So nice to discuss an article when the discussion group includes the people
who worked so hard to do and write up the work being discussed. You are
good folk and serious workers -- that's what I'm attributing to you!
So, with respect, I hate to ask this in a way but I hate to give up the
chance more.
I hate to ask it because (1) I can guess how much is regretfully left out
when you were honed down the plans for the study, then even more when you
were doing it, then even more when you were making choices during the
write-up; (2) there is a lot of importance in the article; but (3) I need to
know what you think about science as the content domain and identity.
I hate to give up the chance to ask because I suspect you have been/are
thinking about it because you write about what "makes it possible for
students to produce culture (i.e., learn science)" page 58.
So here it where I am from reading your article:
Cristobal's science related identities are conditioned by specific
sub-domains, right? He contrasts (p. 54) chemistry and physical sciences on
the basis of his knowledge differential and the consequences that has for
constructing teaching situations. I want to know about the environmental
sciences domain that the example with Ya-Meer comes from; who is
Cristoball-scientist in environmental sciences and how or if that shows up
in actions and interactions. Cristobal's identity in science is also
apparent in the school distinction between the third floor versus basement
science classroom teachers. I want to know which SLC is on the third floor,
how the science teachers relate to each other across the SLC's etc etc and
how or if this shows up in teacher and student actions and interactions.
Ya-Meer's science related identities I know even less about. He
participated in the chemistry class one year and the environmental science
course the second year and he takes "Cisco" classes that his father
amplifies. I have a general feel for his grades but not what he is/does as
a scientist. Do any ideas or ways of thinking/speaking show up when there's
a hurricane coming or a dispute about a new power plant, or when a disease
is diagnosed in his circle of people, or when the news says the bird virus
has its first case of human to human transmission? What happens when
chemistry concepts or procedures can yield a question or elaborate an idea
in environmental sciences? He talks about Cisco classes (p. 59) and
colleges but what about how chemistry or environmental sciences fit in that
thinking? His discussion of Charles and whether a teacher should give a
higher grade than warranted brings up some relations between being a student
with high grades and a student who has control over science ideas and
practices, but how/if he applies this to himself isn't clear to me.
Maybe I just don't know enough about fields (p. 51) but the field of science
seems to need to be recognized as barging into identities in science
classrooms, no? On p. 68, you attribute to Cristobal "a willingness to
continually refine the objects of the curriculum" and I think that means a
scientist is picking among and at science so that students can appropriate
from the science field/culture.
Anyhow I liked what you got me to think and will appreciate any more you can
give me.
Peg Griffin
PS: The tool I rely on most for thinking about educational activity systems
is Leontiev's 1981 "Problems in the Development of Mind" especially starting
around the 391 (but the play stuff just before that and the memory stuff
before that so maybe start about 327).
I especially learn from the contrast between full activity systems and the
"mindless" truncated activity systems that don't have the mediating
action-goal layer between activity and operation. But even more than that I
learn form thinking about mixed motives from co-existing activity systems:
when the focal person is acting under the control of one leading activity
(so that "really effective" motives come from it) but the "other" person in
the social situation is dragging in operations and "merely understood"
motives from a different activity system. (I see this as another way to say
Zo-ped and as another way to think about the yoked systems that Luria used
with Zasetsky or Parkinsons' patients, by the way.)
Here is an extended quote from "Problems in the Development of Mind" because
people tell me it is hard to find the book (It tells of a different world of
schooling than Cristobal and Ya-Meer deal with, doesn't it?):
p.402: "Let us call the first type of motive 'only understandable motives'
and the second kind 'really effective motives.' Bearing this distinction in
mind, we can now advance the following proposition: 'only understandable
motives' become effective ones in certain conditions, and that is how new
motives arise and hence new types of activity.
"The child begins to do its homework under the influence of a motive that we
have created specially for it [PG: in prior paragraph 'You won't go out to
play until you've done your lessons.'], but a week or two pass and we see
that it itself already sits down to its homework of its own volition. Once,
while copying something out, it suddenly stops and leaves the table crying.
'Why have you stopped working?' it is asked. 'What's the good,' it
explains, 'I'll just get a pass or a bad mark; I've written very untidily.'
"This case reveals a new effective motive for its homework. It is doing its
lessons now because it wants to get a good mark. And it is in just that
that the true sense of the copying out consists for it, or the solving of a
problem, or the performance of other study acts.
"The really effective motive inducing the child to do its homework now is a
motive that was previously 'only understandable' for it.
"How does this transformation of motive come about? The question can be
simply answered. It is a matter of an action's result being more
significant, in certain conditions, than the motive that actually induces
it. The child begins doing its homework conscientiously because it wants to
go out quickly and play. In the end this leads to much more; not simply
that it will get the chance to go and play but also that it will get a good
mark. A new 'objectivation' of its needs come about, which means they are
understood at a higher level.
"The transition to a new leading activity differs only from the process
described simply in the really effective motives becoming, in the case of a
change of leading activity, those 'understandable motives' that exist in the
sphere of relations characterising the place the child can occupy only in
the next, higher stage of development, rather than in the sphere of
relations in which it still actually is."
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wolff-Michael Roth" <mroth@uvic.ca>.
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 9:21 AM
Subject: identity
Some of the writings made me wonder if readers understand the point
about identity--it is not so much that we take one, like putting on a
piece of clothing, but that in every single act, we provide resources
for the self and other attribution of identity. That is, by writing
this note, an act, others can make attributions--this Roth guy is
talkative, or this Roth guy talks nonsense etc. If others agree, then
there is a more widespread characterization of the person--which may
change little in the way I see myself... We therefore need to consider
the dialectic of self and other in the consideration of identity,
self-attribution and other attribution, what is constant and what can
change from minute to minute.
For anyone interested in the philosophical grounding of such an
approach to identity (Ricœur, Bakhtin, Marx) with a case study, I have
a chapter in a forthcoming book on urban education which I can make
available to interested individuals upon request.
Michael
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