This is a recent exchange between Mike and my colleague, Alcione
Ostorga, about our interest in learning more about how to use CHAT
for a longitudinal case study we'd like to do with a group of our
bilingual preservice students.
I'm going to follow Mike's suggestion and tap into the collective
brain power on xmca to see if anybody can guide us in learning how
to use CHAT
Pete Farruggio
________________________________________
From: Alcione Ostorga
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 4:03 PM
To: lchcmike@gmail.com; Peter Farruggio
Subject: RE: need CHAT training
Hello Mike,
Nice to meet you too.
I am on vacation this week so I may be a bit slow to reply.
I am really interested in using CHAT for our studies. From the
little I have read about CHAT, I see that it offers a lot of
potential for our multiple studies in bilingual preparation because
in my opinion, it offers the most appropriate theoretical
foundation to examine our bilingual teacher development. I like
the way it examines learning from a context based perspective,
taking into consideration the sociocultural and historical
aspects. I really think that to understand the development of our
pre service teachers we need to consider their history, their
experiences both in our program and in their lives. Since we are
situated in the US/ Mexico border, the development of these
preservice teachers is heavily impacted by their hybrid identities
as both American and Mexican. Multilingualism is also an important
component and we cannot forget the history of the area and how it
impacts the overall development of everyone here.
Our research project has multiple layers. Some of us are focusing
on very specific aspects of our bilingual teacher preparation
program. I am particularly interested in examining the development
of professional identities in our teachers and how the development
of their cultural identities interacts with their professional
identities. We have a lot of data. from cultural identity surveys
and online discussions, educational philosophy assignments, focus
group discussions that asked for their perspectives on the program
and some incredible assignments. Some are very reflective, like the
development of a classroom management plan and video analisis of
thematic units used in teaching children in a sumer library
program. In the fall, I will be doing observations of student
teaching. As a long term plan, I will observe some of these
participants when they become teachers. I am interested in
examining their growth as teachers longitudinally from the time
they entered the program last fall semester to the completion of
their first year as teachers which will be December of 2011.
Although, I think CHAT is the way to go in my study, I must also
state that I am a novice and have only recently become familiar
with CHAT. I realize that is a complex theory, because it is based
on examining the world from multiple perspectives. I think this is
one of the positive aspects of CHAT. After all, the world is
complex and there are many simplistic approaches that are overly
superficial and cannot possibly help us to fully understand human
development. I am not interested in those approaches. But because
CHAT is complex, I feel I need to really learn it before I can use
it.
I am now getting familiar with the vocabulary and main concepts
through a lit research of the latest writings and studies that have
used CHAT. A big question I have at this point is what kings of
analytical methods are used in CHAT studies? Are qualitative
methods generally applied in other kinds of studies also applied in
studies that use CHAT as an analytical lens? Or have CHAT theorists
developed their own methods for analyzing data that best fit
activity theory? This is only the beginning, to fully use CHAT as a
foundation for our research, we need to get some good professional
development in the use of CHAT as a theoretical basis for our
analysis and interpretations of the development of bilingual
teachers.
In the meantime, I will check the XMCA. Do we have to subscribe to
the listserv to post questions?
Thanks Pete for making this dialogue possible. Let's see if we can
plan a video conference for us to learn more about how to use
activity theory.
Alcione
My
Alcione N. Ostorga, Ph. D
Associate Professor
Department of Curriculum & Instruction
College of Education
The University of texas Pan-American
Edinburg, TX
________________________________
From: mike cole [lchcmike@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 6:13 PM
To: Peter Farruggio
Cc: Alcione Ostorga
Subject: Re: need CHAT training
Peter--
Skype works pretty well, even for small group- small group. I will
think of other refs (some of Engestrom's papers come to mine
because he follows cases and he is always thoughtful) but I cannot
help recommending the chapter in Luria's chapter on romantic
science from his autobio.
Hi Alcione, nice to meet you! Either you or Peter should get on
XMCA and post the question about case studies and CHAT. I'll bet
people have not thought much about that issue in that way, but
rather, they have unconsciously been using case study methods under
the banner of
"qualitative research". There are several such articles in Mind,
Culture, and Activity over the years.
mike
On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 4:03 PM, Peter Farruggio
<pfarruggio@utpa.edu<mailto:pfarruggio@utpa.edu>> wrote:
Mike,
Thanks for the rapid, thoughtful reply. I'm copying to my
colleague, Alcione Ostorga, because she's the one with the interest
in using CHAT for the study. Several of us are interested, but
she's the one who brought it up. She can jump in with a precis, as
you suggest.
I like the idea of doing a videoconference with you as an initial
brainstorming session. We have the technical capacity to set
something up to have an open conversation.
Could you recommend some readings for us to do prior to such a
conversation? Maybe some concrete stuff that shows how others have
used CHAT integrating the big picture (institutions, communities,
local & state politics and policy making, etc) with the finer focus
(our students moving through the system and into their careers)
I'll wait for Alcione to explain to you before we think about some
teleconferencing.
Thanks again,
Pete
________________________________________
From: mike cole [lchcmike@gmail.com<mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>]
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 5:44 PM
To: Peter Farruggio
Subject: Re: need CHAT training
Pete-
If you could perhaps send a precis of your proposal to XMCA, it
would allow you to tap into a lot more brain power. The general
issue of case studies from a CHAT perspective is a challenging one.
Maybe Luria will make a comeback?
Also, I can interact from skype or Polycom but basically do not
travel any more. Maybe a preliminary chat about CHAT via that zero
cost route would be helpful?
mike
On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 10:47 AM, Peter Farruggio <pfarruggio@utpa.edu
<mailto:pfarruggio@utpa.edu><mailto:pfarruggio@utpa.edu<mailto:pfarruggio@utpa.edu
>>> wrote:
Mike,
We have a faculty team in bilingual teacher ed that has been
working together for two years on research about our teacher
preparation program. We'd like to do a longitudinal case study of
some of our students as they finish with us and go into the
teaching profession. We've already been teaching an experimental
cohort of students as a pretty cohesive faculty team for the past
three semesters.
We'd like to do our study from a CHAT orientation, as best we
understand it. To help us, we'd like to find a good CHAT "trainer"
who could come down here to South Texas to meet with us and lead a
professional development session about how to use CHAT with our
circumstances. We have a federal grant, so we can pay a reasonable
fee plus travel, lodging, etc.
Would you recommend somebody, or put the word out to help us find
such a person?
Thanks,
Pete Farruggio
University of Texas Pan American
Edinburg, TX
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