Inspired by J. Lumo I will give this blog thing a shot. The primary purpose of it will be admittedly selfish. I am currently working through some twisty language issues in an educational setting and will be using this blog as a means to post these issues to the community. The hope is that some people brighter than myself will be able to get on top of them.
Issue 1 (of many)
We have a very talented graduate student (Kendra Brooks-Rickard)who has taken the reigns on an expressive writing series for kids in grades 5-12. As a side note, we have a proficiency criteria for participation that includes oral and silent reading fluency, handwriting fluency, and relatively strong reading comprehension (weakest measure of the bunch).
The Problem:
There are a handful of students who have participated in the program who all seem to be stuck on one set of core skills. Given my proclivities, I am going call these language based deficits. Here's what's going on. The kids in question have learned a wide variety of skills that have generalized to their writing. Namely sentence structure. They can independently produce great sentences using a variety of gramatical devices. For example, they know how to separate 2 independent but related clauses with a semi-colon and a conjunctive adverb. And they can tell you what they did and why!!! Major accomplishment when one considers that the kids couldn't identify the subject, verb, or object in a sentence a year ago. The problem arises when one looks at the flow of combinations of sentences. Their stories sound like the free-association of thought that is conversation to my Freudian psycho-analyst father-in-law (sorry Hunny but it is true).
How we have conceptualized the problem:
It seems that what is missing or at least is not strong in a overt or productive behavioral repertiore with these kids is an interrelation of particular frames. Specifically, Temporal/Spatial and Cause/Effect frames (these are clearly related). We have tinkered with a handful instructional sequences (they really ended up being assessments) that looked at these frames. We had them read a passage and asked them cause/effect questions: could do. We had them put pictures and then sentences into a logical sequential order: Could do. We had them identify causal relationships in text: Could do. Now we are at a standstill and so to is their writing.
Why post this?
Well, I want someone to solve this problem for me!!!! It is true we need help here; however, I think that this is a really interesting problem for the community as a whole. One that is in-line with the mutual-interest model (see Hayes, 1998; & Hayes & Berens, 2004 shameless). In our clinical setting we have bumped up against a problem that is clearly language based. If we find a solution, the solution will be crude and the sucessful variables will be hard to understand. At which point basic science can go to town (funky town that is). Or, some lurking basic scientist will be able to elegantly parse this stuff out and we can put it back together into a workable technology (hint hint nudge nudge wink wink:-).
Another reason I post or blog it here, is that I think our general conceptualization of the problem is spot on. Furthermore, I do not believe that we would have been able to conceptualize the problem as being language based, let alone recognize it as such, without the basic structure of RFT as a starting point.
Back to the dry erase board.
Mistah Nick
PS If this is not blog worthy material spank me and I will move further commentaries to another location.