RE: Talk of courses and discussions

From: Carol Macdonald (macdonaldc@educ.wits.ac.za)
Date: Thu Jun 02 2005 - 09:57:09 PDT


May I say that once the discussion gets going, I would like, very
diffidently, to offer a small part of my paper prepared for Seville, where I
use AT to show the failure of sustainability in language innovation. It was
an analysis which used the third generation model of Engeström, but looked
at what would happen to individual teachers once the project infrastructure
was withdrawn. I started the analysis using Mike’s (1996) notion of
requiring “internal resources”, otherwise innovative project simply run
themselves down.
Timidly…
Carol

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Chappell [mailto:philchappell@mac.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2005 3:18 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Talk of courses and discussions

On 02/06/2005, at 5:35 AM, Ana Marjanovic-Shane wrote:
<?fontfamily><?param Times New Roman><?bigger><?bigger>What I am interested
in is developing a CHAT theory of language -- so all these different ways to
look at it as an activity are very
helpful.<?/bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily>
<?fontfamily><?param Times New Roman><?bigger><?bigger>Ana

<?/bigger><?/bigger><?/fontfamily>

Dear Ana, Mike, and All,

I'm a little hesitant to go too far here, as my own previous attempts here
to sow the seeds of a group object/motive of discussing AT and a theory of
language haven't really resulted in much - I often wonder whether any
mention of systemics and Michael Halliday results in an impulsive "hit hit
the delete" response ;-) And whither Bernstein...

But Ana's interest is an interest that many here have, I feel, and it has
often been said that the xmca community lacks a fully articulated theory of
language, just as the SFL community is often derided for lacking a fully
articulate theory of human learning. I'm struggling right now with a study
from the SFL "Sydney school" in an attempt to make explicit a pedagogical
approach that foregrounds the linguistic features that afford students
access to future human activity that they may otherwise be denied. But that
is a red herring here.

Should anyone here wish to pursue the discussion of a theory of language
"for chat", I'd like to offer up the suggestion that we read Gordon Well's
paper: The complementary contributions of Halliday and Vygotsky to a
'language-based theory of learning', and I also think that the various
ecological views of language may be worthwhile to pursue.

So, any takers to assemble a couple of papers? I have an electronic version
of Gordon's paper that we will need to get approval to use first.

I'll leave it there and hope there may be a couple here interested in making
a motive.......

Phil



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