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Re: [xmca] Fwd: the Ideal of lived uncertainty as a moral good



Hi Carol,

I do agree, collaboration is frequently mutual reflection, clarification and addition to each other's thinking. Many collaborators finish their partner's sentences as mutual appropriation takes many forms and expressions. (You may enjoy looking at my book Creative Collaboration for examples.)
I have enjoyed this discussion including thoughts on imagination,
Vera John Steiner

----- Original Message ----- From: "Carol Macdonald" <carolmacdon@gmail.com>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 1:19 PM
Subject: Re: [xmca] Fwd: the Ideal of lived uncertainty as a moral good


>From Carol:
Can collaboration not be conceived as at times being mutual reflection [not
losing *all* of its original meaning]? Actually, I reflect on "my" meaning
and I reflect on "our" meaning.  In work one of my students did on
reflective practice it involved  teacher reflecting on what she did, coded
for the researcher in the form of a diary which got discussed, but they
mutually discussed aspects of lessons observed as well as mutually reflected
on videod lessons. In this approach there is no place to sink back into
total individual internalness, because even writing up the PhD meant making
public the meaning of whole project.

When I work with people collaboratively I ask about the mutual meaning we
are creating all the time. That is interspersed with interrogating others
about what they mean, when they are sharing their understanding. (I am
probably irritating because I know I interrupt far more than other people
do.)

There should not be an opposition between imagination and reflection? At the
very least we could saw that one of the functions of reflection is
imagination--this is the most primitive level I would say. Otherwise how
could we generate novelty? Or are people suggesting we can't think in
pictures... intuitively. Physicists do, and their work may be considered the
highest form of reflection.

Not sure I have captured your subtlety, Larry. (But then again I rarely do
:-)  ) To live with uncertainty is surely to live with possibility.

On 18 August 2010 06:05, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 11:00 AM
Subject: the Ideal of lived uncertainty as a moral good
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>


Hi Denise, Martin, and others

I decided to post a new thread so long trailing previous posts are not
included [I'm not sure how much previous information gmail attaches when
responding?]

Martin thanks for the newspaper article. The post on imagination was
certainly on topic. It was also interesting to see how many responses were
posted to the article. Must have triggered people's imaginations.

Denise,
I welcome all your suggestions on the topic of imagination and abduction.
Your recommending my reading Anne Edwards article in the Cambridge
anthology
on Vygotsky has also been suggested by Mike Cole. When I again have access
to a university library I definitely will read this article as it seems
central to my reveries [and fantasies].

Another book edited by Anne Edwards [and Peter Gilroy and David Hartley]
"Rethinking Teacher Education: Collaborative Responses to Uncertainty" also
engages with the dialectic of certainty/UNcertainty and
fallibility/infallibility. The juxtaposition of imagination and reality as opposites rather than aspects of a psychological/societal gestalt seems to
be the framework that needs to be critiqued.

The theme of Edward's edited book on teacher education mentioned above
explores the relations BETWEEN modernity and postmodernity and the cultural
DISSONANCE that we are currently navigating. On page 7  Edwards et al
suggest,

"This dichotomy  between extremes is resolved by an epistemology based on
the notions of 'LIVED UNCERTAINTY' and the 'COLLABORATIVE professional' as
opposed to the REFLECTIVE practitioner) which also allows for the missing
VALUE ELEMENT of teacher education to be reintroduced to the debate
concerning the nature of teacher education"

I would like others to comment on this  juxtaposition of reflecting and
collaborating as opposing terms.  I intuitively perceive reflection and
collaboration as aspects of a gestalt that sometimes are in tension and
sometimes intersubjectively and mutually generative of expansive learning.
Like the dialectical terms imagination/actuality, experience/culture,
structure/process, these shared terms may be differentiated and be
perceived
as opposed but is this ALWAYS the situation??? Is this perceived dichotomy
the reason why Mead is viewed as "merely" cognitive and a branch of af
analytical philosophy???  I wonder if a case can be made to include both
Vygotsky and Mead as having historical roots in Continental Philosophy [via
Dilthey]?
Scholars such as Jack Martin and Alex Gillespie's interpretations of Mead's
writings perceive neo-Meadian accounts as falling within the tradition of
hermeneutical REALISM and
critique merely cognitive accounts.

The question I'm circling around is the term REFLECTION.  This concept
seems
to be avoided by some postmodernist accounts as too INTERNAL and not
collaborativie enough.  Is the term "reflection" now seen as having lost
its
historical roots as emerging within collaborative dialogues.? [in a similar way to how Dewey wondered if he should have replaced the term "experience"
with "culture"]

Denise, is this one of the areas of "quicksand" that you, Mike Cole, and
Andy are cautioning to approach with uncertainty and fallibility as I
attempt to COORDINATE [collaboratively and reflectively] multiple
perspectives.??   I, at this point, still value and want to use both the
terms REFLECTION  and COLLABORATION  and also the terms IMAGINATION
and AGENTIC CAPACITY as valued terms in sociocultural perspectives.  I
however continue to struggle to always remember these concepts as being
 generated  within historical and ontogenetic developmental situational
contexts.   I recognize that I am a product [and process] of my
historically
constructed horizon of understanding and therefore at this point I continue
to IMPLICITLY value [have a BIAS] to want to include "self-determination
WITHIN contexts" as a phenomenological category.  Can the category of
"reflection" coexist and deepen notions of "collaboration" or
should "reflection" be critiqued as too "cognitive", "internal", and
"individualistic"???

Larry
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