self-description

stephanie spina (sspina who-is-at email.gc.cuny.edu)
Wed, 11 Sep 1996 17:51:24 -0700 (PDT)

Hi. My name's Stephanie Urso Spina.
I've been a member of this list for a couple of years and am rejoining
after a one week hiatus while I switched addresses.

Here's the blurb:

My work deals with the social constructions of knowledge and the self,
building on neo-Vygotskiian, feminist, critical, semiotic, and
poststructural theory grounded in practical classroom experience
including teaching K - 12 students in an interdisciplinary, multicultural
public school program and graduate education courses including Cognition
and Teaching; Social, Historical, and Moral Foundations of Education; and
Language and Culture.

My encounters with cognitive and developmental psychology and my life-long
interest in aesthetics, as both artist and audience, have merged in a
desire to understand and explore issues related to both. Two interwoven
lines of inquiry shape my current focus. One centers on and questions the
privileged status of linguistic and instrumental ways of knowing and
communicating over alternative modes, which is core and corollary to
issues of social stratification. The other arises from artistic
experience as a factor in resiliency and its implications for development,
education, and society.
I have just returned to New York from a year of research and study at
Harvard University's Graduate School of Education and am a student in the
Ph.D. program in Developmental Psychology (with a concentration in
Cultural Studies) at The Graduate School and University Center of the City
University of New York.

Stephanie Urso Spina
sspina who-is-at broadway.gc.cuny.edu

PS: Most recently, I have become intrigued by the possiblilities chaos
theory offers and would appreciate the opportunity to eavesdrop and
perhaps dabble in discussion on or off the list about its relationship to
CHAT and the specific interests of other list participants.