Re: abstraction

From: Ini Haket (I.Haket@ppsw.rug.nl)
Date: Tue May 03 2005 - 04:35:23 PDT


Michael, I'm not sure I understand your comment.

Do you mean? It is not important, if students generalize in their own way, because
being the object of activity, the generalizations are inherently objective?

If so, doesn't this cause problems in the school situation?

Or do you mean? Students participate in the same activity and, as a result of that, have
the same objective generalizations.

If so, what is the influence of their past - different - experiences?

Or none of these, but …?

Ini

On 2 May 2005 at 7:12, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:

> When I look at it dialectically, generalizations are objective because
> they are shaped by who states them, they are concrete realizations of
> possibilities that exist at the cultural-historical level in this
> group, they are inherently objective otherwise they could not be the
> object of the activity.
> If you look at the general in genetic way, it makes little sense to
> ask how general is the general, because the general always contains ALL
> the possibilities that are realized concretely. Like all possibilities
> realized in the F1 generation are already contained in the P (parent)
> generation, ALL concrete appearances in the F2 generation are already
> contained potentially in the P generation. This is why P is a true
> general.
>
> Michael
>
>
>
> On 2-May-05, at 6:15 AM, Ini Haket wrote:
>
> > The article poses an interesting problem for me. Is the result of the
> > abstraction
> > process one and the same generalizations for all the participants? How
> > common, how
> > general are certain generalizations? Jurow cites approvingly Latour:
> > “….generalizations
> > are not objective, but are shaped by who states them, how they are
> > connected to other
> > claims …” (page 282). How does this relate to the aims of education?
> > Math teachers
> > wants their students to work with the same general structure, I
> > suppose? Teachers
> > offer guidance to make sure that everybody generalizes and comes in
> > the end to the
> > same abstraction. To reach the first aim the object of the activity in
> > the lessons is
> > generalizing. And inscriptions and the questions teachers provide for
> > the process of
> > conjecturing form an instrument for guidance in the “right direction”.
> >
> > But what about the individual(??), situational(??) influences on
> > generalizations, that
> > Latour mentions?
> >
> >
>



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