Re: [xmca] Read the introduction to the special issue on CHAT/AR

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Those were wonderful notes, Larry and Phillip. Each an education.
Might it be that the two accounts are themselves interconnected? Aristotle's
ideas
spread differentially into many contemporary cultures whose last names are
sprinkled in them both.

mike

On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> Philip
> Thank you for this post. A wonderful lead and I share your passion for
> *intermediate* community.  I'm a child of the 60's who wandered around
> searching and visiting *utopian* face to face communities that were
> attempting to *transform* the world.
>
> My inquires and thinking out loud are a contnuation of this *calling*.
>
> I appreciate that a few people share a perspective that this *quest for
> community* must also include public school settings.
>
> I'm printing out your recommendations, and will follow up.
>
> Thanks Philip
>
> Larry
>
> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 6:48 AM, White, Phillip
> <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>wrote:
>
> >
> > Larry, you wrote, as a follow-up to Mike's recommendation:
> >
> > "I followed up on your recommendation to read the introduction and was
> > intrigued by their referring to an article, "Philosophy, Methodology, and
> > Action research" by Wilfred Carr [The Journal of the Philosophy of
> > Education, Vol. 40, No. 4, 2006.
> >  On p. 95 Bridget and Morten suggest it is "quite legitimate to turn
> praxis
> > against the straightjacket of any normative theoretical methodology."
> >
> > Carr, in his 2006 article locates AR as a modern manifestation of the
> > pre-modern tradition of practical philosophy conceptualized in ancient
> > Greece.  I found this an enlightening expansion of perspective in
> locating
> > the roots of AR."
> >
> > may i suggest an alternative perspective in locating the roots of AR,
> which
> > is a bit closer to CHAT through the College de France and Janet, as well
> as
> > Kropotkin (a name rarely noted on XMCA.
> >
> > Smekh and Nissen assert the common belief that Kurt Lewin is the founder
> of
> > Action Research, and note that Lewin and Vygotsky were friends in Moscow.
> >
> > however, at the time Lewin and Vygotsky were together in Moscow, James
> > Collier was already advocating and practicing Action Research in Native
> > American communities in south-western United States, in the 1930's.
> >
> > In the 1940's, when Lewin first broaches the topic, he qualifies his
> > practice as “a type of action-research”,  using a hyphen, as well as
> > suggesting that there are already other forms of action research, as in
> the
> > following quote:
> >
> > “The research needed for social practice can best be characterized as
> > research for social management or social engineering. It is a type of
> > action-research, a comparative research on the conditions and effects of
> > various forms of social action, and research leading to social action.
> > Research that produces nothing but books will not suffice” (Lewin 1946,
> > reproduced in Lewin 1948: 202-3)
> >
> > Stephen M. Corey (1953), possibly the first university level advocate of
> > teacher research, preferred the term “action research”, without the
> hyphen,
> > attributing it to John Collier since Collier “used the expression action
> > research and was convinced that ‘since the finding of research must be
> > carried into effect by the administrator and the layman, and must be
> > criticized by them through their experience, the administrator and the
> > layman must themselves participate creative in the research impelled as
> it
> > is from their own area of need’” (p.7, author’s italics).  Corey’s
> citation
> > of Collier is “United States Indian Administration as a laboratory of
> Ethnic
> > Relations.” Social Research, 12:265-303, May 1945.”  However, K. R. Philp
> > (1979) writes that John Collier had long been working in socially active
> > groups before he became commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
> >  Collier was educated at Columbia and College de France, where he studied
> > under Janet.  Beginning in 1907 when he was civic secretary for the
> People’s
> > Institute in New York City, he began a long struggle to preserve and
> build
> > community life based on Gemeinschaft, of shared obligations.  These
> beliefs
> > he attempted to implement within the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  As
> > commissioner, he ordered the closing of numerous boarding schools.  To
> > replace them, day schools that also served as community centers were
> built,
> > and a new curriculum that emphasized skills connected with rural life
> “such
> > as care of livestock, homemaking skills, and personal hygiene” (pg. 276)
> > appeared.  From this effort came his call for action research.  Bilingual
> > programs were implemented to improve Indian literacy.  He brought in
> > anthropologists and removed missionaries.  Collier (1949/1962) had a deep
> > belief that for modern culture to survive the “wastage of cultures and
> value
> > systems which ages have made, wastage of natural resources stored by the
> > organic life of a billion years, wreckage of the web of life” (p. 160),
> it
> > needs to return to its roots of small communities, rather than continue
> “a
> > world of social isolates” (p. 160).
> > Collier, an admirer of Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid and the essential
> human
> > value of primary social groups, wrote:
> > That thesis was that democracy – political, social, and economic
> democracy,
> > complexly realized all together – is ancient on earth; that cooperation
> and
> > reciprocity were the way of men through many thousands of generations;
> that
> > the conserving and cherishing of earth and its flora and creature life
> were
> > man’s way through these long ages; that the art of education – the art of
> > informing, enriching, tempering, and socializing the personality, and of
> > internalizing the moral imperatives – was practiced triumphantly by
> village
> > communities in every continent, without ceasing for tens of thousands of
> > years; and that like countless flowers in a long April of our world,
> human
> > cultures, borne by memory alone, illuminated with all rainbow hues the
> > almost unimaginable thousands of little societies wherein immensities of
> > personality development were achieved across the aeons of time. (p.
> 160-161)
> >
> > from the perspective of the early 21st century, what at first seems to me
> > to Collier's utopian, naïve romanticism, I also find myself admiring his
> > passionate commitment to a particular vision of life from which he
> informed
> > all of his activities.  For it is out of this belief in value of small
> > communities that the practice of action research was formed, and I admire
> > this.  As a result, I have continued to inform my own practice of teacher
> as
> > research through my own particular vision of life, taking into account
> > life’s political, social, emotional and economic constraints.
> >
> > at the same time, it's important to recognize that it was also the work
> > that Shirley Brice Heath (1983) did during the late 1970"s in the
> piedmont
> > area of the south-eastern united states, where in "Ways with words", her
> > final chapter was on what she labeled "teacher research", which, as she
> > related to me, reinvigorated the practice of action research within
> > educational institutions.
> >
> > phillip
> >
> >
> > Collier, J. (1949/1962). On the gleaming way: Navajos, Eastern Pueblos,
> > Zuni,
> > Hopis, Apaches, and their land and their meanings to the world. Denver,
> CO:
> >        Sage Books.
> >
> > Corey, S. M. (1953 ). Action research to improve school practices.  New
> > York:
> > Bureau of  Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University.
> >
> > Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life, and work in
> > communities and
> > classrooms. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
> >
> > Lewin, K. (1948) Resolving social conflicts; selected papers on group
> > dynamics. Gertrude W. Lewin (ed.). New York: Harper & Row, 1948.
> >
> > Philp, K. R. (1979). John Collier: 1933 – 45. In Robert M. Kvasnicka and
> > Herman
> > J. Viola (Eds.), The Commissioners of Indian affairs, 1824 – 1977.
> Lincoln,
> > Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Phillip White, PhD
> > University of Colorado Denver
> > School of Education
> > phillip.white@ucdenver.edu
> >
> >
> >
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