Re: Authority in Activity?

David Dirlam (ddirlam who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Mon, 17 Nov 1997 10:53:20 -0800 (PST)

On Mon, 17 Nov 1997, Bill Barowy wrote:

> To make a long story short, I wish to explicate social
> positioning/authority aspects of some activity system interactions that
> have a timescale of hours. Far from being a tabula rasa, my 'irreverant'
> nature might place too much personal attitude in the description! Would
> you know of background reading that might balance my efforts? I'd
> appreciate any references you might email.
>
> Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
> Technology in Education
> Lesley College, Cambridge, MA 02140

Congratulations on the new position, Bill. I wish you could be at
LCHC lab meeting, today. I will be talking on 14 dimensions of Fifth
Dimension field notes that I abstracted mostly from Mike Cole's book. One
of these dimensions concerns the role of Experts, divided into six
different practices: directive/authoritarian, passive/equalitarian,
helper, zpd used, zpd described and compared with non-zpd approach, zpd
identified by the term used in the literature. In the first three field
notes that I coded, the first five practices were apparent. My point is
not that I have anything definitive to say on the topic at this point, but
that the field notes contain a wealth of information on it.
David
David