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Abstracts from articles appearing in Volume 3, No. 2 of "Mind, Culture, and Activity":
Using the Tool-Kit of Discourse in the Activity of Learning and Teaching
GORDON WELLS Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Teaching and learning are largely conducted through talk, yet the relationship between the talk and the activity goals it is intended to achieve israrely problematized or treated as a matter for conscious choice. In this paper, I describe a tool for the analysis of classroom talk, developed in the context of teacher-researcher collaboration, which draws upon activity theory and systemic linguistics. Three main units of analysis are proposed: episodes of talk, which are the chief interactional means by which actions are operationalized; the sequences from which such episodes are constructed; and, minimally, the moves through which each sequence is negotiated. The concept of mini-genre is then used to distinguish different patterns of sequential organization. In the second part of the paper, I contrast episodes from two different activities, showing how different choices of follow-up moves create significantly different kinds of opportunity for student engagement and learning. In conclusion, I suggest that, by recording and analyzing episodes of talk from their classrooms, teachers can become conscious of the options they select; then, if they see fit, they can, by changing the discursive operations deployed, bring about a change in the activities themselves and so change the nature of the classroom community.
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Learning as a Prosaic Act
DEBORAH HICKS University of Delaware
The role of discourse as a social semiotic mediator of knowledge construction has in recent years become an important topic in the fields of psychology and education. Along with the writings of L. S.Vygotsky on relations between thinking and speech, the work of Mikhail Bakhtin has become critical to current theorizing about the mediational role of social discourses. BakhtinÕs writings on the discourse of the novel have become particularly important, in that they provide a framework for understanding how social discourses are constitutive of individual consciousness. In this paper, although I acknowledge the importance of BakhtinÕs writings on novelistic discourse for studies of social semiotic knowledge construction, I suggest that BakhtinÕs work has even wider implications for studies of learning. Drawing in particular from BakhtinÕs early writings on the conscious self, I argue that Òdotted linesÓ drawn from his writings to contemporary studies of learning would entail a theoretical focus on acting/thinking/feeling persons in relationship, engaged in prosaic acts reflective of distinctions of value. I suggest that it is through considering BakhtinÕs work in its breadth that educators and psychologists can gain the unique view of human consciousness entailed by his theories of discourse and the self. My theoretical arguments are illustrated through reference to my current research on relations between childrenÕs classroom learning and their development as biographical persons.
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Learning to Make a Difference: Gender, New Technologies, and In/Equity
MARY BRYSON University of British Columbia
SUZANNE DE CASTELL Simon Fraser University
Taking a lead from Textor et alÕs (1985) innovative project of Òanticipatory anthropology,Ó this article describes a project on gender, equity and new information technologies that is in its infancy. The authors offer a preliminary, ÒanticipatoryÓ analysis of this projectÕ s prospects and pitfalls. In search of a Òcommunity of research practiceÓ having an explicit commitment to what we resort to calling Òradical practiceÓ in education/educational research, we invite others, using e-mail as a medium for a discourse community so focused, into an ongoing conversation concerned with marginalization, alterity, gender and identity as Òtool-user,Ó radical pedagogies and socio-culturally situated research practice/s. It is envisaged here that the formation of a larger Òcommunity of alterity in practiceÓ could substantially enlarge opportunities for critique, support and dialogue while there is yet some material difference which might be made to the work by these means. This anticipatory account of the Gentech Project is, accordingly, one conceptual space from which such a conversation might begin.