Re: [xmca] Thoughts on ISCAR

Thank you, Mike. This is very helpful for those of us who were not able
to attend the meeting. I am very interested in hearing more about these
insights such as attributions to activity theory.. ag

On Sun, September 21, 2008 5:39 pm, Mike Cole wrote:
> Having been buffeted by events leading up to and surrounding
> ISCAR, and then having disappeared for a week, I am just starting
> to get near catching up with myself.... and xmca.
>
> I went first to the polling page to see if we are done voting for a paper
> to
> discuss
> and of course found that the page that is there allows you to read
> abstracts, but not
> vote.... again. The lchc gremlin was busy while I was away. I will go
> hunting for anti-gremlin
> ointment in the morning; then we can finish up the voting and get on to
> discussing.
>
> I note Jonna's comments re the stimulating nature of the meetings and the
> frustrations of
> coinciding talks and uneven attendance. One of my big frustrations was
> that
> I was teaching
> part time at another uc campus while ISCAR was going on and had one big
> non-ISCAR evening
> event to worry about and ended up being able to talk to too few of the
> people I really was hoping
> to have a chance to talk to and missed several talks I wanted to hear. I
> assume everyone experienced
> some version of those problems too.
>
> I do not think I am alone in being interested in what people found most
> interesting at the meeting. Might those
> who attended put up a few "favorite ideas encountered" since no one could
> take it all in and many on xmca
> where not there.
>
> For example.
>
> In the discussion of social construction of CHAT, Volodya Zinchenko
> commented that in his experience, in the
> dance of activity and culture, too often activity gobbled up culture,
> that
> there was something "aggressive" about
> activity (or activity theory, not sure which). I was not sure to what
> extent
> this reflected his experience in the USSR
> and since in Russia. But upon reflection, I could see how this might seem
> the case in my own interest in
> interventionist strategies of research. A crucial issue in such research
> is
> to organize it so that one is in the position
> of mediator, not "I know the right answer, do this" agent. Very difficult
> to
> arrange for.
>
> Another interesting thought was evoked by Alex Kozulin's talk on
> psychological tools and education which had a title something like "the
> idea
> factory" (at least factory was in the title). Yrjo was a commentator and
> he
> remarked on the Taylorist implications of the factory metaphor, but what
> most interested me were two things. First, Alex commented that he uses the
> term "self control" rather than "executive function" but the two terms
> really mean the same thing.
> I think he's right. But coming from an American tradition where we have
> blockological models of memory with
> an "executive block" I had not fully realized that American and Russian
> developmentalists were as close as I had thought in this regard. Secondly,
> he introduced work by Galina Tsukerman which illustrated how a curriclum
> could
> be implemented that promoted "reflective thinking," another term closely
> related to the first two. Galina was not
> at ISCAR, but her work has appeared in the Journal of Russian and East
> European Psych, and it is quite terrific.
> Having all of that put together in a nice example of theory/practice
> research was nice to see.
>
> Vera John Steiner's plenary talk had a great definition of mutual
> appropriation in it that I have to get a hold of.
>
> At the symposium about research at LCHC over the years there were several
> interesting talks picking up different
> LCHC themes. Denis Newman who now heads up an educational research
> evaluation company talked about the
> problems of ecological invalidity of reseach assessments... a new context
> in
> which to think about dilemmas of
> testing, at least for me. Ray Mc Dermott drew parallels between the
> cultural-historical contexts of Dewey's lab
> school and LCHC's out of school research that were provoking as Ray can
> always be, James Joyce and a
> leprechaun always dancing in his prose. There was also an interesting
> symposium on research inspired by Dewey
> and that topic always yields new insights.
>
> The entire event was about diversity and wow was there a lot of it. how
> much
> came through the distance media is
> hard for me to judge. But it was there in the ideas, the faces, the dress.
>
> What did others encounter that seemed of more than personal interest?
>
> If anyone, like Jonna, was at an event, either as speaker or as audience,
> where the material seemed worthwhile
> for discussion but only one person turned up, perhaps they can get the
> power
> points or printed talks and send them along to xmca for distribution and
> discussion. And there is a moodle somewhere where some, if not all, of the
> talks
> are stored that we could use for access.
>
> I hear that winter is coming in Northern Europe. Its still summer here in
> San Diego and we still need rain. Feel
> free to share.
>
> mike
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>

Artin Goncu, Ph.D
Professor and Chair,
Educational Psychology
College of Education M/C 147
1040 W. Harrison St.
Chicago, IL 60607
(312) 996-5259

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Received on Mon Sep 22 08:08 PDT 2008