worthenh@garnet.berkeley.edu
worthenh@garnet.berkeley.edu
Sun, 1 Oct 1995 14:16:51 -0700
I began as a novelist, became a community college teacher to earn a living,
found myself more interested in teaching than anything else but hit a wall
about 1989 (after teaching 10-12 years) needing to understand better the role
of language in learning. I was teaching in Oakland, California. What kind of
construction of the concept "intellgence" would fit the qualities shown
by my students, who were often older, minority, attempting through school to
get better (or at least some) employment? I went back to grad school (UC
Berkeley) to first study reading, then became drawn into the PhD program
as more questions fell in behind the first ranks of answers. Because of
the non-elite character of community colleges, a tradition of adult
education that has a democratizing purpose persists in them, along with
other traditions (transfer, vocational/technical, leisure). When a class works
well, what happens in it can be explained by sociocultural (Vygotsky
and Bahktin) theory. I am preparing a dissertation using observatiosn done
by myself and other members of a team supported by the National Center for
Reserch in Vocational Educatin; we've got over 300 observatiosn of community
college classes of all types, with interviews of instructors. My hope is
to be able to explain what is going on when learning appears (risky presumption!)
to be taking place. I am especially interested in tracking the who-knew-
what-when about Vygotsky and his colleagues in this country, and understanding
the political context of that stream of intellectual history. At the moment
I am living in Iowa City, IA (821 Dearborn Street, Iowa City, 52240) but am
still a student at Berkeley and can be reached at worthenh@garnet.berkeley.edu.