Re(2): Response to Phillips RE: Blast 3

From: Phillip White (Phillip_White@ceo.cudenver.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 31 2000 - 18:31:45 PST


xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:

        Vera scrobe: ..... no, actually Vera asked a great number of profound
questions -
>
>What happens to the consequences of the work with the humdreds of
>students a
>teacher has had? Does not it affect something inside the teacher? Her/his
>memory, or belief system,
>or educational theory? Is not that part of the teacher's consciousness?
>Does not consciousness require some brain mechanism which is indeed
>inside
>the teacher only to be externalized, or realized in a changed form with
>the
>next group of students in an
>evolving activity system? I think by denying internalization we are
>denying
>the material base of humans' abilities to act in a relevant way, in
>building
>upon past collective knowledge as a thoughtful social participant. Without
>acknowledging the role of the human brain,
>(but not making it the primary unit of analysis but part of distributed
>cognition), we are back to a position that excludes a significant aspect
>of activity, that of learning.
>
>Perhaps this is not a problem to most of you, but I think we have
>neglected
>Luria in our discussions,

        this is what i was getting at when i said that as a teacher i always have
to attend to how my students are teaching me to teach them - this
applies as much to when i teach kindergarteners as it does when i teach
students working on their master's.

        the activity is recursive, and the learning for everyone is incremental
and approximate - no one demonstrates the same kind of learning - and
with each different class / student i have to be a different teacher -
struggling to learn differently - the ZPDs are co-constructed - subject
/ object blurred - and we become participants is learning activities -
some far more peripheral than others - and i've been in classrooms where
the "teacher" was the most peripheral learner of all - mostly because
the teacher was attending to "methods" and "lessons" and "goals and
objectives" , rather than the relationships - the socially constructed
relationships -

        i like your questions so _much_ !

phillip

* * * * * * * *
* *

The English noun "identity" comes, ultimately, from the
Latin adverb "identidem", which means "repeatedly."
The Latin has exactly the same rhythm as the English,
buh-BUM-buh-BUM - a simple iamb, repeated; and
"identidem" is, in fact, nothing more than a
reduplication of the word "idem", "the same":
"idem(et)idem". "Same(and) same". The same,
repeated. It is a word that does exactly what
it means.

                          from "The Elusive Embrace" by Daniel
Mendelsohn.

phillip white
third grade teacher
doctoral student http://ceo.cudenver.edu/~hacms_lab/index.htm
scrambling a dissertation
denver, colorado
phillip_white@ceo.cudenver.edu



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