"Though assimulation (appropriation) and educational activity are
connected, their contents are not identical. Socially evolved experience
(knowledge, abilities, skills etc) may be assimulated not only in learning
but in other forms of activity as well (play, work, communication etc.);
but it is only in formal learning, apparently, that the specific goal of
assimulation is posed; in other types of activity assimulation is a
byproduct".
Along these same lines are attempts at such things as mind in/as activity,
society, action, context, situation etc. While one can play with the term
authentic as in what would inauthentic look like, in general, I see it as
how education has been constructed as a particular type of activity that is
unlike most others in society. As Davydov says school is the only place
assimulation is the goal rather than the by product. In this sense maybe
authentic-inauthentic is a binary as in real-not real in that educational
activity is less real or authentic than learning that occurs outside of
school.
For me, there is a double logic as in questioning both how education as an
activity has been constructed and what it has been constructed against.
Is the practice and concept of decontextualization is all its cracked up to
be. Bert van Oers argues decontextualization is a problem for 3 reasons; a
concept based in the negative - it only says something doesn't occur, it is
put oppositionally to context which sense it is personal and dynamic can
not be defined in an absolute way, decontexualization does not satisfyingly
provide an explanation for transfer as it focuses on actions where transfer
is a product of activities themselves. He argues for the
recontextualization of the activity itself with a play activity of
preschoolers being recontextualized when new goal or problems arose.
Recontexualization in contrast to decontextualization then would assume
that instead of education being an activity absent of context it would be
one in which context is dynamic and new goals or problems would elicit a
recontexualization of the activity.
I also feel what education activity is being constructed against;
community, authentic, real etc. in not without its own problems. For
example, Lave and Wenger argue that identity construction is necessarily
for access to legitimate peripheral participation. While not abstracting
the mind-individual from the community, context, situation, activity etc.
is very important, the discussion of identity formation which is goal in
many "authentic" approaches make me nervous. If identification is an
explicit goal of the community it makes transformation more difficult.
I don't necessarily think the fact that education being a unique form of
activity (inauthentic) is a bad thing; although I question the way it has
been differentiated. Recontextualization in contrast to
decontextualization might be away to accept its uniqueness without making
it an activity that abstracts learning from context. The fact remain we
have education with assimulation as a goal if its through rich literature,
dynamic evironment or context, or the more banking type approaches. We can
make them more "authentic" but the act of doing so is to make learning more
accessible to students which is responding to assimulation as a goal rather
than a byproduct.
Nate
----- Original Message -----
From: Donna L. Phillips <philld2 who-is-at rpi.edu>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 4:08 PM
Subject: Re: in the context of, not before
> All,
>
> This thread ties into a recently-discovered knot. I just finished reading
two
> articles (one Brown, Collins, and Duguid) about "authentic situations"
and am
> puzzling with the questions--what makes a situation or context authentic?
What
> then is an INauthentic situation or context? I'm working with Chinese
students
> in their efforts to understand management cases in their MBA program. The
> question of authenticity promises to take some interesting turns in my
> (in?)authentic situation.
>
> Donna Phillips
> Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
> Troy NY
>