One of the references you provided caught my eye:
>tables again. There was less talk-out behavior under the row condition than
>under either table condition. It is concluded that the row arrangement
>reduces number of distractions, thereby increasing study behavior.
The logical extension reminds me of a scene from clockwork orange. =
Strapping the kids down, each to a chair, with their eyelids clamped back,=
and heads rigidly held, would maximize individual study behavior. But then=
Jan Nespor (nespor who-is-at vt.edu) wrote during the whole settings dicussion on=
Wed, 24 Sep 1997 10:39:51 -0500, of which each and every posting was a jem:
> There is a lot of work on these issues, a good bit of it related to
> education. Ecological psychologists like Gump dealt with schools as
> behavior settings, and most school or classroom ethnographers, from Paul
> Willis to Shirley Brice Heath, have had something to say about spatial
> issues. I think Yrjo's point is critical, though: the practice has been
> to treat schools (and worse, classrooms), as bounded, self-contained space=
s
> and to ignore their relations with "the outside." Space has been treated
> as a static container of action. The result has been the neglect of
> history, political economy, geography, place, and probably a distorted
> understanding of educational practice.
In contradistinction, at 8:57 AM -0700 11/12/97, vera p john-steiner wrote:
>An example, we have
>looked at different types of dyadic collaboration.
>Interestingly, the more integrative and transformative a collaboration,
>the more the participants finish each other sentences, co-construct
>their thoughts. In the complementary collaborations. turn taking is
>respected, co-constructed sentences are fewer. This is a small part of
>the story, but it gives a quick glimpse of collaborative dynamics that
>completes some aspects of the qualitative, narrative accounts.
To which, quoted here completely out of context, but making sense neverthele=
ss,
At 10:32 AM +1300 11/13/97, Graham Nuthall responded:
>
>I like Aristotle's notion that the problem should determine the method
> -It might be supposed that there was some single method of inquiry
>applicable to all objects whose essential nature we are endeavouring to
>ascertain ... in that case what we would seek would be this unique method.
>But if there is no such single and general method ... our task becomes
>still more difficult. In the case of each different subject we shall have
>to determine the appropriate process of investigation. (de Anima, 1:1)
And THEN, at 10:57 PM -0500 11/19/97, Jay Lemke wrote:
>The 'script' or institutionalized system of expectations about role
>relations and behaviors in some activity setting can also be regarded as an
>abstraction from a set of 'intertexts' or other occasions that illustrate
>its salient features (are prototypical in some respect), so that instead of
>an in-the-head representation (which does not seem to be how people really
>behave), we can look at how people reference and use these event-texts or
>event-narratives, which ones are called on when, etc. as a system of
>practices that materially embodies the ways we constrain ourselves and
>others to act as if we were following some ideal representation. This makes
>the norms and expectations representatable as systems of action of exactly
>the same kind as those of the activity proper, one system
>(semiotic-interactional) and not two (interactional vs. cognitive).
>
To which I resonate with a thought that, at 2:37 PM -0800 11/22/97, diane=
celia hodges wrote:
>without really feeling "competent" to say how, this seems relevant
>to the current discussions.
Of course at 8:43 AM -0700 10/14/98, Ken Goodman responded to diane ( nearly=
a year later, but to diane, all the same):
>A grandfather, a zeidi, greeted his grandson, home from his first year
>of college, "Tell me, boychick, you learned about this Einstein?" "Yes,
>Zaide, he developed the theory of relativity". "Nu, so explain it to
>me." "Time is relative. If I sit on a hot stove a minute seems like an
>hour. But if I'm with my girl friend an hour seems like a minute."
>"Really" said the zaidi. And from this Einstein makes a living?"
Thus I conclude that the increase in study behavior from Eugene's reference=
was a relativistic settings effect. In the *researchers* frame of=
reference those kids in rows did display an increase in study behavior. In=
the kids frame of reference it is quite probable that their retention time=
of the content was foreshortened. It is all amazingly consistent.
But finally my son, the philosopher, would remind me as he did recently:
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen, philosophers and divines." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Lesley College, 31 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790=20
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]