'surprises' as part of development

From: MnFamilyMan@aol.com
Date: Wed May 09 2001 - 19:22:40 PDT


It is a faulty premise to compare the surprises and disruptions of an adult
existence to those of a child's development. My major criticism of activity
theory is that it is a 'feel good' theory for the facilitators and may not be
designed to provide a practical education for the students. If teachers
implementing the educational experience are concerned with monitoring how
they are feeling in the activity then it is a teacher-serving methodology. I
do not believe that zpd is a social construct, I think Vygotsky intend it to
be a measurable aspect fo an individual's statistic. If anyone would choose
to disput this then please quote Vygotsky. The more I read about AT, the
less I believe it is true to Vygotsky's theory.

I had mentioned earlier that Engstrom has used a valid method (historical
perspective) for presenting social theory, however, the empirical evidence is
lacking and the supporting theorists he uses to support Learning by Expanding
are insufficient in number, mainly I am concerned with his excluding of
psychologists which use scientific data to support their theory. I do
appreciate Engstrom's efforts and understand the amount of work implemented,
however, if he is goint to use history as a method for forwarding social
scientific theory it is imperative he include a multitude of varying
scientists, anthropologists, psychologists and possibly physicists (I am
referring to the recent connection between choas theory and Hegel' dialectic).

Getting back to using adult learning to understand child development it is
important to remember that children first learn to read and then later read
to learn, the same is true for living their life. First off they learn by
living and then eventually people begin to live from their learning. Where
this happens depends on the individual.

What do you think?
Eric



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