Hattie’s idea of Visible Learning is, other than the proposition of a Universal Grammar (Chomsky) or a so-called Human Language Making Capacity (Meisel: 34 ff), based on empirical research and provides a practical alternative to language-based teaching strategies to bridge the gap between (language) knowledge and performance and intercultural competence (cf. chapters 5 & 6.6), especially in a CLIL context. In order to bridge this gap—namely between students’ prior knowledge and successfully accomplishing relevant content-based and communicative tasks—their ZPD has to be taken into account. ZPD, as delineated before, is first and above all, an explanation of social interaction between a child and knowledgeable adults. Based on the theories of former Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (cf. Klewitz 2017a: 15 f.) the ZPD was made available for mainstream discussions by Jerome Bruner (ibid.).
It is in accordance with curricular research and official recommendations such as the German framework for final school examinations (Abitur), defining graded learning objectives (“Lern-zielstufen”) proposed by the Federal Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK: 2013). These recommendations encompass four general stages (to close the ZPD gaps) as reproduction, reorganization, transfer and problem-solving (also reflection), supported by action-based task-verbs (German “Operatoren”) that are mandatory in final school examinations and relate to different cognitive operations like analyze, examine, characterize, compare, assess, evaluate, discuss, develop, describe, name, outline (cf. Klewitz 2019: 28), also known in taxonomies of long-standing use (Krautwohl, Coyle 2010).
Review—reflect—research
What does Dr. Johnson’s reflection on “language as the dress of thought” tell us about the origin of language?
Consider the differences between language acquisition and language learning. Do you agree with the practice in academic literature to use both terms interchangeably?
Visible Learning might coincide with the Zone of Proximal Development, so which gains can be expected from this sustainable teaching strategy?
1 Speakers of Gaelic were persecuted over the centuries: in the Scottish Lowlands there was still a cross-over between English and Scottish Gaelic whereas in the 18th century the Highlands were more or less exclusively Gaelic. (cf.: https://www.visitscotland.com/about/uniquely-scottish/gaelic/. Last viewed 03/05/2021)
2 In: https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/oats/. Last viewed 03/05/2021.
3 Numerous entries in blogs also address this metaphor as a controversy, e.g. In: https://www.usingenglish.com/poll/63.html. Last viewed 03/05/2021.
4 An older essay by the late Columbia University Professor Nicolas Christy discusses variations on this topic in his essay “Is Language the Dress of Thought?” (Christy 1980: 98-106), on which the following considerations are based.
5 About the difference between “learning” and “acquisition” see footnote 9 and the respective entry in the Glossary.
6 The German daily newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine” published an article written by a Berlin teacher whose students had asked him when they could go back to frontal teaching—with the catching title “Wann machen Sie wieder Fron-talunterricht?” (FAZ 01/14/2016). More details about teaching styles can be found in the next chapters (3 & 4).
7 A proper and research-based differentiation between language acquisition and learning can be found in the respective glossary entry of our book.
8 Shown in “Methodenwerkzeuge im sprachsensiblen Fachunterricht“: http://www.sprachsensiblerfachunterricht.de/methoden-werkzeuge. Last viewed 03/05/2021.
Chapter 3
Nature versus Nurture
Vignette “The American Experience”
In her essay “The Measure of America” for The New Yorker (March 8, 2004), the journalist and Columbia University Professor Dr. Claudia Roth Pierpont discusses the connection between the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893) and “How a rebel anthropologist waged war on racism”. She referred to the German scholar Franz Boas, who had emigrated from Germany ten years before, “staunch in the belief that America was politically an ideal country” (Roth Pierpont 2004: n.p.). Boas was concerned about the dichotomy of nature versus nurture, which he pursued in a lifetime of academic and field studies involving his students. The Chicago Exposition marked the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’ “discovery” of America and was opened as the “White City” on the marshy lands along Lake Michigan. What was deemed to be the achievements of the nation, displays of the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln’s Inaugural Address and replicas of the Liberty Bell, could be admired. Where criticism of the young German anthropologist came into play was the exhibit of human characters, called The American Experience:
… [an] extraordinary assembly of peoples. American Indians and native Africans, Germans, Egyptians, and Labrador Eskimos were just a few of those invited to take part in nearly a hundred ‘living exhibits’—whole villages were imported and exactingly rebuilt-with the purpose of expanding American minds: ‘broadening, opening, lighting up dark corners,’ a contemporary magazine expounded, ‘bringing them in sympathy with their fellow men’ (ibid.).
“The American experience” was a popular theme during the whole 19th century, epitomized by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (founded 1883 by Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody), which displayed cowboy themes and episodes from the frontier and Indian Wars. The show was tremendously popular and also very successful in Europe (invitation by the Pope twice) but remained controversial. It was, for instance, not admitted to the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and Cody had to set up an independent exhibition near the Fair.
In the days leading up to the Fair’s opening, Franz Boas in his turn organized setting up houses in which a group of Northwest Coast Indians were to live temporarily, near a location on a small lake marked “Anthropology”. Boas had spent the preceding years researching the lives of these Indians—motivated by the Indian exhibits and artefacts of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. This location contained Native American artefacts like masks and decorated tools which Boas had collected during his research and which he hoped would attract the admiration of visitors through their wealth of imagination.
The Indians on the Fair were asked to perform dances and other rituals to demonstrate examples of their culture and had been assured that they would be paid the respect they were owed, although that had not been their experience in the US of the 19th century. Their lives were, in reality, dominated by the aftermath of the Indian Removals between 1830 and 1850 and the infamous “Trail of Tears”, on which more than 100,000 Native Americans and their black slaves were forcefully removed from their land by the US government and where thousands of their people died. This catastrophe had been justified in the name of the new field of Anthropology and seen as a result of the “natural racial order” proposing the right of white settlers to seize the natives’