[Xmca-l] Re: Of Possible Interest to the XCMA/CHAT Family

[mike cole]

Thanks for the extra info, Susan. I did not know of Heathcote before.
The quotation from Vygotsky caught my eye. Especially:

Essentially, this method of teaching/learning
concepts, *a purely scholastic and verbal method of teaching, which is*


*condemned by everybody and which advocates the replacement of acquisition
of livingknowledge by the assimilation of dead and empty verbal schemes,
representsthe **most basic failing in the field of education*. (Vygotsky
1934/1994a, pp.
356-7)

Since, by 1934, this issue was recognized by everyone, how come it has not
been replaced?
The resilience of drill-and-kill is impressive, as are the successful
attempts, in some social ecologies, to overcome it.

mike

On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 3:32 AM, Susan Davis <s.davis@cqu.edu.au> wrote:

> Thanks Robert,
> It’s great to have the book published as part of your series.  The book is
> called “Learning that matters: Revitalising Heathcote’s Rolling Role for
> the digital age”.
> https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/imagination-and-praxis/
> learning-that-matters/
>
> For those who haven’t heard of Heathcote before, she was a ‘master’
> teacher who achieved international recognition for her teaching practice
> in the 70s and 80s - in particular for pioneering processes such as Mantle
> of the Expert - which use role and fictional contexts to position children
> as ‘experts’ and active agents in investigative processes. She also
> invented this system called ‘Rolling Role’ which is a form of
> trans-disciplinary learning - where multiple classes work with the same
> common context, but from their particular frame or subject perspective.
> The beauty of it is that no one group ‘owns’ the outcome, but groups
> regularly ‘publish’ and share artefacts and outcomes throughout the
> process, with each group having to use and ‘roll’ the work of what has
> gone before.  It was a system she believed was perfectly suited for
> revisiting in the digital age… so that is what the book hopes to assist
> with… the Vygotskian and CHAT work was very helpful in conceptualising and
> understanding this work.
>
> At times reading the work of Vygotsky and Heathcote it felt like they
> could have been writing about education today!
>
> Educational experience, no less than theoretical research,
> teaches us that, in practice, a straightforward learning of concepts always
> proves impossible and educationally fruitless. Usually, any teacher
> setting out
> on this road achieves nothing except a meaningless acquisition of words,
> mere
> verbalization in children, which is nothing more than simulation and
> imitation
> of corresponding concepts which, in reality, are concealing a vacuum.  In
> such cases, the child assimilates not
> concepts but words, and he fills his memory more than his thinking. As a
> result, he ends up helpless in the face of any sensible attempt to apply
> any of
> this acquired knowledge. Essentially, this method of teaching/learning
> concepts, a purely scholastic and verbal method of teaching, which is
> condemned
> by everybody and which advocates the replacement of acquisition of living
> knowledge by the assimilation of dead and empty verbal schemes, represents
> the
> most basic failing in the field of education. (Vygotsky 1934/1994a, pp.
> 356-7)
>
>
> So – getting rid of the dummy run. On the face of it you
> have a rather interesting paradox in drama, because it looks like drama is
> entirely artificial and that the whole thing would be a dummy run – we are
> only
> pretending actually.  And we use words
> like pretend and play and in our culture it does suggest that it’s
> ephemeral
> and there’s no real work/life purpose for it…. So it seems to me we need to
> look and see what it is that makes something NOT feel like a dummy run…
> It seemed to me that one of the important aspects of not
> being a dummy run is that it matters now, we feel like its urgent now.
> (Heathcote 1993, Tape 9)
>
>
>
> Cheers
> Sue
>
>
> Dr Susan Davis
> Senior Lecturer | School of Education & the Arts | Higher Education
> Division
> CQUniversity Australia, Noosa Campus |
> PO Box 1128, Qld 4566
> P +61 (0)7 5440 7007 | X 547007 | M +61 400 000 000| E s.davis@cqu.edu.au
>
>
>
>
> On 24/02/2016 12:14 am, "Robert Lake" <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu> wrote:
>
> >​Susan Davis has published a book that weaves LSV, Dorothy Heathcote and
> >CHAT
> >into one seamless, present tense unfolding of "rolling role". If anyone
> >would like to write a review of it I can get you a copy. It has been five
> >years since Heathcote's passing and I suspect her work will become more
> >and
> >more  important in this era of standardized everything.
> >
> >*Robert Lake*
> >
> >https://www.sensepublishers.com/media/2709-learning-that-matters.pdf
> >
> >
> >For a sense of the dynamic of  Dorothy's pedagogy, scroll to about 5
> >minutes into this.
> >
> >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owKiUO99qrw
>
>


-- 

It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an object
that creates history. Ernst Boesch