[Xmca-l] Re: Emotion as "Sputnik"

Wed Jun 17 11:01:51 PDT 2020

Hi David, and venerable others paying a little bit of attention,

I realize I'm come lately on this reply, as my life does exist extra-screen and off the keyboard now and then, despite sheltering in place.

Let me clarify where I got the powers of three presentations. That was from following Phillip's links to Nuthall and reading his paper, hosted at New Zealand's Leaders in Education website. Nuthall if I can accept the paper on its face, experimentally established that when the students were presented with the object of knowledge (that's my phrase) three times they came to grasp it, they learned it.

No, that's not presenting the SAME lesson three times, and I would have thought dear David you had more imagination than that. I presume you didn't read that paper, so you didn't get the reference, or rather there was a distorted reference.

That's OK that happens to me many times with you various references to papers I haven't had the chance to read.

So let me just clarify my reference.

It's the material and how it is presented, three times. For example:

Let's take "ABC" as the object to be known.

(I say "known" and not "taught" very deliberately).

If I tell you first, "I'm going to teach you ABC."

Then I say, "A is the first letter; C is the third."

Then later, "B is always in the middle."

And then I say, "And by the way, CBA is backwards."

I have basically presented the object of knowledge three times, and now you know ABC to be ABC. You have learned it.

Perhaps this example is facile, but it is intended to illustrate what Nuthall learned and was able to replicate in the classroom. He also discovered that the experience of teachers had nothing to do with good learning outcomes. Doesn't this mean there is something biological going on (not totally, but an aspect that is determined in the dynamics of learning)?

I think this makes a lot of sense because we can sometimes make out that experienced teachers are like genius artists. They were touched by the finger of God, and they just "know" how to teach students. That's a fallacy. There can be some experienced teachers who are just bad teachers repeating bad habits and producing students with bad learning outcomes.

Perhaps it's better to say that bad teachers are fantastic at maintaining the ignorance of their students.

This is not to diminish experience acquired from years of teaching, but just to point out what Nuthall learned.

There is a methodology to learning, we call it teaching, but maybe our ontology is wrong. It's really learning that we need to focus upon and its dynamics. In a sense (as in sensing) this is determined, because we are biological creatures, after all.

That is not said with intention to somehow limit us, because one of our traits as biological creatures is that WE LEARN. That's a beautiful thing.

Knowledge is basically the sunlight that we reach toward and benefit from; it nourishes us. When we reflect this knowledge we become more than what we were before.

There is an appearance (it is illusory) that what we learn is "in our heads." Just as cognition is not isolated to neuronal synapses in the brain, knowledge is not stored there either. Knowledge is "out there" and when we reflect it accurately then the object of knowledge is known. We basically become as the thing we come to know (that is, we reflect it), and then we build on that to become what I will call "better reflectors". This is what learning is.

We polish the mirror until we shine. We do not add knowledge, rather we remove ignorance.

In Sanskrit, "guru" means "one who removes ignorance." This has a very deep reference I feel is lost in the west, where, thanks to Descartes and his atoms, we see knowledge as a constructed product made of parts. As if we are essentially sharing recipes on how to make that product, passing secrets from one group to another, one generation to another, and while doing it we make some alterations that make the product *better,* which we then call technological advancement. (Have you driven a Ford lately?)

This way of rending "products of knowledge" may support capitalism more than we realize, actually.

Because we are in a universe that functions with certain laws, an apparent order, otherwise how does it all stay together and not fly apart at the seams, there is an outward structure we rely upon in rendering our cognitive strategies and their consequences. Hence distributed cognition. By outward, I mean beyond our physical bodies, though this border is permeable. I do not intend to say it is hard and immutable. There is a unification with the environment that lend itself as a means of knowledge (though perhaps I am not coming up with the right words to explain what I mean), between the person and the environment.

Isn't that what an affordance is. The person *with* the environment.

I suppose my take on all this is that we are not looking at affordances in their total manifestation. In this discussion, we seem to give purpose to culture and how it impacts thought (or minds), but then we cull culture out and then revert to (a habit of thinking about) embodied beings that are deterministic machines or computers (here we go with mutual superimposition again!), language being our software programs that run the our algorithms that produce an outcome in isolation from the environment in which we exist.

That isn't how knowledge takes place.

I maintain (and continue to do so) there is something worth knowing from the ancients. They have it right. All I'm pointing out is the science supports it, for those who are understandably skeptical.

Also forgive me, however, I thought Giacomo Rizzolatti,Giuseppe Di Pellegrino, Luciano Fadiga, Leonardo Fogassi, and Vittoria Gallese at the Univerity of Parma were the ones to discover mirror neurons in the 80s and 90s in their experimentation on Macaque monkeys?

I was not in any way referencing "Edelman's theory of re-entrant ("mirror") neurons," as David phrased it. I'm not sure what that even means, so I took to Wikipedia and searched for Edelman.

I learned that there are many Edelmans in the world, or rather in Wikipedia, (500 pages worth!). I did find a book by Shimon Edelman called "Computing the Mind: How the Mind Really Works" (2008) and wondered if that is the same Edelman.

If so, this just supports what I say above. We are just reproducing more Cartesian notions by using the computer-as-metaphor.  To make it seem more "real" we add the word "really."

It's only "really" in the sense of "real-ly" like "badly," "succinctly," or even "syrup-y" not to leave out nouns. That doesn't mean it's real. If it's not real, then it's an illusion, right?

Sometimes reading a label that says "new and improved" doesn't mean it actually is "new" or "improved."

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 14, 2020 12:43 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Emotion as "Sputnik"

  [EXTERNAL]

Annalisa and Mike:

The Good Lord loves and rewards stubborn persistence, Annalisa. I am not sure kids do, though--will they want to sit through the same presentation three times? Or do you simply mean we use three different presentations so that we can randomize the order? Of course, "sputnik" didn't mean a satellite for Vygotsky--the first Sputniks were launched just before I was born, about twenty years after Vygotsky died. When I first translated Vygotsky, I thought a "sputnik" was a kind of sattelite God, Hermes to Zeus, Hanuman to Ram, Athena to Odysseus. But I notice that Russians use "sputnik" to just mean something like "companion", a fellow traveler, or a playmate. So instead of a kind of guardian angel, emotion functions as a bosom companion, growing up as the child grows.

I have--as usual--expressed myself rather poorly, Mike. (It will amuse you greatly to learn that I am teaching Communication this term!) When I said "represent" I did mean re-present. I actually meant exactly what Annalisa is describing. The teacher presents  the task (usually a dramatic situation of some kind) to a small group of "group leaders" and they do an example before the class begins. Those group leaders then return to their groups and present the task to the groups. We did video the results, but I thought the product wasn't nearly as interesting as analyzing the process.

Phillip: Halliday thought that Edelman's view of intelligence was the real biological foundation of his linguistics. And Annalisa is right, it did have a lot to do with Edelman's theory of re-entrant ("mirror") neurons. Andy has some trouble with the determinism of Vygotsky; I have a rather different problem with his hierarchical ideas of how functions are organized in a system. Edelman's books offer a pretty clear way out of that problem!

On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 7:10 AM Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu<mailto:annalisa@unm.edu>> wrote:
David,

My stubborn persistence tells me that there is a way to bring in the dynamics of the pandemic crisis into your research design if we think about it long enough.

If emotion is the sputnik, as you reasonably hypothesize, then how can you create opportunities for sputnik to launch?

I maintain that this can be done with peer learning, because what counts is the cultural connection a student has with a peer compared to that cultural connection the student has with an instructor. Given in your description of social distancing, isn't there a way to compare and contrast learning that comes from "in person with social distancing" vis s vis learning that comes from "online learning"?

What you describe in your study is not what I was proposing. I was proposing how a student learns from a peer presenting the object of learning compared to the way a teacher might. And to use online vs in person learning venues to compare and contrast what we might call the perezhivanie in the learning moment.

If we might accept Nuthall's findings that learning happens when the underlying materials are presented at least three times, that should be a replicable structure that could bear fruit. It should be possible to determine and trace the emotional attachment that prevails in successful concept development.

How about:

  *   Have a control for presentations with underlying material offered three times (delivered via online learning?)
  *   Have a presentation with socially distant teacher presenting three times.
  *   Have a presentation with socially distant peer presenting three times.

Note the differences and similarities, as well as effectiveness and even how quickly a concept is absorbed and mastered by the learner.

What is the flaw in that design as you see it?

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com<mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>>
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2020 3:26 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Emotion as "Sputnik"

  [EXTERNAL]

Annalisa:

It's a great idea. But we are in the throes of "the dance" here in South Korea. Schools reopen. Then there's an outbreak. So the government closes schools again and we all go back into isolation for ten days. Then things reopen again, until the next outbreak. Even when schools are open, class size is greatly reduced, students are kept at least two meters apart and put in masks (we don't have those crazy hats that you see in China, but some schools use cubicles), and that would make it really hard to get peer teaching, much less collect data from peer teaching.

We did do something like what you propose way back in 2007--we just looked at the difference between the way a teacher presented the task and the way that the task was represented to groups.

Guk, I. and Kellogg, D. (2007). The ZPD and Whole Class Teaching: Teacher-led and Student-led Interactional Mediation in Tasks. Language Teaching Research 11,3 (2007); pp. 281–299

I suspect that if you read this study you will find it methodologically and even intellectually crude, particularly compared to what you propose, but for reasons I don't really understand it's the only thing we ever wrote that gets widely cited!)

Phillip:

Yes, ethnography would show precisely the kind of development we're interested in. But I think ethnography is better suited to studying stability than to studying crises. I get that crises are like anything else--they need to be highly contextured to be well textured. But because ethnography has a tendency to view the social and cultural and historical dimension exclusively through the language of the interpersonal, it's really hard to get genetic cross-sections that are broad enough and long enough to tell you how the system as a whole changes at "inflection points" (Joe Biden!) that are prepared for systematically precisely by those epochs we are naively thinking of as stable. (Ruqaiya Hasan's work was one of very few exceptions to this constraint....)

For example. One of the most important responses to the crisis revealed by George Floyd's murder has been to argue that the protests are too easily hijacked as pretexts for violence (see, for example, Boris Johnson's recent remarks on the descecration of Winston Churchill's statue in Parliament Square in London). This assumes, weirdly, a widespread tendency towards unmotivated violence that I have never actually observed in any fellow human being. I am pretty sure that Boris Johnson could probably find someone to produce ethnographic evidence that it exists, but I am equally sure that he couldn't ever produce evidence that it is systemic. Without that evidence, there is no way to predict or explain the fire next time.

Language stuff is not like this: every text is evidence of both the interpersonal and of what we are calling, non-redundantly, the socio-cultural.

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
Outlines, Spring 2020
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!T0YcAI2ZFgrcVF9YM9MLUDcb-cNp7LIOcgsmsruD3hNBinkSE-tE2qzQj3zlLHsVz7xtfg$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!WC3HFOsQ9Q1YrwAJJr6OrmYucGeF3_YdxFPBKTpboOV_8GcFMYTJ5DXB6_eP03Im5e4BWA$>
New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"
 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!T0YcAI2ZFgrcVF9YM9MLUDcb-cNp7LIOcgsmsruD3hNBinkSE-tE2qzQj3zlLHtISrhj0A$ 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WC3HFOsQ9Q1YrwAJJr6OrmYucGeF3_YdxFPBKTpboOV_8GcFMYTJ5DXB6_eP03IavHbi-w$>

On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 11:59 PM White, Phillip <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu<mailto:Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>> wrote:
rather than a test, David, perhaps a rigorous ethnography along the lines of what Graham Nuthall did -

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://researched.org.uk/graham-nuthall-educational-research-at-its-best/__;!!Mih3wA!T0YcAI2ZFgrcVF9YM9MLUDcb-cNp7LIOcgsmsruD3hNBinkSE-tE2qzQj3zlLHvwmgqSEw$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://researched.org.uk/graham-nuthall-educational-research-at-its-best/__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVv1FWd6Q$>
Graham Nuthall: Educational research at its best – researchED<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://researched.org.uk/graham-nuthall-educational-research-at-its-best/__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVv1FWd6Q$>
Graham Nuthall: Educational research at its best 26th February 2019 / in February 2019 / by Jan Tishauser. Professor Emeritus Graham Nuthall, an educational researcher from New Zealand, is credited with one of the longest series of studies of teaching and learning in the classroom that has ever been carried out. A pioneer in his field, his ...
researched.org.uk<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://researched.org.uk__;!!Mih3wA!WC3HFOsQ9Q1YrwAJJr6OrmYucGeF3_YdxFPBKTpboOV_8GcFMYTJ5DXB6_eP03Jr3xUlgw$>

it was highly complex, but clearly from his finding emotions play a key role in concept formation.

he died about 16 years ago.  and oddly enough his work is still little appreciated.

https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Pedagogy-and-assessment/Pedagogical-leadership/The-cultural-myths-and-realities-of-teaching-and-learning__;!!Mih3wA!T0YcAI2ZFgrcVF9YM9MLUDcb-cNp7LIOcgsmsruD3hNBinkSE-tE2qzQj3zlLHsxjeu4UA$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Pedagogy-and-assessment/Pedagogical-leadership/The-cultural-myths-and-realities-of-teaching-and-learning__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVKl43myA$>
The cultural myths and realities of teaching and learning / Pedagogical leadership / Pedagogy and assessment / Home - Educational Leaders<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Pedagogy-and-assessment/Pedagogical-leadership/The-cultural-myths-and-realities-of-teaching-and-learning__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVKl43myA$>
The cultural myths and realities of teaching and learning. by Graham Nuthall. Download this complete document (PDF 149 kB) Help with PDF files Overview. Graham Nuthall was Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.
https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz__;!!Mih3wA!T0YcAI2ZFgrcVF9YM9MLUDcb-cNp7LIOcgsmsruD3hNBinkSE-tE2qzQj3zlLHu6z9KcRQ$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kXD3p1_-w$>

Nuthall had participated in some of xmca conversation.

also, Gerard Edelman's work, which was the focus of an xmca conversation some time ago, points out that initials perceptions are initially sorted into one of two values - in layman's terms, like or dislike.  which is of course an emotional response.

Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind (Basic Books, 1992, Reprint edition 1993). ISBN<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN_(identifier)__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kVQcrjGHA$> 0-465-00764-3<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-465-00764-3__;!!Mih3wA!U4CMQps4MNhV4Y4qAOMoas5Dla-j0v-MYik_D63mVqMQoDdyz5QY0jZqpGwd6kWgq0yeVA$>

in short, there are many ways of exploring student emotions i'd consider to be more reliable that trustworthy than tests.

phillip
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