I've wanted to comment on ISCRAT but I got back to the States from ISCRAT
Sunday night and was teaching Monday morning.... now that the summer
session is over I have a little time.
mike said in an earlier quote:
"A potentially important question for the future is how we, collectively,
can
be of help to you in the very difficult and important work you are
undertaking. I hope the conference provided you contacts and ideas that will
serve you in your project. Ditto for all who went."
I had the opportunity to attend Seth Chaiklin and Falk Seeger's PhD student
workshop before ISCRAT started so I suppose that makes me one of the
'younger' (newer?) generations(historically speaking, of course). Related
to Mike's comment above, one thing that struck me was the fact that most of
us (18 in total, 3 from N. America) were doing CHAT research in relative
isolation. Meaning that our dissertation committees had little if any
knowledge of AT and, if lucky, some ideas about CH research in general.
Consequently we are trying to figure this stuff out on our own and it was
nice to hear that many of the others were having similar difficulties as I
interpreting and using issues related CHAT in our own research (yes, misery
loves company).
A few ideas that came up during this workshop that especially resonated with
me:
-This type of research is messy; your understanding of the issues change
over time (interpreted as 'don't think you are going to get any concrete
answers or feel confident in your findings').
-We are still in early stages of CHAT research therefore there are more
theoretical pieces rather than practical research using these ideas (many of
us would love to see more applications of AT)
- The concept of 'activity' has numerous interpretations (we were assigned
two articles on activity by Davydov and Lomov as an example)
- Doing CHAT research isn't simply 'filling in the triangle' (i.e.
engestrom's model of AT)
So I think that Mike's question above is absolutely critical- how can a
community of established researchers/scholars assist those of us who are
isolated in understanding not only the theoretical bases but also the nuts
and bolts of doing research based on a CHAT perspective? There are
obviously no easy answers, but I've started with some ideas:
With AERA on my mind, I wander in that direction: Certainly more mentoring
opportunities at other conferences would be a good place to start- we all
agreed (Seth and Falk included) that an extra day would have been extremely
helpful as ISCRAT. I noticed that AERA Division C has a PhD student seminar
before the conference to provide students with mentoring opportunities. I
will send in a proposal and hope that some of the CHSIGers will be there as
mentors. There are also mentoring roundtables possible via Div C. Maybe
some informal get together before/after the CHSIG business meeting (I know
how hard it is to coordinate conference schedules)?
Concerning the XMCA listserve- I think that there is great potential
although the main use of it serves those who are more central to CHAT
research. Of course, I realize that any XMCA member could use it but it
seems to be a core of (dare I say) 'experts' that use it. I wonder what
other activities could possibly bring in some of the more peripheral group
members? Discussing an important article might be one possibility.
well I'll stop here- thanks for listening
cheers,
jim
Jim Rogers
PhD student, Instructional Technology
Utah State University
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Aug 01 2002 - 01:00:12 PDT