Hello Steve and everybody–
Thanks, Steve, for your, most useful analysis of Kevin's paper. I agree with
you that it is difficult (if not impossible) to think of any
"monocontextual" activity – this term by itself can be an oxymoron. Also, it
is not very convincing to claim that traditional schooling is a
monocontextual activity. I think it is true that traditional schooling is
IDEOLOGICALLY monocontextual – institutionally it is recognized to have only
one legitimate context which is curricular and instructional defined by the
teacher – but, obviously, IN PRACTICE is polycontextual. Even more, it is
DIVERSILY polycontextual for different participants and observers and
different spheres (that I call chronotopes).
I think that since time and space has semiotic properties, Bakhtin's notion
of chronotope considering unity of time, space, and value (axiology) where
dramatic events unfold is very useful. I use Bakhtin's earlier work
published in English in the book “Art and Answerability” to define triadic
and not dyadic definition of chronotope (sorry for the obvious misnomer).
Bakhtin himself defined chronotope as unity of the dyad time and space but
in his own earlier work he used a triplet of time, space, and value
(axiology). I think that any ethnography of classroom or school (like for
example, Peggy Eckert's "Jocks and Burnouts") can be analyzed using
Bakhtin's literary approach of chronotope. Thus, I'm flipping up Bakhtin's
literary approach: Bakhtin saw literary work in any text (including Plato's
philosophical dialogues). I want to see educational ethnography in texts
describing education (e.g., ethnography of Socratic school in Plato's
texts). This ethnography can be good or bad – it is another story. This flip
allows me to introduce Bakhtin's literary analysis directly in education by
"translating" his text:
Bakhtin claimed that, “The chronotope in literature has an intrinsic generic
significance. It can even be said that it is precisely the chronotope that
defines genre and generic distinctions, for in literature the primary
category in the chronotope is time. The chronotope as a formally
constitutive category determines to a significant degree the image of man in
literature as well. The image of man is always intrinsically chronotopic
(bold indicates specifically literary terms used by Bakhtin, italics is
original)” (Bakhtin, 1991, "Dialogic imagination", pp. 84-85).
My translation of Bakhtin’s statement for education would run approximately
in the following way, “The chronotope in formal education has an intrinsic
generic significance. It can even be said that it is precisely the
chronotope that defines pedagogical regime and generic distinctions among
different pedagogical regimes of schools with different educational
philosophies, for in institutionalized education the primary category in the
chronotope is time. The chronotope as a formally constitutive category
determines to a significant degree the identity of the teacher and students
in education as well. The identity of all participants in school is always
intrinsically chronotopic (the bold indicates my translation of Bakhtin’s
literary terms into educational ones).”
Anyway, I argue that traditional school activity involves not only multiple
contexts but also multiple axiological chronotopes. I can see at least three
co-occurring axiological chronotopes (each of them is polycontextual!) in
traditional schools that I call didactic, local, and ontological. In the
didactic chronotope, curricular ideas collide with each other. In the local
chronotope, drama of participants present in local classroom situations
occurs (e.g., discipline, classroom management, classroom arrangement,
students' "off-task" chatting). Finally, in the ontological chronotope,
school related drama of the participants’ lives occurs on a broader scope
(e.g., teacher's test-oriented instruction, students' friendships and peer
romantic relations, students’ relationships with parents, credentialism,
identity development, gate keeping, racism).
In traditional school, only didactic chronotope is institutionally
legitimate and ideologically monocontextual. Thus, the school tries to build
huge fences to keep local and ontological chronotopes away from the
classroom space, time, and value system. However, it never can succeed
because this fence itself – regime of power – belongs to local and
ontological chronotopes (e.g., regime of rewards and punishments, classroom
management). School itself smuggles them back. Many innovative schools
embrace all three chronotopes as legitimate and mutually constituting (see
Barbara Rogoff’s book “Learning together” as an example).
What do you think?
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Gabosch [mailto:bebop101@comcast.net]
> Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 4:17 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: Space and time in chat
>
> I installed Adobe Reader 5, a major improvement over an earlier version I
> was using, and put Kevin's paper on Polycontextual Construction Zones on
> Word. It was a bit tedious, but alternating between Word processor and
> Excel spreadsheet magic I was able to create a table with each individual
> sentence in its own cell. I then separated out sentences that used terms
> based on polycontext and monocontext to take a look at how this paper uses
> this language to describe activity.
>
> Part of my motivation for this kind of analysis is that Kevin is writing a
> leading paper experimenting with some relatively new terminology and
> thinking tools for CHAT analysis. Mike and Jay especially have been very
> helpful asking questions and providing insights into these terms and
> concepts. I like the uses of the terminology and elements of space and
> time - paths, scales, manipulables, and to borrow from recent post from
> Mike, "space, border objects, third spaces, boundary crossing,
> trajectories, etc." Jay mentioned a term he is exploring, traversals.
> These terms appear to be a fruitful way to describe and analyze the
complex
> dynamic contexts that interpenetrate one another and the activities that
> take place within and around them, and which, indeed, construct them, just
> as these contexts co-construct activities. I see these space-time
elements
> as tools that can add to our understanding of human activity. I look
> forward to learning more.
>
> However - (this is the motivation for this kind of analysis) - I am
puzzled
> over the polycontext/monocontext distinction Kevin experiments with. My
> problem is that I am having trouble seeing any activity as monocontextual.
> If something indeed consists of only a single context, I am inclined to
see
> it, not as an activity, but as what Leont'ev would call an operation, a
> specific, situated act that takes place within a goal-oriented task, or an
> action. Perhaps an operation by nature is monocontextual. But, since
> actions connect operations to a larger context and goal, could even
actions
> be considered monocontextual? Following this line of reasoning, it
becomes
> especially difficult for me to conceive of an activity - a system of
people
> connecting a series of operations and tasks around a overall motive - as
> "monocontextual." It seems to me that human activity is by nature
> "polycontextual", or, to speak a little more plainly, as taking place in
> multiple contexts.
>
> Kevin uses the term multiple contexts a few times. Here are two examples.
>
> **********************************
> EXAMPLES OF THE TERM "MULTIPLE CONTEXTS"
>
> page 211
> In this article, I extend my work on social space to address relations
> among multiple contexts of activity.
>
> page 234
> Further analysis could extend our current understandings of multiple
> contexts by better articulating the temporal and spatial dynamics of
> multiple activity systems in contact, analyzing, for instance, the
> historical and geographical productions of collective and individual
> development, the semiotic relations of material objects as temporally and
> spatially constituted, and the ways in which time and space are traded on
> within polycontextual activity.
> ***********************************
>
> SG:
> As far as I can tell, "polycontexts" means the same as "multiple
contexts."
>
> ***********************************
> EXAMPLES OF THE TERM "POLYCONTEXTS"
>
> page 225
> Jimmy's Funds of Knowledge and Repositioning Across Polycontexts
>
> page 226
> Across the polycontexts of the project, Jimmy's home-based knowledge funds
> as well as his (uncertified) woodshop expertise become meaningful and
> valuable.
>
> page 233
> The constructs of social space as thirdspace, and of spatial scale and
> path, are not intended as a complete "toolkit" of spatial analysis, but
> rather to suggest the fecund possibilities for a further analysis of
> spatial production across polycontexts.
>
> ********************************************
>
> SG:
> The distinction between "monocontextual" activity and "polycontextual"
> activity is made dozens of times in Kevin's article, but in my mind, if
all
> activity is polycontextual, the distinction that Kevin wants to make
> between traditional schooling ("modal schooling activity") and the
> alternative approach to learning represented by the Walden Project is not
> successfully captured with these terms. Looking over the many examples of
> how Kevin uses "polycontextual," I get the strong impression that Kevin is
> talking about a certain type of activity. But I don't understand how to
> define the properties of this specific type of activity if I rule out that
> activities can be "monocontextual." According to my reasoning, saying an
> activity is "polycontextual" adds no information that distinguishes that
> activity if all activities are polycontextual. I could use some help with
> sorting this out!
>
> ***********************************************
> EXAMPLES OF THE TERM "MONOCONTEXTUAL"
>
> page 212
> The following analysis is based on this "construction zone" approach to
the
> Zoped, but shifts from a monocontextual to a polycontextual perspective,
> and considers how activity develops through polycontextual conflict.
>
> page 217
> 3The present analysis holds polycontextual relations as a norm, and not an
> exception. At the same time, for the purpose of analysis, it casts modal
> schooling activity as relatively monocontextual and stable as compared to
> destabilized situations in which modal schooling comes into sustained
> contact with extraschooling, as in the cabin-building project.
> page 228
> One way of interpreting this brief exchange is that it indexes the
> limitations of the project through the closure of institutional
> regulations, how monocontextual schooling closes down possibilities of
> expansion.
>
> EXAMPLES OF THE TERM "POLYCONTEXTUAL"
>
> page 219
> The exceptional meaning of the polycontextual activity for individuals was
> highly evident in interviewing students about the project, where they
often
> related how they would "look back" on the project in the future:
>
> page 220
> (subtitle) TRACING THE EXPANSION OF IDENTITY IN POLYCONTEXTUAL OR
> "POLYSPATIAL" ACTIVITY
>
> page 222
> The saw indexes how the group's (polycontextual) activity is possible, but
> not ready-to-hand, and therefore must be negotiated and developed.
>
> page 224
> Issues of risk are significant within the interaction as a means of
> destabilizing teacher-student identity; assumptions about teacher
> protection, borrowed from the classroom space, are disrupted in this
> polycontextual zone of schooling/beam sawing.
>
> Constructions of fear and risk within the discourse are significant, as
the
> affective and goal-directed dimensions of the activity are tightly
> interwoven in the production of polycontextual learning spaces.
>
> page 228
> Trisha's articulation of ability, in relation to an institutional
authority
> (Cindy), is suggestive of how she is developing an alternate positioning
in
> relation to schooling/ extraschooling, beginning to identify herself more
> completely with the polycontextual boundary-work of the project.
>
> The brief exchange suggests not only Trisha's ability to build on an
> identity affirmed through past (polycontextual) experience, but also her
> developing ability to negotiate identity and activity as multiple contexts
> are reconfigured.
>
> The frame is made primarily of heavy timbers (6 × 6 in.), which is itself
a
> polycontextual production in design, discussed earlier.
>
> The manner in which this particular polycontextual activity may be
> understood as relating to the articulation of social spaces is made
evident
> by analyzing how the object of the activity is developed as a response to
> contrasting and even competing social spaces, and, further, how new
spatial
> paths for the girt are developed as a response.
>
> page 229
> Continual movements between spaces, movements that represent the project's
> struggle to become stabilized either within or beyond the school,
> characterize the polycontextual construction of the cabin.8
>
> Moreover, stories of struggles and successes with past collective activity
> contribute to the scaled-up possibilities of ongoing activity in the
> polycontextual construction zone.
>
> page 233
> The polycontextual path of the project may be interpreted as somewhat
> distant from schooling, yet bidirectionally back toward it for those
> historically located on school's periphery.
>
> Reciprocally, Tyrone's engagement and identity changes the composition and
> identity of the group in its polycontextual activity.
>
> page 234
> Although the present project is strategically shaped around the analysis
of
> social space, it only begins to consider the complex relations of time and
> space in conceiving of polycontextual activity.9
>
> The value of polycontextual development among any social systems ought in
> part be measured by the yardstick of sustainability.
>
> However, the production of polycontextual activity also suggests a more
> modest goal than sustainable change among activity systems or within
> institutions.
> The polycontextual construction zones makes evident how the permanent,
> durable shift in practices and power relations understood as sustainable
> activity system or institutional change are a sufficient but not necessary
> requirement for highly engaged learning.
>
> page 235
> Moreover, the data suggest that polycontextual relations provide openings
> for those successful within schooling (e.g., Trisha and Sid) to
continually
> renegotiate and expand their identities and practices across heterogeneous
> and multiple terrains.
> **********************************************
>
> SG:
> Kevin's term "polycontextuality" obviously refers to situations with
> multiple contexts. But again, I have the problem of believing activities
> by nature have multiple contexts. Below are sentences Kevin uses with
this
> term in it.
>
> *********************************************
> EXAMPLES OF THE TERM "POLYCONTEXTUALITY"
>
> page 212
> My first purpose in this article is to articulate the discussion of
> polycontextuality with an analysis of social space.
>
> page 213
> What hints does this polycontextuality provide for further mediation?
>
> page 215
> (subtitle) TOWARD A SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF POLYCONTEXTUALITY
>
> More modestly, my goal is to bring a discussion of social space to the
> analysis of polycontextuality, to suggest how this discussion might
> proceed, and to illustrate how this theoretical rapprochement may be
> productive for the interpretation of individual and systemic expansion.
>
> page 232
> The foregoing discussion of social space is intended to add texture and
> breadth to discussions of polycontextuality.
>
> page 235
> A materialist account of polycontextuality involves grounding activity
> system constructs such as persons, tools, and community in the spatial
> textures and dynamics of their lived experiences, emphasizing a notion of
> material contextual production over context as "surround."
>
> page 237
> Polycontexuality provides entrée through not only by the mediation of one
> context into another, but through the creation of new spatialities formed
> by the lamination of activity systems.
>
> Moreover, the data suggest that polycontextual relations provide openings
> for those successful within schooling (e.g., Trisha and Sid) to
continually
> renegotiate and expand their identities and practices across heterogeneous
> and multiple terrains.
> **********************************
>
> SG:
> I've really enjoyed exploring these issues through Kevin's paper. The
> Walden Project was indeed a worthy activity for a CHAT analysis. The
> dialogue and analysis was informative and fun. Kevin opened my eyes - and
> obviously those of many others - to the value of using space and time
> elements to better understand the contexts that activity is made of, and
> understand how activities construct contexts.
>
> And now I am looking forward to tackling Yrjo-et al.'s paper!
>
> - Steve
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Aug 01 2003 - 01:00:08 PDT