[xmca] Semiotic-Material Ordering

Michalis:

Such an important paper pertaining to the work that I currently practice.
In fact you have summarized very well a practice that we put into place two
years ago that we have found great success implementing. Two years ago
staff put in a great deal of time in the evenings to develop a portfolio.
It was a list compiling all of the activities they would be required to
complete while they are attending our program. Prior to the development of
this portfolio the explanation of expectations was more ethereal in nature
and consisted of meetings, small checklist and quite frankly subjective
feelings. Since the development of this portfolio the result has been
similar to the following quote from your paper:

"The diagram [insert portfolio here] presented here is abstract and
encompasses the student's complete school past.
Time is here not only spatialized but it is fabricated as a line connecting
the past, the present and
the future, i.e. it is fabricated as irreversible time. A student's
development is 'objectified'. The
term "to objectify" is used here to indicate the translation of something
vague (ongoing interaction
and intra-activity in everyday life) into something visible, in a way which
is accepted as objective;
the term also indicates embodying a vague idea in a materiality e.g. a
document (Middleton,
Brown, & Lightfoot, 2001; Middleton & Brown, 2005). Discursive interaction
and intra-activity
is always also non-discursive: the graphics of development go together with
the students' autobiographical
narrations and the teachers' discussions/reports mediating the
institutional
memory. (p.15)"

Also of note my newest avenue of interest has been to thoroughly research
Chapter 5 (an experimental study of the development of concepts) from
Vygotsky's Thought and Language. Much of what you write pertaining to
development is similar to Vygotsky's view that what evolves into higher
psychological thought in adolescence is present in the child prior to
adolescence but the mediation and the flow of complexes eventually evolves
in the adolescent thinking in concepts as a result of this
semiotic-material ordering. I also see parallels between your thinking on
semiotic-material ordering and Valsiner's concept of the process-structure
of semiotic mediation.

Thank you for allowing your paper to be viewed on XMCA, I for one greatly
appreciate it.

eric

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Received on Wed Apr 16 10:30 PDT 2008