Have any of you read the Popkewitz article in the winter 98 AERJ, entitled
"Dewey, Vygotsky, and the social administration..." ? I am struck by his
claims of the flaws in the constuctivist alchemy of pedagogy. I don't
dispute the processes of alchemy - I think we have a long way to go to
reach more scientific approaches as envisioned by Brown, Collins, and
Engestrom, as especially evident in the continued separation of theory and
practice. His claim to the division between knowledge and processes seem
due, imho, more to the separations and contradictions that occur as people
move from a transmission view of curriculum to one of interpersonal
construction.
I also have this feeling - maybe it will go away in a re-read- that
Popkewitz devalues Dewey's and Vygotsky's ideas because they emerged in a
different time and setting, with different intent than we pursue here and
now. Why should that be the case? Perhaps I am being too simple here, but
I do not discount Watt's work with thermodynamics and the steam engine
because it occured during industrial times, nor the work in quantum
mechanics that occured during WWII. That words as community and zone of
proximal development have different meanings in our new contexts is not
criticism, but rather a recognition of how meanings evolve in the remaking,
while never completely losing their ancestral origins.
And yes, it does seem that new alchemies bring shifts in power, and with
new categories, concurrent shifts in inclusion and exclusion.
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Technology in Education
Lesley College, 31 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]