Re: [xmca] Fwd: the Ideal of lived uncertainty as a moral good

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Carol
I'm in complete agreement with how you are understanding "reflection".  I
personally am struggling with the tension between what are sometimes
referred to as the narratives of "modernity" with  more sociocentric
postmodern narratives.

  Terms such as "internalization" and "reflection" and "experience" and
"representation" sometimes are critiqued as merely "intrapsychic" accounts
or merely "cognitive" accounts which must be challenged and these notions be
replaced with more contextual terms such as "collaboration" and
"affordances" and "mutuality" which foreground and bias sociocultural
accounts.

Why I'm asking this question is my continuing attraction to theories such as
Mead's which focus on terms such as "reflection" and "multiple perspectives"
or Vygotsky's term "internalization".  I recognize that many other
psychologically oriented theoretical perspectives also use internalizing
terms such as "reflection, internalization, experience, and represention" in
their intrapsychic  accounts.
 I think because of the confusion in the multiple ways terms such as
"reflection", "perspective" or "experience" may cause in our conversations
that some scholars think we should discard these particular terms and only
use terms such as "collaborative, and "affordances" so as not to confuse
sociocultural and intrapsychic accounts.

The contrasting terms "inscapes" and "landscapes" capture the tension I'm
reflecting on.  Is the term "inscapes" TOO intrapsychic to be allowed into
sociocultural accounts, or is there a place for wondering about the
relational linkages between inscapes and landscapes??

I continue to value all the above terms and struggle to understand the way
these notions are related.  "my meaning" and "our meaning" are intricately
connected. However, there are other discourse communities within specific
academic disciplines which challenge all internalized concepts of identity
as reifying and essentializing mythologies that posit nonexistent
intrapsychic entities.  It is this alternative discourse which challenges my
using terms which are viewed as intrapsychic "representational language
terms".

Anne Edwards  phrase

"the collaborative professional as OPPOSED to the reflective practitioner"

 written by someone who knows both Vygotsky and Mead was the phrase that got
me reflecting on this topic.

Carol, my background as a "counsellor"  has meant years of reading
about notions of "experiential phenomenology" but at the same time I'm a
teacher who is fascinated with the "reading process" and theories of
reading.  Like a sailor tacking in the wind, I've struggled to move back and
forth between these different disciplines and this  led me to Vygotsky as a
theorist who elevated educational psychology and developmental
psychology within psychology and the human sciences.  However, I'm also
wanting to link Vygotsky with my earlier interests

Larry




On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 12:19 PM, Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com>wrote:

> >From Carol:
> Can collaboration not be conceived as at times being mutual reflection [not
> losing *all* of its original meaning]? Actually, I reflect on "my" meaning
> and I reflect on "our" meaning.  In work one of my students did on
> reflective practice it involved  teacher reflecting on what she did,
> codedou are
> for the researcher in the form of a diary which got discussed, but they
> mutually discussed aspects of lessons observed as well as mutually
> reflected
> on videod lessons. In this approach there is no place to sink back into
> total individual internalness, because even writing up the PhD meant making
> public the meaning of whole project.
>
> When I work with people collaboratively I ask about the mutual meaning we
> are creating all the time. That is interspersed with interrogating others
> about what they mean, when they are sharing their understanding. (I am
> probably irritating because I know I interrupt far more than other people
> do.)
>
> There should not be an opposition between imagination and reflection? At
> the
> very least we could saw that one of the functions of reflection is
> imagination--this is the most primitive level I would say. Otherwise how
> could we generate novelty? Or are people suggesting we can't think in
> pictures... intuitively. Physicists do, and their work may be considered
> the
> highest form of reflection.
>
> Not sure I have captured your subtlety, Larry. (But then again I rarely do
> :-)  ) To live with uncertainty is surely to live with possibility.
>
> On 18 August 2010 06:05, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> > Date: Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 11:00 AM
> > Subject: the Ideal of lived uncertainty as a moral good
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >
> >
> > Hi Denise, Martin, and others
> >
> > I decided to post a new thread so long trailing previous posts are not
> > included [I'm not sure how much previous information gmail attaches when
> > responding?]
> >
> > Martin thanks for the newspaper article. The post on imagination was
> > certainly on topic.  It was also interesting to see how many responses
> were
> > posted to the article. Must have triggered people's imaginations.
> >
> > Denise,
> > I welcome all your suggestions on the topic of imagination and abduction.
> > Your recommending my reading Anne Edwards article in the Cambridge
> > anthology
> > on Vygotsky has also been suggested by Mike Cole. When I again have
> access
> > to a university library I definitely will read this article as it seems
> > central to my reveries [and fantasies].
> >
> > Another book edited by Anne Edwards [and Peter Gilroy and David Hartley]
> > "Rethinking Teacher Education: Collaborative Responses to Uncertainty"
> also
> > engages with the dialectic of certainty/UNcertainty and
> > fallibility/infallibility.  The juxtaposition of imagination and reality
> as
> > opposites rather than aspects of a psychological/societal gestalt seems
> to
> > be the framework that needs to be critiqued.
> >
> > The theme of Edward's edited book on teacher education mentioned above
> > explores the relations BETWEEN modernity and postmodernity and the
> cultural
> > DISSONANCE that we are currently navigating. On page 7  Edwards et al
> > suggest,
> >
> > "This dichotomy  between extremes is resolved by an epistemology based on
> > the notions of 'LIVED UNCERTAINTY' and the 'COLLABORATIVE professional'
> as
> > opposed to the REFLECTIVE practitioner) which also allows for the missing
> > VALUE ELEMENT of teacher education to be reintroduced to the debate
> > concerning the nature of teacher education"
> >
> > I would like others to comment on this  juxtaposition of reflecting and
> > collaborating as opposing terms.  I intuitively perceive reflection and
> > collaboration as aspects of a gestalt that sometimes are in tension and
> > sometimes intersubjectively and mutually generative of expansive
> learning.
> > Like the dialectical terms imagination/actuality, experience/culture,
> > structure/process, these shared terms may be differentiated and be
> > perceived
> > as opposed but is this ALWAYS the situation???  Is this perceived
> dichotomy
> > the reason why Mead is viewed as "merely" cognitive and a branch of af
> > analytical philosophy???  I wonder if a case can be made to include both
> > Vygotsky and Mead as having historical roots in Continental Philosophy
> [via
> > Dilthey]?
> > Scholars such as Jack Martin and Alex Gillespie's interpretations of
> Mead's
> > writings perceive neo-Meadian accounts as falling within the tradition of
> > hermeneutical REALISM and
> > critique merely cognitive accounts.
> >
> > The question I'm circling around is the term REFLECTION.  This concept
> > seems
> > to be avoided by some postmodernist accounts as too INTERNAL and not
> > collaborativie enough.  Is the term "reflection" now seen as having lost
> > its
> > historical roots as emerging within collaborative dialogues.? [in a
> similar
> > way to how Dewey wondered if he should have replaced the term
> "experience"
> > with "culture"]
> >
> > Denise, is this one of the areas of "quicksand" that you, Mike Cole, and
> > Andy are cautioning to approach with uncertainty and fallibility as I
> > attempt to COORDINATE [collaboratively and reflectively] multiple
> > perspectives.??   I, at this point, still value and want to use both the
> > terms REFLECTION  and COLLABORATION  and also the terms IMAGINATION
> > and AGENTIC CAPACITY as valued terms in sociocultural perspectives.  I
> > however continue to struggle to always remember these concepts as being
> >  generated  within historical and ontogenetic developmental situational
> > contexts.   I recognize that I am a product [and process] of my
> > historically
> > constructed horizon of understanding and therefore at this point I
> continue
> > to IMPLICITLY value [have a BIAS] to want to include "self-determination
> > WITHIN contexts" as a phenomenological category.  Can the category of
> > "reflection" coexist and deepen notions of "collaboration" or
> > should "reflection" be critiqued as too "cognitive", "internal", and
> > "individualistic"???
> >
> > Larry
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
>
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