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

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Denise, Andy, Michael, Mike, Vera Carol and others.

Thanks for all the suggestions on where to turn next on my quest to
understand "reflection", "collaboration", and and how it relates to
"RELATIONAL agency" [Anne Edwards term].
I appreciate the opportunity to just "think out loud" and have other
sojourners to walk alongside. This CHAT line is a very powerful medium.
I  recently read a book about Copernicus and how scientific ideas were
distributed in the 1500's.  One person, on his quest to examine ALL the 1st
edition and 2nd edition copies  of Copernicus book still in existence has
located over 600 copies in archives around the globe.  His mission is to
physically examine all 600 copies and read the annotated notes that  other
scholars at the time of publication scribbled in the columns of the
books. [A form of thinking out loud]  He is discovering how interconnected
and collaborative was the development of ideas that were distributed among
scholars in the 15th century. There are amazing parallels to how knowledge
was disseminated 500 years ago and how knowledge is disseminated today. Of
course the speed of dissemination and the democratization of the internet
allows this process of reflection to happen in ways that are transformative
[and allows someone like myself to participate without being attached to a
university]

Andy, I've downloaded your articles on pragmatic interpretations of Hegel.
Thank you.

I have  also downloaded the articles on creativity and imagination.

Denise, I especially want to thank you for the article by Keith Sawyer and
your encouragement to walk the MAZE.  I know  I will never reach the end of
the maze and will wander down many dead ends, but I enjoy meandering and
thinking out loud.

There is a very practical aspect of this quest as I work in elementary
schools and try to support creating perspectives [and structures] which
allow teachers, parents, and students to "see" relationally. Anne Edwards is
exploring the construct "RELATIONAL agency" which is the capacity to offer
support and to ask for support from others by one's ability "to engage with
the world which is enhanced by doing so ALONGSIDE others"  (Edwards, 2007,
p.1 in Relational Agency in Professional Practice: A CHAT Perspective)
Edwards has "observed that the individual appears almost by default as a
slippage in the system in the systematic analyses of activity theory" (2007,
p.7) and her theorizing "relational agency" is a response to her
observation.

Mike,  thanks for the suggestion to google "reflection" at Mind, Culture,
and Activity, after I've read the Sawyer article.

Michael, I also want to thank you for the historical insights on
pragmatism.  It seems to embody a "value system" that tries to be
explicit about the ideal of "community of inquiry" which facilitates
relational rather than individualistic forms of agency.

A very productive [and playful] beginning to my day

Larry

On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 8:02 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

> Larry et al--
>
> So far as i can tell, existential uncertainty is an ineluctable
> consequences
> of mediated human psychological processes. Just as mediation entails both
> control of oneself, choice, and control over the environment, as systems
> propterties, so it can produced both anxiety (Dewey on the quest for
> certainty) AND possibility. I am not sure it is, in itself, a moral good,
> but in so far as it involves choice, I believe it makes moral issues a part
> of all such forms of human behavior.
>
> The topic of reflection, in many of its uses, harks back strongly to
> discussions in Soviet psychology, Lenin, etc. It has also been raised on
> this list recently.  There are a LOT of message about this topic to be
> found
> at lchc.ucsd.edu if you google from the bottom of the page (and, I see, a
> couple of papers that wandered on there from one of our classes, gotta see
> about that!)
> mike
>
> On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 1:19 AM, Denise Newnham <dsnewnham@bluewin.ch
> >wrote:
>
> > Dear Larry, I think that you will find solace in the semiotic line of CHT
> > or
> > SCAT. Valsiner, Wertch, Daniels etc. Rogoff attempts to bridge the two. I
> > have attached a paper by Sawyer I don't know whether you have read this.
> I
> > think that your journey is worth pursuing you just have to be prepared to
> > answer a lot of questions.
> >
> >
> > Denise
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On
> > Behalf Of Larry Purss
> > Sent: 18 August 2010 06:06
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: [xmca] Fwd: the Ideal of lived uncertainty as a moral good
> >
> > ---------- 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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