Wertsch suggests that one reason for conflicting results of research on
effective methods of instruction is the "failure to appreciate the power
of the mediational means involved.(p.119)" He goes on: "Mediational means
are often viewed as simply reflecting underlying psychological and social
processes, not as having a central role in shaping discourse." The example
of reflective teaching and the comparison to the locating information
technique are offered in this context. Later in Chapter 5, there is a
haunting example of the destructive power of stereotype, appropriated
unconsciously, while consciously rejected, i.e. the power of a discourse to
shape mediated action.
But in all the examples, teachers or researchers are active agents,
framing the interaction of the student subjects with the mediational
means. This points to power being located not only in the mediational
means and subject/agent, but being distributed in the social context(s) in
which the mediated action is taking place. That power can constrain or
empower the mediational means, affecting access to mastery (and
appropriation).
Your example(s) and Eva's comments point to attempts to improve the
mastery of the student teachers in an effort to standardize the
mediational means, i.e., standardize distribution.But even if a
standardized level of mastery were attainable, there would still be
variation in the deployment of the mediational means according to
contextual constraints and the inclinations of the teachers and other
involved agents, as well as the relations of the various individual
subjects to the mediational means (e.g., are they relating to the language
used as native speakers or as second language speakers).
I guess where this is taking me is toward the essential variability of
the mediational means and the need to account for factors which constrain
or enable their power.
Honorine
Peter Smagorinsky wrote:
One more observation--again without the benefit of actually having read
Chapter 4--Honorine cites Jim's use of reciprocal teaching as an
illustration of exemplary practice. Jim may already have covered my
comments in MaA, but one thing we find in our research is that a practice
(e.g., reciprocal teaching) is but a tool that gets understood and
implemented in idiosyncratic ways. And so reciprocal teaching (or
cooperative learning, or portfolio assessment, etc.) has some ideal form,
yet may experience refraction during particular appropriations and get
enacted in ways that don't resemble the practice envisioned by its
originator. To give an example from something I wrote a few years ago: a
student teacher claimed to be engaging her students in cooperative learning
because she had told them to work in groups and to share their work. For
the assignment, however, she provided students with a three-page summary of
a story with blanks provided for students to fill in missing information.
Students were placed in groups of three and told that each student should
do one page independently and when finished, they should read the three
pages consecutively for a whole understanding of the story. The teacher
thus grasped some features of the tool of cooperative learning yet did not
understand the overall concept of cooperative learning's emphasis on
interdependence. And so I think that any instructional practice that's
offered as an exemplar needs to be qualified by the observation that
particular instantiations of its use might vary from its ideal form.