Re: [xmca] Where and What Is A Boundary?( is it between microgenesis and ontogenesis?)

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Hi Denise
Thanks for recommending "starting at the beginning" by reading YE's masters
paper. Do you have access to a copy, or does YE have a website where it is
posted?
The question of how closed [structured] and rigid are activity systems in
public schools with all their policy and ideological constraints dominating
from the "center" versus Peter S's suggestion that schools are actually more
contested ground and more dialogical & intersubjective is a tension that I
live with daily.  I'm personally interested in how an individual working
WITHIN school activity systems [with crystallized institutional value
systems of how we "ought" to proceed] are actually monolithic Discourses
that subjugate teachers to follow the party line. Or, in contrast, are
schools actually more open "contested" ground where multiple alternative
frames are dialogically competing for air time.
In current public school systems concepts such as "Communities of practice"
"collaborative planning", "learning communities" "socioemotional learning"
are all "buzz" words which I believe are possible opportunities to engage in
introducing alternative narratives about our "values". Our value systems
 "orient" which direction WE choose [or are constrained to follow]  The
metaphor of the "compass point" that points us in particular directions and
MAY "consciously & purposefully" guide our value orientations, actions, AND
ACTIVITY is a metaphor I reflect on. Is this metaphor relevant to our
discussion as we argue whether Discourses  [frameworks, scripts, narratives,
ACCOUNTS] are monolithic and POSITION US [deterministic bias]  Or
alternatively, within school systems, can we elaborate an alternative
Discourse which uses the metaphor of the "compass point" to engage and
generate novel possibilities within the public school system.  If people
believe activity systems are monolithic then the constraints are seen as
insurmountable and to live with "conscious purpose" would require abandoning
working in schools and attempting to build novel institutional structures
OUTSIDE the public school system.  [many idealistic people chose this path]
However, there are also educators who choose to work within the constraints
of public schools and are struggling to implement alternative values
embedded within sociocultural Discourses which generate alternative compass
points that orient our actions and activity within school systems.  A major
obstacle when working within schools is not that these alternative
Discourses are silenced [though one could argue this point]. What I find
difficult to overcome is the "respect" we have for the value of "tolerance"
that tells us that we EACH have our own value orientation of how "I" ought
to proceed. Institutional "codes of conduct" are the response to
individualistic perspectives to values at the school wide level.   What is
"defended against" is the notion that "WE" in a "third space" of symmetrical
relationships can INFLUENCE and CHALLENGE each others "compass points" in a
spirit of trust and respect for other perspectives.
How do we create opportunities to form "third spaces" [physical and
metaphorical] where we can reflect on and make conscious our IMPLICIT
actions and activities?  In the process of achieving some distanciation from
our IMPLICIT practices WE  become more "conscious" in acting out OUR value
orientations [subjectively, intersubjectively, AND collectively].

Eric,
 you have worked in "alternative" structures which are now being challenged
by the larger school activity system. How do you position yourself to
continue acting with "conscious purpose" within a system which is attempting
to impose the dominant Discourse [which is not monolithic].  I would suggest
that this tension in value orientations is shared by others who are
exploring sociocultural alternative narratives.  In this months article,
learning spheres, INTERMEDIATE BETWEEN action and activity seems to be a
critical level of interaction for forming "third spaces"

Are there opportunities IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS for "third spaces" or "learning
spheres" to support reflecting on our value orientations and in shared space
generate novel ways for how WE OUGHT to proceed.

Larry

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 4:57 AM, Denise Newnham <dsnewnham@bluewin.ch>wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> The use of the activity triangle as a second stimulus within a change
> laboratory and during an expansive learning cycle has been only too often
> misconstrued. This article is only another example of this use. While no one
> would like to prevent the use of theory or methods in a new and creative
> way, the use of the activity triangle (as developed by YE) as a "Christmas
> tree" is a rather weak and non productive interpretation of a truly
> remarkable work. It is a problem but to argue every case is non productive.
> It is important non the less that academics do realize that it is not a
> stock tacking device. I think that part of the difficulty is that
> understanding change laboratory and expansive learning is not easy as it has
> an massive theoretical background but I would like to encourage you as it is
> really worth the pain:).
>
> I think that Yrjo and Annalisa are not recounting the historical
> development of the expansive learning theory in their article and are taking
> the perspective of YE theory of expansive learning. For those that are
> really interested a good place to begin to understand how it fits into and
> out of the theories of LV and Leontiev is to begin at the beginning that is
> in his masters thesis 1987. The other papers are "windows" onto learning
> processes and development within and between activity systems.
>
> I think that the issue of schools as open systems is rather questionable as
> many schools are rule bound and are closed systems stifling creativity and
> collaborative effort as well as non productive to learning and development.
>
> I am rushing of to Botswana to gather data for a Cl intervention and am not
> sure of internet so if I don’t respond to the cold shower that might follow
> please forgive me as it is not out of fear to tread where the mighty walk
> but due to lack of infrastructure
>
> Denise
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf Of smago
> Sent: 15 September 2010 12:21
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>  Subject: RE: [xmca] Where and What Is A Boundary?( is it between
> microgenesis and ontogenesis?)
>
> Thanks David. I would just like to clarify my own reservations about the
> use of the triangle. As I see it, it works entirely well for Engeström's
> organizational research, and he has had many iterations of it in different
> organizational settings in order to develop and refine his categories and
> depict them relationally through the triangle. And perhaps it works for
> other sorts of organizational work, including that done for consulting fees,
> which YE has assured us, I hope to our satisfaction, is not the approach he
> takes.
>
> There's a forthcoming article by YE and Annalisa Sannino, due in
> Educational Research Review, that clarifies what his work is designed to do
> ("Studies of expansive learning: Foundations, findings and future
> challenges) and traces its evolution. It both clarified things for me and
> raised additional questions. For instance, they outline "the theory of
> expansive learning" as the framework for their research. But it seems that
> the theory of expansive learning is taken to be synonymous with activity
> theory, or cultural-historical activity theory. This conflation of terms and
> constructs lies at the root of much of my confusion about how to refer to
> this work, and perhaps others can help me understand whether they are viewed
> as synonymous or whether there are distinctions that enable people not
> working to change the object of collectives can be said to work as activity
> theorists, or CHAT-ists.
>
> I'll string together a series of quotes next to help clarify how Engeström
> and Sannino explain their framework. Expansive learning is movement from
> actions to activity. The essence of expansive learning activity is
> production of objectively, societally new activity structures out of actions
> manifesting the inner contradictions of the preceding form of activity in
> question. Expansive learning is mastery of expansion from actions to a new
> activity. Expansive learning typically calls for formative interventions
> based on the principle of double stimulation. The theory of expansive
> learning focuses on learning processes in which the very subject of learning
> is transformed from isolated individuals to collectives and networks.
> Expansive learning is manifested primarily as changes in the object of the
> collective activity. Boundary crossing involves collective concept
> formation. In formative interventions, the researcher aims at provoking and
> sustaining an expansive transformation process led and owned by the
> practitioners. A Change Laboratory is typically conducted in an activity
> system that is facing a major transformation. To facilitate analysis and
> resolution of the problems, interventionists typically introduce conceptual
> tools such as the triangular models of activity systems as second stimulus.
> Expansive learning takes place because historically evolving contradictions
> in activity systems lead to disturbances, conflicts and double binds that
> trigger new kinds of actions among the actors. Expansive learning is a
> process of [collective] concept formation.
>
> OK, that's sufficient for my purposes here. The article is much longer and
> richer than I could reduce to a digest. I've made only one change in
> Engeström and Sannino's language, which is the bracketed [collective] in the
> final quote.
>
> I am providing this summary in order to argue that most of what I see in
> the invocation of the triangle is inappropriate, at least in educational
> research in the US, which is primarily my concern. I see a role for it if a
> group of educators understands a need for a change in the object of their
> activity--say, a faculty responding to an initiative to move from learning
> that is meaning-oriented to learning that produces high test scores (to give
> a repugnant example)--and seeks a collective expansion to accommodate this
> new disturbance in their work. But aside from what Viv Ellis is doing in the
> U.K., I don't see it used that way, and given the US's emphasis on
> individual rather than collective action, it's not an easy construct to
> import. Rather, the triangle makes an appearance and then the researcher
> does something that has nothing to do with changing the object of collective
> activity.
>
> My apologies for this long note, but I hope it helps to situate YE's work
> in this discussion of the MCA article we have chosen to explore. p
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf Of David Kellogg
> Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2010 8:07 PM
> To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Where and What Is A Boundary?( is it between
> microgenesis and ontogenesis?)
>
> eric--
>
> I think that BOTH your example and Professor Smagorinsky's paper (for which
> many thanks) really DO help to clarify the concept of boundaries.
>
> I come to the word "boundary" from the work of people like Ben Rampton,
> whose model is bilingualism, biracialism, bisexuality, and so on. Boundary
> crossing here really is "interactional" in the sense that our authors would
> like to see it: I become bilingual by crossing linguistic boundaries, from
> one language to another and back again.
>
> Professor Smagorinsky's paper notes that the "boundary" between theory and
> practice is honored in the breach in precisely this way: by emphasizing the
> need and the difficulty of bridging the gap we are indirectly acknowledging
> the gap as a real phenomenon and prizing the ability of a few
> preternaturally endowed persons amongst us to scuttle back and forth across
> the divide.
>
> There IS a real divide which we need help negotiating as teachers, and it's
> a divide that teacher education alone can overcome. It's really not between
> "theory" and "practice". It's  between the genetic laws that govern
> ontogenesis, child development from year to year, and those that govern
> microgenesis, changes in knowledge states from moment to moment.
>
> These two things are not the same; the boundary between them is very real,
> and it is (as we know) NOT addressed by Piaget and the constructivists (for
> whom development "explains" learning) and ignored by most other approaches
> (for whom developmetn just IS learning).
>
> What eric suggests is that there is also a real boundary which belies the
> unreal divorce between theory and practice which Smagorinsky, Cook and
> Johnson seek to overcome by the concept (which unlike "knowledge" is a real
> link between microgenesis and ontogenesis). Your example suggests a real
> boundary between the NC and the lesson goals.
>
> As eric says, this boundary is real, but it's an artefact of the (sometimes
> genuinely destructive, occasionally helpful, but mostly irrelevant) attempt
> of people outside the classroom to have their say about what goes on inside,
> by means of guidelines, goals, achievement targets, etc. That's what I meant
> by the underlying issue of class conflict.
>
> Now, here's my question, which I think picks up some of Professor
> Smagorinsky's criticisms of the way Engestrom's triangle is dragged in by
> its long hairy ears at the drop of a business consulting hat. Why do we have
> to classify these guidelines, goals, achievement targets etc. as "tools" and
> not as, say, "rules" or "division of labor" or whatever?
>
> I think the "expanded triangle" has both TOO MANY categories (because it
> really separates out things like "tools" and "rules" and "division of labor"
> that are not, in practice, any different from each other) and NOT ENOUGH
> (because, for example, it does NOT distinguish between tools and signs, two
> things that behave very differently in terms of their orientation to
> objects). Worse, it does not differentiate between object-as-product and
> object-as-process.
>
> In what sense is a "learning trajectory" an "object of activity"? A
> training programme does not produce "learning trajectories"--at the very
> most, it can produce exam scores, diplomas, certificates and so on.
> "Learning trajectories" are neither produced, exchanged, nor consumed in
> anything but an extremely dull metaphor. Despite the way we may feel some
> days, learning is not the consumption of teachers.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
>
> On Tue, 9/14/10, ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org> wrote:
>
>
> From: ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Where and What Is A Boundary?( is it between scientific
> and everyday concepts?)
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Tuesday, September 14, 2010, 9:22 AM
>
>
> Being a psychology major I brought my ideas pertaining to learning theories
> to the table when I began my studies for becoming a teacher.  I was amazed
> that the majority of my classes had nothing to do with how to provide
> environments where student experienced genuine learning but rather focused
> on classroom management and providing ‘checklist style’ lesson plans.
>
> The current paper for discussion certainly addresses a core issue of
> education.  I have been a ‘student/teacher’ as well as a mentor and have
> discovered the difficulties faced when the ‘scientific thinking’ of academia
> conflict with the ‘everyday thinking’ of being a teacher.  Where the
> boundary is in this I am not quite clear other than the dept of Education
> does the telling, the university does the disseminating of the department’s
> telling and the student/teacher is left to practice in the reality of the
> classroom.
>
> Teaching in an alternative program I have never had to provide syllabus’
> for my classes because the instruction and the outcome are specifically the
> same.  Is the student attending the science museum explorer’s club and do
> they have the project completed?  Is the student writing the resume, filling
> out applications, scheduling job interviews and following through with
> employment?  At what level of independence does the student operate?
> Now a new regime shift has directed us to provide syllabus’ for our
> classes, the new administrator's don’t want the syllabus' to appear in the
> ‘everyday thinking’ style of the questions above they want goals, outcomes
> attached to MN state standards.  Is this possible to do?  Of course it is
> possible but it has nothing to do with student success, if it did we
> wouldn’t have the 75% graduation rate (twice the national average for
> special education students) we have experienced over the past 15 years.
> Successful curriculum writing has nothing to do with genuine learning but
> everything to do with complying to the political winds of the time.  How
> this is a boundary I really truly don't know.
>
> what do others think?
> eric
>
>
>
>
> From:   MICHAEL W SMITH <mwsmith@temple.edu>
> To:     "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date:   09/14/2010 11:02 AM
> Subject:        Re: [xmca] Where and What Is A Boundary?
> Sent by:        xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
>
>
>
> I share David’s concern with understanding just what a boundary is.  I’d
> like to add an additional question: How does one determine what boundaries
> are relevant?  Put another way, how does the analytic help one identify the
> activity systems in operation and hence the boundaries that one needs to
> examine.  The authors posit two systems:  the DTE and the cooperating
> schools.  They posit the existence of these systems but don’t appear to
> derive them empirically.  That is, if the DTE and the schools are, in fact,
> the systems that are germane, one would be able to find sufficient
> similarities in the "general object,"  in the rules, in the tools, and in
> the division of labor across cooperating schools, small groups, supervisors,
> and so on.  As Peter pointed out in his initial post and as he has argued in
> his own research (Smagorinsky & O’Donnell-Allen, 1998, for example), it
> might be a mistake to assume those similarities.  The key system, then,
> might be much smaller--an idioculture and not a culture.  In such a
> circumstance, investigating borders would not be investigating the spaces
> between the DTE and the schools, say, but would be investigating the spaces
> between the small groups in Extract 2 and the DTE (or a particular
> university class) or investigating the spaces between the supervisor-student
> teacher-mentor group and both the particular cooperating school and the DTE
> in Excerpt 4.  My worry about positing the larger structures first is that
> doing so might keep one from observing boundaries that are more important.
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 9:40 PM, David Kellogg
> <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:
>
> > First of all, many many thanks to Professor Peter Smagorinsky for his
> > incisive but very fair summary of the study, and above all for opening
> up
> > issues that really go far beyond the study itself.
> >
> > As we see! With all due respect to Professor Engestrom and the folks
> > at
> the
> > Change Lab, I think that the issue of profit, and salaries, and even
> > critical peer review and publishing is much more interesting to the
> writers
> > of a study than it is to its readers. So I think that Professor
> > Smagorinsky's understanding reflects, accurately, the reader's point
> > of view.
> >
> > It certainly reflects mine. Studies like the one that Professor
> Engestrom
> > reports on in "Perspectives in Activity Theory" (CUP 1999: 377-404) as
> > essentially examples of business consultancy discourse, in that they
> focus
> > on enhancing collaborative production, often through negotiated
> > consensus, and leave the underlying issues of class conflict in the
> > background. Nevertheless, it seems to me that precisely these issues
> > are
> the
> > key to understanding the 'boundary" concept.
> >
> > I usually have a lot of trouble with articles like this. I am a deep
> > breathing reader, and I can stay under water for a very long time
> without a
> > good definition. But my imagination (and understanding) is too visual
> and
> > concrete and I cannot really even begin to get a good picture of what
> the
> > author is going on about unless I have a good example.
> >
> > And I find I don't really get a good example of the "boundary" concept
> > until p. 223, where we get a pretty clear boundary between what the
> trainees
> > have been told to do as trainees and what they will actually do as
> teachers.
> > This comes up again near the end, where there is a boundary set
> > between "goals" (as defined by the NC) and "work", as defined by the
> teachers.
> >
> > I found myself wondering, as I read the study, if this boundary is not
> > a temporary mirage created by the fact that we are talking about
> PRE-SERVICE
> > teacher education, a situation where the student teachers still have
> > to
> jump
> > through hoops to get their certification, and where, because the
> > student teachers do not have the experienced teachers' source of
> > authority, viz, their chalkface experience, they are more or less at
> > the mercy of
> mentors,
> > the professors, and of course the examiners.
> >
> > Pre-service programmes focus on what is teachable in preservice
> programmes.
> > That is why they focus so much on lesson plans, which in real life are
> > notorious unreliable guides to classroom interaction for the simple
> reason
> > that they largely pre-empt it with "goals" and "targets" and
> > "projected outcomes". They also focus on the kind of teaching
> > knowledge that is statable and testable. But a great deal of this
> > statable, plannable, rehearsable, and testable teaching knowledge is
> > what Whitehead would
> call
> > "inert" knowledge.
> >
> > For example: one of the really key problems that teachers face when
> > they start teaching in English is being able to reduce questions to
> > the point where they are manageable and then expand them again to the
> > point where
> they
> > are challenging to learners(who can be of widely varying degrees of
> > proficiency, communicative capacity and even amiability). This was the
> point
> > of the distinction our teacher Ms. Yi Minkyeong made between
> > "nonverbal response wanted", "verbal response wanted", and  "verbal
> > thinking
> wanted".
> >
> > This knowledge is not only largely unconscious, it is largely
> > undescribable, because it includes (at least) three undescribed things:
> > familiarity ("Have I said this before?"), structural complexity ("How
> long
> > and complex is the question? What about the answer?"), conceptual
> complexity
> > ("How concrete/visualizeable abstract/conceivable is the question?
> > What about the answer?"). It's not the sort of thing we can teach in
> > our pre-service programmes, although we are making some inroads with
> > the in-service ones (where I am teaching this very afternoon).
> >
> > One of my grads is now studying the possibility of discarding the
> > "artificial zone of proximal learning" of the pre-service programme
> > altogether and going to the naturally occuring sort of "legitimate
> > peripheral participation" that we find in apprenticeships, what we
> > found
> in
> > for centuries in the arts and even in teaching before colleges of
> education
> > were invented. (I remember travelling on trucks in the Sudan and
> watching
> > how young Sudanese boys learned to become "drivers" in this way.)
> >
> > Shin Jiyeong has already found a significant difference in one novice
> > teacher in the use of visual prompts and also in what she calls
> > "non-repetition questions", that is, questions which produce the
> > target sentences (specified by the NC) without actually asking for
> > "Listen and Repeat". This is interesting because Shin Jieun and
> > Kellogg 2007 failed
> to
> > find ANY improvement in another co-teacher in any part of the lesson
> EXCEPT
> > the greeting.
> >
> > What makes the difference? I think that Jinyeong's apprenticeship is
> > NOT
> a
> > mentorship, where the relations found between examiners and examinees
> > invariably reproduce themselves, and change the focus from the kind of
> > indescribable knowledge we are looking for to the more describable sort.
> > It's also NOT the crazy situation I started her out on (silly me)
> > where
> the
> > two teachers had to teach the same thing at opposite ends of the
> classroom
> > looking at each other teach.
> >
> > First of all, the two teachers have good reasons to take turns
> > watching
> and
> > teaching. One is an inexperienced native speaker of English and the
> other is
> > a highly expert non-native speaker, so they both have (different)
> > things
> to
> > do and so different things to look at.
> >
> > Secondly, there is a clear cycle of "watch this" and "now you have a go"
> > for both teachers. It seems to me where the actual teaching "work" is
> not
> > statable, this is essential: there is literally no other way for the
> > knowledge to be internalized except through imitation, and the way our
> short
> > term memories work, there has to be a very short window between the
> > observation and the imitation for the imitation to be accurate and
> useful.
> >
> > Finally, there is, actually, an emergent concept, which neither
> > teacher
> was
> > aware of at the beginning of Jiyeong's research, and it's not "goal"
> whether
> > of "work" or of "lesson" or of the NC. We started out just looking at
> what
> > kinds of behaviors produced long answers (more than one word) from the
> kids,
> > and we found to our distress that "Listen and Repeat" were virtually
> > the only ones that did. I think the idea of a "non-imitative" or
> "non-repetitive
> > question" is still a bit of a broad brush. But I also think that when
> the
> > research is really done, this is where the real source of improvement
> will
> > come in, and I think, not coincidentally, that this is where
> > pre-service programmes really have to butt out.
> >
> > I was reading the "Boundary" article, I set up a gedankenexperiment,
> which
> > I think reflects pretty well the kind of class conflict underlying the
> > "boundary" concept. Let us say that there is a fundamental dispute
> > over
> a
> > curricular issue. Imagine, for example, that a party comes to power
> > that wishes to remove a fundamental concept from the curriculum (e.g.
> > the
> welfare
> > state, or Norway's membership in the NATO alliance, participation in
> > the invasion of Iraq, and active involvement in the Afghan War).
> >
> > Do I, as a teacher, want the decision making in the hands of a
> CONSERVATIVE
> > teacher (they do exist; I have quite a few as grad students) or in the
> hands
> > of a LIBERAL, even a RADICAL Department of Teacher Education?
> >
> > Well, OK, it's a thought experiment. The idea of a radical DTE is
> > really
> a
> > little like one of Einstein's relativistic trains, or Schrodinger's
> > cat; there are none such, and none likely. But I think that in actual
> > fact
> the
> > real curricular decisions are ENTIRELY in the hands of the teacher,
> > for
> much
> > the same reason that decisions over learning are in the final analysis
> in
> > the hands and heads of learners. And I think that's where they should
> > be too.
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Michael W. Smith
> Professor and Chair
> Department of Curriculum, Instruction,
> and Technology in Education
> Temple University
> 1301 Cecil B.Moore Avenue
> Philadelphia, PA 19122
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