Louise,A bit late, and maybe someone's already answered for me, but Freire's classic book is Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It is truly brilliant.
BTW, LCHC-ers, it is also a classic of intervention research with a cultural model, no?
JAY. Jay Lemke Professor (Adjunct) Educational Studies University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 www.umich.edu/~jaylemke On Sep 30, 2009, at 10:06 PM, Louise Hawkins wrote:
Jay, Could you recommend a good text to read regarding Freire's ideas? Regards Louise Hawkins Lecturer - School of Management & Information Systems Faculty Business & Informatics Building 19/Room 3.38 Rockhampton Campus CQUniversity Ph: +617 4923 2768 Fax: +617 4930 9729 -----Original Message----- From: Jay Lemke [mailto:jaylemke@umich.edu] Sent: Thursday, 1 October 2009 02:59 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: Re: [xmca] Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control? Perhaps a second, more serious response. Critical thinking, I believe, is a "habit of mind". That is, it's not something one turns on and off, or something that we can stimulate in a single class or around a single issue or text. It inhabits a longer timescale, it is more of an acquired disposition, and once you acquire it it's there with you in relation to pretty much everything. How we acquire it is a big, important question. I think we know, epidemiologically, that those who are marginalized in society are more likely to acquire it spontaneously. I always found Freire a useful text with Brooklyn College pre-service and new teachers, initially to talk about how to stimulate critical thinking in others who were already living in conditions that limited their human potential. But it always wound up being about how these students/teachers themselves were being limited by institutions, biases, power inequalities, etc. (even those in our own college classroom). They, too, were living in conditions that made them ready to discover critical stances. It took a while, and I don't know for sure how long the active critical disposition lasted in the face of the pain of seeing the pain around us, and the ease of easing off from a critical stance in life. One critical breakthrough can catalyze a more generalized critical disposition, but "transfer" is often as much a learned capacity in regard to critical thinking as in regard to any other higher intellectual function. But the deeper, the wider, and the longer it sinks its teeth into us, the more likely we will be looking and feeling critically for the rest of our lives. I know that you and your students will keep at it! JAY. Jay Lemke Professor (Adjunct) Educational Studies University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 www.umich.edu/~jaylemke On Sep 30, 2009, at 7:23 PM, Beth Ferholt wrote:An interesting twist as I used this paper in a class of student teachers here at Brooklyn College:I was excited to bring in Bodrova from the New York Times. I thought I could encourage critical thinking about the troublesome 'frame' in which the article presented this exciting work with play. I overestimated my abilities to encourage critical thinking about the piece ... but comments from the students after class made me think that these teachers-to-be may included more dramatic play in their classrooms because they read these ideas in the Times. BethOn Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:23 PM, Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:David and all, Briefly, the dynamic, in the sense of the mechanisms at work, may be much the same, but the degree of residual choice, or freedom-in- practice, remains considerably greater. Call is power-within-the-system as opposed to power-over-the-system, which, I agree, individuals in general, regardless of social class lack. That's why collectives are more formidable in resisting or changing the system. A deep question I think is whether the marginalized or the middle class in fact play this role. The former, I think, find it harder to organize and participate in collective action over longer time spans, but if they do are more likely to initiate major changes. The latter aggregate in search of their interests more often and easily, but are less likely to do more than negotiate relative advantage within the existingsystem. Here too one sees, I think, the implied powers of burgher andpauper. (Genuine princes are in a much more paradoxical position!) JAY. Jay Lemke Professor (Adjunct) Educational Studies University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 www.umich.edu/~jaylemke On Sep 27, 2009, at 10:36 PM, David H Kirshner wrote: But there is a world of political difference among controllingyourself, carrying out commands, and controlling others. Jay, Not to dispute the critical stance of your concerns re self- regulation,I wonder to what extent the politicization of the issue obscures itsdynamics. Even the wealthy scion inheriting position and power has to learn to navigate in an existing system "he" (most likely, he) hasn't created. The rewards for self-control undoubtedly are much greater and much more readily forthcoming for the prince than the pauper. But isn't the dynamic the same? David -----Original Message----- From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu ] On Behalf Of Jay Lemke Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2009 11:26 PM To: lchcmike@gmail.com; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: Re: [xmca] Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control? As a footnote to my worries about the politics of teaching "self- control", and in response to Mike's note about re-framing in cognitive psych discourse, a thought or two about "executive function". There is a value connotation in this term, from "executive" in itssense of high-status individual in a managerial role (cf. "ExecutiveMBA program" or "Executive Summary" not to mention "Executive Washroom"!). And it's not so semantically distant from the putative denotative meaning of the term: the function of executing decisions. The history comes, I believe, from computer programming and computer processordesign, where the executive function carries out the commands of theprogram.So there is a sort of root cultural meaning-message here: "it's goodto be in charge" conflated with "self-control is good". But there is a world of political difference among controlling yourself, carrying out commands, and controlling others. Or as I argued in my other post, learning how to control yourself to act your part in someone else's drama.It may be obvious but perhaps still worth noting that there's also adifference between the meaning of "self-control" or "self- regulation" as the basic and necessary ability to focus your own attention and action in order to get something done beyond the single instant vs. their meaning as conforming to the norms of behavior set by others. In free cooperative or collaborative activity, where group norms are agreed and remain subject to challenge by all and to revision, this latter difference fades. But how often does that happen in schools? or any late capitalist institution? JAY. Jay Lemke Professor (Adjunct) Educational Studies University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 www.umich.edu/~jaylemke On Sep 27, 2009, at 9:22 AM, mike cole wrote: I am pushed to get ready for classes monday, Ageliki.I would be glad to discuss the issue I referred to as re-framing within thecontext of the discussion of learning sciences and vygotsky just tokeep it in the bounds of time constraints-- have you read that discussion? Otherwise my comments will make no sense. Within that context, I might start with executive functioning as a "neuroscience term," the discourse on 0-3 and ways to make babies brains develop more quickly (see xmca discussion of brain and education),and the linkages to no-child-left behind. Seems a long way from Kharkov in the late 1930's, or 1990's, or the recent (to the NYTimes) discovery of Vygotsky. mike Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Ageliki Nicolopoulou <agn3@lehigh.edu> wrote: Hi Mike,Can you explain a bit what you mean by re-framing and why you see it as an issue of re-framing? Thanks, Ageliki -- ********************************************** Ageliki Nicolopoulou Professor Department of Psychology, Lehigh University 17 Memorial Drive East Bethlehem, PA 18015-3068 Personal Webpage:http://www.lehigh.edu/~agn3/index.htm<http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Eagn3/index.htmDepartmental Webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/~inpsy/nicolopoulou.html<http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Einpsy/ nicolopoulou.html> ********************************************** mike cole wrote: Thanks Peter-- I was just about to forward this story. Apart fromits considerable intrinsic interest to members of this group, it seems relevant to the prior discussion the origins of learning sciences and the ways in which re-framing can operate to change the terms of discourse. mike On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 7:36 AM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote: September 27, 2009 The NY Times Magazine SectionThe School Issue: Preschool Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control? 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