[Xmca-l] Re: decolonising science/maths

[lpscholar2@gmail.com]

Ed,
I agree with you as you say a space opens up that we can call *studying* and teachers by opening this particular space (the studying place) make it possible for students to study. The other article by Vivian Pauley may overlap this insight which is significant and meaningful. 

You then mention what teachers bring to this emerging study place: Content knowledge area knowledge  and content pedagogical knowledge.
These higher level *intended* knowledges are carried into this zoped.

However there may be multiple internationaly of actions/gestures beyond and in excess of knowledges occurring in these studying places emerging into place. What Kym Maclaren is focussing attention on is the INEVITABILITY of situating others in particular ways within  these forming places through our actions/gestures.
These gestures (intentional actions) at the pre-verbal gestural level of *being-with* others are also significant intentional meaning generating aspects of the emerging studying situation.

The *slowing down* of the way the teacher proceeds, either in mathematics learning or Franklin learning *democractic spirit* was expressing this gestural aspect of the emerging studying *place* through the way the teacher *approaches* or *orients* toward the (subject matter at hand).
Others call this objectives.
Shifting to the Vivian Pauley thread we may further reflect on these developing themes

Sent from my Windows 10 phone

From: Edward Wall
Sent: October 17, 2016 4:37 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: decolonising science/maths

Larry

    The example is nice, but it misses the point. Unless one believes in some sort of transmission theory of knowledge, expertise doesn’t have much to do with teaching or, necessarily, learning. One might say, in fact, there is a space which teacher and learner inhabit called ‘studying’ and teachers, in effect, make it possible for students to study and hence learn (something only they can do). Some have postulated there is, in fact, two sort of expertise that teachers need: content area knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (and going slower isn’t at the top of the list).

    Not in defense of bad mathematics teaching, but mathematicians, normally, do not ‘study’ how to teach mathematics nor do they, normally, experience in their own learning teachers who have ‘studied’ mathematics teaching in a substantial fashion. This has nothing to do with ‘dead white males’, but with living conceptions of teaching among which the myth of the sufficiency of expertise is paramount. 

    In any case the link that was sent appears to be something written by a person who is firmly against decolonizing mathematics or did I miss something?

Ed

> On Oct 16, 2016, at  1:45 PM, lpscholar2@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> Mary,
> Thanks for posting this thought provoking article on learning and being solicited into becoming an *expert*. 
> 
> I want to share a view on expertise through a Merleau-Pontian lens as portrayed in an article written by Kym Maclaren.
> 
> Actions (gestures in M-P frames) intend meanings in the world. Equally the intended meanings also develop meaningful *places* of the selves involved in generating these intended meanings.
> For example:
> 
> The action (gestures) of someone who takes himself to be a specialist or *expert* and prides himself on being able to do things that others are not capable of doing.  Let us say an expert sailor demonstrates his expertise at tying special knots swiftly and efficiently – he MARKS HIMSELF OUT as an expert through his gestures. Tying the knot so quickly, so deftly, that we, the onlookers are left out of the process and experience only the beginning rope and the end product. The experts gestures seem to us, then, to be marvelous, magic, and beyond our ken.  He is thereby *set out* as the *solitary expert* with an *in* on this other world, and we onlookers are correlatively *set out* as the excluded, the non-participants.
> 
> Our experience is very different on the other hand,  when this expert *takes it upon himself* to teach us to tie these special knots. All of a sudden this mysterious, magical process is opened up to us.
> 
> The moves (gestures) – though still the same in their basic outline – are slowed down and exaggerated, presented on a larger scale, and we find ourselves drawn into the actions (gestures). As beginners to be sure, clumsy, awkward, and unsure of what we are doing – but as participants nonetheless.
> 
> By virtue of slowing down his gestures and opening the gestures up to us the expert *communicates* in his gestures a place for us as learners AND he attributes to himself the identity (the place) of being a teacher. He *makes room* for us in THIS world and treats us as people who could, in principle (in potential) have an *in* on this mutual world while simultaneously treating himself as someone *who shares a world* with us and can on the BASIS OF THIS SHARING, help us to find our way into this *particular* reality.
> 
> I could add commentary but will let this presentation from Kym Maclaren speak for itself. 
> Mary,
> This presentation creates a felt-imaginative experience of *expertise* to juxtapose with  the article you posted.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
> 
> From: Mary van der Riet
> Sent: October 16, 2016 7:42 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity (xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu)
> Subject: [Xmca-l] decolonising science/maths
> 
> 
> South African education is in a really difficult place it the moment. Its difficult to know where the tensions and disruptions will end, and how, if at all one can play a constructive role.
> One of the debates is about the need to 'decolonise' education, including science/maths. This call by students has been met with derision and disrespect.
> One of the few bits of sense about this decolonising has drawn on some cultural-historical philosophy
> see
> 
> http://theconversation.com/yes-mathematics-can-be-decolonised-heres-how-to-begin-65963?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%205808&utm_content=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%205808+CID_4eb3c8c0d6199c16245de6a1ef60f7cb&utm_source=campaign_monitor_africa&utm_term=Yes%20mathematics%20can%20be%20decolonised%20Heres%20how%20to%20begin
> 
> 
>