kinds of learning

Judy Diamondstone (diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu)
Sun, 31 Aug 1997 13:31:21 -0400

I spent some of a much needed day off reading & ruminating over
the most recent extraordinary exchange on learning & development.
I'd like to unwrap all the intertexts & eat everything, but my
size won't permit it.

I offer here my own digest of some of the ideas about learning -
that is, social learning or co-regulation of organisms.
Two "mechanisms" of co-regulation were mentioned:

IMITATION (mimesis) [which branches into/ out of emulation...]

INDUCTION (prolepsis) where one interactant anticipates/ induces
the actions of another

One "mechanism" wasn't mentioned but might account for the
kind of systems-mixing interactions that were fruitfully discussed:

ABDUCTION ("stealing" of one thing for another use/object/activity
- like play?) - effected by way of artifacts of culture. Examples of
abduction would by renarrativising the past (stealing the past for the
present), using a broom in play as a flying machine;
Another example without identifiable agents comes to mind:
grammatical metaphor in language -- one semiotic function "steals"
from another. Abduction complicates the framing of what's
co-regulated because it transgresses functional systems & system levels.

-- More later, I hope...

Judith

Wise persons draw outlines; therefore they see well


Judith Diamondstone
* NOTE CHANGE OF AREA CODE * (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
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Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
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