[xmca] Two off topic requests for info

[Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Blessed three day weekend coming up and the opportunity to re-enter many
ongoing conversations.

Two requests for information.

1. I am looking for a reference to the social nature of creativity, in the
sense of "retrospecitive construction"
through social interaction, of novelty as newly created cultural formation.

2. I am looking for references to a phenomenon which I have been
encountering for some time, and am sure is
ubiquitous, but do not know published data on. LCHC works with kids who tend
to do poorly in school. For some
time now part of that work has involved us in helping with homework (See
Nocon and Cole on school invades afterschool
if this aspect of the matter is of interest).

Anyway, we have very well documented evidence that a child at, say, grade 3
is being asked and expected to do homework
assignments which are too hard in a mixture of ways that are linked to
absence of well mastered subroutines. Example, a child
is asked to subract 108 from 215. One issue is "borrowing". You need to
subtract 8 from 15 and replaced the 0 in 108 by a 9. But
this child, who understands this feature of the task (lets suppose) cannot
tell you what 15-8 and cannot work it out in a short period
of time if at all.

Generalized, the issue is that to "keep up" in school, the child must both
do her homework correctly or get smacked down AND must
somehow also acquire rapid and efficient means of completing the sub-tasks
involved which she has not mastered. The pedagogical challenge then
becomes (to eggregiously simplify) how to hold the child in the activity at
the "higher" level while "filling in" at the lower level.

References anyone, please?

It is memorial day weekend in the united states. In my class of 25 students
work with kids at our after school site no one knew what they
were supposed to remember on memorial day or where the holiday came from.
Something to do with death and soldiers. With children being
killed by other children in the neighborhood of our researchsite it was, a
very sad, teachable moment.

Civil war? What civil war?
mike
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