On Mon, 12 Jan 1998, Mike Cole wrote:
> Phillip-- What you describe sounds like a terrific description of
> 1920's Thorndikism/Taylorism and 1980's block diagram cognitive
> psychology hand in glove. It makes REAL clear the dis-ease with the
> idea of best practices.
>
> Its what happens when we murder to dissect.
> And then make inferences about the living organism.
>
Phillip's reaction to being treated like a cadaver is certainly
justified and I did not give alot of clues in my posting that this was NOT
the sort of methodology that I had in mind. Following Scribner and Cole, I
think of practice very broadly, ranging from the practice of a profession
to the moment-to-moment practices exercised in particular situations. As
such, I agree wholeheartedly with Phillip that we need to situate the
practices in schools, families, communities, and societies, as well as in
teachers and pupils.
However, I do not think that it is necessary to murder to analyze.
Such murdering comes from the medical/physiological model that has beset
Phillip (and most "subjects" of psychological research). One of the
reasons that I am so enthusiastic about the ecology metaphor is that it
provides a rigorously scientific, but non destructive model. For example,
far from prescribing one and only one way, it shows the value of
diversity. Also, far from remaining removed from the system being studied,
it studies its own activities as part of the system.
But ecology cannot give us the whole methodology. The reason is
that cultural development has some basic differences from evolutionary
adaptation. One of these basic differences is the "default strategy" that
I mentioned in my last posting. Such methods crop up very often when
people are put in new situations or put under pressure in old ones
(including the pressure that comes from being observed by clip-board
toters and government watchdogs). Sometimes they do little harm, but also
sometimes they can be very destructive. Treating pupils as if they can't
learn because they have an unusual skin color or linguistic accent is an
example of such destructive, default practices. Also, Phillip, putting
great time pressure on teachers and observing them without allowing them
to interact during the construction and use of the observations is
another.
In contrast to such low end practices, there are also practices
that teachers/schools/parents/communities have constructed that are not
common and that work really well for particular situations. To find these,
I agree with Mike that describing the school setting as an activity system
is a very important step. It is also essential, to continue to monitor the
changes in the system. It is quite possible, for example, to encourage a
good practice too much (stifling diversity can be dangerous to the
system). In the final analysis, I agree with Louise that researchers can
make an important contribution, but I also agree with the skeptics -- some
researchers use default or even derived practices that can be very
destructive. Including the researcher in the analysis of change in the
activity system, therefore, is an essential step. Society won't let the
classroom alone, any more than (or even as much as) we leave our forests
alone. The problem is not so much to get the researchers out of schools as
to give them better tools (including ecological and activity theory
perspectives) and hold them as accountable for their impact as every
other element is being held accountable (i.e., when they are being
destructive, identify the fact, and provide them with alternative
methods).