Re: bullfights vs. barnraising vs. playing

From: SANUSI ALENA LEE (sanusi@ucsu.colorado.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 04 2001 - 14:15:22 PDT


Neat data, Bill! I have something like that in my videotaped project
work: five middle-school boys at two computers. The physical arrangements
around the computers encouraged the formation of two groups, but the group
of three boys actually swapped seats around and discussed whose turn at
the mouse it was, but the group of two had one who would even scoot his
mate away from the mouse when he (the mate) scooted over to handle the
mouse while the mousemeister was momentarily out of the room, so closely
did he guard the mouse. That complicates the gender analysis, but also
challenges the "classroom culture" idea a little, if I understand it
right, by noticing in one small space two spontaneously performed
variations on ways of understanding how to proceed in the classroom.
[I'm a microanalyst, so I am looking at how that unfolded on a
moment-by-moment basis.]

It must be my own orientations that make me see this as smack on the issue
of cultures arising in academic settings, nothing peripheral about it. I
mean, look at them doing different social arrangements to accomplish what
is to start with an identical project, but how the social arrangements
(driven by VERY local cultures) arise in the same room and influence
noticeably the outcomes.

It's nice to turn to data, Bill.

--Alena

On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, Bill
Barowy wrote:

> Going back over some student papers, there was one submitted recently in which
> a student cum teacher pursued an observation of some students playing SimTown
> for his midterm project. I'm quoting him primarily for my own records, but
> this seems something to share, peripherally related to the present discussion
> of the tensions surrounding debate and consensus -- and are we taking for
> granted that the context of academic work is pretty much a competitive
> environment? Here are some curious twists from the summary of some field
> notes:
>
> "A lot of discussion went on during this time and some conflict too. The boys
> generally wanted to remove certain parts of the city, while the girls wanted to
> build. An interesting observation was that during this time the boys in each
> group had control of the mouse and completed all the actions while the girls
> instructed them on what to do next. Also noted was that the youngest boy was
> the first to notice that it was important to keep a certain equality between
> building and resources. The younger girls in his group made the connection
> that if a town is stable they gain credits.
>
> After about thirty minutes, the groups began developing their groups town.
> They each started with the same identical starter town. I expressed that this
> should be fun but that they need to develop as much of a quality town as
> possible in the time given. This indirectly set a competitive edge between the
> groups and the dynamics of the groups noticeably changed. The girls in the
> group almost instantly gave a limited equal time that a group member could
> operate the mouse. One group would even change chairs when time on the mouse
> was up. The boys were limited on removal and were pressured to spend more time
> building. Both groups were constantly aware of the business-to-house
ratio and
> the older group would check on their resources more often." (S.J. 7/2001)
>
>
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