Nineteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

International, national, and state data are showing low progress in student learning and literacy acquisition over time; although certain studies illustrate that students are currently reading and writing far more than the previous generation. Additionally, district superintendents and classroom teachers are expressing that students are not making the accelerated progress being demanded by national and state standards. In an attempt to improve literacy acquisition and instruction many states and districts emphasize high stakes static assessments that highlight student deficits as a solution to improve instruction and have become a systematic impediment to literacy acquisition, instruction, and professional learning. Consequently, static assessments have become a “technology of domination” (Foucault, 1977) over teachers and students that is used to engineer a panopticon to monitor school and classroom activities. Along with punitive evaluations and school grading, years of leaving no child behind and racing to the top has shown that a strong focus on high stakes testing is not the answer to improving either instruction, students’ literacy acquisition, or professional learning. Part of the concern with employing technologies of domination to control curriculum is narrowing definitions to increase control. Currently, one term in particular has been extensively overused in the hopes of improving instruction – Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. At present, quite a few schools and parents are receiving reports that equate students’ ZPD to a grade equivalent score (e.g. 2.4 – 3.4) based on a computer administered reading test without taking into account what students can do and cannot do. Without accounting for students’ funds of knowledge (what they know and/or can do) and what is completely out of their reach, identifying a student’s ZPD in the hopes of guiding instruction effectively and responsively is misleading and misinforming teachers.