Hi Kevin,
I think you've made a good distinction between questioning and interpreting,
but let me push my puzzlement a bit farther. I think that most of the time
we see the world as making perfectly good sense. We certainly ARE
interpreting but from our point of view we are seeing things as they
'really' are. I, at least, only get the sense that I am interpreting when
something unexpected occurs or when I make a conscious decision to take a
fresh look at a situation that seems familiar to me (a kind of semiotic
consciousness). And I don't think it is just a matter of "inner
contradictions" as I understand the term so far. Contradictions are also a
part of what "makes sense" to me. Contradictions pre se don't surprise me.
So I'm still looking for that dynamic force that promotes movement and
change. Perhaps I will find it in Seattle next week?
djc
-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Rocap [mailto:krocap@csulb.edu]
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 1:20 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: Chapter 1 and New Introduction
Dear Don et al,
Thank you for starting us off Don.
I like your questions and see a wrinkle to them in the reading that I'd
like to note. The questioning of practice that you raise Don and that
YE does sounds like a volitional act - a "question authority" kind of
act. And, I imagine that may definitely be the impetus for expansion in
some cases. But I am also struck by YE's mention of Vygotsky's "method
of dual simulation."
He writes in the New Intro (p. 6, in my print-out): "the crucial idea
here is that a task is never just the task the experimenter designed.
It is always interpreted and reconstructed by the subject by means of
his or her internalized 'psychological instruments' that cannot be
strictly controlled from the outside."
It seems to me these acts of interpretation, reconstruction and/or
misprision are as fertile for expansion as any active/volitional
questioning of the practice may be. I have seen this often in designing
and implementing professional development for teachers. The "making
sense" of the the implementation by participants may itself expand the
learning and send the practice off in new directions.
So do questioning and interpreting go hand-in-hand? And a partial
answer to Don's query, that I am suggesting, is that it may not be an
issue of "knowing what is wrong" as an impetus to choosing a path of
expansion, but that "making sense," active interpretation of a task may
itself lead to new expansions (without any volitional assessment of
wrongness).
How does this questioning and interpreting fit together? I'm also
interested in hearing about questioning that is more in the challenging
(wrongness-seeking mode), rather than the interpreting vein, as I read
Don. Is "challenge" implied in questioning, or is the questioning YE
describes simply the active process of interpretation? YE relates the
quotation Don provided to Latour's actor-network theory as well, so
perhaps someone can illuminate whether the "stepwise construction of new
forms of collaborative practice" requires an assessment of wrongness, or
a "rebellion" or "break" from established practice, as such, or can be
an process of active (actor?) interpretive practices. Thanks.
In Peace,
K.
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