farewell to Rommetveit/ teaching of psych

From: Melissa Lemons (mlemons@faculty.ed.umuc.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 01 2004 - 04:39:12 PDT


Hello,
I do not think I fully grasped Rommetveit's article, but I found that
Wertsch's summary helped. As a psychology instructor for a
undergraduate population that is mainly full-time military students I
find many failed attempts at intersubjectivity. When I think I am
trying to create I-thou communications, sharing what I believe to be
truly valuable and helpful research and theory, students experience a
foucs on "it." "It" here is the content of psycholgy, some strange,
distant and personally insignificant course topic. When students try to
share experiences about a crazy Aunt Sally or child with behavioral
problems in an effort to personally and meaningfully engage in the
material, I tend to respond with "No, that's not 'it'" discussions
about research and theory.
Am I missing the point here? Maybe there is some point at which enough
mastery of "it" allows for more meaningful conversations between I's.
As the instructor my desired outcomes for students often differ from
their desires for themselves, also limiting intersubjectivity. My
limited experience with research is that to be objective, the
researcher is supposed to focus on the "it" so that personal factors do
not bias the interpretations of cause and effect.
Having very little success at "traditioal" experimental work myself,
I'm pursuing counseling psychology. Can folks point me toward CHAT
resources on intersubjectivity between counselor and client?

Many thanks,
Melissa

Melissa Lemons
UMUC Europe

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Cole" <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, September 1, 2004 2:15 am
Subject: Intro and farewell to Rommetveit

>
> As we get ready to move on to other topics, here is jim wertsch's
> intro to Rommetveit. Sorry there was not more interest in following
> up the many potential topics in his article.
>
> Vote early, vote as often as you can, for the next discussion paper.
> Summerly yours,
> mike
>



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