[Xmca-l] Re: Re-situating funds of identity within contemporary interpretations of perezhivanie

[robsub@ariadne.org.uk]

Hi all

In the triad critical episode, reflection, catharsis, what do we mean by 
"critical"? It sounds as if it is something extraordinary, a life 
defining moment. I note the use of the word “traumatic”. But two things 
occur to me that challenge this. The first is that, in my experience, 
changes often occur through a drip by drip process. There is not any one 
episode that causes a change in perspective, but a steady gentle turning 
away from one view and towards another. A change  will result from a 
whole series of episodes and experiences. So that is a kind of 
uncountable perezhivanie, rather than a few countable perezhivanies. The 
image in my mind is of my perezhivanie as a stream with a series of 
overlays, some of which, perhaps in hindsight, can be seen as coherent 
paths towards a perceived change of identity. This is partly reflected 
in the quote from Gonzales Rey: “The human subjective processes are 
never moved by one final cause and do not represent stable contents; 
they flow in time, integrate, and unfold into different forms during the 
same experience.”

The second challege is that, in my own life, I have sometimes noticed 
afterwards that moments have become significant which did not seem so at 
the time. So, at what point does something become “critical”, and does 
it matter?

A final observation: this kind of reflection resembles Schon’s 
reflection-on-action. There must be work that compares the two, but I am 
not aware of any.

Rob

On 20/06/2018 23:25, Alfredo Jornet Gil wrote:
>
> ​Thanks for the discussion so far, Moises and Adam. And while Moises 
> (or anyone else) perhaps comes back with a more a more comprehensive 
> reaction, I was just wondering about Moisés question 2 and what the 
> relation between the categories "identity" and "personality" are, if 
> they can be related at all. In Vygotsky, perezhivanie is explicitly 
> linked to personality. As far as I can recall and without having gone 
> to the texts and check, Vygotsky does not use the term "identity" in 
> the sense it is used in current literature. This also leads me to 
> wonder on the distinction between *learning* (which according to 
> Moises is part what the Funds of Knowledge/Identity were designed to 
> address) and *development*. Is analytical categories, is perezhivanie 
> more about development and funds of identity more about learning? 
> Or we have to differentiate them on other grounds?
>
> Alfredo
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu 
> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Adam Poole (16517826) 
> <Adam.Poole@nottingham.edu.cn>
> *Sent:* 19 June 2018 04:14
> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re-situating funds of identity within contemporary 
> interpretations of perezhivanie
>
>
> Thanks to Moises for posting some questions about the article that I 
> would like to respond to.
>
>
> I will first include his summary and interpretation of the paper and 
> then respond to his questions.
>
>
>
> Interpretation of paper
>
> The Poole’s paper invited me to enrich the notion of funds of identity.
> Grounded in the funds of knowledge approach, the funds of identity concept
> try to intentionally reinforce the positive backgrounds and experiences of
> learners to overcome the deficit thinking in education (to sum up: by
> reducing marginalized school population to a sum of cultural, social,
> linguistic deficits). However, our experience is not only light. And in
> the dark funds of knowledge suggested by Zipin, existential funds of
> identity invite us to capture a more holistic view on people’s experience.
> In my opinion, deep learning (meaningful, significant learning) is based
> on the recognition and transformation of learners’ identities. This
> assertion, that would be one of my working hypothesis, assumes three
> theoretical principles: (1) that human identities are culturally-situated
> and distributed (geographical funds of identity, cultural funds of
> identity, institutional funds of identity and so on); (2) that there is a
> constitutive link between learning and identity (as so many scholars
> suggested and developed) and (3) that meaning (significant experience)
> plays an important role as a learning generator. Here in mind, I would
> like to share three questions or topics that can help us to understand the
> Adam Poole’s paper, in particular, and further advance our
> conceptualization on contemporary topics as perezhivanie, in general.
>
>
> Questions
>
>
> 1)        Do you think that existential funds of identity should be
> considered as a type of funds of identity? In other words, should be 
> incorporated into the prior classification into geographical, 
> practical, institutional, cultural and social funds of identity? Or 
> may be should be considered as a “re-theorization” of funds of identity?
>
>
> This is a question that I have been struggling with for some time. 
> When I initially uncovered existential funds of identity I considered 
> to be more than a type of funds of identity. I couldn't see how it 
> related to the five categories that you proposed, as to me the type of 
> identity being described was more internal or meditative. However, the 
> more I researched into the funds of identity concept and its 
> theoretical underpinnings, the more I came to question this 
> conclusion. Firstly, funds of identity, as I understand it, is 
> predicated upon a synthesis of macro and micro-level approaches to 
> culture - that is, identity is embedded in artefacts and social 
> practices and therefore is distributed in nature. However, to bring in 
> the concept of perezhivanie, individuals construct new identities from 
> the social identities that surround them. In contrast, I initially 
> understood existential funds of identity as largely phenomenological 
> in nature. However, on reflection, I realised that issues to do with 
> identity confusion, relationship problems, etc, are social in nature.
>
>
> So, existential funds of identity should be seen as a complement to 
> funds of identity, rather than a re-theorisation of it. Most 
> significantly, it can be used to show how negative experiences can be 
> drawn on in order to bring about positive pedagogical outcomes.
>
>
> However, I would be interested to know if anyone else thinks that 
> existential funds of identity complements or contradicts the concept 
> developed by Moises.
>
>
>
> 2)        How we could link the concepts of identity and perezhivanie?
>
>
> Good question! For me. identity is an open-ended process that is both 
> personal and social in nature. For this reason, perezhivanie is a 
> really useful concept to bring this relationship into focus. Firstly, 
> it shows how development is the result of the dialectical relationship 
> between the mind and the environment. This relates to identity in a 
> big way, as it suggests that identity is quite fluid: we are different 
> people indifferent times and across different contexts. Perezhivanie 
> is relevant here as it helps to explain the way individuals relate 
> differentially to their environments. In relation to my teaching, I 
> have found that students do not embody fixed identities that they take 
> with them from class to class, but construct new identities in 
> response to their classes - the teacher, the students, the subject. To 
> draw upon, and extend Thompson and Hall's (2008) metaphor of 'virtual 
> school bags of knowledge' - students do not only bring one school bag 
> with them, but have many different bags from which they draw in the 
> construction, and performance, of their classroom identities.
>
>
> This realisation leadme to question the role of labelling that you 
> often find in staff rooms - this is the 'difficult' student, this is 
> the 'gifted' student, etc. By observing students' behaviour in other 
> classes, I realised that there was something going on between the 
> students and their environments - hence the link between identity and 
> perezhivanie. Rather than engaging with the imposed label (that really 
> says more about our deficit thinking than the students themselves) we 
> should engage with the students' lived experiences of their social 
> world - both positive and negative.
>
>
> 3)        One of the aims of funds of identity is to develop an approach
> to the construct “identity” that had educational implications. What 
> are the
> educational/pedagogical implications of the existential funds of identity?
>
>
> This is a bit more of a complicated one! I do agree with your 
> assertion that drawing upon minoritised students' negative or 
> problematic experiences could lead to the reproduction of deficit 
> thinking. However, I do think that if handled ethically, teachers can 
> draw upon both light and dark funds of identity in order to valorise 
> the whole child and their social worlds. So pedagogically, existential 
> funds of identity can help to develop 'thick' stranded relationships 
> between teachers and students. Moreover, it can also bridge the gap 
> between the classroom and home by acknowledging that life and 
> individual experiencing is complex and multi-layered, often involving 
> critical moments that are ambivalent in nature. I have to say that 
> this approach may not be appropriate for younger learners. I had in 
> mind adolescent learners when I developed the idea of existential 
> funds of identity.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Adam
>
>
>
>
>
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