People moving into and co-constituting systems appears to be common. Some result in new forms of activity, with different actions, different products, etc. than the old, others do not. Other examples are (in generality) the company that hires the new VP, who it is proleptically thought, will take the company in new directions, the university that does the same with a provost, a faculty with a new professor, etc. More specifically, Boston has its history of school bussing, physically moving kids into new schools, in an attempt to make changes. Generally, schools of Education engage student teachers in progressive forms of education, with the underlying assumption that these forms of actions will 'transfer' with the student teacher. More specifically, Lesley U. does the opposite of sending instructors to cohorts located at the schools. Honorine's book about the coalition describes an incredibly complex form of this interaction between and among systems. The free movement of the children between the youth club and the 5d is one of the things cited in the mesogenetic paper for the systemic differences between the library and youth club 5d's.
One thing to be done is to investigate more how contradictions between systems (external contradictions) are enacted by people when systems intersect, when people enact the interactions between systems. In some ways a lot field work is already done, but needs the overlay of theory, i.e. "The children's center directress made no secret of the problems associated with bringing strange adults into her facility, nor did she minimize rapid staff turnover or the difficulty of having any of her staff take responsibility for the activities" (p200). There are at least two waves of intersection and contradictions enacted here -- one being the planning meetings in which lchc personnel interacted with the library staff, planning and projecting the future interactions at the second wave of intersection that involved the actual movement of people between lchc and the library. The gist I get is that in hindsight, the contradictions appearing in the second wave made their first appearance in the first wave, although they are not recognized so at that earlier time. Sounds similar in some ways to my experience with preparing graduate courses that will take place in computer labs located in schools.
for reference, the mesogenetic paper is a chapter in the book 'sociocultural psychology' edited by laura martin et al.
-- Bill Barowy, Associate Professor Lesley University 29 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."]
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