Thanks for your note, Peter.
Our pedagogical discourse is integrative in nature, not just the
sociocultural school--as you described the Elkonin-Davydov system, but
pretty much across the board (including pedagogical recommendations offered
by cognitive psychologists, constructivists, etc.). I think this is because
within the preparadigmatic struggle to establish a mature science, each of
the competing schools of psychology needs to envision itself as being able
to account for everything. My approach steps back from this hegemonic
dynamic to look at the underlying learning metaphor addressed by a
particular school, and at the pedagogical guidance that flows most
coherently from that. I think the integrative discourse of pedagogical
reform tends to blur what could be more powerful and effective guidance
offered toward pedagogy that targets discrete notions of learning.
David Kirshner
_______________________________________________
Peter Moxhay <moxhap@portlandschools.org> wrote:
David wrote:
> ...an "enculturationist pedagogy" in which ... one focuses on
> supporting
> the development of the classroom microculture so
> that it comes to resemble the target culture with respect to the
> targetted
> forms of participation.
> I distinguish this enculturationist agenda from a
> psychological-constructivist agenda in which the goal is to help
> students
> develop stronger, more viable conceptual structures.... and
> developing tasks designed to stress the students' current conceptual in
> ways that are intended to produce cognitive perturbations leading to
> conceptual restructuring.
It's interesting that in the Russian "Developmental Instruction" schools
(Elkonin-Davydov system) _both_ of these hold. The formation of
a classroom microculture ( a culture of "quasi-research") is of primary
importance, and yet the approach is clearly aimed at developing
more viable concepts through tasks that are initially posed by the
teacher but later on with ever-greater independence by the children.
In the E-D approach, I believe that these two aspects are not, however,
regarded as distinct orientations arbitrarily married together.
Peter
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