David Kirshner
Louisiana State University
On Wed, 24 Dec 1997 09:01:21 -0800 (PST) Ellice A Forman said:
>Dear David and Vera and others,
>I have been reading your discussion of sociocultural approaches to
>education (especially math education) with interest although I've been too
>busy to respond (or even to read messages in a timely manner). As Vera
>knows, Paul Cobb and Erna Yackel have often used my work in their
>arguments against the so-called social determinism of the sociocultural
>approach. In my opinion, that position is useful for their argument (that
>two approaches to understanding learning in context need to be
>applied--one constructivist and one "situated" or symbolic interactionist.
>But it distorts the sociocultural position. On the other hand, I enjoy
>debating with both of them (and with their colleagues such as Terry Wood)
>because there is more in common than dissimilar about our work and I find
>I learn a lot from all of them.
>
>Like Vera, I have been involved in studying collaborative problem-solving
>from a sociocultural perspective for more than 20 years. I agree with Vera
>that collaboration involves "complementarity" and "the dynamics of
>co-construction". This is discussed in a recent publication (with Jorge
>Larreamendy-Joerns) in Cognition and Instruction (1995, vol 13, no. 4). In
>that paper we argued that expertise is emergent and socially
>constructed--so the idea that there are merely horizontal or vertical
>interactions (peer vs. expert-novice) is called into question.
>
>On another topic, I would like to congratulate David for a terrific book
>on Situated Cognition (which he edited with James Whitson). I've been
>enjoying many of the chapters in it--particularly the ones by Valerie
>Walkerdine (much clearer than many of her earlier books, papers) and by
>Cobb et al. and the introduction which makes some interesting connections
>and contrasts with the introduction in the book I co-edited, Contexts for
>Learning (which was more influenced by Jean Lave's work than it might
>appear since she was involved in the AERA symposium that was the basis for
>the book and was a big influence on the thinking of all three editors).
>
>Ellice Forman
>University of Pittsburgh
>