Re: Questioning the Institution of Learning.

sveggetti who-is-at axrma.uniroma1.it
Fri, 07 Nov 1997 18:56:24 +0100

At 10.04 05/11/97 -0700, you wrote:
>In answering Steve's message I would like to stress that collaboration and
>solo endeavors are not absolute choices. I remember learning a lot about
>my own teaching when co-teaching a class in Learning and Cognition with
>collegue whose work methods differed dramatically from my own. He provided
>an important ZPD for me, and hopefully, I did the dame. It took a while to
>appropriate and use in my teaching practices the consequences of that
>collaborative effort. The experience made me ready for other joint
>teaching activities, some of which were equally effective, others did not
>open up a productive ZPD.
>I would welcome some more comments from you Steve on the role of
>collaboration among architects as I am engaged in writing a book on
>intellectually productive collaborations, thanks, Vera John-Steiner
>
>
>---------------------------------
>Vera P. John-Steiner
>Department of Linguistics
>Humanities Bldg. 526
>University of New Mexico
>Albuquerque, NM 87131
>(505) 277-6353 or 277-4324
>Internet: vygotsky who-is-at unm.edu
>---------------------------------
>
Dear Vera in reeding your answering about the "solo teaching" and about a
possible alternative choice of a co-teaching in a class and moreover in
following the subsequent way you explain it ( the latter experience) as a
form of ZPD I understood the meaning of a message which was sent by myself
on October the 31, which was absolutely ununderstandable in the terms it
was formulated.Agree completely with you on the strong value of the
co-teaching and it seems to me that it is the more valuable the more the
disciplines co-taught are different. I quoted an experience of mine of
co-teaching physics and psychology ( to the medical students in the
University I work in ). What I feel is that the only fact which forces the
generally accepted a "solo" teaching, with the teacher doing whatever, once
the class door is closed, is the strong social and cultural
determination of the teaching activity ,inasmuch as it consists in a sort
of "forced social production" of pupils with pre-determined cognitive
characteristics. It seems to me that debating about architectural space and
about the definition of the real social cultural character of institutions
from the point of view of Activity theory in the way Engestroem did it in
his book (1990), has the advantage of giving to the adults of our time the
tools for understanding the general aversive relations pupils and students
express toward the instructional process. I realize that there are many
different ideas to render in a more explicit way,in what I'm writing to
you, but at present want thank you for the insight you gave me about the
collaborative teaching.My warmest greetings Serena Veggetti >
>