Peter-- I sent along your note to Chuck Bazerman who is not reading xmca
at present. Here is his reply which he said I could forward and whch may
be of interest with respect to the difficult issues you raise.
mike
---- >From bazerman@education.ucsb.edu Fri Aug 2 18:15:30 2002Mike, thanks for this interesting puzzle to think about--which really presses us to important clarifications concerning the way various human inventions extend and organize human mind. What follows is a set of ruminations--new to me, though maybe familiar to some others on the list about what is at issue in what I can glean from Peter's problems. As i see peter's problem, it is not getting past the theory practice distinction (which all us right-minded AT'ers agree on), but what you do once you get past it--how do you make more subtle observations about what is going on in the relation among the inside, the outside, another inside and the various extensions and devices in-between.
As I have have mentioned a couple of times when I was subscribing to xmca-- Vygotsky, although he had a point in distinguishing tool from symbol in order to highlight the self-regulatory use of language, when he does rely on that distinction he forgets what he knows at other times about language being a mediating device to coordinate with others. In making this distinction he also does not seem to be aware of the way that use of tools as material as Bateson's blind man's cane can organize the mind. Indeed one can choose to work with material tools with overt self-regulatory intent to reshape consciousness--such as when someone chooses to use a learn-to-type program to automatize actions or when a wind instrument player uses an oscilloscope to train her hearing or when someone hits a bucket of golf balls to get her mind off of a problem.
The point of bringing up this old problem is that it reminds us that there are many kinds of devices to accomplish work and coordinate with others, and in the course of using these devices we have various organizings, reorganizings, trainings, developments, regulations of neural states of affairs and consciousness (including what we typically call cognition, affect, and neuromuscular responses). Moreover we can self-awarely choose these devices for their work advantage, interpersonal effect, and intrapersonal effect. As we start to look at and reflect on these devices, both material and symbolic, we may notice many differences in the way the accomplish work, and in the way the work interpersonally and intrapersonally. These manifold differences may be too subtle to be captured by the broad categories of tool, symbol, mediating device, systems of knowledge, etc. although those terms do catch important elements of all.
For example textual genres (as analyzed in the genre theory literature) can do a lot of material, self-organizing, interpersonal organizing, and situation organizing work, they can help us shape and recognize intentions, they can define chronotopes that shape a situation and establish expectation of ontologies and action, they can organize sequences of material and inspire to gather materials, they can impose action restraints on others, the can create roles for participants. On the other hand they do not do all the work of defining what is to be aid or how we are to respond, they rather create opportunities for certain kinds of things to happen and be brought to bear. There are certain intrapersonal consequences for those who regularly work with certain genres--lawyers who regularly argue in court develop certain attitudes, stances, repertoires of mentation, things they know as fact and procedure and concept while lawyers who spend their days writing and manipulating contracts develop into somewhat different cognitive and behavioral creatures. In some ways the differentiation of their work and relations and internal organization is like the differentiation between those who spend their day training and playing as a basketball guard versus a center, or people who catch and hit a smaller baseball, using gloves (second basemen versus outfielder's) and bats, or people who operate cranes versus run the frontloader--but in significant ways the lives of the basketball folk or construction machine operators are different that that of the lawyers--and the distinctions among the subtype are of different character and consequences.
So what we really need is a more refined way of characterizing how these different devices work and change our material, interpersonal and intrapersonal life trajectories. the terms like tool, sign., mediating device metaphorically point us towards certain areas of effect, but they don't spell out all the mechanisms and effects. So trying to homogenize the effect under a small number of terms, or excluding items from this small list of general terms because their effect and means are not quite the same may not get us where we really need to go.
Does this help, or have I lost myself in a friday afternoon daydream? If it seems not too obscure feel free to post it to the list and ask people to cc me on ensuing discussion.
Chuck
At 10:41 AM -0700 8/2/02, Mike Cole wrote: >Hi Chuck-- This was posted by Peter Smagorinsky on xmca, can you >help out vis a vis genre? >mike >The question I asked about tools was posed to help me with my development >of the paper I gave at ISCRAT in which I (with coauthors Leslie Cook and >Tara Johnson) challenge that theory vs. practice dichotomy often found in >discussions of learning to teach, with the goal of replacing >theory/practice with Vygotsky's notion of the concept, which requires >interplay between abstraction and experience (usually dichotomized as >theory and practice). > >I'll paste in the introduction to the part of the paper in which we try to >provide a richer notion of practice than that typically found in >theory/practice bifurcations. Generally, no surprises in this outline for >xmca readers. My question concerns a claim at the end of what follows, >which is that Scribner and Cole's terms "technology" and "systems of >knowledge" correspond to what others have called "tools" and >"genres." Mike C agrees that tools can substitute (though is not >synonymous with) for technology, but that "systems of knowledge" and >"genres" don't correspond as well. My question is, if genre provides a >poor substitution, what might work better? (perhaps nothing?) > >Also: In an effort to find out the three types of tools identified by >someone I can't put my finger on, I've looked to Wertsch's Mind as Action, >where he argues that all tools (mediational means in his parlance) are >material; he identifies psychological and technical (his pole vault >example). Brad Belbas (through backchannel) has suggested that Kozulin >offers human beings as a third type of mediator, which is now how I've >phrased it below. > >Any help on these questions is greatly appreciated! thanks,Peter >OK, here's the section of the draft in question: >Thus far we have focused on concepts and the types of generalizations that >approximate them, complexes and pseudoconcepts. We next turn to the kind >of activity central to the development of spontaneous concepts and >implicated in the development of scientific concepts. We refer to this >activity as practice. The notion of practice outlined in the Vygotskian >tradition is conceptually richer than that typically found in the >theory/practice dichotomy, grounded more in culture and necessarily tied to >community work, what Lave and Wenger (1992) and others call a community of >practice. > Lave (1996) argues that "Theories of situated activity do not >separate action, thought, feeling, and value and their collective, >cultural-historical forms of located, interested, conflictual, meaningful >activity. Traditional cognitive theory is 'distanced from experience' and >divides the learning mind from the world" (p. 7). This traditional >distancing of theory from experience characterizes the ways in which we >have described the theory and practice dichotomy often assumed by >educators. Here, Lave argues for the unification of various human beliefs >and experiences in a theory of activity. To see how this unification might >be accomplished, we turn to Scribner and Cole's (1981) definition of >practice, which they outline in their study of situated literacy. They >describe practice as "a recurrent, goal-directed sequence of activities >using a particular technology and particular systems of knowledge. We use >the term 'skills' to refer to the coordinated sets of actions involved in >applying this knowledge in particular settings. A practice, then, consists >of three components: technology, knowledge, and skills" (p. 236). These >particular technologies and systems of knowledge correspond roughly to what >others (e.g., Wertsch, 1991) now call tools and genres (M. Cole, personal >communication, July 2002); that is, technical, psychological, and/or human >mediators for acting on the environment (tools) and the recurring social >forms and practices through which tools enable one to act meaningfully >(genres) Kozulin, 1998; Wertsch, 1998). > >
-- Professor Charles Bazerman Chair, Department of Education Gevirtz Graduate School of Education University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 phone: 805-893-7543 bazerman@education.ucsb.edu http://www.education.ucsb.edu/~bazerman
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