XCMA Related Links

 XCMA Related Web Sites


Conferences

American Educational Research Association, Seattle 2001
The 82nd annual meeting of AERA in Seattle will take place April 10th through 14th, 2001. The theme of the meeting will be What We Know and How We Know It.

Fifth Congress of the International Society for Cultural Research and Activity Theory
The Fifth Congress of ISCRAT (2002) will be held in Amsterdam from June 18th through 22nd. The theme will be Dealing with Diversity: Tools and resources for human development in social practices.


Cultural Historical Activity Theory

Cultural-Historical Special Interest group of AERA
The Cultural-Historical Research special interest group focuses on mediated action, history, and the role of human agency and activity theory in the tradition of Vygotsky, Luria, Leontev, Bakhtin, Mead, and many others (see and decide yourself who we are).

Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research - Helsinki
The methodology of developmental work research (DWR) relies on interventions aimed at helping practitioners analyze and redesign their activity systems. Our theoretical framework is cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) in which the idea of expansive learning is of central importance.

International Society for Cultural and Activity Research (ISCAR)
ISCAR is a newly formed organization that grew out of two, related academic societies. The first was ISCRAT, the International Society for Cultural Research and Activity theory. The second was the Society for Sociocultural Research. During the past 20 years, several conferences and seminars on themes central to activity theory and sociocultural approaches held in the Nordic countries, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Brazil. The two societies agreed to join together in 2002 and will hold the first ISCAR conference in Seville, Spain, in September, 2005.

5th D Clearinghouse
The Fifth Dimension is an international educational program of after-school activities for children ages 6-13, promoting cognitive and social development. The activity approach allows children to participate in academic work alongside more capable peers and adults (most often college undergraduates) where they use, practice, and master basic skills as means to gaining control over, and responsibility for, their own actions. Children's participation is voluntary and about most of the activities include computer games and educational software

The Vygotsky Project
A comprehensive site about Vygotsky and his ideas. The site has six major sections; Vygotsky's own words, family and friends, analysis of Vygotsky's ideas, Vygotsky compared to others, Vygotsky in practice, and Vygotskian concepts.

Sociocultural Theory
A comprehensive set of links about Vygotsky and Socio-Cultural Theory from the University of Colorado School of Education. The site also includes links to other theories and Vygotsky's relationship to them (e.g. Semiotics, Cognitive Psychology).


Diversity and Identity

International Laboratory VEGA
Content includes The Network on the Ethnological Monitoring and Early Warning of Conflicts, and the Conflict Research Center.

GenTech
GenTech is an applied research project whose mandate is to create conditions within which girls and women have maximum access to, and confidence in, a wide range of new information technologies.

Gender Equity
An article by Education Week on the Web about gender equity. The article looks at various perspectives on gender equity as well offering a comprehensive listing of resources from Education Week and other sources.

Deconstructing "Difference" and the Difference This Makes to Education
Nicholas C. Burbules
The tension between sameness and diversity has been an ongoing feature of modern educational theory and practice, especially in the United States. We seem fundamentally torn between, on the one hand, a desire to use education to make people more alike (whether this is in regards to a "melting pot" of citizenship values and beliefs; the essential texts of "cultural literacy"; the factual knowledge and skills that can be measured by standardized tests; or the establishment of uniform national standards across the curriculum) and, on the other hand, a desire to serve the different learning styles and needs, the different cultural orientations, and the different aspirations toward work and living represented by the diverse population of students in public schools.

Women and Girls Last: Females and the Internet
Author: Janet Morahan-Martin
The Internet has been dominated by males since its inception. Although use of the Internet by females has increased dramatically in the last few years, women and girls worldwide still use the Internet less and in different ways than males. Low Internet use by females not only gives them less access to information and services available online, but also can have negative economic and educational consequences. This paper discusses barriers to greater female use of the Internet: the Internet as new technology, the masculine Internet culture, and gendered communication styles online.

Dialoguing Across Differences: Three Hidden Barriers
James W. Garrison Stephanie L. Kimball
Elizabeth Ellsworth has provided an important critique of critical pedagogy that problematizes such popular liberal principles as rationality, democracy, dialogue, justice, equality, and empowerment. Ellsworth’s point is that these liberal principles “are repressive myths that perpetuate relations of domination.”

Rethinking Schools
Rethinking School is an urban educational journal that is published four times a year. Their focus is on educational reform with a strong focus on equity and social justice issues. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire writes that teachers should attempt to "live part of their dreams within their educational space." Rethinking Schools believes that classrooms can be places of hope, where students and teachers gain glimpses of the kind of society we could live in and where students learn the academic and critical skills needed to make that vision a reality.


Education

American Educational Research Association
The American Educational Research Association is concerned with improving the educational process by encouraging scholarly inquiry related to education and by promoting the dissemination and practical application of research results.

Culture, Learning, and Development in Education
Formed in 1993, SCRG (housed within the College of Education of Michigan State University) is composed of faculty and graduate researchers in the social sciences and education. The culturally-diverse members bring a shared set of theoretical, methodological, and practical concerns to studying relations between culture, education, and human learning/development.

Research in the Teaching of English
This vision of what "research in the teaching of English" means is broad and inclusive. Committed to publishing manuscripts that maintain RTE's tradition of excellence while reflecting the diversity of sites, methodological perspectives, and ontological orientations that have newly enriched literacy studies in recent years.

Networks
A new on-line journal focused on teacher research. This journal offers teachers working in classrooms from pre-school to university a place to share their findings and learn from each other.


Gestalt Psychology

Society for Gestalt Theory
Site of the international "Society for Gestalt Theory and its Applications," founded in 1978 to further the development and application of the Gestalt theory of the so-called "Berlin School" (Wertheimer, Koffka, Koehler, Lewin) in various fields of science, research and practice.


Linguistics and Semiotics

Charles S. Peirce Studies
This site provides links to five of Peirce's most important papers. Here, Peirce puts himself in the place of Aristotle and Kant and carves out his list of phenomenal categories. These categories gird all of Peirce's thought, from his logic to his cosmology. Like Kant, he believed these categories describe those aspects of reality necessary for us to be able to reconcile discrete sensory data into the unity of consciousness which we experience.

The Bahktin Center
The Bakhtin Centre was founded in October 1994. Its purpose is to promote multi- and inter-disciplinary research on the work of the Russian philosopher and theorist Mikhail Bakhtin and the Bakhtin Circle, and on related areas of cultural, critical, linguistic and literary theory.

The Narrative Psychology Homepage
This site focuses upon narrative perspectives in psychology and allied disciplines and provides an interdisciplinary guide to bibliographical and Internet resources concerned with "the storied nature of human conduct" (Sarbin, 1986).


Philosophical Dialectics

Psychology and Marxism
The site explores the relationship between Marxism and Psychology. Its central focus is the Cultural-Historical school of Vygotsky.

The Marxist Internet Archive
A comprehensive site devoted to Marxism in general. In addition to Marx/Engels, they have major collections on Lenin, Trotsky, and Women.


Pragmatism

The Center for Dewey Studies
The Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale was established in 1961 as the "Dewey Project." In the course of collecting and editing Dewey's works, the Center amassed a wealth of source materials for the study of America's quintessential philosopher-educator, John Dewey.

John Dewey:Democracy and Education

An online version of Dewey's (1916) book Democracy and Education made possible by the Institute for Learning Technologies at Columbia University.

George's Page: The Works of George Herbert Mead
George's Page is a repository for the publications of George Herbert Mead. The site also provides access to related publications by other writers, including source documents referenced by Mead, some biographical and historical notes, and commentaries on Mead's work.


Social Constructionism

Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood
A new online international research journal with articles in pdf format. It provides a forum for researchers and professionals who are exploring new and alternative perspectives in their work with young children (from birth to eight years of age) and their families. The journal aims to present opportunities for scholars to highlight the ways in which the boundaries of early childhood studies and practice are expanding, and for readers to participate in the discussion of emerging issues, contradictions and possibilities.


Technology

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
Published quarterly on the Web by the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California.

GenTech
GenTech is an applied research project whose mandate is to create conditions within which girls and women have maximum access to, and confidence in, a wide range of new information technologies.

The Neo-Luddite Reaction
A web site of links about Luddism by the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Denver. The term Luddite has been resurrected from a previous era to describe one who distrusts or fears the inevitable changes brought about by new technology. The original Luddite revolt occurred in 1811, an action against the English Textile factories that displaced craftsmen in favor of machines. Today's Luddites continue to raise moral and ethical arguments against the excesses of modern technology to the extent that it threatens our essential humanity.


To suggest a related Web site, please e-mail the URL address and a description of the site to Nate at vygotsky@home.com

Revised 02/27/2001