Vera,
I agree. In going back in the archives the differentiation between actions
and activity came up which might be important to take up. For me
appropriation gets closer to the activity end, but as part of that
appropriation we internalize (and externalize) actions which as I understand
it are things individuals do. I agree Luria is very important here. I
realize I countered appropriation to internalization and that is mostly
because I see it incorporated in the term of appropriation.
My drawing on appropriation was that it was something more than "mastery" or
"just the fact" but as you mentioned below included consciousness and the
material base of human abilities. I think both appropriation and
internalization are terms that evoke very different meanings for a
particular reader. For me if were talking about Leontev, Luria, Vygotsky
etc. there seems to be an emphasis on what occurs in learning cannot be
seperated from consciousness, identity, and the brain.
Nate
-----Original Message-----
From: Vera John-Steiner [mailto:vygotsky@unm.edu]
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2000 10:12 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: Response to Phillips RE: Blast 3
Nate,
What happens to the consequences of the work with the humdreds of students a
teacher has had? Does not it affect something inside the teacher? Her/his
memory, or belief system,
or educational theory? Is not that part of the teacher's consciousness?
Does not consciousness require some brain mechanism which is indeed inside
the teacher only to be externalized, or realized in a changed form with the
next group of students in an
evolving activity system? I think by denying internalization we are denying
the material base of humans' abilities to act in a relevant way, in building
upon past collective knowledge as a thoughtful social participant. Without
acknowledging the role of the human brain,
(but not making it the primary unit of analysis but part of distributed
cognition), we are back to a position that excludes a significant aspect
of activity, that of learning.
Perhaps this is not a problem to most of you, but I think we have neglected
Luria in our discussions,
Vera
-----Original Message-----
From: Nate Schmolze <nate_schmolze@yahoo.com>
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Sunday, October 29, 2000 9:15 AM
Subject: Response to Phillips RE: Blast 3
>Phillip,
>
>I agree with what you said about the classroom and how the terms don't
>necessarily get at what is occurring in the students or teachers head.
>
>One example, I was recently in a classroom (Kindergarten) where children
>were doing journal writing. The logic of this practice was children would
>explicitly examine various patterns of oral language in their writing. We
>of course have fancy terms for this like emergent literacy, "non-standard"
>spelling etc. One of the main aspects of this sort of activity is you
don't
>emphasize "standardized spelling" because what you want to do is have
>students come to terms with the relationship between oral and written
>language.
>
>Well, one child was writing letters in a sporadic fashion, so I was curious
>of what patterns he was transcribing. He then said something - oh I'm just
>making up letters. For this particular child journal writing was a time
when
>you just randomely selected letters from the alphabet for about 15 minutes.
>
>We can, and we often do make sense of such writing through theories of
>literacy stages etc. For me an emphasis on activity and appropriation
offers
>a different lens in which to view what is ocurring. We have certain
beliefs
>about how children learn and organize the instructional environment
>accordingly and students as well as teachers appropriate this activity.
>For the teacher this child may still be in a literacy stage where the child
>has not come to any sort of phonetic awareness of letters and sounds, but
>for this child he sees the activity he was engaging in as that literacy
>stage.
>
>So, I think your right about needing to be in tune with what the student
>teaches us, but that again is very much mediated by our beliefs as
teachers.
>For me appropriate - as in activity - gets at what is ocurring in both the
>teacher's and student's head in the above example. In many ways it reminds
>me of my son coming home from his Kindergarten screening and saying, "boy,
>they really have stupid teachers at that school, they don't even know their
>letters". The point being I guess is appropriation for me gets more at the
>actual process that is ocurring in these examples than say internalization,
>construction or various other terms. For me it keeps activity in clear
focus
>which usually does not occur when we approach children's unique ways of
>learning from an inner-outer individualistic framework.
>
>My sense is that while activity is not in ones head -something I go out and
>construct- and in that sense predertimed, objective etc, students are also
>not seperated from activity. I see it as getting away from the american
>notion of the social, cultural etc taking on a form of superstructure.
>Activity includes and incorporates the dialectic of the object-subject
>relation. To use your example of teaching reading the experiences of
>hundreds of students might influence (determine) the type of activity your
>future students may receive. That may be good or bad - we don't have time
to
>reinvent the wheel with every child, but then there are also teachers whose
>experience with teacher education and students from the 60's still
determine
>the type of activity current students engage in.
>
>Nate
>
>
>
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 01 2000 - 01:01:42 PST