Summary: "Schema Theory Revisited"

Schema can be traced back to Kant. They highlight a give and take between culture and memory. Basically, we understand and organize our experiences based on prior knowledge, which is formed by social and cultural experiences. However, culture’s role in schema has been lost in current schema theory and its application to reading processes.

Schema theory was the driving force as reading models were developed in the 1970s and 80s. Studies have essentially proven that prior experience strongly influences one’s interpretation of a text. This is usually proven in research through the use of “bizarre” or “ambiguous” texts. Critics point out that these texts do not reflect the readings we encounter in normal situations nor in a classroom.

Research has not delved into schema origination, and the authors are interested in the role of social and cultural factors in schema development. They believe that “social and cultural considerations are the most critical and essential factors in schema acquisition” (541).

“Sociocultural theorists argue that schemas emerge from the social interactions between an individual and his environment” (547). If we look at reading from a socio-cultural perspective, we recognize that culture influences how we see the world—that is, how we pattern the world we live in. That patterning influences how we will interpret meaning not just in the world but in words.

The way that cognitive practices are influences by social practices is reflected in learning. A student who struggles with reading a text may better understand the material by talking about the reading with peers. He or she is then able to take that new understanding back into the cognitive sphere by writing about the text. Learning is recursive (see Vygotsky Space model, pg 548).

Classroom Practice:

The authors give an example of Mrs. Weber who taught a unit on racism. They read and discussed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” and read a book in which a young boy doesn't understand the use of the word “black” to describe people who were cinnamon, nutmeg, acorn, etc. After reading the passage, Mrs. Weber had all the children put their hands in a circle and notice the different shades and colors.

One child in Mrs. Weber’s class did not understand the purpose of this exercise or the book. He had lived in the U.S. for two years and, despite all the class discussion and context provided leading up to this particular reading, simply didn’t have experience of racism. Since he didn’t have that schema, he took the exercise and the book literally and could not see the figurative “lesson” behind it.

How, then, can new schema be acquired? And how do teachers help students who as language learners do not have the same schema as their classmates? It isn’t as simple as showing pictures or giving new pieces of information. Students struggle to make connections between packets of information.

The authors look at schema theory as being about more than “prior knowledge” but also about the social interactions that form that knowledge. In classroom practice, it may be necessary not just to give new info (that doesn't really create “schema”) but to allow students to interact, engage with and respond to new info in order to appropriate it as their own knowledge.

3 ways that sociocultural perspective helps us reframe schema theory:

1. 1.     Draws attention to issues of schema origin and development
2. 2.     knowing is a cultural process (it’s not just learner + info = knowledge)
3. 3.     highlights role of meditational tools (multiple languages, kinds of text and video, social interaction)

Conclusion:  “We have little understanding of how the schemas originate and develop or what role social and cultural factors play in these genetic processes” (556). Finally, the authors want us to consider the political implications of knowledge and knowledge transfer.