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RE: [xmca] Measuring culture
Wagner, and all,
Thanks for sending this link. Here are a few of my thoughts, rough as they are, assembled since re-entry from AERA in Vancouver.
I share your concern over numbers and funding because it they have become omnipresent factors in educational research. This suggests a value in our culture.
Artin Goncu, commented at the end of the Cultural Historical Research SIG Business meeting, after the panel on play, that further inquiries, and research needed to be done on play. He also added that this lack of consideration of play as something worthy of understanding was epistemological ( I hope I don't misrepresent him here as I was unable to record the exact statement). Lois Holzman added then, our concern over play was, in addition to being epistemological, also ontological.
With neuroscience and evolutionary biology being so popular (or, as I heard another funded and published researcher call it, "sexy," which might even be another discussion altogether), it is essential then that we not feel obsolete, or defeated, and continue to engage in inquiries, using alternative methods, models, and tools that might engage the larger concerns about what is lost in selecting a few values--those of quantitative experimental research and placing them at the fore.
It is also essential that we continue to enter into a dialogue with these other researchers and the culture at large to protect our worldview from becoming obsolete.
If we are to engage in a conversation, or play, for that matter, it is important that we learn and use the language and rules by which the game is being conducted. Play, or research inquiry that is approached as play, requires a shared attention over an activity, an activity that ceases to exist, or that is lost when the intentions of the other are not understood and imagined as significant or meaningful.
Think of playing a simple game with a child, like peek-a-boo. It is only meaningful for a time and then the activity must change, develop, evolve...to continue in a relationship that can become new forms of play.
A way of studying can be historical without being stuck in a static piece of history. People who do not have an understanding of the theory, and ensuing research, may think an evocation of such historical figures such as Marx and Vygotsky means something that has already passed. All science is not that of old, which seeks to reduce the human to numbers.
I encourage you all to continue to live, play, act, converse, engage!!! And try and do these things with the "others".
That's all for now,
Monica Hansen... back in Richland, Washington, USA surrounded by books, papers, writing, research to-do lists, student work portfolios, end of terms and end of program assessments, new online teaching platforms and training, a house that needs to be cleaned and tidied, filled with family and pets that need attention.
________________________________________
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] on behalf of Wagner Luiz Schmit [wagner.schmit@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 8:05 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [xmca] Measuring culture
Hello,
I don't know if you already saw this... I am still thinking about it and
what to say about it...
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/pt-br/what_we_learned_from_5_million_books.html
A new tool or a new way to reduce human to numbers? In some places i
already see scientists from fields like neuroscience, evolutionary
psychology and etc pointing to me and saying "Marx? Vygotsky? Gosh you are
obsolete and should be in a Museum". And they have funding...
Just trowing toughs...
Wagner Luiz Schmit
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