Re: [xmca] Might we pause to consider? Imitation and the Zoped

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Peter-- I have been reading out of sequence. It seems to me that the
approach you take to imitation and that proposed by Lois are quite similar
when you write:

So imitation is actually a constructive process, and so, I think, is
relevant in discussions of the ZPD in that it is relational, involves
adjustment, is reciprocal, involves new constructions, relies on
intersubjectivity, and so on. Just as the ZPD is often characterized as a
flat, one-way instructional process moving easily from here to there,
imitation can be pretty static. But not if the act of imitation is part of a
more complex process of appropriation.

Specifically, "creative imitation" implies to me the making of something
(the creat part) and linking it to appropriation also seems useful (both for
understanding appropriation and imitation).

Your coaching example brings up an aspect of imitation as a socio-culturally
mediated process that has not come up so far, reciprocal imitation. Seen in
mother-infant interaction of course, but having also coached sports some, I
quickly think of cases where, as a part of demonstation "how to do X" it is
common for a coach to imitate a player's action as means of providing a
compelling contrast between the "right" and "wrong" ways. Of course, the
coach cannot precisely repeat the player's actions which are situatedly
contingent, but s/he can provide a model with enough verisimilitude for the
player to imitate (constructively/creatively to be sure).

In both the coaching example, and an example such as a mother imitating a
child blowing bubbles in the bathtub, who imitates the mother imitating
him/her, the process of imitation cannot be exactly the same for the two
partners. How is the difference (how are the differences?) best
characterized?

mike

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 11:29 AM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:

> I can't claim any kind of definitive understanding of terms from a language
> I can't even read (Russian), but I'll try to outline what I understand by
> "imitation" as available to me in translations of LSV's work.
>
> When I first came across his references to imitation, I was pretty puzzled,
> because mimetic education is not what I usually endorse, i.e., teaching
> students to mime or copy other sorts of performances. For instance, in
> teaching writing, it's common to provide students with model essays to
> imitate. I tend to avoid this approach because it tend to produce very
> formulaic writing with little variation from the model.
>
> And yet, I know that imitation is part of many learning experiences. As a
> basketball coach, I would demonstrate a technique and have the players try
> to incorporate it into their own games by means of drills. Much sports
> learning is based on such demonstration and then repetition by the learners
> with corrective feedback from coaches (not always gentle or supportive, but
> coaching styles no doubt affects how learners accept teaching).
>
> What seems to matter is how the act of imitation involves modification as
> the understanding of the action and its conceptual basis is internalized.
> That's what I understand "appropriation" to involve: not mindless imitation,
> but taking a modeled action, going through its motions, and adapting it to
> one's own capabilities and needs and to the affordances and constraints of
> new applications. So, while in basketball most efforts to "box out" or "take
> the charge" or use any other technique all look more or less the same, each
> involves an adaptive process to suit each player's body type, skill set,
> athleticism, and so on, and the situations in which the technique is
> applied.
>
> So imitation is actually a constructive process, and so, I think, is
> relevant in discussions of the ZPD in that it is relational, involves
> adjustment, is reciprocal, involves new constructions, relies on
> intersubjectivity, and so on. Just as the ZPD is often characterized as a
> flat, one-way instructional process moving easily from here to there,
> imitation can be pretty static. But not if the act of imitation is part of a
> more complex process of appropriation.
>
> Imitating the Style of the Spectator by Benjamin Franklin
> About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. I had never
> before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much
> delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible,
> to imitate it. With that view, I took some of the papers, and making short
> hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by for a few days, and
> then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by
> expressing each hinted sentiment at length and as fully as it had been
> expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. I then
> compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults and
> corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in
> recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before
> that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for
> words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or
> of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant
> necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety
> in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and
> turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten
> the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections
> of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into
> the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the
> paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By
> comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and
> amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain
> particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method
> or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time
> come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.
>
>
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf Of mike cole
> Sent: Monday, December 27, 2010 11:13 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity
> Subject: [xmca] Might we pause to consider? Imitation and the Zoped
>
>
> Hi David, Andy and Peter -- I have been in airports and other family homes
> for a while which makes time to participate in the conversation for a
> while.
> I was wondering if you might find it interesting to pause a bit and expand
> on the issue of the inter-relationship between imitation and the zoped.
> Here
> is why.
>
> First of all, each of these terms is used in a variety of ways in academic
> discourse, and I am not always clear what people are gesturing at when
> they use either term. I think it would be helpful to figure out if
> different
> senses of  "imitation" are in any way related to different understandings
> of
> the term "zone of proximal development."
>
> Here is another example to add to David's language learning one. It
> involves
> learning arithmetic in a Liberian rural school in the 1960's. It is
> published somewhere in an early report of our work on mathematics learning
> acurately, but this is what I recall.
>
> Observing in the schools, my colleague, John Gay, heard the children
> intoning their times tables (think here of the intonation, as in David's
> example, la da da da da ; la da da da da,,,,,,,,,,,, The children speak
> little or no English, and Liberian English is, to American ears, rather
> sing
> songy. John asked a child what he was doing. "Singing, was the answer. I
> know the tune I do not know the words." These same children, when I helped
> them with their homework, would complain that the teacher was unfair. He
> gave examples like 2+2=4 and 3+6=9 but on the test he put 5+3=? and 6+4=?
> How are we supposed to know that if he didn't teach it to us." We would
> ordinarily refer to this as "rote" learning.
>
> In the context of this discussion, it might be thought of as forms of
> imitation in instruction.
>
> My hope would be that by pausing to dig more deeply into this combination
> of
> concepts, we might learn a lot about where we are slip sliding around
> without even noticing it.
>
> mike
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