<< Elina et al,;
AERA sells the tapes of the major sessions which they record. You can order
specific tapes from AERA by contacting them at 202 223-9485 ot
http://aera.net perhaps.
With regard to other CHAT sessions, I can report on some and suggest that
those who wrote papers (as described in the CHAT- special interest program
which was posted a while back) perhaps send them to Eugene Matusov who may
put them in the newsletter for our group.
Below is my report:
The rountables on Monday were very well attended and covered a variety of
topics, would like to hear about the paper session which i missed.
A symposium organized by Peter Smagorinsky of Ethical Dilemmas in
Culturing Children drew a good crowd. King Beach discussed the downside of
intervening with children in Nepal. Kathryn Au and her colleague whose
name I do not have here described the situation with native Hawaiian
students with an excellent review of outside interventions that
systematically undermined that culture, particularly by discouraging the
primary means for cultural survival/maintenance and development, their
language. My paper focused on dilemmas pertaining to intra-national
interventions from the 1960's which led to Head Start programs etc. The
illusion that such programs are eradicting group-based inequality in
educational processes/outcomes was addressed and the dichotomy of local
versus national approaches to culturing children was noted. Mike followed
with a discussion of local approaches viv a vis the Fifth Dimension project
and its cultural sensitivity to culturing without imposing others' values
etc in a particular community, etc. Vera John-Steiner compressed her
discussion of papers and invited participation from the audience which was
muted somewhat and focused mostly on descriptions of the 5th dismension
project.
Group participation was much more vigorous on Thursday's business meeting
and invited symposium on the Future of CHAT. This was truly an interactive
session which Kris Gutierrez, Vera and Mike led. Yrjo E. and Elvira Lima
were not able to attend as scheduled due to unforessen problems. The issue
of diversity and it's connection to advances in CHAT were
discussed....among other themes that those present may wish to expand on.
The Special Interest group on CHAT will operate on a 2 year cycle with
respect to officers, Luis Moll is president elect while Vera finishes her
term. Gordon Wells is Program Officer elect, Eugene Matusov will take over
a virtual, interactive newsletter (I can't wait to ask Lev and Alexei some
things!!). Judy, our Treasurer was able to clone also but I don't have the
name of the new person (help Judy?). Carolyn Panofsky, our V.P. was able to
find a clone in me. We hope to put together another solid program for our
next CHAT meeting in Montreal next year, and for the 4th year in a row, we
will allow AERA to come along..
I will report a little bit on the Measuring and Diagnosing the ZPD session
with Gary Price, Peg Griffin, Arkady Margolis and others next time but
would rather have someone else do it. Rubstov was not able to attend. I had
mixed feelings re. the last presenter who posited cultural differences in
cognitive styles (context independent/dependent a la Witkin) were related
to differences in various outcomes..
>>
Dear Pedro, Roberto et al.,
Thanks a lot for your effort and detailed report. ZPD session sounds
interesting. Who talked about cultural differences in cognitive styles? Why
did you have mixed feelings about it?
Elina
Elina Lampert Shepel
Chairperson of Curricula Committees
Globe Institute of Technology, Inc.
291 Broadway, 2nd floor
New York, NY 10007
212 349 4330(w.)
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