Dear colleagues, I have a brand-new paper (not yet published) titled 'The
horizontal dimension of expansive learning: Weaving a texture of cognitive
trails in the terrain of health care in Helsinki'. It might be relevant for
the issue Don is discussing in the message below. If anyone is interested, I
can send it to you as attachment.
Yrjo Engestrom
> From: "Cunningham, Donald" <cunningh@indiana.edu>
> Reply-To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 12:19:47 -0500
> To: "'xmca@weber.ucsd.edu'" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Subject: FW: horizontal/vertical
> Resent-From: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Resent-Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 10:20:02 -0700 (PDT)
>
>
> I'm not sure well I am articulating this concern, but here goes:
>
> Any model of learning has to contain within it an element of development. In
> other words we have to talk about how we learn more than we knew before
> and/or how we learn differently than we did earlier. As YE points out, for
> many learning theorists, particularly Gagne, development is cumulative
> learning where new learning is based upon prior learning and higher forms of
> learning are derived from simpler forms. For other theorists, we learn
> qualitatively different things in qualitatively different ways as we
> develop.
>
> I wonder how helpful the horizontal/vertical metaphor is when talking about
> learning by expanding. We all appreciate that metaphors can highlight
> certain aspects of the phenomena being compared, but also obscure or perhaps
> misrepresent other aspects. Is difference or development best expressed as
> higher or lower, broader or narrower? YE seeks to avoid "rigid one
> dimensional sequences being imposed on social reality" but are two
> dimensions any less rigid? Development takes place in time, some things
> happen before others (duh!). The issue then is whether some things are
> pre-requisites for others. The notion of pre-requisites is clearer in the
> vertical where higher order skills are built upon a foundation of lower
> skills, stage 2 is built upon the foundation of stage 1, etc. It is less
> clear to me that pre-requisites play a role in the horizontal dimension. Is
> greater breadth, increased use of "general processes of formation of
> particular functional systems", evidence of progress? YE denies that there
> is any fixed order of progression or end point, but is there no culturally
> universal or, at least, typical sequence? "Increased use" of general
> processes suggests a quantitative difference. Are there qualitative
> differences as well? If so, do some things have to happen before other
> things or is order irrelevant? How then are we to judge progress? YE says
> that "People have to decide where they want to go, which way is up". Up from
> what? And was it important to be down?
>
> djc
>
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