Tom is very much a post modernist in the sense of looking at
discursive spaces rather than action and time. His book
Struggling for the Soul discusses constructivism as a way of
creating discursive spaces which create normality/abnormality.
An example is the social construction of the "problem solver"
which puts children into a discursive space of normal (problem
solver) and abnormal (non-problem solver). A focus on how things
we see as natural "problem solver" are socially constructed as a
way to create "others".
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Barowy <wbarowy who-is-at lesley.edu>
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Monday, February 22, 1999 12:45 PM
Subject: Popkewitz, Dewey, and Vygotsky
>Folks,
>
>Have any of you read the Popkewitz article in the winter 98
AERJ, entitled
>"Dewey, Vygotsky, and the social administration..." ? I am
struck by his
>claims of the flaws in the constuctivist alchemy of pedagogy.
I don't
>dispute the processes of alchemy - I think we have a long way
to go to
>reach more scientific approaches as envisioned by Brown,
Collins, and
>Engestrom, as especially evident in the continued separation of
theory and
>practice.
My understanding is he tends to argue for a seperation of
practice and theory and that it is the arrogance of modernist
theory that thinks it has answers for practice. I found Jay's
stuff on post-modernism helpful in understanding where he is
coming from.
His claim to the division between knowledge and processes
seem
>due, imho, more to the separations and contradictions that
occur as people
>move from a transmission view of curriculum to one of
interpersonal
>construction.
He would most likely argue in a Foucaultian sort of way that the
"interpersonal construction" is the govermentality of the social
admisistration of the soul.
>I also have this feeling - maybe it will go away in a re-read-
that
>Popkewitz devalues Dewey's and Vygotsky's ideas because they
emerged in a
>different time and setting, with different intent than we
pursue here and
>now. Why should that be the case? Perhaps I am being too
simple here, but
>I do not discount Watt's work with thermodynamics and the
steam engine
>because it occured during industrial times, nor the work in
quantum
>mechanics that occured during WWII. That words as community
and zone of
>proximal development have different meanings in our new
contexts is not
>criticism, but rather a recognition of how meanings evolve in
the remaking,
>while never completely losing their ancestral origins.
I don't know if he devalues them, but rather sees them as part
of the govermentality of the social administration of the soul.
He would argue that community and the zone of proximal
development create spaces for the social administration for the
soul. For example, the recognition that a child's motives and
emotions can not be ignored could be seen as were not happy just
controlling a child's learning, but also want to control their
motives and emotions. It is not good enough their learning we
also want to control how they feel about learning. Also
especially with Dewey there was an emphasis on "learning by
doing" which he sees as creating a discursive space of otherness
in the sense that one is seen as a "doers" because they are
perceived as being incapable of learning abstractly. Hand on
learner or doer is a discursive space which constructs children
(poor) as an other.
Nate