Patrick Dias <INAD@MUSICB.MCGILL.CA>
Patrick Dias (INAD@MUSICB.MCGILL.CA)
Tue, 23 Jan 1996 17:43:28 EST
I teach at McGill University, Montreal, Canada in the Faculty of
Education. My work is primarily in the area of reader response to
literature, the development of writing abilities, and teacher
education. I have written mainly on adolescent response to
literature. Recently I have studied how readers from four
different cultural settings read and respond to the same poems. I
am also working with a team of three other researchers studying
the relationships between writing in academic and related
workplace settings. I am excited by the work of Vygotskian
scholars such as Jim Wertsch and Mike Cole, and the applications
of Activity Theory as explored by Engestrom. Also
Situated/Distributed Cognition, Lave and Wenger, James Britton,
Shirley Bryce Heath, Michael Polanyi, Wm. Labov, and Barbara
Rogoff come to mind. I see my work moving primarily in the
direction of examining how collaborative small group inquiry can
empower students as readers and writers. My major goal is to
promote what I call non-directive teaching, a radical shift in
teacher roles and classroom relationships, as a powerful means of
enabling learning.