RE: [xmca] Project

[Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu>]

Project has been defined in many different ways over time. Kilpatrick's Dewey-era outline of "The Project Method" is a classic. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4954/

More recently, I've drawn on Gee's notion of a projective identity, e.g.,
In this study we examine three high school senior boys who, as part of a unit of instruction on identity, each produced a mask through which he artistically expressed his sense of self.  Using a sociocultural framework based in the work of Vygotsky, we analyzed the boys' composition of their masks in terms of their goals for working on the project, the material and psychological tools they employed to produce the masks, and the settings in which they learned how to use their compositional tools for such purposes.  Based on both concurrent and retrospective protocols that the boys produced in conjunction with composing their masks, we investigated their processes of composition as what Gee terms identity projects; i.e., as efforts to project themselves into their mask texts and as part of their long-term projects to explore and develop their personal and socially-situated identities.  

The article is online at 
Zoss, M., Smagorinsky, P., & O'Donnell-Allen, C. (2007). Mask-making as representational process: The situated composition of an identity project in a senior English class. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 8(10). Retrieved from http://www.ijea.org/v8n10/v8n10.pdf

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Ron Lubensky
Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2013 10:04 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Project

I am going to wade warily into this discussion. I think asking for a
*definition* for project is fraught in itself, because it demands ontological decomposition or deconstruction, which we resist in a dialectic analysis and an immanent critique. Andy has stated in many places that a project is "an activity". A particular activity. With an emergent concept of itself arrived through socio-cultural development and collaboration. I don't need much more to understand it.


--
Ron Lubensky
www.deliberations.com.au <http://www.deliberations.com.au/>
0411 412 626
Melbourne Australia

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