[Xmca-l] Re: Re-situating funds of identity within contemporary interpretations of perezhivanie

[Greg Mcverry]

So I am annotating the article here before I formulate my response:
https://jgregorymcverry.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Resituating-Funds-of-Identity-Within-Contemporary-Interpretations-of-Perezhivanie.pdf

Some quick thoughts:
-Allowing students to choose their software created a situation where
identity was also mediated by technical knowledge., which in itself
signifies membership and identities within groups.
-There is a wealth of literature exploring image metaphors and identity.
This is usually framed from a new literacies perspective and draws on James
Paul Gee (too much). Every digital story telling study ends with, "Students
did "identity work" this provided a fresh take on funds of identity.
-I thought the role of the environment was downplayed here. Being in a
school setting the motivation for doing identity work is influenced by
power relationships int he classroom.
-Interesting how cultural meaning and funds of knowledge (lazy cat) were
included in the avatar of "lazt cat"
-I am scared for our youth when the environment of perezhivanie is
controlled by algorithims. Students do not get to decide how their identity
is projected. Their social interactions, the friends they see and
communicate with are now controlled by corporations. We must encourage
students to own their digital spaces.
-I am playing with the idea of building critical evaluation by having
students interact with bias avatars doing bias read alouds of multiple
sources.

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 6:27 PM Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
wrote:

> ​Thanks for the discussion so far, Moises and Adam. And while Moises (or
> anyone else) perhaps comes back with a more a more comprehensive reaction,
> I was just wondering about Moisés question 2 and what the relation between
> the categories "identity" and "personality" are, if they can be related at
> all. In Vygotsky, perezhivanie is explicitly linked to personality. As far
> as I can recall and without having gone to the texts and check, Vygotsky
> does not use the term "identity" in the sense it is used in current
> literature. This also leads me to wonder on the distinction
> between *learning* (which according to Moises is part what the Funds of
> Knowledge/Identity were designed to address) and *development*. Is
> analytical categories, is perezhivanie more about development and funds of
> identity more about learning? Or we have to differentiate them on other
> grounds?
>
> Alfredo
> ------------------------------
> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Adam Poole (16517826) <Adam.Poole@nottingham.edu.cn>
> *Sent:* 19 June 2018 04:14
> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re-situating funds of identity within contemporary
> interpretations of perezhivanie
>
>
>
> Thanks to Moises for posting some questions about the article that I would
> like to respond to.
>
>
> I will first include his summary and interpretation of the paper and then
> respond to his questions.
>
>
>
> Interpretation of paper
>
> The Poole’s paper invited me to enrich the notion of funds of identity.
> Grounded in the funds of knowledge approach, the funds of identity concept
> try to intentionally reinforce the positive backgrounds and experiences of
> learners to overcome the deficit thinking in education (to sum up: by
> reducing marginalized school population to a sum of cultural, social,
> linguistic deficits).  However, our experience is not only light. And in
> the dark funds of knowledge suggested by Zipin, existential funds of
> identity invite us to capture a more holistic view on people’s experience.
> In my opinion, deep learning (meaningful, significant learning) is based
> on the recognition and transformation of learners’ identities. This
> assertion, that would be one of my working hypothesis, assumes three
> theoretical principles: (1) that human identities are culturally-situated
> and distributed (geographical funds of identity, cultural funds of
> identity, institutional funds of identity and so on); (2) that there is a
> constitutive link between learning and identity (as so many scholars
> suggested and developed) and (3) that meaning (significant experience)
> plays an important role as a learning generator. Here in mind, I would
> like to share three questions or topics that can help us to understand the
> Adam Poole’s paper, in particular, and further advance our
> conceptualization on contemporary topics as perezhivanie, in general.
>
>
> Questions
>
>
> 1)        Do you think that existential funds of identity should be
> considered as a type of funds of identity? In other words, should be
> incorporated into the prior classification into geographical, practical,
> institutional, cultural and social funds of identity? Or may be should be
> considered as a “re-theorization” of funds of identity?
>
>
> This is a question that I have been struggling with for some time. When I
> initially uncovered existential funds of identity I considered to be more
> than a type of funds of identity. I couldn't see how it related to the five
> categories that you proposed, as to me the type of identity being described
> was more internal or meditative. However, the more I researched into the
> funds of identity concept and its theoretical underpinnings, the more I
> came to question this conclusion. Firstly, funds of identity, as I
> understand it, is predicated upon a synthesis of macro and micro-level
> approaches to culture - that is, identity is embedded in artefacts and
> social practices and therefore is distributed in nature. However, to bring
> in the concept of perezhivanie, individuals construct new identities from
> the social identities that surround them. In contrast, I initially
> understood existential funds of identity as largely phenomenological in
> nature. However, on reflection, I realised that issues to do with identity
> confusion, relationship problems, etc, are social in nature.
>
>
> So, existential funds of identity should be seen as a complement to funds
> of identity, rather than a re-theorisation of it. Most significantly, it
> can be used to show how negative experiences can be drawn on in order to
> bring about positive pedagogical outcomes.
>
>
> However, I would be interested to know if anyone else thinks that
> existential funds of identity complements or contradicts the concept
> developed by Moises.
>
>
>
> 2)        How we could link the concepts of identity and perezhivanie?
>
>
> Good question! For me. identity is an open-ended process that is both
> personal and social in nature. For this reason, perezhivanie is a really
> useful concept to bring this relationship into focus. Firstly, it shows how
> development is the result of the dialectical relationship between the mind
> and the environment. This relates to identity in a big way, as it
> suggests that identity is quite fluid: we are different people in
> different times and across different contexts. Perezhivanie is relevant
> here as it helps to explain the way individuals relate differentially to
> their environments. In relation to my teaching, I have found that students
> do not embody fixed identities that they take with them from class to
> class, but construct new identities in response to their classes - the
> teacher, the students, the subject. To draw upon, and extend Thompson and
> Hall's (2008) metaphor of 'virtual school bags of knowledge' - students do
> not only bring one school bag with them, but have many different bags from
> which they draw in the construction, and performance, of their classroom
> identities.
>
>
> This realisation lead me to question the role of labelling that you often
> find in staff rooms - this is the 'difficult' student, this is the 'gifted'
> student, etc. By observing students' behaviour in other classes, I realised
> that there was something going on between the students and their
> environments - hence the link between identity and perezhivanie. Rather
> than engaging with the imposed label (that really says more about our
> deficit thinking than the students themselves) we should engage with the
> students' lived experiences of their social world - both positive and
> negative.
>
>
> 3)        One of the aims of funds of identity is to develop an approach
> to the construct “identity” that had educational implications. What are
> the
> educational/pedagogical implications of the existential funds of identity?
>
>
> This is a bit more of a complicated one! I do agree with your assertion
> that drawing upon minoritised students' negative or problematic experiences
> could lead to the reproduction of deficit thinking. However, I do think
> that if handled ethically, teachers can draw upon both light and dark funds
> of identity in order to valorise the whole child and their social worlds.
> So pedagogically, existential funds of identity can help to develop 'thick'
> stranded relationships between teachers and students. Moreover, it can also
> bridge the gap between the classroom and home by acknowledging that life
> and individual experiencing is complex and multi-layered, often involving
> critical moments that are ambivalent in nature. I have to say that this
> approach may not be appropriate for younger learners. I had in mind
> adolescent learners when I developed the idea of existential funds of
> identity.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Adam
>
>
>
>
>
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