Hi Bill, with reference to your comments about the complexities of a
simultaneous transformation study, I would like to point you and
anyone else interested to two different studies, one among grade 8
students [1], one in a class of grade 4-5 students [2], where we have
done such work, and also written about the complexities of doing such
work. For example, tracing the emergence of knowledge and how it
becomes shared.
[1] Roth, W.-M., & Bowen, G. M. (1995). Knowing and interacting: A
study of culture, practices, and resources in a grade 8 open-inquiry
science classroom guided by a cognitive apprenticeship metaphor.
Cognition and Instruction, 13, 73-128.
[2] Roth, W.-M. (1998). Designing communities. Dordrecht,
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishing.
Two partial studies from [2] were reported as:
Roth, W.-M. (1996). Knowledge diffusion* in a grade 4-5 classroom
during a unit on civil engineering: An analysis of a classroom
community in terms of its changing resources and practices. Cognition
and Instruction, 14, 179-220.
Roth, W.-M. (1995). Inventors, copycats, and everyone else: The
emergence of shared (arti)facts and concepts as defining aspects of
classroom communities. Science Education, 79, 475-502.
which should be read as companion studies.
Cheers, Michael
>At 1:18 PM -0800 12/29/00, Mike Cole quoted Michelle Minnis and Vera
>John-Steiner:
>>Considered alone, activity theory is masterful in the social
>>domain. It is most convincing when it is focused on activity
>>systems in teams and organizations. But it does
>>not resolve well at the level of the individual person. We miss in
>>this collected work the documentation of simultaneous
>>transformations in activity systems and in
>>individual actors in these systems. There is only one instance of
>>that in Perspectives, the longitudinal study by Bujarski,
>>Hildebrand-Nilshon, and Kordt.
>
>After some growing frustration trying to locate the book, not upon
>the bookshelf, not under the bed, and so on, it appeared in a
>private place, located next to "steps to an ecology...", and "the
>self in social interaction" -- in good company.
>
>I see (and am living) the complexities of a simultaneous
>transformations study. These are: 1) Orientational Vacuum. The
>activity systems framework puts a highly useful perspective on
>social/technological interactions, as Vera points out, yet it seems
>the coordination with models of individual transformations remains
>to be completed. Semiotic ecology my provide a manageable step in
>this direction. Alfred's diagrammatic approach bridges to other
>people and things and functionally lends itself to revealing
>punctuations in ecological interactions.
>
>2) Historical dearth of Field Interest/Problematic Focus. The
>literature does not seem to indicate a great amount of intellectual
>interest in co-development, and there are exceptions of course --
>Bronfenbrenner's, and separately Clotilde Pontecorvo's, studies of
>families are two that jump to mind. My own interest I can date to
>about 1994 when an aera symposium proposal with Denis Newman and
>John Clement was well received, in contradiction to the interest
>apparent in the literature. There are near misses almost everywhere
>however, and the following examples are not condemnations, but
>simply examples of some things coming close. Luria's study of the
>mnemonist started in the 20's and in a 1935 account (perhaps a
>decade later) the subject states "I know that i have to be on guard
>if I'm not to miss something. What I do now is to make my images
>larger..." --- Is this the influence of Luria's study of memory on
>the eidetic development of the subject?? Perhaps during the 10
>years of tests on the subjects synethesia and memory, the subject
>began adapting more advanced techniques, trying to do better -- and
>surely Luria's tests responded in turn? Is also the subject's
>eventual life trajectory to the occupation as mnemonist the
>influence of Luria's study that drew a long-term attention to his
>memory? Would the subject have instead stayed a reporter, or
>perhaps moved to being an editor? A second example, Joe Polman's
>book, a case study of a teacher attempting project based science,
>does not fully describe the simultaneous transformations in the
>author, in the school (if any), and in the perhaps highly
>influential CoVis project -- but this would have added many years
>and volumes to his dissertation. I see in L*'s paper on boundary
>objects the co-development of a natural history museum and its
>principal scientist (and also the benefactor perhaps), yet the one
>focus of the paper, as research papers are compelled to be focused,
>is on the presentation of the concept of boundary object. It is not
>as if the data w
> for example, around fifth dimension studies, together with the
>research reports, the web sites, and so on, forming
>auto-bio-ethnographies with the completeness one endeavors to reach
>when attempting to document the co-development of individual(s) and
>system(s).
>
>3) Expanse of Field work. Possibly the root cause of (2) is the the
>difficulty of the study: pulling together a multifaceted,
>multiply-focussed (not one unit of analysis but many) study that
>spans co-development, longitudinally across people, things, and
>social structures and processes, balancing comprehensiveness with
>depth. This is no low-hanging fruit. Many professional and
>personal pressures and barriers militate against engaging in this
>kind of work. Barker et al. were almost there, but were missing
>(1) a theoretical framework of the dynamics. Consequently, their
>data is too much a static re-presentation, revealing the
>complexities and interdependencies of person-and-milieu in behavior,
>but not well capturing their changes over time.
>
>Who's to blame?
>
>
>--
>Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
>Lesley University
>29 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
>Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
>http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
>_______________________
>"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
> and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
>[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
------------------------------------------------------ Wolff-Michael Roth Lansdowne Professor Applied Cognitive Science MacLaurin Building A548 Tel: (250) 721-7885 University of Victoria FAX: (250) 472-4616 Victoria, BC, V8W 3N4 Email: mroth@uvic.ca http://www.educ.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/ ----------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 27 2004 - 11:29:00 PST