[Fwd: ethnicity and pedagogy?]

From: Juanita Cole (jmccole@ucsd.edu)
Date: Mon Sep 29 2003 - 12:16:54 PDT


---------------- Original Message ------------------
Subject: ethnicity and pedagogy?
From: "Juanita Cole" <jmccole@ucsd.edu>
Date: Mon, September 29, 2003 11:53 am
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Cc: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
-----------------------------------------------------

David K.,
how can students' racial/ethnic culture be remote
from target disciplinary culture? This sounds
confusing especially when considering, for example,
Ancient Egyptians and "mathematical culture".

Juanita Cole
>
>
>
>
> Mike,
> The Vygotsky quote we've been discussing concerns
> pedagogy, whereas your
> question concerns research. I don't know what
> Vygotsky would say about the
> research methods questions. But his enculturationist
> pedagogy, as I am
> elaborating it (see way way below), has at least the
> beginnings of a point
> of view on diversity. I generally take the reference
> culture for
> enculturationist pedagogies to be disciplinary
> cultures (e.g., mathematical
> cultural, historiographical culture, etc.) that are
> presumed to be
> specialized cultures remote from the varied ethnic
> and racial cultures in
> which students' identities are vested. In practicing
> an enculturationist
> pedagogy, one's responsibility is to work with the
> cultural resources
> available within the classroom community to fashion a
> classroom
> microculture that progresses toward the disciplinary
> culture with respect
> to specified cultural dispositions. For instance,
> supposing one is
> interested in teaching mathematical proof, conceived
> as a form of logical
> argumentation specific to the mathematical community.
> Then one works with
> the forms of argumentation that are native to the
> classroom microculture to
> shape them in the appropriate directions. Now the
> native forms of
> argumentation one finds in the classroom community
> are partly a reflection
> of the cultural backgrounds of the students. However,
> these various
> resources are simply the resources from which one
> begins. Because students'
> racial and ethnic cultures are conceived as remote
> from the target
> disciplinary culture is one need not deal with them
> directly or
> systematically.
>
> All this is for what I call "learning pedagogies"
> aimed at individual
> learning. For critical pedagogies that aim at broader
> social
> transformation, one cannot suppress the specificity
> of cultural background
> of the students. Often this distinction can be rather
> subtle. For instance,
> the scientific method is conceived as a disposition
> of scientific culture,
> to be addressed through an enculturationist learning
> pedagogy, whereas
> "critical thinking"--a frequent enculturationist
> target--doesn't have an
> overt reference culture, but probably is located
> within a certain social
> class. Thus teaching for critical thinking does have
> to deal, explicitly,
> with students' cultural locations.
>
> Hope this helps.
> David Kirshner
> PS. In your note, you characterize
> psychological-constructivist pedagogy as
> an instance of "transmission teaching," but I would
> disagree. There is no
> direct communication conceived within a
> psychologcial-constructivist
> perspective.
>
>
> _____________________________________
> Mike Cole said:
> I happen to be online as your note on the Vygotsky
> quote comes across and
> it is amazing aposite to the questions that Juanita
> was posing, David.
>
> This quote, of course, also speaks to the issue of
> transmission teaching
> versus environmental arrangement teaching.
>
> Do you think that Vygotksy would approve of Carol
> Lee's approach? That is,
> as we have discussed here before, cultural variation
> seems to get short
> shrift, or a history-as-progress-shrift, in his
> writing and that of his
> students. Is this a small and bridgable gap, or a
> major issue?
> mike
> ______________________
>
>
>
>
> There are several complex issues in Juanita's note
> that we are very anxious
> for feedbac on.
>
> Try this one on. In order to gain insight into (lets
> say) ethic variations
> in optimal learning conditions, is it necessary to
> donconduct research with
> people of more than one ethnicity?
>
> Carol Lee et al in their article argue that treating
> ethnic groups as
> homogenous is pernicious and misleading. Why not
> focus on intra-group
> variations and their susceptibility to modification
> through environmental
> design?
>
> I argue the comparative work is necessary BOTH
> between and WITHIN ethnic
> groups (using differing instructional arrangments) to
> arrive at conclusions
> concering a particular "eth". Juanita is unconvinced.
>
> Et vous?
> mike
> ________________________
>
> Juanita Cole said:
> I would like to invite the XMCA community to engage
> in a discussion regarding the important themes raised
> in the current issue of Educational Researcher:
>
> http://www.aera.net/pubs/er/eronline.htm
>
> It would be extremely helpful for my research
> project, which seeks to enrich the basic literacy
> skills of African American children through
> culturally responsive instruction, to dissucs these
> questions specifically:
>
> 1. What terminologies are best to characterize
> cultural variations in approaches to learning that
> reflect an individual's cultural background?
>
> 2. How does one avoid the traps of using
> Europeans/European-Americans as the reference point
> when making comparisons in learning? Why is it even
> necessary to make these comparisons when study
> individuals from a specific cultural group?
>
> 3. How can researchers design effective educational
> interventions that build upon the fundamental
> cultural experienes of learners; yet still take
> into consideration the shared common practices across
> ethnic/racial groups as a result of access to public
> media, symbols and practices?
>
> ______________________________
> David Kirshner said:
>
> Mile Cole asks:
> What about the Vygotsky quote caught your
> attention/memory David?
>
> Thanks for asking, Mike.
> I've appended the quote, below. In it, Vygotsky
> articulates what I refer to
> as an "enculturationist pedagogy" in which the agenda
> is to enhance
> students' cultural forms of participation. I conceive
> forms of
> participation broadly to include tendencies to relate
> to others, oneself,
> problems, and artifacts in culturally specific ways.
> In such a pedagogy,
> one focuses on supporting the development of the
> classroom microculture so
> that it comes to resemble the target culture with
> respect to the targetted
> forms of participation. Thus individual students
> "learn" by becoming
> enculturated into the evolving classroom
> microculture, not directly from
> the teacher.
>
> I distinguish this enculturationist agenda from a
> psychological-constructivist agenda in which the goal
> is to help students
> develop stronger, more viable conceptual structures.
> This kind of pedagogy
> involves making conjectures about students' current
> understanding and
> developing tasks designed to stress the students'
> current conceptual in
> ways that are intended to produce cognitive
> perturbations leading to
> conceptual restructuring. The problem I'm attending
> to is that the
> contemporary discourse of pedagogical reform tends to
> be integrative,
> trying to marry together what I see as quite distinct
> pedagogical
> orientations. The result is that the pedagogical
> guidance we offer to
> teachers has a tendency to be more labored and
> equivocal than I think it
> needs to be. I treasure quotes like this one from
> Vygotsky because it
> speaks clearly, and presses a strong pedagogical
> agenda.
>
> David Kirshner
>
> ____________________
> from Vygotsky's Educational Psychology:
>
>>From the psychological point of view, the teacher is
>> the director of the
> social environment in the classroom, the governor and
> guide of the
> interaction between the educational process and the
> student. [?] Though the
> teacher is powerless to produce immediate effects in
> the student, he is
> all-powerful when it comes to producing direct
> effects in him through the
> social environment. The social environment is the
> true lever of the
> educational process, and the teacher's overall role
> reduces to adjusting
> this lever. [?] Thus, it is that the teacher educates
> the student by
> varying the environment (Vygotsky, 1926/1999, p.49).
>
> --
>
>
>

-- 
Juanita M. Cole, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0092



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