Classroom Talks: Culture, Social Class and Equity – a Conversation with Courtney Cazden

The Werklund School of Education invites you to attend a 90 minute conversation with Dr. Courtney B. Cazden on Wednesday May 7th. 4pm – 5.30pm Education Tower, Room 1220. RSVP to educ.adminoffice@ucalgary.ca Courtney B. Cazden is Charles William Elliot Emeritus Professor of Education, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University. Over the past half century, her work has set the grounds for the qualitative analysis of classroom interaction and talk. Her continuing work on language and literacy learning in classrooms is used internationally and focuses on equity and social justice for students of cultural and linguistic minorities, and socially and economically marginalized communities. Professor Courtney Cazden’s book, ‘Classroom Discourse’ is considered a classic work in the analysis of teacher/student interaction and learning in the classroom. It set the terms for our analysis of the “I/R/F” or “I/R/E” exchange structure of teacher/student talk. The work brings together many strands from Professor Cazden’s distinguished career as an educational researcher and scholar. Working at Harvard University in the 1960s, Professor Cazden was one of the first researchers to focus on the impacts and implications of social class on classroom learning and interaction. When working with Dell Hymes and colleagues, she made major contributions to the emergent application of the “ethnography of communications” and “sociolinguistics” to the study of schooling and education. In the 1970s, she returned to the elementary classroom as a teacher, a journey partly documented in Hugh Mehan’s book, ‘Learning Lessons’, also a major breakthrough in the analysis of classroom exchange structures. In the past half-century, this work has focused and continued to focus on the learning experiences of working class, cultural and linguistic minority and Indigenous students in classrooms. During this session, moderated by her collaborator and colleague Allan Luke, Professor Cazden will discuss the foundational roots and influences on her work, reinterpret some key findings and key issues of educational research over the past half century, and the current projects and writing she is undertaking.

Location:

EDT 1220

Speaker:

Courtney B. Cazden

More information at http://www.ucalgary.ca/events/calendar/classroom-talks-culture-social-class-and-equity-conversation-courtney-cazden