[Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: [New post] Why generations?

Fri Nov 27 13:03:20 PST 2020

Great post, Zaza. Thanks.
And quite relatable, including the risk/reward part.

On Friday, November 27, 2020, Zaza Kabayadondo <zaza.kabayadondo@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I follow a lot of the discussions on xmca but rarely post. Despite many
> very warm invitations from Mike and others, I have only posted on this
> forum 3 times since joining in 2014. I read about 80% of the threads.
>
> So to the question, "isn't any adult xmca member allowed to type..."
> here's are my thoughts:
>
> I'm a millennial so I have been observing online discussion forum blowouts
> since I was about 16. People who look like me (black, female, immigrant)
> get trolled online all the time. I'm not saying xmca has trolls but I've
> become conditioned to worry about the risks of posting in any online forum.
> As a general rule it is safer not to get sucked in - to watch but not to
> get blood on my hands. I am only an active poster in groups where I trust
> the members and feel safe in, even when I don't know all the members. So
> what I asked myself what is it about xmca that makes me feel like I have to
> be super careful about what I post? What makes this group feel "unsafe" or
> "toxic". In other words, what makes it feel *risky* to post something on
> xmca? Below I've listed the 5 risks that I worry about. There are more,
> certainly, but I picked just the first few to start and paired them with
> some design questions I think we should be asking about how to design the
> community we want here.
>
> 1. "What is the context for this post? I think I get it but are we talking
> about the same thing?"
> *The design question we can ask ourselves**:* What can we do to provide
> better context, in a way that invites more members to add to an original
> post?
>
> 2. "I'm only marginally familiar with this topic, I'm curious but I won't
> ask questions but I don't have the energy to be "schooled" on this today." *The
> design questions we can ask ourselves:* How can we be argumentative,
> informative, without being toxic? What is the best way to engage novices
> and experts in this topic?
>
> 3. "Who else is out there, reading this? I don't know who I'm talking to
> except the 5 or so active members"
> *The design question we can ask ourselves:* What can we do as a community
> to learn more about each other, our work, and our domains of focus or ways
> of applying CHAT.
>
> 4. "If I post this will it turn into a long and laborious (unpleasant)
> email exchange? Am I ready for a fight in this space?"
> *The design question we can ask ourselves:* How do we bring critique
> without criticism? How do we sustain conversation without putting the
> burden on only the original poster?
>
> 5. "Dude, I don't read or speak Russian so I have nothing to say about the
> translation from the original."
> *The design question we can ask ourselves: *How do we get around the
> challenges of casual and virtual engagement; and the challenge of not
> knowing who this community is or if what I (each of us) can contribute will
> be valuable to the community.
>
> So this is why, for me, it's not so straightforward to say anyone can
> post. I'd love to see what other "risks" people have perceived. I'd also
> love to be part of doing something about addressing them, because I do
> think this forum has the potential to be an incredible community for more
> than just a handful of members.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 12:35 PM Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Um, isn't any adult xmca member allowed to type what he or she wishes and
>> then click the Send button?
>>
>> This talk of stifling, excluding, suppressing, etc is confusing to me.
>>
>> Maybe this is something only someone on the left can understand?
>>
>> If people want to post a comment, question, remark, new topic, etc, they
>> should just do it. Who cares if it's not automatically received with open
>> arms or agreement?  Isn't that half the fun?
>>
>> Is there really that much pressure and/or backstabbing in academia?
>> Shouldn't the accomplishment of reaching that level come with the freedom
>> to speak openly? As one on the outside, I guess I'm naive to these
>> pressures. But nonetheless, they seem really counterproductive to me.
>>
>> Naively (I suppose),
>>
>> Anthony
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Friday, November 27, 2020, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Great to see your voice, Phillip. Its been a while.
>>> I, too, have been thinking about the long history of xmca's inability to
>>> create a level and welcoming playing field. I mourn
>>> the days when Mary Bryson, Susanne Castell and Eva Ekblad would conduct
>>> pointed lessons for those participating in the discussion
>>> for their utter blindness to issues of gender. And we have seen the
>>> correctness of Foucault's reminder of our inability to know
>>> with any certainty the effects of our speech actions too often to
>>> enumerate. Being "put on the spot," as you say, is a clear example of a
>>> discourse practice that discourages participation from those who are
>>> intimidated for fear of being seen as misguided or of offending some
>>> senior person who will, one day, be writing a letter of recommendation
>>> for a scarce job.
>>>
>>> So I, too, welcomed all of Arturo's notes and those over everyone else.
>>> The crack in American society opened up by the BLM, Metoo,
>>> covid disruption, television of police murders, ...... has brought us
>>> the presence of young scholars sympathetic to, but critical of, Vygotsky
>>> and the
>>> tradition we refer to as CHAT. They are also scholars who are adept in,
>>> and leaders in, the use of digital media for reorganizing educational
>>> practices at both the colleague and elementary school levels in a manner
>>> that does not put learners on the spot but affords a variety of desired
>>> pedagogical outcomes.
>>>
>>> Inspired by the elderly voices who remember that this problem did not
>>> spring out of the ether, but is baked into the way that xmca and
>>> before it xlchc, developed-- against the explicit wishes and designs of
>>> its creators.
>>>
>>> At the following link in the lchcautobio you will find a report, written
>>> in 1992 by two former post-docs at lchc about the beginnings of xlchc, its
>>> transformation into xmca as a way amplify the feedback that xmca authors
>>> received (this only worked well a couple of times, precisely because of
>>> the issues being raised here for the past week).
>>>
>>> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/XLCHC-PDFs/Finkelstein-Gack_Seeds-of-XLCHC.pdf
>>>
>>> There you will see all of the problems that we encountered when LCHC
>>> tried to expand beyond the face to face practices in order to keep
>>> former students, post-docs, and visitors in touch with each other on a
>>> working basis as a way to work around the discriminatory institutional
>>> that restricted our ability to maintain an integrated collective. A lot
>>> of smart, experienced, people tried  (Yro, Jim Wertch, ...It failed, as we
>>> are witnessing.
>>> Time for the next generation to join the discussion.
>>>
>>> Like Phillip, I feel I have written enough, probably too much.
>>>
>>> thanks for reading this far if you have!
>>> stay safe. take care
>>> mike  😷
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I, personally, have been lectured regularly by colleagues who lament,
>>> xmca's failure to overcome its white male, gender-blind
>>> bias
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 9:40 AM White, Phillip <
>>> Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> dear Everyone:
>>>>
>>>> thinking over all of the posts as an aggregate, rather that
>>>> individually referencing them, regarding marginalization of xmca members,
>>>> i'm reminded that this has been a topic over the last twenty-five years,
>>>> that i've noticed.  only this time, the response is different in both
>>>> quality and quantity, as well as introducing shared tools of analysis -
>>>> which in my mind i believe is in part due to BLM activism, and certainly a
>>>> newer and younger generation of colleagues here on xmca with a mindful use
>>>> of our shared professional ethnographic tools. which i appreciate, greatly.
>>>>
>>>> as any native english speaker knows, the term - to put someone on the
>>>> spot - elicits the synonyms:
>>>> embarass - humiliate - shame - inhibit - tease - degrade - crush -
>>>> wither - show up.
>>>>
>>>> if the intention was to praise the student, why then weren't words of
>>>> praise - for example: "Thank you for that question.  I myself have wondered
>>>> about that evolution."
>>>>
>>>> i'm reminded of Foucault: People know what they do; frequently they
>>>> know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they
>>>> do does."
>>>>
>>>> in Brandon Taylor's novel Real Life, the narrator notes that in social
>>>> gatherings when a white person makes a casually racist comment to a person
>>>> of color, the whites remain silent, preferring not to move out of their own
>>>> comfort level.  really, nothing was lost in translation.
>>>>
>>>> from my perspective, there is too much protection here on xmca of both
>>>> white fragilities, as well as white hetero-normative male fragility.  and
>>>> one way to work around this is practice - i humbly suggest - is that those
>>>> who self-identify as CIS white male could begin to point out points of view
>>>> that support white hetero-normative supremacy.  the burden for this should
>>>> not be placed on those already socially marginalized.
>>>>
>>>> i'm reminded that in a class i taught for those working to get their
>>>> master's degree in education, that when i would assign Bryant Keith
>>>> Alexander's "(Re)Visioning the Ethnographic Site: Interpretive Ethnography
>>>> as a Method of Pedagogical Reflexivity and Scholarly Production" - in which
>>>> Alexander used the metaphor of pedagogy as drag - i would get blow-back
>>>> from some students complaining that since they had no personal contacts
>>>> with gay men, much-less gay men in drag, that they should not have to read
>>>> the ethnography.  my response was that since they had no experience, this
>>>> was a good way to start since they had no knowledge of who their students
>>>> were, or their parents.  Yet within their classroom, or school community
>>>> they worked in, there very well could be these life experiences.
>>>>
>>>> i'm feeling that i've written enough - this is such a richly complex
>>>> topic.
>>>>
>>>> and so i'm grateful for Arturo's inadvertently public response - it was
>>>> illuminating.
>>>>
>>>>  phillip
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> I[image: Angelus Novus]
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelus_Novus__;!!Mih3wA!S7fCXtTCVQWkCXnNSwdyFfFitd3dB8EuTUKFK0sSSJdSy8_M6BJohNdCkFQYltd7V6VOEQ$>The
>>> Angel's View of History
>>>
>>> The organism, by its life activities, creates what is outside.  So
>>> organisms create the conditions of their own future
>>> which is different from their past" Richard Lewontin
>>>
>>> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!UfBIAxztDRfLvu1xAR5iSyDH09yTvqMF8a6f14bDD_2lSVHI-QpBh_7OMpYOwvmRVEn3fA$ 
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!S7fCXtTCVQWkCXnNSwdyFfFitd3dB8EuTUKFK0sSSJdSy8_M6BJohNdCkFQYltd1dis3rA$>
>>> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://re-generatingchat.com__;!!Mih3wA!S7fCXtTCVQWkCXnNSwdyFfFitd3dB8EuTUKFK0sSSJdSy8_M6BJohNdCkFQYltesckucQg$>
>>> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu.
>>> Narrative history of LCHC:  lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
> --
> To schedule up a 30 minute call using Calendly: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://calendly__;!!Mih3wA!UfBIAxztDRfLvu1xAR5iSyDH09yTvqMF8a6f14bDD_2lSVHI-QpBh_7OMpYOwvnYjyyshw$ .
> com/with-zaza
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://calendly.com/with-zaza__;!!Mih3wA!XqyD32PqUjrECjiznbMVU0BJd3EV7WR_MpV6AorPmT9jGyRTOd3p228sBZf1TP7e_DD-Hw$>
>
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