[xmca] Thoughts on ISCAR

Having been buffeted by events leading up to and surrounding
ISCAR, and then having disappeared for a week, I am just starting
to get near catching up with myself.... and xmca.

I went first to the polling page to see if we are done voting for a paper to
discuss
and of course found that the page that is there allows you to read
abstracts, but not
vote.... again. The lchc gremlin was busy while I was away. I will go
hunting for anti-gremlin
ointment in the morning; then we can finish up the voting and get on to
discussing.

I note Jonna's comments re the stimulating nature of the meetings and the
frustrations of
coinciding talks and uneven attendance. One of my big frustrations was that
I was teaching
part time at another uc campus while ISCAR was going on and had one big
non-ISCAR evening
event to worry about and ended up being able to talk to too few of the
people I really was hoping
to have a chance to talk to and missed several talks I wanted to hear. I
assume everyone experienced
some version of those problems too.

I do not think I am alone in being interested in what people found most
interesting at the meeting. Might those
who attended put up a few "favorite ideas encountered" since no one could
take it all in and many on xmca
where not there.

For example.

In the discussion of social construction of CHAT, Volodya Zinchenko
commented that in his experience, in the
dance of activity and culture, too often activity gobbled up culture, that
there was something "aggressive" about
activity (or activity theory, not sure which). I was not sure to what extent
this reflected his experience in the USSR
and since in Russia. But upon reflection, I could see how this might seem
the case in my own interest in
interventionist strategies of research. A crucial issue in such research is
to organize it so that one is in the position
of mediator, not "I know the right answer, do this" agent. Very difficult to
arrange for.

Another interesting thought was evoked by Alex Kozulin's talk on
psychological tools and education which had a title something like "the idea
factory" (at least factory was in the title). Yrjo was a commentator and he
remarked on the Taylorist implications of the factory metaphor, but what
most interested me were two things. First, Alex commented that he uses the
term "self control" rather than "executive function" but the two terms
really mean the same thing.
I think he's right. But coming from an American tradition where we have
blockological models of memory with
an "executive block" I had not fully realized that American and Russian
developmentalists were as close as I had thought in this regard. Secondly,
he introduced work by Galina Tsukerman which illustrated how a curriclum
could
be implemented that promoted "reflective thinking," another term closely
related to the first two. Galina was not
at ISCAR, but her work has appeared in the Journal of Russian and East
European Psych, and it is quite terrific.
Having all of that put together in a nice example of theory/practice
research was nice to see.

Vera John Steiner's plenary talk had a great definition of mutual
appropriation in it that I have to get a hold of.

At the symposium about research at LCHC over the years there were several
interesting talks picking up different
LCHC themes. Denis Newman who now heads up an educational research
evaluation company talked about the
problems of ecological invalidity of reseach assessments... a new context in
which to think about dilemmas of
testing, at least for me. Ray Mc Dermott drew parallels between the
cultural-historical contexts of Dewey's lab
school and LCHC's out of school research that were provoking as Ray can
always be, James Joyce and a
leprechaun always dancing in his prose. There was also an interesting
symposium on research inspired by Dewey
and that topic always yields new insights.

The entire event was about diversity and wow was there a lot of it. how much
came through the distance media is
hard for me to judge. But it was there in the ideas, the faces, the dress.

What did others encounter that seemed of more than personal interest?

If anyone, like Jonna, was at an event, either as speaker or as audience,
where the material seemed worthwhile
for discussion but only one person turned up, perhaps they can get the power
points or printed talks and send them along to xmca for distribution and
discussion. And there is a moodle somewhere where some, if not all, of the
talks
are stored that we could use for access.

I hear that winter is coming in Northern Europe. Its still summer here in
San Diego and we still need rain. Feel
free to share.

mike
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Received on Sun Sep 21 17:47 PDT 2008