I like Mike's sketch a lot. I guess it would be useful to pick a concrete
example that uses the concept of contradiction in the analysis of an
empirical case, such as one of our studies of health care settings. But that
may take the discussion too deep into specifics...?
Yrjo Engestrom
>
> I hesitate to get very deep into this because I am in office hours and might
> get bumped here, but.......
>
> Dewey-- Vis a vis Piaget/equilibration/contradiction
>
> I thought I was talking about clash of schemas a la the constructivist
> physics literature where the pedagogical strategy is to confront students
> with the errors of their presconceptions (I am a perfect subject for
> all such efforts!), such that disequilibrium is causes by the clash of two
> cognitive schemas.
>
> I think that the issue regarding Piaget versus AT may be an issue of unites
> of analysis or levels. That is, when Yrjo studies the issues of contradictions
> that arise in some complex work practice, he is talking about socio-cultural-
> political-economic institutions which constrain people's interactions with
> each other and the objects of their work. These contradictions may exist
> for quite a long time without rise to a crisis point where people both
> individually and collectively feel like "something has to be done." One
> thing they do in such circumstances in Finland is to call in Yrjo's group
> who then run a change lab which elicits from people the history of their
> own involvement in the institutions and their notions of how things used
> to be, are, and might be. There is a collective process of externalizing
> understandings, feelings, etc.
>
> In that collective process, schema conflicts are bound to happen (where
> schemas here are not considered exclusively inside the head). But their
> source is not, so to speak, individual/cognitive as it is cultural-0
> historical, socio-cultural. It also becomes interpersonal within the
> context of the reflective practices of analysis that the change lab
> initiates. And presumably, in that same process of mediated interpersonal
> interaction, individual understandings get examined, externalized,
> appropriated, etc.
>
> If YE has the time, perhaps he can comment. I am not speaking for him,
> but for myself from my own limited understanding.
>
> no students yet, second note to come.
> mike
>
>
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