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

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

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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