I hesitate to get very deep into this because I am in office hours and might
get bumped here, but.......
Dewey-- Vis a vis Piaget/equilibration/contradiction
I thought I was talking about clash of schemas a la the constructivist
physics literature where the pedagogical strategy is to confront students
with the errors of their presconceptions (I am a perfect subject for
all such efforts!), such that disequilibrium is causes by the clash of two
cognitive schemas.
I think that the issue regarding Piaget versus AT may be an issue of unites
of analysis or levels. That is, when Yrjo studies the issues of contradictions
that arise in some complex work practice, he is talking about socio-cultural-
political-economic institutions which constrain people's interactions with
each other and the objects of their work. These contradictions may exist
for quite a long time without rise to a crisis point where people both
individually and collectively feel like "something has to be done." One
thing they do in such circumstances in Finland is to call in Yrjo's group
who then run a change lab which elicits from people the history of their
own involvement in the institutions and their notions of how things used
to be, are, and might be. There is a collective process of externalizing
understandings, feelings, etc.
In that collective process, schema conflicts are bound to happen (where
schemas here are not considered exclusively inside the head). But their
source is not, so to speak, individual/cognitive as it is cultural-0
historical, socio-cultural. It also becomes interpersonal within the
context of the reflective practices of analysis that the change lab
initiates. And presumably, in that same process of mediated interpersonal
interaction, individual understandings get examined, externalized,
appropriated, etc.
If YE has the time, perhaps he can comment. I am not speaking for him,
but for myself from my own limited understanding.
no students yet, second note to come.
mike
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