[Xmca-l] Re: Heathcote and Immagination

[Ed Wall]

Mike

     I’m not entirely positive which discussion you are referring below, but, although I probably have it, I don’t have it pulled out.

     Also I’m not entirely sure what questions you say are left hanging; questions sometimes have a way of being answered (smile).

      Interesting you mention Maxine Greene as, in a way, what I consider as the most relevant of her writings here was early and titled “The Teacher as Stranger.” However, that is my perspective on these things.

       I’m not quite ready for "drama and imagination" although I would be fine, in the interim, with "teacher and imagination.”

       I have, perhaps, a few things of interest to say in my reply to Susan which I will get to later today.

Ed

> On Feb 29, 2016, at  7:53 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> 
> Seems like the section on imagination you mention, Susan, fits right in
> with that thread of xmca discussion. Linking drama and imagination seems
> essential to me and you mention several who have done so effectively. You
> also remind me to go back and re-read Maxine Greene! Now I am further
> behind than ever. Better stop reading. :-)
> 
> Ed, do you have that discussion pulled out and re-examined. It left a LOT
> of questions unanswered.
> 
> Maybe we need a header called drama and imagination?
> 
> If so, I vote we add Raymond Williams to the discussion.
> mike
> 
> On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 12:39 PM, Susan Davis <s.davis@cqu.edu.au> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Ed
>> 
>> Both Vygotsky and Heathcote both understood that the work of the
>> imagination is not only an individual mental exercise but in inspired by
>> and is expressed through interactions with others, conceptual tools and
>> ultimately material means and artefacts.
>> 
>> I think Vygotksy described the different ways imagination worked very well
>> indeed and I have summarised that in the book. Some key quotes from him
>> include:
>> Everything the imagination creates is always based on elements taken from
>> reality, from a person’s previous
>> experience. The most fantastic creations are nothing other than a new
>> combination of elements that have ultimately been extracted from reality.
>> (p. 13)
>> 
>> The first law of creativity: The
>> act of imagination depends directly on the richness and variety of a
>> person’s
>> previous experience because this experience provides the material from
>> which
>> the products of creativity are constructed. The richer a person’s
>> experience,
>> the richer is the material his imagination has access to. Great works and
>> discoveries are always the result of an enormous amount of previously
>> accumulated experience. The implication of this for education is that, if
>> we
>> want to build a relatively strong foundation for a child’s creativity,
>> what we
>> must do is broaden the experiences we provide him with.(pp. 14-15)
>> 
>> 
>> The right kind of education
>> involves awakening in the child what already exists within him, helping
>> him to
>> develop it and directing this development in a particular direction. (p.
>> 51)
>> –Vygotsky,
>> L. (2004) “Imagination and creativity in childhood.” Journal of Russian
>> and Was tEuropean PsychologyVol. 42 No. 1.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> This work recognises therefore that to inspire imagination means ‘feeding’
>> the imagination and it is therefore the teacher’s responsibility to work
>> with children and bring in various tools, processes and provocations that
>> will draw them into creative processes.
>> 
>> In terms of working in drama I think the notion of the social imagination
>> comes into play (though that is a term more closely associated with Maxine
>> Green) and collectively a group creates something together - something
>> that did not exist previously and which would not exist in the same form
>> if created individually.  In that sense it is helpful to draw on the
>> language of improvised drama to understand the process -  someone
>> generally makes an ‘offer’ to begin the imaginative exploration,
>> practically speaking in embodied action it can be a physical or verbal
>> offer.  Multiple offers can at times be made but one has to be accepted,
>> and then extended upon. This process keeps going and as those who have
>> studied improvised drama knows, the key is then to draw the threads
>> together and find an appropriate conclusion.  Now what this means in
>> practice is a fluid interplay of power shifts as people forfeit their
>> right to have their every idea accepted (which is unworkable), trusting
>> that if they go with the one that is on the table or seems to ‘grab’
>> people,  they will be able to contribute and that the outcome will be
>> something that they are a part of and will be worthwhile. That is social
>> imagination in action. Decisions are often made in the moment - not after
>> exhaustive dialogue - although reflection on what has gone on and been
>> created often occurs afterwards. This is especially the case if you were
>> to be devising a new work. The whole process has to be underpinned by a
>> sense of trust and a belief that as a group the give and take of the
>> process will generate something that has been worth the effort. It doesn’t
>> always, but that is often part of the educational process with children
>> and participants - 'what do you feel worked, what didn’t, what offers
>> ended up proving fruitful, were there ‘blocks’ that we couldn’t work
>> around?  If we did it again what would you change?’ and so on. (see some
>> of Keith Sawyer’s work on improvisation for more insights on how these
>> processes work and why he believes improvised theatre is perhaps the
>> highest form of creativity)
>> 
>> It is writerly in Barthes sense in that while a ‘text' has often been
>> initiated, it is deliberately left unfinished and the participants must
>> make imaginative leaps, connections and new solutions to be able to
>> complete the text or dramatic encounter. What is also interesting in a
>> drama process is that you can play it multiple times, from different
>> perspectives and something different can be revealed each time.  In Boal’s
>> work with forum theatre people from an audience and the disenfranchised
>> are also invited to step up and take on a role within a version (as
>> spectactors), therefore finding ways to shift power dynamics and to
>> explore alternative solutions.
>> 
>> 
>> I hope this is of interest.
>> Cheers
>> Sue
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 1/03/2016 4:58 am, "Ed Wall" <ewall@umich.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> Susan
>>> 
>>>    Coming a little late to this conversation and thinking about your
>>> comments last July on Vygotsky and imagination, I was wondering if any of
>>> that played a large role in your book. In particular and if so, how did
>>> Heathcote, one might say, pragmatically theorize imagination? It seems,
>>> given, what you have written in the present thread that she seems to have
>>> created moments through a stance that "respected and worked with the
>>> material they offered, drawing out significance, considering the
>>> implications and working dialogically with very alternative views from
>>> her own.” This, in some of the literature, is indicative of an
>>> imaginative ‘leap’ that is stabilized in the ‘waking state.’ In a sense,
>>> the moment becomes, in somewhat the sense of Barthes, ‘writeable.'
>>> 
>>> Ed Wall
>>> 
>>>> On Feb 24, 2016, at  5:32 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-praxi
>>>> s/
>>>> 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
>>>> 
>>>> <default.xml>
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an object
> that creates history. Ernst Boesch