I liked very of her summary. It remember me the importance of a
constant discussion about ours ideias: her commentaries are much inviting to
deepen our debate.
At 13:23 17/07/1996 -0400, you wrote:
>As I explained in a previous message that I hope gets through
>cyberspace before this one, the summary I showed my colleague
>will not be shown to anyone else - only referred to for
>the concerns it raised, as an example of public discussion of the
>issues. Sorry for my misleading initial request.
>
>For those interested, the message in question is reposted below:
>
>The following message is a synthesis of xmca discussions on the
>political use and polarization of educational issues, focusing on the
>phonics/WL strand. Other extended exchanges since the Stone article
>was posted, inlcuding responses to the Sokal controversy, though
>related, are less well represented, only because the issues and my
>interests broaden beyond my capacity to integrate them right now. Perhaps
>the following may be of some small use in a more public response to
>guttered educational discourse. However, despite the fineness,
>judiciousness, & on occasion brilliance of the overall discussion
>(in its original e-mail form), it amounts to a position statement of
>sorts, not the sort of evidence-based argument that we have said
>the debate needs, and I have no time to make this a project.
>I've had a proposal deadline to meet [deleteted personal info]....)
>-----
>
>
>Recently, attacks against a wide range of approaches to education
> have appeared on the Internet, in professional journals, and in the
>news media. While the attacks vary from sloppily researched diatribe to
>reasoned argument, they have in common a commitment to
>certain forms of instruction that the OTHER approach
>to education (the one under attack) supposedly neglects.
>Although XMCA participants who have commented on these attacks
>are educators of different persuasions, they have all objected
>strongly to the dichotomization of educational issues and the sacrifice
>of substantive debate to "empty symbol politics." In the interest
>of working towards empirically sound & necessarily complex
>representations of actual educational practices, and thus toward
>decisions leading to BETTER practices, I offer this
>partial summary of discussions re: politics, ideals, &
>realities of education.
>
>(I stuck pretty much to the gist not the text of discussions.
>I trust that xmca-ers whose positions differ from what follows will
>clarify/amend)
>
>American education seems to vacillate between "half-truths" (Mosher, 5/10).
>that take the form of EITHER a belief that students need explicit
>instruction in basic skills (e.g., phonics instruction) OR the conviction
>that students need lots of literacy experiences that are relevant to
>their lives (e.g., "Whole Language" instruction). In fact, participants
>on this list agree that good teachers find ways to do both. Intending to
>expand the terms of the debate beyond the usual dichotomies, they have
> argued for "simultaneously grasped perspectives" (Wells) and for
>"pragmatic solution-oriented perspectives" (Raithel)
>
>To be more specific, xmca-ers generally agree that schooling should
>offer students both texts, problems, and projects that are relevant
>to their lives AND instruction that focuses on those features of
>literacy that may generalize across texts, problems, and projects
>(subtasks and routines, such as recognizing grapheme and phoneme
>correspondences). Of course the combination of instructional approaches
>leaves a lot to be answered: When is it appropriate to focus attention on
>discrete skills or facts? How much explication is enough, how much
>is too much, and how does the teacher know? Rather than formulas,
>xmca-ers advocate _navigation aids_ (JL?) for teachers,
>philosophies informed by experience that can guide decision-making in
>complex classroom environments, ways of linking general principles of
>learning and development to on-line teaching and learning interactions...
>
>At one (high) level of generality, such principles would include
>the design of classroom environments rich in materials relevant to
>students' lives and motivating activities [JL's "contexts and
>functions for meanings"]; it would also include instruction focused on
>forms and rules as resources for use in the future (JL's "transportable,
>generalizable tools"). Another principle not yet discussed derives
>from a leading assumption of the xmca community, that knowledge
>"arises from activity and is oriented towards future activity." (Wells)
>Thus, xmca-ers also advocate linking classroom work to the cultural
>and historical practices that it supports - drawing attention to the
>grammar of situations, as well as the grammar of sentences.
>To focus on the ongoing history of knowledge-making
>is to foreground contextual features, social relations and
>values, making them available for analysis and critique.
>
>In sum, the the xmca community recommends some combination of
>whole language practices and explicit instruction, with a third term,
>a concern for history and culture, added to the mix [A position
>that needs only specificity and concrete examples to make it
>interesting & useful. And the contentious issue of WHAT counts as history
>and culture - of content - not addressed]
>
>Even if opponents on either side of the debates in education were to
>agree on an eclectic mix of pedagogical principles, they would still
>be faced with questions about what those principles _ought_ to mean in
>practice. In the debates over one form of instrucation or another,
>we inevitably hear about the failures of a particular philosophy of
>education to make public schooling work better or work for more students.
>But the practical realities are that the models of educational practice we
>construct get hooked in unpredictable ways to other practices (Winward).
>"Translations" of a philosophy into educational practices can never be
>more than approximations. The slippage between principles and practice
>not only breeds questions (a potential benefit to the educational
>project) but also (unfortunately) invites caricature of aims and
>methods and makes fodder for our culture wars.
>
>The only evidence-based discussion of specific issues that cuts
>past general principles and resists stereotypification was based on a
>dissertation study of math education, which (according to JL) found that
>"insofar as teachers make accommodations to the dispositions of
>their students from non-dominant groups.... they wind up not modelling
>for them the most powerful discourses, registers, and genres of
>mathematics." JL's discussion invokes a theory of discourse
>(that mathematics talk like other dominant discourses functions
>within a narrow, technical and authoritative register), and it
>foregrounds concerns for the education of non-mainstream populations.
>But the questions it raised can be cast in "neutral" terms, as a
>problem all teachers must face (tho' granted, Bernstein makes clear
>that questions of pacing are hardly neutral). These are issues that
>interest me, so I will end by inviting discussion. Does a dominant
>discourse lose its virtuosity when it signals a relational modality?
>Jim Martin's claim - that it's the powerful discourse, not its
>watered down version, that needs renovating - suggests so.
>Here is a good example of the need for messy data, a good place
>for me to stop.
>
JOAO BATISTA MARTINS
jbmartin who-is-at sercomtel.com.br
UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE LONDRINA
ADDRESS:RUA RENE DESCARTES, 349
LONDRINA - PARANA - BRASIL
CEP 86060-600