On reading this Cynic might have retorted:
>Fine, so now at last Jean Lave is re-introducing good old
>transfer into her theoretical system to get it in working order.
While Besserwisser would remark:
>As was obvious from the start: when situated learning is the
>phenomenological primitive, the theoretically interesting problem
>will be how the practices learned travel from one situation to another.
>We all have the commonsense experience that it happens. I'm surprised
>that it should take so long to integrate this phenomenon into SitCog
>theory.
Now calm down, you guys: *Theory*Takes*Time*
Get serious and listen:
At 11.07 -0700 97-07-29, Mike Cole wrote:
> In the "schooling as transmitting cultural capital" view,
>we are talking about intergenerational "transfer." In the usual
>ed psych literature on transfer, we are usually talking about a
>person who learns something in one setting (like a classroom or
>a hands on session with Dienes blocks) and then uses what is learned
>there to deal with some later problem.
>
> These are not generally considered the same problem by psycho-
>logists. Should they be?
Well they do seem to be related as parts of the same BIG problem of how
practices travel between situations. So in case there is a reconsideration
of this whole problem area on our agenda it may be time to try some hands
at a mapping of relevant categories and relations.
Then both "transmission" and "transfer" carry pretty heavy connotational
loads of "transport" of diamond-hard primitives. Perhaps they can still be
purged in a process of clarificatory discussion? Converted into Gibsonian
"invariances under transformation"? Inspired by "translation" in a
Latourean sense (detours in a network of human and nonhuman actants)? Or
"translation" in the way of George Steiner (between situations in analogy
to between languages)?
Eva
Eva.Ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se