At 07:28 AM 7/17/01, you wrote:
> thank you, Phillip, for this caution - finding the term "motivation" an
>explanatory principle more appropriate for behaviorism than CHAT, i myself
>would never assume that students can be motivated. so when you read-in
>that assumption, i'm glad that you disagree with it.
Why would NOT motivation be a central explanatory category for CHAT. It seems so central such as saying the ZPD is a category more fit to behaviorism. Guess it just took me by surprise. So, Phillip, when you say you'd never assume students can be motivated are you saying that we (teachers, parents, who ever) do not or can not organize the environment in such a way to motivate students.
Confusedly,
Nate :)
>>
>>
>>What I am suggesting is that the teacher must first be able to create a
>>collective object of collaborative learning.
>
> yes, absolutely - i appreciate you taking the time to clarify and
>elucidate this - as i wrote my response i considered if i were being too
>brief - and being lazy took up the better part of valor.
>
>>The practices and processes
>>that Phillip suggests then form part of a portfolio of tools that create
>>an
>>environment which nurtures the collective object. This prerequisite
>>requires
>>that the teacher is able to create a zoped focused on the subject matter
>>for
>>the course into which the students wish to flow. Or, to put it bluntly,
>>the
>>teacher herself must be able to demonstrate her own passion for the
>>subject,
>>and also relate it meaningfully to the personal objects and aspirations of
>>the students. Without that, no creative classroom practices will work.
>
> i was so glad to see the term "passion" used - Vera has been doing work
>on the affective domain which is, i believe, the most critical element in
>teaching/learning - i wish that i had a larger working vocabulary to
>express this.
>>
>>
> the story about you son's academic success i liked, being that it
>supports some of my beliefs about education. As he said -
>> He replied 'They're very
>>good with me and a few others. But for the rest the teachers and students
>>reinforce each other's apathetic rituals."
>
> and of course, in any classroom there is always resistance to
>collaboration, for whatever reason.
>
> anyway, i sure hope that this is of some help for Barb.
>
>phillip
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George Bernard Shaw:
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind
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Nate Schmolze
http://members.home.net/schmolze1/
schmolze1@home.com
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Albert Camus (1957):
An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the privation of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It adds to death a rule, a public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization which is itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death. Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have
to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.
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