[Xmca-l] Re: Zuckerman's 2016 article and "what would aneducationbe?"

[mike cole]

Dear Colleagues -- My apologies for sending a message intended for Galina
Tsukerman to the list, but there it is in two languages. Delete if it you
are not interested. If you are, some context.

When people began to show interest in Galina's paper I was afraid that it
would go unnoticed because the publishers had messed up the print edition,
and it was impossible to find the work in a TOC. And secondly, I thought
both it and the paper that accompanies it relevant to the questions and
suggestions being stimulated by Margaret and Carrie's paper.

I forwarded comments to Galina who wrote to say that while she can read
English she cannot write it. I offered to find a way to get her Russian
answers translated but opined (and opine) that the discussion might get
very complicated if people showed a lot of interested. We'll see how such
communication develops, if it does.

By way of explanation.

mike

On Sat, Dec 3, 2016 at 3:52 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> Правильно ли я понимаю, что вы можете читать по-английски, но это очень
> трудно для вас писать по-английски ?? Если это так, то не существует
> реальная трудность, по крайней мере между нами.
> Я могу читать по-русски очень хорошо, но я привык писать это только
> латинскими буквами из-за все время, затраченное на общение в рамках проекта
> Velham.
>
> Есть некоторые комментарии, которые вы могли бы хотеть, чтобы ответить на.
> Если да, то пошлите свой ответ мне на русском языке, и я сделаю все
> возможное, чтобы получить их перевод. Обсуждение может стать очень
> интересным, но и он может стать слишком трудным
> поддерживать или не вызывают никакого интереса. Мы должны видеть.
>
> По крайней мере, не стесняйтесь всегда писать мне на русском языке. (Я
> пишу на русском языке с помощью Google Translate, который делает достаточно
> хорошую работу). Вы могли бы попытаться использовать в обратном направлении
> и позволяет увидеть, как это работает.
>
> Если у Вас есть PDF российского издания, не могли бы вы отправить его? Я
> хочу, чтобы проверить использование слов в некоторых местах.
>
> Как хорошо быть в контакте !!
>
> (in English it reads like this):
>
> Galya-
>
> Do I understand correctly that you can READ English, but it is very
> difficult for you to WRITE English?? If that is the case, there is no real
> difficulty at least between us.
> I can read Russian pretty well, but I am used to writing it only in latin
> letters because of all the time spent on communication as part of the
> Velham project.
>
> There are some comments you might want to respond to. If so, send your
> response to me in Russian and I will do my best to get them translated. The
> discussion could become very interesting, but also it could become too
> difficult
> to maintain or evoke no interest. We will have to see.
>
> At least feel free always to write to me in Russian. (I am writing in
> Russian via google translate which is doing a reasonably good job). You
> might try using in reverse and lets see how it works.
>
> If you have a PDF of the Russian publication, could you send it? I want to
> check word usage in some places.
>
> How nice to be in contact!!
>
> Warmest regards,
>
> mike
>
> On Sat, Dec 3, 2016 at 3:24 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
> wrote:
>
>> Harvard was founded to educate the clergy, great point! Thanks!
>> Alfredo
>> ________________________________________
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> on behalf of White, Phillip <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>
>> Sent: 03 December 2016 20:43
>> To: Alfredo Jornet Gil; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Zuckerman's 2016 article and "what would
>> aneducationbe?"
>>
>> Alfred - yes, absolutely children are expected to demonstrated behaviours
>> elicited by the teachers.  that's the core structure of all institutions,
>> authorities expect demonstrations of their goals, regardless of ideology.
>>
>>
>> i think that we practitioner of CHAT too easily forget the historical
>> aspects of activity theory.  people can only do what they know how to do -
>> and what they know how to do is often what is the deep structure of 'hidden
>> curriculums', which are found in all cultural activities.  hence
>> revolutions eat their young, and the return to stability is a practice of
>> the old ways wrapped in a new vocabulary that supports the new authorities.
>>
>>
>> deep change is highly incremental.  yes, classrooms don't appear to be
>> the same as classrooms of one hundred years ago, much less two hundred
>> years ago.  however, remember that Harvard was founded to educate those
>> destined for the clergy, the judiciary and the mercantile class.
>>
>>
>> phillip
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
>> Sent: Friday, December 2, 2016 4:34:44 PM
>> To: White, Phillip; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: Re: [Xmca-l] Re: Zuckerman's 2016 article and "what would
>> aneducationbe?"
>>
>>
>> Phillip, interesting thoughts. ​Made me think of my ongoing experience at
>> an elementary school (below).
>>
>>
>> I also felt uneasy in the way Zukerman phrased some aspects of
>> teaching/learning, and most of all, I did not understand why she talked
>> about students learning, but not about teachers learning: teachers do also
>> learn and develop (change!) in and through teaching/learning situations
>> (and become better or worse teachers). But there is something concerning
>> "compliance" that I do not get from your argument. You say that in Galina's
>> examples, "children are expected to demonstrate learning behaviours that
>> the teacher deems appropriate"  ... and then I wonder, is not this inherent
>> to any educational situation? This is certainly what happens in many homes,
>> including my own. Indeed, deeming something appropriate seems to be
>> necessary to be able to decide what kind of education we want, right? Or
>> should we deem as inappropriate that people expect other people to do what
>> they feel/believe is appropriate?
>>
>>
>> But yes, another question is, what type of relations do we want to engage
>> into, what culture do we want?. After all, if the model is science (which
>> in Zukerman's case, who follows Davydov, seems to be), is not science the
>> product of the same (increasingly globalised) history from which
>> neoliberalism, comunism or putinism also are products?
>>
>>
>> I am everyday working as an assistant in an arts-based elementary school
>> here in Canada and I witness and participate in enforcing practicesm that
>> have very little to do with the progressist ideas explicitly endorsed by
>> the school. Even though I do not want to part-take in them, it really takes
>> a lot of work to break free from the inertia of the tasks, which are
>> (unawarely) designed so as to require enforcement. It is a very visceral
>> situation, being there with kids I love, and yet finding myself doing
>> precisely what I do not want to do. I am caught in the situation. What do I
>> need to do to break from it? I think first is the work of becoming aware
>> not only of the fact, but the conditions that sustain the fact: the task.
>> Next, I guess I have to realise that changing myself as an educator
>> requires changing the tasks. We are currently working on a reflective
>> process in which I hope to bring awareness and change to the whole staff.
>> Does this process resemble science?
>>
>>
>> Alfredo
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: White, Phillip <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>
>> Sent: 03 December 2016 00:00
>> To: Alfredo Jornet Gil; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: Re: [Xmca-l] Re: Zuckerman's 2016 article and "what would
>> aneducationbe?"
>>
>>
>> everyone  -  having read Zukerman's paper on how young school children
>> learn to learn, it seems to me that the teaching strategies she promotes
>> will not come close to alleviating the problem of neoliberalism and the
>> hollowing out of students.  as stated on page 2, "... schoolchildren must
>> to able to compute, read, write, and, by the way, learn.  This occurred in
>> the late 1970's in the face of one in a series of technological revolutions
>> confronting manufacturers with a new need for lifelong training."
>>
>>
>> so there is the core proleptic goal of neoliberal education - students
>> are to be educated to meet the needs of business.
>>
>>
>> in my own experience of teaching - from kindergarten to graduate school -
>> the child who is described as an independent learner is actually a
>> compliant child.  and certainly in Zukerman's examples, these children are
>> also learning to be compliant - they are expected to demonstrate learning
>> behaviours that the teacher deems appropriate for the classroom.
>>
>>
>> in point of fact, the last elementary school i was in for fifteen years -
>> 2001 - 2016 - the type of teaching and questioning strategies promoted by
>> Zukerman were practiced in every classroom.  and teachers were explicitly
>> evaluated on how close them came to a rather common mantra: Never do for a
>> child that she can do herself.  and, yes, all answers elicited through open
>> questions were written so that all could see, and then analysed and
>> evaluated by the students.
>>
>>
>> as Smagorinsky pointed out in his paper regarding development of learning
>> and social practices, at core there is always an ideology.
>>
>>
>> here in the states it is neoliberal capitalism.
>>
>>
>> in russia it was communism, and now Putinism.
>>
>>
>> both carry a high value of conformity, nationalism, and compliance to
>> authority.
>>
>>
>> phillip
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> on behalf of lpscholar2@gmail.com <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>> Sent: Friday, December 2, 2016 8:26 AM
>> To: Alfredo Jornet Gil; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Zuckerman's 2016 article and "what would
>> aneducationbe?"
>>
>> Alfredo,
>> The resonance of your answer is harmonic with my question and feels so
>> gestating and co-generative. Learning collaboration as joint action leading
>> [orienting receptively] to freedom in the opening of future joint action
>> [all the way down].
>> Mastering one’s *relations* TO OTHERS is achieved [an ability Zukerman
>> would say]  by becoming subject AND SUBJECTING TO those relations.
>> At the heart of our inquiries is *relations* in their polyphonic
>> manifestations.
>>
>> What has just occurred here and now as an example [an exemplar?] of being
>> carried along by the *subject matter* developing what *we* mean.
>>
>> Con/vivial  -  con/verse/ation   - all the way down.
>>
>> MITSEIN as well-being-in-the-world- WITH- others [abbreviated or
>> shortened to *well-being*
>>
>> An original and very appealing view/image on WHAT independence, or
>>  BECOMING an independent learner - means
>>
>> I feel heard and inspired and grateful in this spirit [value?] of
>> friendship and fellowship unfolding in the back and forth across
>> perspectives
>> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>>
>> From: Alfredo Jornet Gil
>> Sent: December 1, 2016 9:40 PM
>> To: lpscholar2@gmail.com; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: Re: [Xmca-l] Zuckerman's 2016 article and "what would
>> aneducationbe?"
>>
>> Larry,
>> how accepted one view on Vygotsky is, is something many others in this
>> list know better than me. When I began reading Vygotsky, many here had
>> already bee studying his original works for 30 years...
>>
>> I know, however, that it is easy to simplify matters one way or another.
>> It is quite common, for example, to find published papers where Vygotskian
>> concepts are used in ways that effectively reify cognitivist views that
>> cognitive science itself has been trying to get rid off for long time now.
>>
>> Perhaps the question is not so much about how accepted a version of a
>> legacy is, and perhaps less so how accurate that version is with the
>> original intention, but how generative this version is for whatever we find
>> useful pursuing. A view where joint action leads to freedom in the
>> generation of future joint action (the turtles all the way down), and not
>> independently of it, seems to me more promising than other versions.
>> Although many things in this article are surely debatable, it certainly
>> offers an original and appealing view on what independence, or becoming and
>> independent learner means. Vygotskian historians have noted that Vygotsky
>> often referred to Bacon's aphorism "natura parendo vincitur"... In
>> G.Zuckerman's article, mastering one's relation to others is achieved by
>> becoming subject and subjecting to those relations.
>>
>> Alfredo
>>
>> From: lpscholar2@gmail.com <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>> Sent: 02 December 2016 04:37
>> To: Alfredo Jornet Gil; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: RE: [Xmca-l] Zuckerman's 2016 article and "what would
>> aneducationbe?"
>>
>> Alfredo,
>> How accepted is this perspective of the Vygotskian legacy as being
>> (intermental) through and through?
>> The metaphor (turtles all the way down) comes to mind?
>>
>> This perspective opens up the ideal or the possible of learning
>> collaboration as involving a spectrum or a layering of developmental
>> periods that emphasize a (merging quality) but emphasizes that all the
>> periods continue to be alive and animated. This includes the original
>> receptivity marking the infants gestures, and imitation, and play/imaginal
>> and learning activity as all active  ingredients creating the personality.
>> To later become reflective and acquire some degree of volition over these
>> earlier  more primordial deeper layers/spectrum of merged abilities as
>> secondary phenomena of  learning collaboration seems to occur as a
>> derivative experience (after the experience of merger).
>> Opens up the question of central lines for further inquiry in the back
>> and forth.
>>
>> This term (intermental) seems to be a key notion for opening locked doors
>>
>> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>>
>> From: Alfredo Jornet Gil
>> Sent: December 1, 2016 4:19 PM
>> To: lpscholar2@gmail.com; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: Re: [Xmca-l] Zuckerman's 2016 article and "what would
>> aneducationbe?"
>>
>> Larry, this way of articulating a Vygotskian approach to learning as NOT
>> something that simply first is external and that then becomes internal, is
>> one of the things that most attracted me from this paper. The competences
>> and cognitive functions that Galina describes are intermental through and
>> through, even when she talks of a "happy end" where the competence to
>> initiate collaboration is interiorized. This resonates quite well with an
>> argument that Michael R. and myself have been advancing recently referring
>> to the inter-intrasubjectivity (see e.g., MCA perezhivanie issue), although
>> critical readers will note that we advance the argument in a way much more
>> metaphorical than Galina's reported experiments (and being metaphorical is
>> a fair critique, though being so may  also be a good way to move forward to
>> new concrete research programs).
>>
>> Another thing I like is that the article raises a question of
>> distinguishing (or not) between relations of learner and a skilled person
>> (may we say, an apprenticeship?) on the one hand, and between learner and
>> *teacher* on the other. An advantage of this approach is that it allows
>> tracing those genetic lines of development that are specific to teaching
>> (teaching/learning) situations of the kind western schools and middle class
>> parents sometimes exercise exhibiting and generating expectations of
>> learning to think and solve problems independently.
>>
>> Alfredo
>>
>> From: lpscholar2@gmail.com <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>> Sent: 01 December 2016 21:21
>> To: Alfredo Jornet Gil; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: RE: [Xmca-l] Zuckerman's 2016 article and "what would
>> aneducationbe?"
>>
>> Alfredo,
>> Since you opened a new thread for the Zukerman article -in particular –
>> I will highlight  a central question from page 17 that is organizing the
>> article for the reader’s ability to respond.
>>
>> The last paragraph on page 17 opens with:
>>
>> Just what is learning collaboration?
>>
>> The answer given:
>>
>> It can be (understood) in two ways. It can be seen as a sort of
>> scaffolding temporarily needed for mental development – until children
>> aquire the ability to apply scientific concepts INDEPENDENTLY, to frame and
>> solve problems demanding theoretical thinking without the help of a
>> teacher. However, learning collaboration can also be (interpreted) not as
>> an ancillary developmental tool, not as an EXTERNAL removable support
>> created in the course of building the mental ediface, but as an important
>> part of this ediface, as  A VALUABLE ABILITY ESSENTIAL TO HUMANS AT ANY
>> POINT IN THEIR ADULT LIFE.
>>
>> It is this 2nd version of (learning collaboration) as a valuable
>> (intermental ability) that continues and is universal, that this paper is
>> highlighting for our further inquiry into
>>
>> Just what is learning collaboration? As an aspect of answering,
>> Just what is education?
>> A four way back and forth co-generation of genetic phenomenology
>>
>> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>>
>> From: lpscholar2@gmail.com
>> Sent: December 1, 2016 8:09 AM
>> To: Alfredo Jornet Gil; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: RE: [Xmca-l] Zuckerman's 2016 article and "what would
>> aneducationbe?"
>>
>> Alfredo,
>> A central notion of the article hinges on when a person shifts from
>> educability (being the ready objects of education) TO the ability to learn
>> (being able to exercise subjectivity/agency and becoming an active force in
>> learning activity -becoming a subject of learning.
>>
>> Now in order to pinpoint the birth of a subject (able to learn
>> independently) this paper examines two possible relations of the concepts
>> (interpsychic action) and (independent action) existing within the Vygotsky
>> school:
>> 1)      As long as an action remains (intermental) and is carried out
>> with the help of an adult, it is NOT independent
>> 2)      People can independently bring about  collaborative (intermental
>> action) that they are NOT able to carry out individually.
>>
>> A lot (hinges) on these two contrasting notions of being a subject of
>> learning and carrying out something independently. Both versions exist
>> within the Vygotsky school.
>> To put the (value) on the intermental is to also play with notions of
>> intercorporeality and intersubjectivity.
>> As Zackerman says:
>> Children’s independence is usually understood as the ability to act
>> without an adult’s help as the end of the (intériorisation) of an
>> action.... When this occurs, their (intermental) interaction with the adult
>> disappears, having served its purpose. This INTERPRETATION treats
>> independent action as synonymous with (intramental) action.
>>
>> This paper questions this sens of (independence) as a concept, goal, and
>> purpose. The key question shifts to become:
>> What enables the emergence of a child’s ability to INDEPENDENTLY
>> structure (intermental) action.
>>
>> I will pause with this open question at the heart of the Vygotsky School
>> exploration of developmental paths.
>> Where does (independence) exist? – intramental phenomena as
>> interiorization or intermental phenomena as enlisting the collaboration of
>> others.
>> Note that both alternatives  are offering the key to answering -what is
>> education? May need a transversal back and forth to inquire deeper into
>> this open question
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>>
>> From: lpscholar2@gmail.com
>> Sent: November 30, 2016 5:04 PM
>> To: Alfredo Jornet Gil; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: RE: [Xmca-l] Zuckerman's 2016 article and "what would an
>> educationbe?"
>>
>> Alfredo,
>> ? WHAT is education.
>> This fourth paper contributing to our emerging answer in the flowing
>> stream.
>>
>> On page 9 see figure 1 on periodization of leading forms of (intermental)
>> collaboration.
>> Notice that earlier forms are continuing as *enduring* forms of
>> intermental collaboration.
>> Therefore the leading intermental collaboration of infancy continues to
>> *endure*.
>> What is this enduring quality from infancy? The chart says:
>> The immediate-emotional communication between the child and a loving
>> adult as a UNIVERSAL source of warmth, care, understanding, benevolence,
>> protection, and the acceptance of the child’s unique existence as a thing
>> of inherent value.
>>
>> THIS universal intermental collaboration EXTENDS into the other 3
>> periodization’s. (early childhood, preschool childhood, and young school
>> age).
>> So indicates the diagram of periodization on page 9.
>>
>> This awareness may become lost or misplaced as we focus on the next
>> period emerging which *merges* with this earliest intermental and
>> *enduring* form of collaboration.
>>
>> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>>
>> From: Alfredo Jornet Gil
>> Sent: November 30, 2016 12:22 PM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Zuckerman's 2016 article and "what would an education
>> be?"
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>>
>> I am responding to Larry's last post on the "social science is busted"
>> thread, and in continuation with the discussions sparked by MCA's Issue 3
>> lead article.
>>
>>
>> ?In those discussions, we have come to, as Larry puts it, a transversal
>> reading of 3 articles:  Margaret and Carrie's on hollowed out science
>> identities, Peter's on practical concepts, and Lave and McDermott's reading
>> of Marx's estranged labor in terms of estranged learning.
>>
>>
>> A common thread tying the 3 articles together, as Larry identifies it,
>> has to do with ?the question, *what is education?* Perhaps most
>> importantly, ?the question is also about what education could instead be as
>> possibility, as a *desirable* possibility. Obviously both questions are
>> necessary: we need to have a notion of what goes on in schools now as much
>> as we need a notion of what a good education could be.
>>
>>
>> Now, while reading 3 articles transversely already is a lot of reading
>> for the regular mortal (though nothing uncommon for the scholar avis), I
>> think we would gain a lot by adding Galina Zuckerman's recent article
>> (recently mentioned by Mike) to the reading list. What this addition brings
>> in is, in my view, what to me sounds like the initial step needed for
>> connecting the two questions posed above, the one on the facts of education
>> and the one on possibilities. Zuckerman does so connecting the latter
>> question on possibilities to a scientific inquiry into what the ability to
>> learn is. She writes:
>>
>>
>> "The question of what values to prioritize, particularly the question of
>> which abilities should be developed in children of a given age, is not a
>> question for science. Developmental psychology can tell us what abilities
>> children are capable of developing at a particular age. Pedagogical
>> psychology can instruct us in how to actualize a particular developmental
>> potential: what educational and childrearing conditions are required for
>> the achievement of potential developmental abilities to become the norm in
>> childhood development"
>>
>> Taking a route that goes across this intersection of the possible and the
>> desirable, and reflecting on common reform efforts to foster students'
>> self-regulation and their ability to learn, Galina asks: are *educability*
>> and *the ability to learn* the same thing? For her, the difference lies in
>> the following: to be easily educable students need to become objects of
>> learning; to become able to learn, they need to become subjects.
>>
>>
>> I think Galina's article will proof relevant to many in this list for
>> many reasons. One such reason is that she takes a thoroughly Vygotskian
>> perspective on these matters, and I love that she never speaks of
>> individual skills or knowledge but keeps talking of ability to engage
>> and/or initiate interaction. Her approach is not only non-individualist,
>> but also developmental: it takes into account many of the concerns on age
>> that have been raised in recent xMCA discussions. And it even discusses the
>> connection between communication and generalization, a connection that
>> became relevant to this list few weeks ago, when David K. shared one of
>> Vygotsky's last lectures (by the way, here Galina makes a case for the
>> non-adequacy of distinguishing the two, communication and generalization,
>> in terms of an external/internal dichotomy; she explicitly rejects the
>> "internalisation" way of languaging it).
>>
>>
>> The article is attached and shared here as part of xmca's ?educational
>> ?mission and is to be used for that purpose ?only.
>>
>> Alfredo
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>