Thanks for nice dialogic quotes. When I was an elementary school student in
the Soviet Union our teachers were very open discussing how to limit our
communication with each other and keep us on task by using gender bushing
and keeping friends at least two desks away. See pictures my 2nd grade
classroom with explanations at
http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/classrooms/soviet.htm
Let me know, please, if you find some interesting features on the pictures
or have questions.
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Barowy [mailto:wbarowy@mail.lesley.edu]
> Sent: Sunday, September 05, 1999 7:55 PM
> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: CLASSROOM SEATING ARRANGEMENTS
>
>
> Hey Eugene,
>
> 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 spaces
> > 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
> nevertheless,
> 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
> 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."]
>