late lbe2

From: Bill Barowy (wbarowy@lesley.edu)
Date: Sun Apr 22 2001 - 19:44:51 PDT


Thanks Paul for the reminder to write something about lbe. As you note, it has made a difference in the work I am doing. In '97 when I joined xmca, I was looking for a theoretical base that could provide explanatory power for complex interventions in education. The bottom line is that lbe has been the most robust and viable of any that I have encountered so far. Furthermore, Yrjö has been especially gracious and kind concerning inquiry into his work and that of his colleagues, thus compounding the value of this resource. I will stand corrected if I am wrong, but I believe Yrjö sees the triangular form as provisional. I am aware of more recent work with the Change Laboratory, in which the triangular model is put into the service of mediating actions among participants, affording insights that I interpret as moving away from complexes, and towards conceptions. Furthermore, the work going on at "the boundaries" continues to push on the originally centralized version of activity that appears in lbe.

First things first -- Mike had inquired about what I meant concerning lbe and flexibility in analysis. It was premature to write about it then, but now that ch 2 has been read, the timing is better. IMHO, one powerful feature of ch2 is the ability to treat multiple categories while maintaining their relations to the whole. For example, from primary to quaternary contradictions, one is able to engage in the "ethnography of troubles" from within a category, i.e., the exchange/use value of computers (artifact category) to the much larger scale of troubles between systems. One is not bound to a unit of analysis that is fixed in relations and time. So as the explanatory need emerges from the data, one can "zoom in" to the development of a single person, and relate it to the development of an institution the person works in, and further embed the analysis in the political and economic conditions of the region and time, and go back. With careful thought, one does not fall into the trap of thinking of context as "that which surrounds", but perhaps as "that with which one interacts, shapes, and is shaped".

I am considering individual/institutional co-development using lbe, because this reflects the political climate of the times in the U.S. We have individualized assessments that range from high stakes tests of students and teachers, to grades, to portfolios. And yet we are also faced with making systemic changes in institutions, because many people have realized that this may be the only way to reach mandated goals on individual learning. Yet with LBE as a theoretical lens, one can see these things put into a cultural and historical perspective. Context and systemic change becomes more than a buzz word.

Perhaps one of the best ways to get insight into how much explanatory power LBE provides is to begin making alterations to the categories in the triangular model. So far, my efforts have mostly resulted in greater respect for the original work.

One of the most useful insights afforded by lbe is the collective and systemic nature of expansive activity -- exactly that faced by an investigator who wishes to make contributions to a field, i.e. education, that is not characterized by short term returns (of the kind needed for tenure for example) but which aims for the deeper transformations made possible by long term joint efforts. I conclude from this aspect of the theory, and from the many insights made possible to me by xmca'ers too numerous to mention, that this particular forum is worth spending one's time -- with a significant return on the investment.

Gotta run, other exchanges to tend to. Yeah, in terms of priorities, I got my herb garden in (the snow has finally melted as we made the discontinuous change from winter to summer). Bunny continues to do strange digging, and rolling about, when fresh sod is put in her pen.

bb



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