[Xmca-l] Re: What Are Halliday's "Magic Gateways"?

[Andy Blunden]

the idea that using a cultural artefact an individual 
interacting with another individual brings the entire 
history and culture of which they are a part into their 
immediate interaction. Thus suspending the distinction 
between social theory and psychology.

Andy

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*Andy Blunden*
Hegel for Social Movements <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!Mih3wA!WofP7aaNDzNixfJP-qIT7_0DVixsUGJRwSFItiD3UtuFF0_Rs0ogKUvb2bFD5CxuKnSVgQ$ >
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On 21/06/2020 10:15 pm, Anthony Barra wrote:
> And my other question (for everybody), which I think might 
> elicit a nice range of responses, is:
>
> What do you think is the most powerful threshold concept 
> in Vygotsky?  i.e., what is the one concept, or insight, 
> of Vygotsky's that, when fully understood, most opens up a 
> new way of seeing?
>
> From Meyer and Land (2003): "Threshold Concepts’ may be 
> considered to be “akin to passing through a portal” 
> or “conceptual gateway” that opens up 
> “previously inaccessible way[s] of thinking about something”
>
> Thank you!
>
> Anthony
>
> P.S.  The following excerpts might hurt more than help, or 
> confuse more than clarify, but for convenience's sake, 
> I'll copy and paste them here:
>
> Meyer and Land, 2003: "Our discussions with practitioners 
> in a range of disciplinary areas have led us to conclude 
> that a threshold concept, across a range of subject 
> contexts, is likely to be:
>
>  1. Transformative, in that, once understood, its
>     potential effect on student learning and behaviour is
>     to occasion a significant shift in the perception of a
>     subject, or part thereof.
>  2. Probably irreversible, in that the change of
>     perspective occasioned by acquisition of a threshold
>     concept is unlikely to be forgotten, or will be
>     unlearned only by considerable effort.
>  3. Integrative; that is, it exposes the previously hidden
>     interrelatedness of something."
>
>
> Flanagan, 2020: "Examples of the threshold concept must be 
> transformative and involve a traverse through a liminal 
> space. They are likely to be characterised by many of, but 
> not necessarily all of, the other features listed below:
>
> 1.
>     Transformative: Once understood, a threshold concept
>     changes the way in which the student views the discipline.
> 2.
>     Troublesome: Threshold concepts are likely to be
>     troublesome for the student. Perkins [1999, 2006] has
>     suggested that knowledge can be troublesome e.g. when
>     it is counter-intuitive, alien or seemingly incoherent.
> 3.
>     Irreversible: Given their transformative potential,
>     threshold concepts are also likely to be irreversible,
>     i.e. they are difficult to unlearn.
> 4.
>     Integrative: Threshold concepts, once learned, are
>     likely to bring together different aspects of the
>     subject that previously did not appear, to the
>     student, to be related.
> 5.
>     Bounded: A threshold concept will probably delineate a
>     particular conceptual space, serving a specific and
>     limited purpose.
>  6. Discursive: Meyer and Land [2] suggest that the
>     crossing of a threshold will incorporate an enhanced
>     and extended use of language.
>  7. Reconstitutive: "Understanding a threshold concept may
>     entail a shift in learner subjectivity, which is
>     implied through the transformative and discursive
>     aspects already noted. Such reconstitution is,
>     perhaps, more likely to be recognised initially by
>     others, and also to take place over time (Smith)".
>  8. Liminality: Meyer and Land [4] have likened the
>     crossing of the pedagogic threshold to a ‘rite of
>     passage’ (drawing on the ethnographical studies of
>     Gennep and of Turner in which a transitional or
>     liminal space has to be traversed; “in short, there is
>     no simple passage in learning from ‘easy’ to
>     ‘difficult’; mastery of a threshold concept often
>     involves messy journeys back, forth and across
>     conceptual terrain. (Cousin [2006])”.
>
> Thank you!  (And thanks again to David, re: magic gateways)
>
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> On Saturday, June 20, 2020, David Kellogg 
> <dkellogg60@gmail.com <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     You know, nothing is quite as complicated as trying to
>     be simple about something complex. So Anthony wanted
>     me to talk about a "threshold concept" in Halliday,
>     and even gave me chapter and verse about what this
>     might involve.
>
>     https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/6qf1qz__;!!Mih3wA!WofP7aaNDzNixfJP-qIT7_0DVixsUGJRwSFItiD3UtuFF0_Rs0ogKUvb2bFD5Cxy1-ybHg$ 
>     <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/6qf1qz__;!!Mih3wA!R1tuEz28TKCRX-z854TQcafClzwE-T5yfevnoxkw5DRwjpbz239rg0baB8eFK_R16hv7mQ$>
>
>
>     Halliday was, first and foremost, a teacher like you
>     and me. That's why he rejected the whole distinction
>     between grammar and vocabulary, it's how he ended up
>     involved in the Chinese revolution, it's why he
>     asked--and even answered--teacherly questions like
>     "How big is a language?" (depends on where you are and
>     where you are going, but it can be calculated) and
>     "Does Chomsky's distinction between surface and deep
>     structure help you teach or learn anything at all?"
>     (no) and "What is 'difficulty' and how much of it can
>     we blame on the text rather than the child?" (it
>     depends on how willing you are to divorce the text
>     from the child's understanding of it).
>
>     I think that precisely because he was a teacher like
>     you and me, he wouldn't have liked the concept of
>     "threshold concept": a single "aha" moment that
>     retrospectively transforms the way you think about a
>     whole domain like language. Yet in another sense,
>     precisely because he was a teacher like you and me, he
>     inisisted on free choice (yes, with consent!) as the
>     organizing principle of lexicogrammar
>     ("grammar-and-vocabulary", where the "and" is to be
>     understood in a fully Spinozan way). So he sees child
>     development as a series of magic gateways--the
>     differentiation of meaningful choices, some of which
>     are more meaningful than others. The most meaningful
>     one is not "that gateway"--the one you are looking
>     back upon in satisfaction--but "this gateway"--the one
>     you find yourself on the threshold of.  The magic is
>     simply in the fact that you know that beyond that
>     gateway there are even greater gateways.
>
>     Or rather more delicate gateways. Halliday used to say
>     that you can really start anywhere when you are
>     describing a complex phenomenon, so long as you
>     remember that beyond one degree of delicacy there are
>     infinitely others. So I think that the description I
>     gave of the magic gateway here is adequate at about
>     eighth grade level, with two amendments:
>
>     a) The "iinterpersonal metafunction" is singular and
>     not plural. Functions like "Mood" are sub-functions of
>     this single uber-function that is the child's magic
>     gateway into the whole of language. And of course
>     beyond that gateway lie other gateways, e.g.
>     "Subject", "Finite", etc.  The same is true of the
>     "textual metafunction" (Theme, Rheme) and the
>     "ideational metafunction" (one of the very rare
>     sources of disagreement between Halliday and Ruqaiya
>     Hasan was that she insisted that there were really two
>     different ideational metafunctions, the logical and
>     the experientail, while Halliday preferred to see them
>     as subfunctions of one).
>
>     b) The "who" (interpersonal), the "how" (textual) and
>     the "what" (ideational) are not the names of questions
>     ("Who are you?", "How are you?" and "What are you made
>     of?"  are not three different metafunctions). They are
>     labels for the metafunctions, attempts by me to
>     simplify a complex terminology. But a name is just a
>     gateway, and beyond each vague name there must
>     necessarily be a more delicate and therefore more
>     definite one.
>
>
>     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!WofP7aaNDzNixfJP-qIT7_0DVixsUGJRwSFItiD3UtuFF0_Rs0ogKUvb2bFD5Cxbk8Jh2g$ 
>     <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!UeTMSuYY3iGYNI80NGkgVW3vksPeX6xhNqXG1qffMzIs4RXePyHwgPaQtDiL035DfoBa0w$>
>     New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: /L.S. Vygotsky's
>     Pedological Works/ /Volume One: Foundations of Pedology/"
>     https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WofP7aaNDzNixfJP-qIT7_0DVixsUGJRwSFItiD3UtuFF0_Rs0ogKUvb2bFD5CyQNwMyGA$ 
>     <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UeTMSuYY3iGYNI80NGkgVW3vksPeX6xhNqXG1qffMzIs4RXePyHwgPaQtDiL035f0sEiOg$>
>
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