Christine and others,
I love the idea of a grassroots movement, but I fear that in the case of
teaching grammar, a movement like the one you describe will face many
obstacles. I have been doing research on grammar instruction with public
high school teachers for
the past three years and we've experienced a number of roadblocks as
we've tried to implement grammar/language instruction that is based on
linguistic research, that is drawn from students' linguistic resources,
and that is clearly connected to particular uses of written and oral
language.
Here are a few obstacles we've faced:
1. Standardized test preparation - Most state and national standardized
tests now include multiple choice grammar/conventions tasks that ask
students to edit decontextualized sentences. To prepare students for
these tasks on high stakes tests, teachers are pressured to teach
grammar primarily  through practicing such tasks.
2. Standardized curricula - Most districts have adopted standardized
curricula that give teachers little room to choose what to teach in a
given school year. From what I've seen, most of the high school
curricula frame grammar in very traditional and often unclear terms and
goals (such as "9th grade: review parts of speech, kinds of clauses,
use of quotations.")
3. Available (and mandated) curricular materials - From textbooks to
computerized test preparation programs to videos (such as "Grammar
Pitfalls"), grammar is still presented in most widely-available
curricular materials in ways that are confusing and not particularly
helpful to students. I can't tell you how often I run across the
explanation that "a sentence is a complete thought" (to refer to
another recent thread on this listserv) in the textbooks adopted by the
school districts in which I work. I've found no widespread curricular
materials that offer the kinds of nuanced and scaffolded explanations
of grammar that people on this listserv do. And teachers are often
mandated to use the curriculum that their districts have adopted and
often are not allowed to bring in outside resources. Thus, even if we
convinced teachers to teach grammar in a new way, their districts and
mandated curricula might prohibit it.
4. Content knowledge - From my own work, I've found that it takes a
tremendous amount of time to teach even very strong and committed
teachers how to approach grammar in the ways we advocate. Currently, we
spend our first 15 hours together just discussing sociolinguistic
research on language/dialect variation and ways (and reasons) to teach
subject/predicate/verb. As many of you have pointed out, grammar has
been either ignored in K-12 education in recent years or downplayed
(i.e., relegated to the editing phase of process approaches to
writing). The result is that many teacher still need a lot more
professional development to gain the linguistic content knowledge and
the pedagogical content knowledge to teach grammar in the way that many
people on this listserv advocate.

Given the growing standardization of education and the current
administration's emphasis on "research-based instruction," I think that
it's imperative that we systematically study and publish research on
successful approaches to grammar instruction and, as you suggest, teachers'
needs and the obstacles surrounding such instruction. I
fully admit that I am biased because much of my job involves
educational research, but I don't think we can convince the public, the
feds, the states, the curriculum developers, school principals, or
teachers to change their approach to grammar instruction until we have
research that shows the effectiveness of what we propose. My sense from
looking at how the National Writing Project and other groups have
shaped their message in response to the current educational climate is
that we have to base our claims on sound research in order to be heard
at all at the national (or district) level.

I'm interested in hearing others' thoughts on this.

Amanda

On Oct 14, 2005, at 9:25 AM, Christine Reintjes wrote:

> Ed,
>
> Thanks for your comments.  You know the saying.."Think globally, act
> locally"?
>
> What if this group came up with a priority list and our members worked
> on introducing it in our local schools? I'm a great believer in
> grassroots movements. Maybe someone on this list could write a paper
> on the results.
>
> I've been thinking about interviewing public school English teachers
> to get to know where they are coming from and what they need. My
> community college students really like my descriptive perspective on
> dialects. They have so many stories of painful experiences around
> their native dialects being labeled bad, wrong, stupid and defective.
>
> Let me know your thoughts.
>
> --
>
> Christine Reintjes Martin
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
> ----Original Message Follows----
> From: Edward Vavra <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> interface at:
>     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
*****
Amanda Godley, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, English Education
University of Pittsburgh
5A18 WWPH
(412) 648-7313

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/

 
*****
Amanda J. Godley, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
English Education
University of Pittsburgh
412-648-7313
    

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/