Below you will find the current lineup of people who have selected
to summarize and comment on individual chapters in the *Contexts of
Learning* book. You will note that about half the chapters are still
open for reviewing.
Cheryl reports that people are asking about deadlines and procedures.
I want to use the queries to say something about this particular
experiment and XMCA more generally.
First, I have offered up this form of activity as a way of stimulating
coordinated consideration of issues that are central to the themes of
xmca and to provide a focus for discussion. As I am sure you have noted,
the people participating are an unusually broad sample of geogrpahical
locales and academic interests. Many interesting issues have been raised,
but the follow-through rate is pretty low. This, we know, is normal. Only
from time to time does a topic catch fire and provide a dense discussion.
Second, one of my hopes in starting up the discussion again was to see if we could
experiment with ways to foment cumulative discussion. The idea of using
the chapters of *Contexts of Learning* was, in part, in service of this
goal. It is also in the service of providing new practices that mix
the traditional expression of ideas in print (MCA) and electronic discussion.
If we are going to achieve these goals we really need volunteers
to summarize and comment on the remaining chapters.
I have not checked carefully, but my impression is that we have
not had much in the way of volunteering from graduate student
participants. That is a shame. Absolutely no degree status is
even implicitly implied by the idea of having xmca participants
provide summaries for discussion. We also have a noticable
absence of non-North American commentators.
These features of the response so far speak to a third goal of
xmca that I had hoped to foster with this experiment-- the goal
of multivoicedness and diversity.
So, PLEASE, those who have held back for whatever reasons, please
re-think and jump in.
Concerning deadlines. My idea is that people could post their
summaries any time between now and, say, the first week of
November. We would discuss them as they came up. Then, in (say)
December, Ellice could comment and we could discuss further.
If all this went interestingly, we could then consider publication
of the resulting, edited down, summaries and discussion, for the
second number of MCA in 1996.
So, that is/was the plan. I hope it seems congenial and look forward
to the ensuing discussion.
mike
-------------------------
CONTEXTS FOR LEARNING Sociocultural Dynamics in Children's
Development, edited by Ellice A. Forman, Norris
Minick and C. Addison Stone.
Chapter 1- Vygotsky in Classroom Practice: Moving from
Individual Transmission to Social Transaction
Luis C. Moll and Kathryn F. Whitmore
*Chapter 2- First-Grade Dialogues for Knowledge Acquisition
and Use
Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar, Ann L. Brown, and Joseph C.
Campione (to be reviewed by Bill Blanton)
Ch. 3 - Dynamics of Discourse: Literacy and the Construction
of Knowledge
Gen Ling M. Chang-Wells and Gordon Wells
*Ch. 4 - Discourse, Mathematical Thinking, and Classroom Practice
Paul Cobb, Terry Wood, and Erna Yackel (Dewey Dykstra)
Ch. 5 - Creating and Reconstituting Contexts for Educational
Interactions, Including a Computer Program
Peg Griffin, Alexandra Belyaeva, Galina Soldatova, and the
Velikhov-Hamburg Collective
Commentary- Time to Merge Vygotskian and Constructivist Conceptions
of Knowledge Acquisition
Giyoo Hatano
*Ch. 6 - What is Missing in the Metaphor of Scaffolding?
C. Addison Stone
(Reviewer- Joe Glick)
Ch. 7 - Deconstruction in the Zone of Proximal Development
Bonnie E. Litowitz
*Ch. 8 - Vygotsky, Hymes and Bakhtin: From Word to Utterance
and Voice
Courtney B. Cazden (Joan Kelly Hall)
Ch. 9- Vygotskian Perspective on Children's Collaborative
Problem-Solving Activities
Ellice A. Forman and Jean McPhail
Ch. 10 - Toddlers' Guided Participation with Their Caregivers
in Cultural Activity
Barbara Rogoff, Christine Mosier, Jayanthi Mistry, and Artin
Goncu
Commentary- Away from Internalization
Martin J. Packer
*Ch. 11 - Institutional and Social Context of Educational
Practice and Reform
Roland Tharp (Jacques Haenen)
*Ch. 12 - Generation and Transmission of Shared Knowledge
in the Culture of Collaborative Learning: The Fifth Dimension,
Its Play-World, and Its Institutional Contexts
Ageliki Nicolopoulou and Michael Cole
(Reviewers Zvi Bekerman & Gaby Horenczyk)
Ch. 13 - Activity Settings of Early Literacy: Home and School
Factors in Children's Emergent Literacy
Ronald Gallimore and Claude Goldenberg
*Ch. 14 - A Sociocultural Approach to Agency
James V. Wertsch, Peter Tulviste, and Fran Hagstrom (Wortham)
Commentary - Interface between Sociocultural and Psychological
Aspects of Cognition
Robert Serpell
Afterword - Direction of Post-Vygotskian Research
Jacqueline J. Goodnow
* means has reviewer
Francoise Herrman is willing to do any!
Joan Kelly Hall already has the Cazden article that you said Bazerman
would do. Will B do a different one?
Cheryl