Can We Succeed if We Don’t Speak the Same Language? by Jess Gregory
A graduate student in a test preparation session for an administrator certification test asked whether he could use educational acronyms and abbreviations in his test responses. I answered the question with a standard response that it is important to spell out the abbreviation or acronym the first time it is used, but it is acceptable to use abbreviations and acronyms. Later, I began to question my answer. Is it acceptable for educators and educational leaders to use abbreviations and acronyms?
While we rarely admit as much, one reason educators use acronyms and abbreviations is to demonstrate their competency as educators, their “with-it-ness” by integrating buzzwords into conversation, and in general, talking about the importance of communication and transparency without communicating effectively or transparently. The use of abbreviations, acronyms, and buzzwords creates a barrier in communication and out groups of stakeholders that educators espouse to include. Educational leaders, and those preparing leaders, need to examine the practice to determine the purpose in using these terms and whether the consequences of their use are worth the loss of clarity.
The purpose of an acronym is to save time and space, but this efficiency of communication may not be the only reason they are used so widely in education. Using them creates a sense of group cohesion, as everyone in the group knows what is being said with a special acronym. Acronyms and abbreviations are not all equally known, and some abbreviations are district or even school specific. The use of acronymns and buzzwords creates a group of people who can communicate more efficiently, but it also creates an out-group. This out-group is everyone else, including parents, guardians, community members, and even the non-educators that work in the same school buildings.
Joining the tribe
Abbreviations, acronyms, and buzzwords are the language of educators; they create a special lexicon that only other educators comprehend. I will call it Eduspeak. There is little chance that a layperson will develop a facility for Eduspeak without explicit training, practice, and time in the field. Even trained, new educators are self-conscious that they don’t have the entire lingo that experienced educators banter about with such ease. The acquisition of educational lingo, or Eduspeak, marks a new educator’s unofficial entry into the profession. I remember finally feeling like an insider when I had gracefully included a smattering of Eduspeak into a conversation with colleagues and an even newer colleague asked me what the Eduspeak term I had just used meant. It was a feeling of pride.
This defining moment stuck with me, as did the growing sense of empathy for those not a part of the in-group. Chance favoring the prepared mind (Pasteur, 1854), and many years of teaching later, I reread Orwell’s 1984 and was struck by the parallels between Eduspeak and Newspeak. In 1984 Orwell used language, along with dress and other outward symbols of belonging, to identify those in the Party (higher class) to each other and segregated them from the Proles (lower class). The language created by the Party, Newspeak, has its roots in English, or Oldspeak, but was continuously being revised to be smaller and less similar to the Oldspeak used by the Proles. Language defined the group and only those accepted into the in-group had access to the communication.
The patterns of change are less defined in Eduspeak than Newspeak, but the constant change is guaranteed by a never-ending stream of new educational initiatives at the local, state, and national levels. As soon as, or even before, an educator has mastered the implementation of a new initiative with its Eduspeak, a writer, scholar, or trusted figure reports that something else may be even better. The complexity of Eduspeak means that only the most up to date can use it well, and everyone else is either trying to figure it out, or hiding that they are unsure of the meaning behind the Eduspeak.
Language, in this case the specific language of Eduspeak, has a productive function. It defines the norms and values of the group and establishes acceptable and not acceptable behaviors and attitudes. Eduspeak is dynamic, it shifts with the current trends in education and serves to identify those that are current in the field to each other, and separates them from those who are outside the field or too new to have learned the language. The freshest buzzwords become necessary tools in the language of Eduspeak, forcing those that wish to converse to become aware of the buzzwords and the ideas and practices behind them. Educators communicate how they define themselves, and where they “fit in,” in part, by their use of Eduspeak.
Role of language in defining groups in non-fiction world
While Orwell was writing fiction, the use of language to define groups is a reality. Communication, and Orwell might expand this to thoughts, is dependent on language. Language describes and defines an individual’s interactions with others, even how an individual is perceived. These perceptions can limit or advance an individual in society, based on the value that society places on the group to which the individual belongs. Laureau and Weininger (2003) describe this as cultural capital: The habits and dispositions that embody a group’s cultural traditions are unequally valued and therefore present opportunities for a group’s advantage or disadvantage. Originally described by Bourdieu (1977; 1981) cultural capital consists of values, attitudes, behaviors and skills that together impact the way individuals perceive and evaluate their world.
With this view of cultural capital, access to valued cultural capital is a form of power. Kavanagh (cited in Rurak, 2004) connects motivation to the use of exclusive forms of language, “jargon is used by bureaucrats of all kinds to facilitate their own interactions.” Even as language may be used to facilitate interactions, it also excludes others from joining the conversation. If you speak the language then you are accepted; language serves as an admission ticket, as the currency of cultural capital.
Advancing the group by excluding others?
When I was young I remember using passwords to keep my little brother out of a club or modified codes to communicate with my friends privately even when we were in public. Even as adults, we create passwords all the time, inside information, knowing looks, and other cues that include some and exclude others. Eduspeak is the password for the educator club.
It is imperative to consciously decide when Eduspeak is making communication more efficient and when it is serving another purpose. A possible function of Eduspeak goes beyond the definition of a group. It establishes expert power over the “lay” person. This intimidates the “non-educator” and asserts that we, as educators, know best. In the guise of professionalism, Eduspeak flies in the face of the rhetoric of inclusion and valued stakeholders. By using Eduspeak, we put a barrier between ourselves, as educators, and those with whom we say we wish to partner. Our language defines the rules and practices and tells the stakeholders that they have less to contribute to the conversation.
Valuing communication
Back to the question raised by my student, was it ok as an educator or an educational leader to use abbreviations and acronyms in his response? And with that, the larger question, should educators use Eduspeak? While Orwell further segregated the Party from the Proles through meaningless computer generated music and other media, schools create a dazzling digital presence to engage community members. These polished digital spaces are frequently steeped in Eduspeak. Websites created to provide access to the latest school and district level data do very little to explain what these data mean. Graphics are splashed across posters and web-banners that display how the latest initiative(s) align with the school’s mission and vision without a narrative of what that initiative means for students in the district or their families.
Parents and community members receive lots of information without clear communication. If schools and educational leaders are seeking to engage parents and community members in helping to increase student performance, then I should have given a different answer to that student. I should have said, “no, explain your ideas in plain language,” reinforcing that the goal was to be understood by all stakeholders: parents, students, and community members. I should have asked what are the real purposes of these educational abbreviations and acronyms, of the Eduspeak? I should have taken advantage of that teachable moment, and started to dismantle, in some small way, the barriers between educators and “non-educators”.
Communication is at the heart of the work of educators, and maybe it will take me longer to type an email if I use plain language and avoid Eduspeak, but it makes sense to speak the same language as families and community partners. By using normal language and eschewing Eduspeak, I clarify that I value communication and not exclusivity. I aim to improve the performance outcomes of students, fostering their success through more effective, and more accessible communication. By avoiding jargon, abbreviations, and acronyms I leave myself open to being understood by anyone, and in so doing leave myself open to criticism by anyone. I also risk losing the good opinion of my Eduspeak using colleagues. The challenge will be for me, as an educator, not to seek to identify with my professional group through the use of specialized language, not to be a part of the Eduspeak using group.
It may be tempting to suggest that educators restrict the use of Eduspeak to situations where they are communication within a group of educators and switch to plain, understandable language around non-educators, but this is how we arrived where we are. Eduspeak creates a barrier to effective communication even within the field of education unless everyone has the same background, the same local abbreviations, and therefore speaks the same dialect of Eduspeak. Eduspeak unintentionally infiltrates even the most banal conversations because it becomes a habit, as such, it is difficult to advise educators to restrict its use to specific settings and expect it to not creep into other situations.
Recommendations, not “shoulds”
I offer two recommendations for educators that wish to improve communication. These recommendations are for the practicing educational leader, the aspiring leader, the classroom teacher, coach, parent, really…any educator. First, be a constant translator. What I mean by this is whenever you hear an acronym, abbreviation, or buzzword, ask the person using it, “Do you mean ______ by this acronym?” Ask the question even when you are sure you know the right answer. Be the voice for the person who might be a part of the conversation but does not have the confidence to ask. This translation allows everyone to be an equal participant in the conversation and reminds the speaker to be sure his or her listeners are following. The byproduct of being a constant translator is that people around you will begin to spell out what they mean by their Eduspeak, as being clear will be more efficient than using Eduspeak that then has to be translated.
Second, keep parents and community members first. As educators, we serve a public function. We prepare children to fulfill their potential and to be productive members of the community. The Council of Chief State School Officers recognizes this when they say “that schools are an integral part of the community, they lead and support outreach to students’ families and the wider community” (CCSSO, 2012, p. iv). Rather than create a dictionary or glossary of acronyms for parents so that they will know what we mean, remove the barrier of acronyms in all forms of communication. Seek to understand what information parents and community members want, and provide that without the Eduspeak. It is better to adopt transparency as the rule than to try to educate parents as to what the rules and language of schools are. In short, eliminate Eduspeak to improve communication.
Some will argue that Eduspeak and its dialect serve a useful purpose, and that may be so. Eduspeak lets one educator feel connected to others, it differentiates those that are current from those who are not, and prohibits those outside the group from deducing meaning in conversation. Eduspeak also serves a protective function. It cloaks action (or inaction) in rhetoric; it obscures educational outcomes in domains, performance expectations, and other terms that make it easier to not say what sometimes needs to be said. Eduspeak softens hard truths, it muddles meaning making it easier for the educators leave to themselves an escape route, they can not be penned into a corner. Eduspeak values the protective, insulating function over the communication function; this does not align with core values in education. If we want everyone to succeed, both children and adults, we need to speak the same language and we need to understand each other. We need to share a truth, we need to value communication, and we need to eliminate the unnecessary—Eduspeak.
Jess Gregory is an Assistant Professor in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Southern Connecticut State University.
References
Bourdieu, P. (1981), La représentation politique. Eléments pour une théorie du champ politique. Actes de la recherce en sciences sociales, 36-37, 3-24.
Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J. C. (1977), Reproduction in education, society and culture, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA.
Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). (2012), Our responsibility our promise: Transforming educator preparation and entry into the profession. Author: Washington, DC.
Laureau, A. and Weininger, E. (2003), Cultural capital in educational research: A critical assessment. Theory and Society, 32(6), 576-606.
Orwell, G. (1949), Ninteen eighty-four, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, NY.
Pasteur, L. (1854), Extract of a Marked Conference, December 7, 1854. In A treasury of the World’s great speeches, ed. Houston Peterson.
Rurak, C. (2004), The roots and perils of Eduspeak–The language of pretense and evasion. Writers Block. Retrieved from http://www.writersblock.ca/summer2004/feature.htm
