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[xmca] 1982 paper on schooling
Hi Mike, Steve and All
I like your summary, Steve. This is a vygotskian and bakhtinian article with
a set of topics that are of interest to us: literacy practices, oral and
written language, schooling, critical feminism and research methodology.
I would like to privilege and discuss the last topic. In fact, to study *"*
everyday/scientific" knowledge as a function of years of schooling” and
measuring it with a “nouns”* *test may be a reductionist perspective.
Despite this, the article may be interpreted as an exploratory step of a
larger research; and its subject is a promising refreshment for me.
Discourse analysis methodologies may be a central issue to study literacy
practices. From a cultural historical perspective (to analyse discourse
practices in literacy research), what kind of methodological choices do we
need to make? Interviews? Natural observation? How to analyse multiple data
we collect with all this methods?
Best,
Luísa A
On 28 June 2010 00:56, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> Cool summary of the article, Steve.
> A variety of issues ensue, but which are of interest to people?
>
> mike
>
> On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I like this article Mike just posted - Focus on Women's Empowerment in
> > Latin America Maternal Schooling and Health-Related Language and Literacy
> > Skills in Rural Mexico
> > by EMILY R. DEXTER, SARAH E. LEVINE, AND PATRICIA M. VELASCO.
> >
> > Here are some extracts that stand out for me. <Bracketed comments> are
> > mine, the rest is quoted from the article. Interesting connections to
> > recent discussions. I find doing this kind of summary helpful for me to
> > absorb this kind of writing, so here goes.
> >
> >
> > ***********
> > <1. One of the measurements used in this study of rural Mexican women
> > regarding how they responded to health interviews and information was to
> > measure how they defined the meanings of common nouns in a noun
> definition
> > task.>
> >
> > Following Snow in her research with schoolchildren, we employed a noun
> > definition task to assess women's decontextualized language skills. Women
> > were asked the meaning of 10 simple nouns such as "knife," "thief," and
> > "dog" with the question, "What is a ?" Their responses are scored on a
> > continuum from highly contextualized to highly decontextualized. A
> > contextualized definition of "thief" would be "One stole my television,"
> > while a decontextualized response would refer to abstract properties: "A
> > person who steals from others." A highly contextualized description of
> "cat"
> > might be to point to a cat in the room, while a decontextualized
> description
> > would describe it in terms of its superordinate category membership ("a
> cat
> > is an animal...") and specific properties ("that is domesticated,
> nocturnal,
> > and has fur and whiskers").
> >
> >
> > <2. The noun definition task employed in this study is similar to aspects
> > of Luria's study.>
> >
> > The noun definition is the verbal equivalent of the object classification
> > task that A. R. Luria used when investigating the reasoning strategies of
> > Soviet peasants. Luria found that nonliterates with no schooling were
> more
> > likely to classify objects according to function rather than
> superordinate
> > category: a scythe would be grouped with wheat rather than with other
> tools,
> > for example. Luria proposed that schooling and literacy promote
> > classification systems that are abstracted from everyday life.
> >
> >
> > <3. Socioeconomic status tends to predict the length of answers to
> > questions in a health interview.>
> >
> > While the noun definition, listening comprehension, and reading
> > comprehension scores were predicted by length of schooling, adult
> > socioeconomic status is the only variable that predicts how much a woman
> > speaks in an interview. Women with more socioeconomic resources, on
> average,
> > gave longer responses than women with fewer resources, regardless of
> > education level. We have not found evidence, then, that women learned
> this
> > skill in school. It should be noted, however, that adult socioeconomic
> > status explains only 25 percent of the variance in this measure, showing
> > that at each level of socioeconomic status considerable variation exists
> in
> > the length of responses.
> >
> >
> > <4. Schooling and literacy help women understand oral public health
> > messages.>
> >
> > The oral language skills effective for local, face-to-face communication,
> > we argue, are not a sufficient foundation for the bureaucratic literacy
> > required to understand public-health messages. In our study, the women
> able
> > to provide the most decontextualized, impersonal definitions of common
> words
> > were also, on average, the most skilled at understanding spoken health
> > messages, and those with the greatest listening comprehension skills were
> > best able to understand printed health information.
> >
> > ... we argue that the ability to understand public, bureaucratic language
> -
> > spoken and written - requires an orientation to language emphasized in
> > schools but not necessarily in other family and community settings.
> >
> >
> > <5. Women's literacy classes should expand oral language abilities, not
> > just reading skills. This point seems relevant to some of Shirley's
> remarks
> > the other day.>
> >
> > ... a major goal of women's literacy classes should be to expand oral
> > language abilities. Not only will these skills serve as a foundation for
> > literacy, but they also will give women greater access to the information
> > provided by the increasingly ubiquitous radio and television.
> >
> >
> > <6. Just as this study relied, in part, on correlating the ability to
> > define nouns in decontextualized ways with the ability to interact with
> > public health systems, the ability to articulate and challenge the
> > definitions of words is important in general, including in feminist
> > consciousness.>
> >
> > The act of defining words, however, is also a fundamental and powerful
> way
> > of participating in the public sphere of meaning-making. A formal
> definition
> > is an assertion that a word has a standardized-or shared-meaning that
> > conveys not only one's own experience but also the experience of a
> > collective, or an implied "we." Definitions are agreements about what
> words
> > mean, and those agreements can be challenged. It is through the act of
> > redefining words that new meanings can be created in the public sphere,
> and
> > social change for women occurs, in part, when they successfully challenge
> > the public definitions of words such as "marriage," "motherhood," "home,"
> > "work," "economy," "sexuality," "politics," and "equality." A critical
> > feminist consciousness requires an ability to understand the way the
> world
> > is currently defined and an ability to become an active participant in
> > defining the public world.
> >
> > *******
> > - Steve
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Jun 27, 2010, at 3:10 PM, mike cole wrote:
> >
> > Attached is a paper on years of schooling and the formality of
> definitions
> >> given by Mexican women. Part of a much larger set of papers but directly
> >> related to earlier paper by Snow and ulvi's dissertation topic. Not sure
> >> where/how best to respond to Andy's note because i am unsure if people
> >> regard it as peripheral or central to Vygotskian and other theories of
> >> culture and development.
> >>
> >> I see this "nouns" test as well as the paper with D'Andrade as relevant,
> >> but
> >> also as leaving plenty of room for a study that uses the "everyday/
> >> scientific" distinction and studies it as a function of years of
> >> schooling.
> >>
> >> mike
> >>
> >> On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 9:02 AM, ulvi icil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I am interested on the effect of schooling on concept formation, the
> >>> relationswhip between everyday and scientific concetps as a candidate
> >>> research topic for my master thesis that I will start to work October
> >>> 2010
> >>> onwards !
> >>>
> >>> Ulvi
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> 2010/6/26, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>:
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>> That article connects to several ongoing threads, Andy. But lets see
> if
> >>>> others are interested before I directly comment.
> >>>>
> >>>> Instead, I think that the cover of the current issue of the New Yorker
> >>>> magazine provides interesting food for thought one concepts and their
> >>>> representations. It is accessible from www.newyorker.com. Try to
> click
> >>>> on
> >>>> the cover and than use control+ (on a pc) to get a larger and larger
> >>>> imaged.
> >>>> The different layers of meaning appear to move between the syntagmatic
> >>>> and
> >>>> paradigmatic dimensions of meaning making. Besides,
> >>>> its clever.
> >>>> mike
> >>>>
> >>>> On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 6:38 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> I just had a read of Mike's 1982 paper with Roy D'Andrade on the
> >>>>>
> >>>> influence
> >>>>
> >>>>> of schooling on concept formation:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/ap82v4n2.PDF
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Great paper!
> >>>>>
> >>>>> It occurred to me that Luria is in agreement with many others that a
> >>>>> hierarchical system of categories, a taxonomy, is the archetype of
> the
> >>>>> "abstract" concept. Luria's conception of how this relates to prior
> >>>>>
> >>>> forms of
> >>>>
> >>>>> concept (affective and concrete) is the main point of interest in the
> >>>>> article, but I would like to question whether this taxonomical idea
> is
> >>>>>
> >>>> valid
> >>>>
> >>>>> as the archetype of the "true" concept. The article claims that
> >>>>>
> >>>> taxonomical
> >>>>
> >>>>> practices ("true" or not) are archetypal school practices, and this
> is
> >>>>>
> >>>> an
> >>>>
> >>>>> interesting and different question.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> An interesting counterpoint to this is Hegel's classification of 3
> >>>>> different components which he thinks must *all* be present in the
> >>>>>
> >>>> formation
> >>>>
> >>>>> of a true concept:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The subject is (a) ascribed certain qualities; (b) seen as having
> >>>>> having
> >>>>>
> >>>> a
> >>>>
> >>>>> certain place in a system of social practice; and (c) taken under its
> >>>>>
> >>>> genus,
> >>>>
> >>>>> as belonging to a certain living whole.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Further, I think (c) does not actually amount to the kind of Linnaean
> >>>>> hierarchical family tree, but could also be interpreted like genre
> and
> >>>>> archetype without the implied underlying totality. Also, there is all
> >>>>>
> >>>> too
> >>>>
> >>>>> much room for subsuming (c) under (a) as almost all of present-day
> >>>>> philosophy and natural science are wont to do.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Mike, you have done a lot of work on the role of this "taxonomical
> >>>>> activity" in and out of school. Davydov on the other hand, emphasises
> >>>>>
> >>>> (b) as
> >>>>
> >>>>> opposed to (a). It would be interesting to investigate
> >>>>> concept-formation
> >>>>>
> >>>> on
> >>>>
> >>>>> this wider frame.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Andy
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>> *Andy Blunden*
> >>>>> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <
> http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/ <http://home.mira.net/~andy/>><
> >>>>> http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/ <http://home.mira.net/~andy/>><
> >>>>>
> >>>> http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/ <http://home.mira.net/~andy/>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
> >>>>> Book: http://www.brill.nl/scss
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>>>
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> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> <Velasco.Schooling.pdf>_______________________________________________
> >>
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--
Luísa Aires
Universidade Aberta/Cetac.Media
R.Ameal, nº 752
4200-055 Porto
laires@univ-ab.pt
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