xmcamail.2007_11: RE: [xmca] Streamed Discussion of Development

From: Emily Duvall <emily who-is-at uidaho.edu>
Date: Mon Nov 19 2007 - 11:38:56 PST

HI Eric,
A little bit will be coming out by Christmas in

Duvall, E. (2007). What a difference an ideology makes: An alternative pedagogical orientation to neoliberal values in education. In R. Alanen & S. Poyhonen (eds.), Language in action: Vygotsky and Leontievian legacy today. Newacastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Pp. 124-159.

However, the full deal is my dissertation - I just defended on the 6th actually - so it's not out there yet! I'm revising a bit and then looking for a publisher.
Mike did post my chapter 2, though ... :-)
Overall he results were pretty interesting in terms of the data that is relevant for children, parents, teachers and administrators - the assessment tool is very interventionist in orientation to allow for 'scores'... but with room for interactionist style mediations to allow for learning-that-leads-development. The rest of the assessment is interactionist. Doing a form of deep DA, I would say, changes a person. I would argue that there is work done my ZPD vis-à-vis learning the child and having them mediate my understanding of who they are, how they think, and what they need in terms of learning-that-leads-development. To that end, I am less about the product as a static piece of information.
It actually ends up being a very political piece - a critique of high stakes testing given issues of social justice and consequential validity... and looks at the kind of readers we are producing... children who can read reading-tests for example. The latter is pretty interesting given recent announcements in the US about literacy and how few people read books or texts in general, but how children's reading comprehension has gone up. It really speaks to the genre of reading-test reading.
At any rate, the DA itself was exceptionally good for teaching not only reading strategies, but also metacognition. One child really picked up on this; within several months he was no longer reading below grade level and the next year was receiving reading instruction in general education. He really needed that window into his thinking. Another child (who is the subject of the chapter above) learns that he can think and begins to gain control over his mind.
One of the interesting side-research forays I did as a dissertation-diversion project was to work with a spec ed teacher and have her review the data results to see if it could be relevant to for her. Even though I'm a spec ed teacher by trade I really wanted some corroboration of my thinking. The process really changed her approach to teaching in general... she saw the value in teaching using metacognition as much as possible. She, in turn, began to require her aides, etc to use the type of questioning that helps children think about their thinking and give us windows into their learning and development.

I can send you a copy of the assessment - a transformed state-mandated, standardized test of 3rd grade reading from Virginia, but it is really the narration of the cases that gives the deep understanding of what can be discovered in DA and these come with video excerpts of my work with the kids who agreed to participate. I'm a little hesitant to put it all out there until I have finished making it reasonably beautiful... :-)
Chapter 2, though, lays out the creation process connected to Vygotsky's cultural and historical method.. it needs some tweaking but it's out there.
~ Em

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org
Sent: Monday, November 19, 2007 10:42 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: RE: [xmca] Streamed Discussion of Development in CHAT theory

Great work Emily!

Do you have any articles concerning the research? I work with High School
age severely emotionally disturbed students who come with standardized test
scores that rarely provide much information pertaining to their potential
and have often thought that an assessment that provided such information
would be helpful.

eric

                      "Emily Duvall"
                      <emily@uidaho.ed To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
                      u> cc:
                      Sent by: Subject: RE: [xmca] Streamed Discussion of Development in CHAT theory
                      xmca-bounces@web
                      er.ucsd.edu


                      11/19/2007 12:34
                      PM
                      Please respond
                      to "eXtended
                      Mind, Culture,
                      Activity"

Hi Eric
Yes, I am advocating the use of DA - it is in fact my area of research...
:-)
I have used it to transform a state mandated, high stakes reading test for
3rd grade specifically for children with learning disabilities. The DA I
piloted takes about 20 minutes and provides quite a bit of diagnostic
information from the initial process, but DA is not simply a test. As a
result, while the information provides more sensitive 'scores' that reveal
children with learning disabilities are in the process of learning what it
is that state mandated tests suggest all children should be learning, the
DA process works towards learning-that-leads development vis-à-vis reading
strategies. The assessment is not simply taking a 'test', but also the
reflective and relflexive work in partnership with the child as the
directionality of development is through contintued process-activity with a
variety of texts (i.e. including other tests, trade books, poetry, etc).
The engagement is recursive and ongoing.
~ Em

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org
Sent: Monday, November 19, 2007 9:34 AM
To: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Streamed Discussion of Development in CHAT theory

Emily:

Are you advocating the use of Dynamic Assessment? I read David's post in
much the same way Mike did, that he wasn't reducing it persay but rather is
pointing to shortcomings in zpd theory. Is this correct David?

The problem specifically is that it will try to connect for a great period
of time, perhaps two, three minutes and then nothing. I have attempted
through the link on the listserv as well as the hyperlink under the green
banner. frustrating

"Mike Cole"

                      <lchcmike@gmail. To: "David Kellogg"
<vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
                      com> cc: "eXtended Mind,
Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
                      Sent by: Subject: Re: [xmca] Streamed
Discussion of Development in CHAT theory
                      xmca-bounces@web

er.ucsd.edu

11/19/2007 10:31

Please respond

to mcole; Please

respond to

"eXtended Mind,

Culture,

Activity"

Emily-- I thought the point of David's comment about one on one kinds of
zopeds was that they were insufficient, not that he was advocating such
reduction.

It is Adrian Cussins who uses the footpath metaphor and I thought it
problematic for some of the same reasons expressed in this thread.

No agency? No Burkian Pentad?
Not even a *secret* agent?
darn.
what replaces such exciting stuff?
mike
ps-- no idea about the problem with reaching the streamed discussion, Eric.
Checking on it.

On Nov 18, 2007 8:11 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:

> You didn't miss much, Mike! Paul attacked the use of the word "agency",
> and nobody was willing to defend it.
>
> Let's try a new direction instead. On Saturday, as it happens, I went to
> hear Professor Bachman, who signed the rejection letter you got for the
AERA
> mini-course. He's an assessment wallah in language teaching, and he gave
one
> of these airport talks that can be given to anyone and no one on any day
of
> the week in any city on earth (a pity, because we just had a very high
> stakes college entrance exam here in Korea, always accompanied by at
least
> one suicide).
>
> In the discussion, I tried to extend his idea of "generalizeability"
(that
> is, the idea that test results are predictive in some way of behavior
> outside of the test taking) to the FUTURE--dynamic assessment, of course!
> Professor Bachman couldn't see that there was any problem there at all,
> because the ability to learn is, as we all know, a form of aptitude, and
> aptitude is simply another construct which can be sampled and modeled by
> statistical means.
>
> On the way home it occurred to me that it is in principle impossible for
a
> test to predict how test-taking behavior can POTENTIALLY (as opposed to
> actually) change, even if we take (as dynamic assessment usually does) a
> severely truncated view of what a ZPD involves (one learner plus one more
> able peer or one learner plus one mediational means). It's in principle
not
> possible to use the zone of proximal development to predict how the zone
of
> proximal development itself will develop.
>
> I think that there are some disadvantages to the way in which Professor
> Engestrom talked about the ZPD (in particular, the only reference to
> internalization seems to be the ability to move around independent of the
> starting point, which is something that is possible without
internalization,
> e.g. using a map). But I think his "footprints in the forest" image
> catches this limitation extremely well. It is possible to use extant
> footprints to predict future footprints, but it is not possible to use
> footprints to predict future trails.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
> ------------------------------
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