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Re: [xmca] Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?



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.
Beth

On 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
existing
system. Here too one sees, I think, the implied powers of burgher and
pauper. (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 controlling

yourself, 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 its
dynamics. 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 its
sense of high-status individual in a managerial role (cf. "Executive
MBA 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 processor
design, where the executive function carries out the commands of the
program.

So there is a sort of root cultural meaning-message here: "it's good
to 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 a
difference 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 the
context of the discussion of learning sciences and vygotsky just to
keep 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/inde
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Departmental Webpage:  http://www.lehigh.edu/~inpsy/
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nicolopoulou.html>
**********************************************


mike cole wrote:

Thanks Peter-- I was just about to forward this story. Apart from
its
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 Section

The School Issue: Preschool


Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?


By PAUL TOUGH


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