Establishing Norms to Bridge Sociocultural Understandings
Community Norms
There are at least three categories of norms that are needed to build a brave space where learning, socioemotional, and sociocultural perspectives interact through: “respect for others, equitable participation, and accountability to the [learning] as well as one’s classmates” (Windschitl, Thompson & Braaten 2018, p.66) being valued.
I hope to establish the norms of the Environmental Art session with the groups I am working with based on their own needs and any community contract that may already be in place. In order to build a brave space where participants are collaborative and creative, there needs to be an element of co-creation of what these community of norms will be with the group you are working with. In saying this though, I will explicitly state that there are certain norms that I expect myself and the participants of the session to follow and to hold ourselves accountable to for the time together.
Environmental Art Norms:
Knowledge can and will shared in many ways through engaging with visual, verbal, non-verbal, and oral communication that values multiple languages and cultural backgrounds and identities. (KID FRIENDLY: Communication through many forms, honoring cultures)
Communication will be used as a way to build understanding of topic and to deepen each other’s ideas and questions as well as our thinking and creation processes. (KID FRIENDLY: “Yes and”: build on others’ ideas)
We will speak from our perspectives, knowledge, and understanding and give new perspectives which add to others’ learning and will request clarification, show agreement or confusion, verify, and ask others to repeat as needed. (KID FRIENDLY: Speak from your heart, listen to understand, and ask for expansion/repetition)
We will give “wait time” for all to have a chance to think and process before speaking and when we are soliciting ideas, give others a chance to speak by watching our “air time”, and when others speak we will listen actively without interruption. (KID FRIENDLY: Give “wait time” to process; watch our “air time” when we share)
I am using Table 4.1 from Ambitious Science Teaching to inform the Community Norms above
Table 4.1 from Ambitious Science Teaching (Windschitl, Thompson & Braaten 2018, p.67)