Re: Timothy's book, Angel's review
Eugene Matusov (ematusov who-is-at cats.ucsc.edu)
Wed, 13 Sep 1995 12:47:22 -0700
Thank you, Angel (and Mike for encouragement of Angel), for sharing with us
your very thoughtful analysis of Timothy Lensmire's book. I just want to
comment on Timothy's advice to transform classroom activities from
individual to group ones. Together with Barbara Rogoff and some of her
students, I'm studying an innovative elementary school in Utah that
encourages parent participation and collaboration. A colleague of us,
Chikako Toma, who is Japanese was watching videotapes of classroom
activities that we collected in this school. She was amazed that parents
and teachers working in small groups with children designed activities with
individual final product. According to Chikako Toma, it differs from
Japanese classroom activities where often there were joint (or group) final
products. I recently checked that observation by doing a brief inventory
(this is very preliminary "results" =96 no reliability or even strict coding
were performed): out of 104 videotaped activities 68% were with individual
final product and 32% with joint final product. The data was spread evenly
among grades. 32% included all-class activities =96 if all-class activities
are subtract to focus exclusively on small group activities, the percentage
will be even lower. It seems that mid-class US parents and teachers tend to
design activities for elementary school children with individual final=
product.
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Eugene Matusov
Psychology Department
University of California at Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
EMATUSOV who-is-at cats.ucsc.edu