Everyday Pedagogy: Lessons from Basketball, Track, and Dominoes

MIKE, an African American high school student and a basketball player at an urban public school in Southern California, is sitting with me in the coach's office at his high school. Normally, he is the picture of confidence. He is tall, has a huge smile, and walks with a swagger carries him down the hallways with as much grace as he shows on the basketball court. He is a leader on the team and often directs his teammates during the games. Just a moment ago, I asked Mike how he calculated the average number of points he scored from the free-throw line. Say, for instance, I asked, that you take 11 shots from the line and you make 7 of them. What is your percentage from the free-throw line? Mike answered me with his usual smile, fully attending and highly confident. Well, if you had taken 10 shots and made 7, would be 70%. But then you took extra shot, and you missed it. So it would bring it down. . . to about 65%. But Mike's confidence is fading fast, and now he is sinking into his seat, looking as if he could just disappear right from his chair. He looks at me sheepishly. I'm not really good at math, he mumbles. In front of him is a math worksheet, and on top is the problem 7/11 = ____%. But Mike misremembers the algorithm and divides 11 by 7. Then he doesn't know what to do next. Mike was a participant in a study I conducted on thinking and learning across contexts, and he was not alone in his apprehension about math. Almost all of his teammates displayed similar patterns of response indicated they could think in complex ways about averages and percentages but did not apply complex thinking to the school versions of problems involving these concepts. (1) In subsequent studies, I became concerned both with understanding these knowledge differences across contexts and with the kinds of teaching gave rise to them. Clearly, Mike's difficulty had nothing to do with his ability to do the mathematics required. I wondered how out-of-school settings provided opportunities for young people to learn and develop in ways some classrooms seem to struggle with. That is, how were teaching and learning organized in out-of-school settings? And how were young people offered access to a sense of themselves as competent participants in these practices? In this article, I explore common characteristics of some out-of-school learning environments for African American students, drawing on findings from several studies of cultural and community practices--the game of dominoes, high school track and field, and middle and high school basketball. While Mike's story is an example of learning in a specific content domain, I focus here on the broader question of how students in out-of-school settings learn to be competent in those settings. The environments I studied had two critical characteristics: 1) participation in them was organized to support key psychosocial issues, such as belonging and identification; and 2) learning in them was scaffolded in multiple ways by expert participants. (2) I conclude by discussing potential implications for classroom learning can foster the success of a wider range of students, including those like Mike who currently tend to be marginalized. BELONGING AND IDENTIFICATION I highlight four aspects of teaching and learning in out-of-school practices support learners' sense of belonging and identification: fostering respectful relationships, making mistakes acceptable, giving learners defined roles, and offering learners ways to participate incorporate aspects of themselves. Fostering respectful relationships. In basketball and track, coaches spend a lot of time developing and supporting positive relationships with the young people in their charge. They make the team a place where everyone is accepted and everyone has a place. In basketball, while interactions between players can be competitive, coaches don't allow put-downs and often give positive reinforcement to players who support one another and behave in respectful ways. …