whew indeed!
> ----------
> From: Mike Cole
> Reply To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Sent: Sunday, February 4, 2001 4:40 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: bumping etc
>
>
> Its never too late to be the first in an xmca discussion, Phillip! That is
> the (anti?) virtue of a global conversation.
>
> Since you take as your example our 5th D activities, I can try to answer
> conceretely in that context. For a more general solution to issues of
> the relation of motives to action/activities I defer to those clearer on
> such matters than I am. I'll try to answer in two parts, related to two
> points you raise:
>
> 1.you write:
> 'Bumping into one
> another', 'laminated', and so on. All of them left me dissatisfied because
> they involved conceptualising the systems as interacting, maybe becoming
> integrated, but still retaining separate identity. But how can such
> metaphors satisfy the mingling that occurs? The intermediation? the
> remediation? and the resulting reframing of the whole AND the parts?
>
> Yep, the metaphors are crude alright, but so is -- thus far!-- our
> analysis of interinstitutional relationships. Part of the issue here
> is WHAT becomes integrated. UCSD is not about to integrate with the
> boys and girls clubs of America or any of its branches. It (or part of
> "it"-
> -- the level of collectivity in a university's operations doesn't much
> impress me at least when it comes to interaction with its surrounding
> communities) does want some level of interaction, partly for institutional
> reasons (I have to call them motives in this context!) having to do with
> rhetoric about land grant colleges and their obligations to tax payers.
>
> Bumping into may be a lousy metaphor, and laminating in this arena is
> more of the airplane modeller's glue variety, but for me, for the person
> teaching the class at present, for club staff, and for the somewhat higher
> levels of the club hierarchy, "bumping into" speaks a whole lot more to
> me than the convergence of rivers.
>
> I should note that only when the bumping turns to grinding do I see this
> being experienced as bumping at the level of the kids, though at a micro
> level, that is visible too.
>
> 2. About the "motives" of the stakeholders. You write:
> For example in the 5D at the Solana Beach Boys'
> and Girls' club the children arrive to 'play', while the UCSD sponsors of
> the project have created an environment for 'learning' which is tacit
> rather
> than explicit. Why do the researchers have to indulge in this benign
> deceit?
> Both 'playing' and 'learning' have the biological function of creating
> Nate's "increased potential for acting in the world". The distinction is a
> cultural-historical construct, and so requires a reframe in a 5D site.
>
> One of the difficulties I have always had in trying to describe/work with
> the 5thD at the level of design of the "the activity" (the time that the
> kids, undergrads, researchers, local staff, visitors meet) is that it was
> deliberately designed to MIX leading activities a la Leontiev et al. That
> is, affiliation, play, learning, peer interaction, and work were built
> into
> what was going on from early on. In the past two years, facing the sudden
> attention to afterschool by monied state authorities, we have had to fight
> to legitimate the important role of play. The tugs at pulls at different
> sites between different leading activities in this sense is a central
> dynamic in all the University-Community partnerships on which "the
> activity
> itself" depends for support.
>
> It is this same dynamic interplay, I believe, that leads to the phenomena
> you point to such as students who are clearly not doing this "for the
> grade"
> (hell, our class is more work than any 1 1/2 comparable classes they
> could
> choose from!) and the kids are not doing it just to get a higher score
> on a computer game (though at time that is certainly operative). Rather,
> from
> the collective effort at creating a zoped for kids after school,
> developmentally
> valued (by the participants whose efforts go into the creation) emerge.
>
> The phenomenon awaits appropriate description.
>
> In this regard, it drives me nuts that (say) three kids and two undergrads
> can spend 1 1/2 hours deeply engaged in the mixed environment of the 5thD
> playing games, writing hints, arguing about whether Britany Spears is a
> new instantiation of Madonna, all of which seems like they are engaged
> together in "an activity" and the fact that several such groups are doing
> the same thing, in loose interaction with each other, which, I think, is
> supposed to be what one refers to as "the 5thD activity." And this all
> leaves aside the fact that the whole thing depends upon the supra
> collaboration
> of minimally coordinated organizations.
>
> Phew!
> mike
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Mar 01 2001 - 01:01:10 PST