Greetings. My name is John St. Julien. That name may be vaguely familiar to
some--I participated, intermittently, in the old xfamily lists but got off
shortly before the change to the current structure took place.
I am newly at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the
department of curriculum and instruction. I am interested in learning;
especially in how, materially, learning takes place and how that constrains
what we can reasonably postulate about human knowledge. I take a basically
connectionist position in regard to learning and that has led me to a
situated position regarding knowledge. (Which, in turn, leads me to this
list.) The immediate impetus to return to the list is David Kirshner's kind
reforwarding of a post reviewing Elman's connectionist account of a series
of interactions between development and learning. I find these sorts of
linkages extremely exciting and believe that they point toward the
potential power of a position which concentrates on the architecture which
supports human thought and learning. My main quarrel with connectionist
explanations is that they generally do not pay enough attention to how
unstable representation is on their account and hence are not sensitive to
the crucial role practices may play in stabilizing and coordinating human
thought and activity.
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John St. Julien (stjulien@uiuc.edu)
Department of Curriculum & Instruction,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
1310 South Sixth Street, Rm 388
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 333-2319
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/stjulien