Reading would appear to be a system in which various cognitive processes
come together which as a system would have more depth and generalizability.
I would assume the same would be true with activities in other cultural
activities such as making pottery, or the taxicab example Mike discusses in
*Cultural Psychology*. As the Gee articles that I have read lately mention
such functional systems (not his words) would include affective components
such as motivation, identification etc. He saw this in terms of discourse
and the New Litracy as he called it that relied heavily on sociocultural
(Lave, Wenger, Cole, Scribner, Wells, Wertsch etc) approaches to literacy.
Maybe Gee's citations are out of context but it would assume that
acquireing a discourse comes when a "community of practice" which would
include cognitive processes that are typical of middle childhood are in a
particular functional system. While it would be fair to say that education
has not functioned as such a system, I am not sure I would write off the
notion of schooling not being able to change cognitive processes in a deep
and general way within such a system. When those processes are in such a
system they are transformed - become more complex and are more likely to be
generalizeable. Gee makes such an argument in reference to reading if we
want students to be "readers" rather than just passing "reading tests".
Nate
----- Original Message -----
From: nate <schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Monday, July 05, 1999 7:46 PM
Subject: Re: Help requested
> Mike, thanks for making it available I found it a very interesting read.
>
> I would be interested in reactions to the following quote from Cole's
> Chapter 13.
>
> Nate
>
>
> "Overall, the picture that emerges from extensive research on schooling
> provides only minimal support for the idea that schooling changes the
> cognitive processes associated with middle childhood in any deep and
> general way. In those cases in which schooling has been found to affect
> cognitive performance, the effect appears to be restricted to rather
> specific information-processing strategies or to a specific context that
is
> relevant primarily, if not exclusively, to school itself (Cole, 1990)."
>
>