Hi all
This generic activity discussion IS an interesting one. While we're at it,
let me take it in the direction of the writer -- I am thinking in the
context of present-day educational activities where writing functions as
mediator of changes in the writer. So I'm not objecting to anything anybody
entered into this thread, just looking at another angle. I think it was
Helen's mentioning of textbooks, together with Peter J's exemplification
with texts of science as sources of scientific knowledge, that turned my
mind in this direction.
At 08.56 +0100 0-04-18, Helen Beetham scrobe:
>We can perhaps take from this the idea that a written 'text' is both the
>product of a specific authorial activity (which itself is a historically and
>culturally mediated activity) and a particular kind of mediating artefact.
>If we think of the novel or textbook as the archetype of the 'text' then the
>mediated activity is less obvious
At 17.40 +0100 0-04-17, Peter JONES\(SCS\ scrobe:
>The same is true, surely, of scientific
>texts or works. Let's say we're talking about understanding the relations
>between time, speed and distance in physics and the equations that express
>those relations, as given in a scientific text. We can learn the equations and
>verbal definitions of the concepts off by heart, of course. But, as Gordon
>says, this kind of activity - the test-orientated amassing of verbally
>expressed knowledge doesn't lead to the kind of understanding we are talking
>about (and advocating).
Education is a peculiar activity, in that it's societal object is to
produce a change (called learning, understanding, skill, etc.) in some of
the participating subjects (called pupils, students, trainees etc.) -- I
mean, it's not like education produces hamburgers or cars (except in rare
cases). (It's another matter, that few if any of the participants will
openly regard the "processed" students as the "product" of the activity).
Education DOES produce populations of changed individuals -- though the
nature of the change may not be immediately obvious: one part of the
business of educational researchers is to care about the quality of these
changes, the effectivity of the production, about the societal relevance of
the resulting changes, and about the ethics and humanity of the practices
of educational activity.
The genres of writing we practice (and keep practicing) do change us quite
irreversibly. I would say it is so, whether we are elementary school
children learning to write and read, or undergoing the process of writing
practices at other educational levels levels or in other forms of writing
-- whether what we are put to do is to scribe squiggles in multiple choice
boxes, to write third-grade science logs on time measuring devices, to jot
down diagrams and equations as a temporary (soon erased or revised)
mediator in a study group session of physics majors doing homework
problems, or all the writing in the set of genres a grad student is milled
through in order to be an authorized scholar or scientist. At no stage
there is any going back -- unless a brain damage erases some of the changes
wrought by the writing activities we have been subjected in. Or unless we
practice antidotal forms of writing heavily enough to over-write the traces
of the more damaging practices of the written word.
Well, it looks as if I'm going to run out of steam or time before I've
written halfway to where I thought I was going. So I would just like to tip
down on my keyboard some words about the physics majors that Jan Nespor
writes about in *Knowledge in Motion. Space, Time and Curriculum in
Undergraduate Physics and Management* (Falmer Press, 1994). Nespor, being
an anthropologist, found that he could not 'read' physics textbooks as he
read other books... but nor coould the students -- the
texts-cum-equations&diagrams of physics is a quite different genre of
reading and writing from fiction or anthropology. It is read and written in
generic ways, and learning the genres of physics takes a thorough
remoulding of the reader/writer. As the taking of lecture notes and the
problem solving sessions showed Nespor, learning physics, means learning to
employ equations and diagrams as mobile, transformable, texts mediating the
problem solving activity. (This local activity, BTW, turns on converting
unsolved problems -- instances of "physics" -- into solved ones, thence
"physics" is the object of the activity). He notes that in order to be able
to follow the turns in the jotted-text-mediated discussions between the
students in their problem solving sessions he would have had to BECOME a
physics major, instead of being an anthropologist fieldworking among
physics majors. Nespor also gives his readers a pretty good idea of the
immersion in the activities of undergraduate physics that it takes to carry
through the whole process of becoming a fledgling physicist -- basically
those who make it spend most of their waking hours practicing the tools and
genres of the field = working hard on undergoing the process of change,
which as a process is heavy on the specialized genres of written
mathematics.
wondering what has become of me through writing :-)
Eva
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