anger, despair or indifference? A possible factor might be the existence of some learning injury– a notion that I would very much like to discuss with you, and which I will tentatively define as: “Any incident, scene or situation that occurred in the course of formal instruction, which has permanently harmed an individual and led them to pass a definitive judgment of incompetence upon their own ability to achieve. The consequence is an open or hidden form of withdrawal from the learning process, with or without signs of distress being displayed by the learner. Common symptoms include a persistent lack of purpose and interest, avoidance behaviour and poor performance, mental blocks and an inability to achieve, a fatalistic and deterministic attitude which may induce a general sense of hostility or marked resistance to learning, in whatever form.”[1] (Lapaire 2023) 

 

During the discussion, I will listen to your own testimonies, and present some empirical evidence in the field of language teaching which I recently collected through questionnaires (self-reporting) in 2022 and language biographies (2019-2023). I will briefly look at what individual subjects say about their incapacity and / or unwillingness to learn and achieve, the metaphors and imagery they unconsciously use to define their plight. I will close with more practical considerations on re-engaging the “learning body” (Lapaire 2019) in language learning so as to unlock positive energies and reverse negative mindsets. I will show that transferring the general philosophy of “poor theatre” (Grotowski 1968) to (language) education might help: going back to bare essentials physically, spatially, and semiotically.

 

Jean-Rémi, LAPAIRE teaches cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, gesture semiotics, dance and performance theory at Université Bordeaux Montaigne (UBM), France. He has explored the role played by physical motion in grammar, abstract reasoning and social interaction: how the sensing, moving and cognizing body articulates and projects situated “social meanings”. His current research is centred on intersemiosis, intersemiotic translation and performance-based approaches to education. He has designed and tested new teaching and learning strategies in science and the arts– spoken, written, visual-kinaesthetic – which allow educators and students to engage more fully in observation and reasoning, His claim is that new spaces and strategies for reflection, creativity and analytic journaling can be set up and used successfully in such diverse fields as grammar, pragmatics, poetics, literature, discourse analysis… and astrophysics.

 

[1] French: "Tout incident, épisode ou situation lors de l'enseignement d'une discipline qui a durablement blessé le sujet et conduit ce dernier à prononcer sur lui-même un jugement d'incompétence sans appel. Il en résulte une posture (implicite ou explicite) de retrait du processus d’apprentissage, avec ou sans souffrance manifestée. Les symptômes les plus courants sont : un désintérêt et une démotivation durables, des stratégies d’évitement et une incapacité à progresser, un blocage et un fatalisme de l’échec, générant une hostilité et une résistance marquées à toute proposition d’apprentissage."

References (landmark papers which present more than “period interest”)

Asher, James. 1972. Children's First Language as a Model for Second Language Learning. The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Mar., 1972), pp. 133-139

Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. London: Routledge, (1968) 2002.

Horwitz, Elaine, Horwitz, Michael, and Cope, Joann. Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety

The Modern Language Journal, Summer, 1986, Vol. 70, No. 2 pp. 125-132.

Horwitz, Elaine. Preliminary Evidence for the Reliability and Validity of a Foreign Language Anxiety Scale, TESOL Quarterly, Sep., 1986, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Sep., 1986), pp. 559-562.

Horwitz, Elaine. It Ain't over 'til It's over: On Foreign Language Anxiety, First Language Deficits, and the Confounding of Variables. The Modern Language Journal , Summer, 2000, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 256-259.

Lapaire, Jean-Rémi.“Engaging the ‘learning body’ in language education.” English and American Studies, Issue 16 / 2019. (Print Dnipro: Lira Publishing ISSN 2313-500Х) (Online: ISSN 2409-921X).

MacIntyre, Peter.  How Does Anxiety Affect Second Language Learning? A Reply to Sparks and Ganschow. The Modern Language Journal , Spring, 1995, Vol. 79, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 90-99.

MacIntyre, Peter. Willingness to Communicate in the Second Language: Understanding the Decision to Speak as a Volitional Process. The Modern Language Journal , Winter, 2007, Vol. 91, No. 4 (Winter, 2007), pp. 564-576.