[Xmca-l] Re: Emotion as "Sputnik"

[David Kellogg]

Annalisa and Mike:

The Good Lord loves and rewards stubborn persistence, Annalisa. I am not
sure kids do, though--will they want to sit through the same presentation
three times? Or do you simply mean we use three different presentations so
that we can randomize the order? Of course, "sputnik" didn't mean a
satellite for Vygotsky--the first Sputniks were launched just before I was
born, about twenty years after Vygotsky died. When I first translated
Vygotsky, I thought a "sputnik" was a kind of sattelite God, Hermes to
Zeus, Hanuman to Ram, Athena to Odysseus. But I notice that Russians use
"sputnik" to just mean something like "companion", a fellow traveler, or a
playmate. So instead of a kind of guardian angel, emotion functions as a
bosom companion, growing up as the child grows.

I have--as usual--expressed myself rather poorly, Mike. (It will amuse you
greatly to learn that I am teaching Communication this term!) When I said
"represent" I did mean re-present. I actually meant exactly what Annalisa
is describing. The teacher presents  the task (usually a dramatic situation
of some kind) to a small group of "group leaders" and they do an example
before the class begins. Those group leaders then return to their groups
and present the task to the groups. We did video the results, but I thought
the product wasn't nearly as interesting as analyzing the process.

Phillip: Halliday thought that Edelman's view of intelligence was the real
biological foundation of his linguistics. And Annalisa is right, it did
have a lot to do with Edelman's theory of re-entrant ("mirror") neurons.
Andy has some trouble with the determinism of Vygotsky; I have a rather
different problem with his hierarchical ideas of how functions are
organized in a system. Edelman's books offer a pretty clear way out of that
problem!


On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 7:10 AM Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:

> David,
>
> My stubborn persistence tells me that there is a way to bring in the
> dynamics of the pandemic crisis into your research design if we think about
> it long enough.
>
> If emotion is the sputnik, as you reasonably hypothesize, then how can you
> create opportunities for sputnik to launch?
>
> I maintain that this can be done with peer learning, because what counts
> is the cultural connection a student has with a peer compared to that
> cultural connection the student has with an instructor. Given in your
> description of social distancing, isn't there a way to compare and contrast
> learning that comes from "in person with social distancing" vis s vis
> learning that comes from "online learning"?
>
> What you describe in your study is not what I was proposing. I was
> proposing how a student learns from a peer presenting the object of
> learning compared to the way a teacher might. And to use online vs in
> person learning venues to compare and contrast what we might call the
> perezhivanie in the learning moment.
>
> If we might accept Nuthall's findings that learning happens when the
> underlying materials are presented at least three times, that should be a
> replicable structure that could bear fruit. It should be possible to
> determine and trace the emotional attachment that prevails in successful
> concept development.
>
> How about:
>
>    - Have a control for presentations with underlying material offered
>    three times (delivered via online learning?)
>    - Have a presentation with socially distant teacher presenting three
>    times.
>    - Have a presentation with socially distant peer presenting three
>    times.
>
>
> Note the differences and similarities, as well as effectiveness and even
> how quickly a concept is absorbed and mastered by the learner.
>
> What is the flaw in that design as you see it?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Annalisa
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Saturday, June 13, 2020 3:26 PM
> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Emotion as "Sputnik"
>
>
> *  [EXTERNAL]*
> Annalisa:
>
> It's a great idea. But we are in the throes of "the dance" here in South
> Korea. Schools reopen. Then there's an outbreak. So the government closes
> schools again and we all go back into isolation for ten days. Then things
> reopen again, until the next outbreak. Even when schools are open, class
> size is greatly reduced, students are kept at least two meters apart and
> put in masks (we don't have those crazy hats that you see in China, but
> some schools use cubicles), and that would make it really hard to get peer
> teaching, much less collect data from peer teaching.
>
> We did do something like what you propose way back in 2007--we just looked
> at the difference between the way a teacher presented the task and the way
> that the task was represented to groups.
>
> Guk, I. and Kellogg, D. (2007). The ZPD and Whole Class Teaching:
> Teacher-led and Student-led Interactional Mediation in Tasks. Language
> Teaching Research 11,3 (2007); pp. 281–299
>
> I suspect that if you read this study you will find it methodologically
> and even intellectually crude, particularly compared to what you propose,
> but for reasons I don't really understand it's the only thing we ever wrote
> that gets widely cited!)
>
> Phillip:
>
> Yes, ethnography would show precisely the kind of development we're
> interested in. But I think ethnography is better suited to studying
> stability than to studying crises. I get that crises are like anything
> else--they need to be highly contextured to be well textured. But because
> ethnography has a tendency to view the social and cultural and historical
> dimension exclusively through the language of the interpersonal, it's
> really hard to get genetic cross-sections that are broad enough and long
> enough to tell you how the system as a whole changes at "inflection points"
> (Joe Biden!) that are prepared for systematically precisely by those epochs
> we are naively thinking of as stable. (Ruqaiya Hasan's work was one of very
> few exceptions to this constraint....)
>
> For example. One of the most important responses to the crisis revealed by
> George Floyd's murder has been to argue that the protests are too easily
> hijacked as pretexts for violence (see, for example, Boris Johnson's recent
> remarks on the descecration of Winston Churchill's statue in Parliament
> Square in London). This assumes, weirdly, a widespread tendency towards
> unmotivated violence that I have never actually observed in any fellow
> human being. I am pretty sure that Boris Johnson could probably find
> someone to produce ethnographic evidence that it exists, but I am equally
> sure that he couldn't ever produce evidence that it is systemic. Without
> that evidence, there is no way to predict or explain the fire next time.
>
> Language stuff is not like this: every text is evidence of both the
> interpersonal and of what we are calling, non-redundantly, the
> socio-cultural.
>
> David Kellogg
> Sangmyung University
>
> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
> Outlines, Spring 2020
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!QniU8qpEc4XteLAT4T5hxTRGUd9fxaqasjLsXXKsAvFWgiZ4fMH8VVv0mjVbJLvQqXLtqA$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!WC3HFOsQ9Q1YrwAJJr6OrmYucGeF3_YdxFPBKTpboOV_8GcFMYTJ5DXB6_eP03Im5e4BWA$>
> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *
> Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*"
>  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!QniU8qpEc4XteLAT4T5hxTRGUd9fxaqasjLsXXKsAvFWgiZ4fMH8VVv0mjVbJLth1foD8A$ 
>
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WC3HFOsQ9Q1YrwAJJr6OrmYucGeF3_YdxFPBKTpboOV_8GcFMYTJ5DXB6_eP03IavHbi-w$>
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 11:59 PM White, Phillip <
> Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu> wrote:
>
> rather than a test, David, perhaps a rigorous ethnography along the lines
> of what Graham Nuthall did -
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://researched.org.uk/graham-nuthall-educational-research-at-its-best/__;!!Mih3wA!QniU8qpEc4XteLAT4T5hxTRGUd9fxaqasjLsXXKsAvFWgiZ4fMH8VVv0mjVbJLuMXq4JbA$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://researched.org.uk/graham-nuthall-educational-research-at-its-best/__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVv1FWd6Q$>
> Graham Nuthall: Educational research at its best – researchED
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://researched.org.uk/graham-nuthall-educational-research-at-its-best/__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVv1FWd6Q$>
> Graham Nuthall: Educational research at its best 26th February 2019 / in
> February 2019 / by Jan Tishauser. Professor Emeritus Graham Nuthall, an
> educational researcher from New Zealand, is credited with one of the
> longest series of studies of teaching and learning in the classroom that
> has ever been carried out. A pioneer in his field, his ...
> researched.org.uk
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://researched.org.uk__;!!Mih3wA!WC3HFOsQ9Q1YrwAJJr6OrmYucGeF3_YdxFPBKTpboOV_8GcFMYTJ5DXB6_eP03Jr3xUlgw$>
>
>
> it was highly complex, but clearly from his finding emotions play a key
> role in concept formation.
>
> he died about 16 years ago.  and oddly enough his work is still little
> appreciated.
>
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Pedagogy-and-assessment/Pedagogical-leadership/The-cultural-myths-and-realities-of-teaching-and-learning__;!!Mih3wA!QniU8qpEc4XteLAT4T5hxTRGUd9fxaqasjLsXXKsAvFWgiZ4fMH8VVv0mjVbJLsjKSSxaA$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Pedagogy-and-assessment/Pedagogical-leadership/The-cultural-myths-and-realities-of-teaching-and-learning__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVKl43myA$>
> The cultural myths and realities of teaching and learning / Pedagogical
> leadership / Pedagogy and assessment / Home - Educational Leaders
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Pedagogy-and-assessment/Pedagogical-leadership/The-cultural-myths-and-realities-of-teaching-and-learning__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVKl43myA$>
> The cultural myths and realities of teaching and learning. by Graham
> Nuthall. Download this complete document (PDF 149 kB) Help with PDF files
> Overview. Graham Nuthall was Emeritus Professor of Education at the
> University of Canterbury in Christchurch.
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz__;!!Mih3wA!QniU8qpEc4XteLAT4T5hxTRGUd9fxaqasjLsXXKsAvFWgiZ4fMH8VVv0mjVbJLt4jdvbkA$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kXD3p1_-w$>
>
> Nuthall had participated in some of xmca conversation.
>
> also, Gerard Edelman's work, which was the focus of an xmca conversation
> some time ago, points out that initials perceptions are initially sorted
> into one of two values - in layman's terms, like or dislike.  which is of
> course an emotional response.
>
> *Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind* (Basic Books,
> 1992, Reprint edition 1993). ISBN
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN_(identifier)__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVQcrjGHA$>
>  0-465-00764-3
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-465-00764-3__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kWgq0yeVA$>
>
> in short, there are many ways of exploring student emotions i'd consider
> to be more reliable that trustworthy than tests.
>
> phillip
>
>
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