>2) I do not think that in the Case2 teaching was the goal (or primary
>goal) of the adult. I think that the goal was to help the child to make
>his video. I think teaching and learning were by-products of the working
>together on the video project.
>3) In Case1, teaching was alienated not only from the child but also from
>the adult: it was not the case that the adult honestly wanted to share
>what he was excited about...
Well, of course we don't know what these two people were thinking, and our
behaviourist friends would tell us it doesn't matter what they were
thinking, but let's assume they are typical.
I don't think that Case 1 adult was not wanting to share his knowledge. At
the very worst he would want to teach well enough to keep his job, and more
likely his failure to "connect" with the kid was a point of frustration for
him. (Remember, 30 years ago I was a know-nothing young maths teacher in
Brixton, so I have some sympathy with the Case1 teacher).
Also, I doubt that Case 2 adult was simply drawn in by the enthusiasm of
the kid and forgot about his own role.
Let us assume that both adults intended to teach. If this was not true in
the cases observed, there will have been millions of cases where this was
true and both kinds of outcomes ensued.
Let us assume that in both cases the kid either was not interested in
learning the application or was only committed "formally", e.g., to please
his parents, to pass the exam, to please the adult, or whatever.
The barrow which I am pushing is the thesis that until both participants
are committed, for their own reasons, to a common project, then there will
be no learning. And further in fact, until the joint project is meaningful
for the lives of both participants, then learning will be transitory and
meaningless.
In Case 1, the adult simply took it for granted that the kid wanted to
learn and understood what it was he was wanting to learn and could not see
the signals being given that this was not the case and did not know how to
proceed otherwise, how to reframe his project. He could not recognise the
independent identity of the kid as a needy person with their own will, who
was not committed to learning the application, and could not be cajoled
into it.
In Case 2, the adult was either a better teacher, who knew that the kid had
his own agenda which did not have a place for learning the given
application, or had enough sympathy and rapport with this kid to just know
in his bones that as things stood the kid had no reason to commit to
learning the application, and found it easy to put himself in the kid's
shoes and recognise what the kid was interested in doing and recognising
that his own aims could be reframed in such a way that he could do what
really enthused him (expanding the horizons of a youngster) while
collaborating with the kid in a "cool" project.
I think it is a kind of rhetorical twist to describe learning as a
"by-product", despite the deep truth which lies within this observation.
For the adult, learning was the aim. The video production was a project
which would provide learning as a by-product, but by-product only in the
child's consciousness. The important thing was that the video production
project produced outcomes to which both were committed.
What do you think?
Andy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Dec 01 2003 - 01:00:11 PST