Hi Andy,
I too thought the ISCAR newsletter interview article was very good. I
especially liked your comparison of CHAT to interactionist approaches,
which you and I have discussed before. One area that continues to be
messy, as you suggest, is the relationship of CHAT to social
constructIVism and social constructIONism.
Since CHAT's first home is developmental psychology, it is out of the
work of Piaget and Papert that these terms are usually defined, and so
closely that they are often conflated. While these theories
acknowledge the social and perhaps cultural influences on learning and
interpretation, they centre on a cognitivist, mental model view of
knowledge. There is also the normative aspect of giving control to the
learner to construct his or her individual world-view.
The other social constructIONism comes out of communications and
sociology (e.g. Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of
Reality, 1966), that challenges the inevitability of categorisations
that are taken for granted in common discourse, and which form the
bases for many institutions. This post-modern constructIONism
generally places knowledge in discourse and interaction, but in more
recent scholarship focuses on the cultural situation of the
individual. This isn't a learning theory but rather a critical,
meta-theoretical stance. To complicate matters, there are different
strands with various accounts of what should be treated as real, true,
essential, scientific, etc. and how communication should relate to
action. It also challenges academic research standards with advocacy
for interventionist approaches to practice. For an interdisciplinary
expansion of CHAT, I think this constructIONism offers a rich field
for comparison.
--
Ron Lubensky
http://www.deliberations.com.au/
0411 412 626
Melbourne Australia