Responsive Teaching

This book provides a conceptual basis for recognizing the classroom as an ecology of linguistic and cultural patterns that should be taken into account as part of the teacher's professional decision making. It argues that the orchestration of classroom behaviour cannot be separated from the mental ecology of metaphor and thought patterns that reflect the student's primary culture. Chapters discuss the metaphorical nature of language and thought, primary socilization, nonverbal communication, framing and social control, the classroom as an ecology of power, culturally responsive supervision, and educating teachers for the 21st century - all from a cultural and linguistic point of view. The authors challenge the Cartesian tradition of viewing the student as a culture free individual, and the classroom as a problem in management. They draw on Gregory Bateson's ideas to help illuminate student behaviour as a form of communciation about social relationships - a form of communication that relies heavily on culturally embedded patterns, and to reveal the classroom as a mental ecology where thought processes of others are encoded in the metaphorical language used to introduce new concepts.
The book emphasizes that responsive teaching involves being sensitive to how the ecology of patterns (behaviour and thought) reflects cultural differences and may be a source of miscommuncation and alienation.