Dear Carrie and everybody-
Play is not my area but I remember reading cross-cultural research saying
that in some traditional cultures little kids' play both different and less
extensive than in most industrial societies. Kids there mostly do things and
participate in community activities than play. Is true and if so, how do
these findings relate your study and conclusions?
What do you think?
Eugene
PS Please pass my congratulations to Keith (we were postdocs at UCSC
together and shared offices).
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carrie L. Lobman [mailto:lobman@rci.rutgers.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2003 6:53 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: RE: improv
>
> I know that this dialogue moved on to a lot of new places from here but I
> actually wanted to talk to Keith about my work for a while--so I thought I
> would take this opportunity to talk to the list about some of the
> differences I see between his work and mine and see what you all think.
> Keith was actually supposed to be the discussant at my session at AERA,
but
> he left early to be there for the birth of his child (a most excellent
> excuse I'd say).
>
> Anyway I have found his work on improv and play to be invaluable in terms
of
> a methodology for studying play and playfulness and in terms of
> understanding and seeing play in a non-instrumental, but extremely
valuable
> way. However, the major difference I see between my work and his is the
> relationship between improvisation and development throughout people's
> lives. Keith argues, as far as I can tell, that through pretend play
> children learn the improvisational skills necessary for adult
conversation.
> He hypothesizes in Pretend Play as Improvisation that pretend play dies
out
> at around 7-8 years of age because children have learned how to improvise
> other forms of conversation. I would argue that improvisation remains a
> revolutionary/developmental activity (revolutionary in the sense that it
> allows the participants to actively reorganize what is into something
new).
> We stop improvising/pretend playing at around 7-8 because we are told to
> stop--to stop playing and get to work. While adult conversations are
> obviously improvised in a certain sense in other ways they are very much
> scripted--adults and older children know what they think they are supposed
> to say and do and this limits how they see themselves as creators of the
> conversation. Why I advocate improvisation for teachers is because it
> reconnects them with their ability to play in the sense of being the
active
> creators of their teaching and their lives.
>
> What do people think?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 5:55 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: improv
>
>
>
> Very interesting, Carrie. Keith Sawyer is somewhere around the list and
> has been writing on improvisation. Your applications sounds like fun as
> well as useful.
> mike
> .,
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