What is the age group of the students you are speaking about?
On Tue, 9 Dec 1997, Graham Nuthall wrote:
> Thank you Jay for your fascinating exploration of the implications of
> non-internalisation and non-externalisation.
>
> My way of trying to make sense of what Jay has developed is to translate it
> into my exploration of how students learn from their classroom experiences.
> I have been looking at why different students sometimes learn quite
> different things from their participation in the same activities. One
> reasos seems to be the permeability of membrane that encloses the sense of
> self (I know this has shades of dualism, but it makes sesne in this
> context). Some students interact with others as though their being was out
> there in the social interaction. They give the sense that they are what
> they are doing. Other students keep themselves a mystery. Maybe they are
> struggling with understanding, maybe they are afraid of ridicule, maybe
> there are more powerful things dominating their feelings at that time.
> When you talk with these students afterwards, those who are out there in
> the activity have acquired a great deal from the activity. Those who
> remained inside themselves may not even remember the activity at all.
> And, of course, those who do most to shape the activity, who play with it,
> make up jokes, creatively push at its boundaries, are those who are most
> openly, fully engaged in the activity.
> Which suggests that openness to internalisation is the playground of
> externalisation. That those who become the activity are those who do most
> to recreate the activity.
> Which takes my thinking back to Jay's earlier piece on the integration or
> identity of the rational/emotional. That it is in the trusting, emotional
> openness to participation with others that rationality arises. I think?
>
> So many ideas, so little time to comprehend them all!
> Graham
>
>
> Graham Nuthall
> Professor of Education
> University of Canterbury
> Private Bag 4800
> Christchurch, New Zealand
> Phone 64 03 3642255 Fax 64 03 3642418
> http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/educ/ultp.html
>
>