Since there are just a few more pages, I chose to post, for the mean-time, on chapter 1.
I think my initial internal dialogue was based on which of the tenets do I see most often and as most important. So with that I would start out by asking what tenets stuck out to you?
For my own answer I'll start off with one of my favorite quotes from Bruner during his discussion on the 4th tenet of The interactional tent. "Unlike any other species, human beings deliberately teach each other in settings outside the ones in which the knowledge being taught will be used." I think if I had to get a tattoo of an inspirational quote that was directed in the pursuit to create authentic learning environments, it would be this one. To me this creates, maybe one of the greatest and easiest ways, to re-structure any approach to education, and maybe the most critical. By taking on the understanding that for what ever institutional subjectification we have to education, it seems as though innately, we take the opportunity immediately away from the spaces in which it is most needed. Do we do this because, according to the 6th tenet, "Education, however conducted in whatever culture, always has consequences in later lives of those who undergo it." (p.25). Do we innately move towards "safe spaces" or learning so that the consequences of what we teacher are safely cast into the later years of an individual and not really experienced in their lives today? I think maybe we do, because then we can place the procedural nature of education within these removed settings in order that we can label them as successful, in order to keep the learner sheltered from what inevitably awaits them? Whatever the reasoning, for any institution, it is certainly a great phrasing of the tendencies in which we move learning and the knowledge created far away from the actual situations that would necessitate its usage. So for me I appreciate the 4th tenet somewhat more than the others.
I also found accord with the 7th tenet The institutional tenet. "Cultures are not simply collections of people sharing a common language and historical tradition. They are composed of institutions that specify more concretely what roles people play and what status and respect these are accorded..." (p.29). In all of our hopes to complete our doctoral degrees, I would imagine that there is always some unrest, or at least deliberation of what our place will a midst the culture of higher education. Do we see ourselves as the researcher? The practitioner? Or because of our experiences within an institution we just don't want to belong to that tradition at all? Can we remain within a tradition long enough, that we are able to buy into the means of success that are outlined within that institution, and carry out a role that isn't representative of who we wanted to be, but because of its power and safety, can we then find comfort in maybe not being who we wanted, but at least being more than we were? How does that type of thinking drive our own students today? Or on a even larger scale, how does that motivation, or maybe, de-motivational thinking, perpetuate the ways our schools are set up?
In relation to tenet 4, both Bruner and Davis see intersubjectivity as a way to understand the mind through language. Davis points out that human brains connect to one another and from generation to generation through language (p. 100). Bruner describes intersubjectivity as “the human ability to understand the minds of others” through language (p. 20). More specifically, Bruner names it a cultural-psychological approach to education, while Davis names it constructionism. In this community, teachers are orchestrating learning experiences for learners as they interact with one another, learn from one another and are free to explore.
ReplyDeleteIn relation to tenet 7, I kept thinking about our education crisis in Oklahoma. Could we not hold “public forums” to debate and learn about what is really going on? It seems while we have a State Department of Education in Oklahoma, it has failed miserable at it’s job. What is it’s job? Really? Do we even know? What is it’s purpose and why is it failing? Bruner mentioned the Secretary of Labor’s work, The Work of Nations as a policy document for us to follow. Could our answer to this crisis be found here? It seems we all know we are in a crisis, yet we don’t know what to do about it.
While I agree with Bruner that “a more integrated theory of teaching-and-learning” is needed, can we truly integrate the four perspectives that he lays out in Ch. 2? I am having the most trouble integrating #2: Seeing children as learning from didactic exposure: The acquisition of propositional knowledge. It seems when looking at its folk pedagogy, it contradicts the other three. It sees the child’s mind as passive (not active) and as a blank slate of which to be filled with knowledge from the expert. Yet as I connect each of the four perspectives to Davis, I run into another problem, #4. Maybe, I am not thinking this out correctly and you all can help me understand where I’ve gone wrong. I have Bruner’s 1st perspective as structuralism, the 2nd perspective as religion, the 3rd perspective as intersubjectivity, and the 4th perspective as empiricism. Do you agree? If so, how can we integrate two theories from the the metaphysical and two theories from the physical?
ReplyDeleteJenny, melding these perspectives sounds like we do everyday. It's separating them that we have problems with most of the time.
DeleteI don't feel Bruner thinks of children as complete "blank slates." I think he recognizes trends which exist in learners, and teachers (folk teachers-mothers etc.) and points out they exist. It all goes back to culturation. School, and education, according to Bruner, cannot exist with out culture. And that much of the teaching and learning is done in a cultural context.
"The chief subject matter of school, viewed culturally, is school itself. That is how most students experience it, and it determines what meaning they make of it." pg 28.
ReplyDeleteThis is the best definition of schooling and students I have found.
Matt I agree with this being a pretty awesome definition of schooling. As a I read Chapter 1, and particularly this section that addresses Tenet #6, I found myself referring back to the content and issues that we've been discussing in our multicultural class. I wonder how Putnam would respond to this definition of schooling?
DeleteI was blown away from the statistics Bruner mentioned on page 83. They must be taken into consideration when talking about educated our children. We can’t make decisions about what’s best for our students without thinking about their lives outside of school. As our culture changes, education must change with it. The number of working mothers makes a difference; the number of students from divorced families makes a difference; the number of students living in mother-only households makes a difference; the number of families below the poverty line makes a difference. These changes/trends have a direct effect on education. Bruner suggests that schools need to become, “…centers for the cultivation of a new awareness about what it is like living in a modern society”… instead of “trying to reproduce the culture as it has been” (p. 82-83). He believes what America needs is “a renewal and reconsideration of…school culture” and to build a community of learners where learning is “participatory, proactive, communal, and collaborative” (p. 84).
ReplyDeleteI think much of this is also the fodder of the Robert Putnam book that was the campus wide book study, I think the title was, "Our Kids in Crisis". I was able to attend his lecture and so many of these ideas from Bruner that you quoted were part of it. One big idea that I got from that was increasing the use of other types of social capital because the family is not the same as it was. Another one was participation in extracurricular activities, which I think echoes the ideas listed in your last sentence.
DeleteLindsay I was thinking exactly the same thing! I didn't get to attend his lecture, however I just got done reading his book for my other class. Once of the discussions that we had a few weeks ago was whether or not Putnam viewed these statistics as being causative or correlated. For the most part we agreed that he is strongly suggesting correlations and not causations, however it seems as though Bruner may be leaning more towards the causation perspective, at least when we refer back to that 6th tenet again. Thoughts?
DeleteI don't know if this would be the tenet that I see most often, but I can say that I do consider it extremely important. I was drawn initially to tenet 6, instrumentalism. Some things I related to were the subcultures of poverty and the effect that we know they have on education of those who are part of them. Also the idea that education is never neutral, never without social and political consequences p 25. However, I did have some questions about the idea that on page 26 Bruner discusses the ideas of differing aptitudes and differing cultural ideas of skill and modes of thought; then on page 27 he says of course all children should have the same curricula. They should? That suprised me. Anyone else have a concern with this statement ? in the same paragraph he essentially asks, what the same is. Exactly, so how can we promote the idea of sameness when we don't even know what it is? Kinda like the difference between equal and equality.
ReplyDeleteThe other tenet that stuck out to me was 9, narrative. Again, perhaps because of my social studies background, narrative is a key component to learning, understanding, communicating, problem solving, cultural survival, etc. And though I guess I understand the disposition of some to consider arts of narrative as "decoration" p 40, high on Maslows hierarchy, and something reseserved only for people who aren't busy trying to feed themselves, I personally saw the difference art integration could make even in a social studies classroom to students who were in survival mode. I whole heartedly agree with Bruner when he says we may have erred in divorcing science from the narrative of culture. For even in math there is beauty in a tessellation and in science there is art in and poetry in the journey of a butterfly's life cycle.
Adam, going back to your post on tenet 7, all those questions make me somewhat uneasy because I don't know the answer for myself, let alone what we do for students. I feel frustrated sometimes because of all we know, all I have learned about education while in this program, why can't we fix it? So many people much more intelligent than I know what's right, so why does education continue to be stuck in an agrarian/ industrial state? Maybe it's like that thing where we don't want to convert to the metric system... Lindsay
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DeleteLindsay,
DeleteI too noticed the statement about the same curricula. After reading it over and over, I wonder if he was just asking a question or making a point, not necessarily saying it is what he believes. He says in the previous paragraph:
“School curricula and classroom “climates” always reflect inarticulate cultural values as well as explicit plans; and these values are never far removed from consideration of social class, gender, and the prerogatives of social power.”
He then asks several questions (which he calls quasi-educational questions):
1) Should girls…be admitted into state-supported military academies formerly reserved for you men?
2) Is affirmative action a covert form of discrimination against the middle class?
After making a few points, he then asks:
3) All children should have the same curricula?
It makes me wonder if he is just making a point that “with increased community awareness, formerly innocent issues like curriculum soon become political ones” and these questions are the types of “innocent issues” that become debatable.
Taken out of context, this statement means something different, but as I relook at the statement in context, I am not sure this is a statement of his belief.
Jenny, I was hoping he was oversimplifying, but when he said, "of course", it really threw me. I don't pretend to know the answer, I just really have a problem with the idea of conformity and that all students should learn the same thing. He talked about the chess club and gave some other examples about Gardner and such, but again, the "of course" seemed so very definite.
DeleteLindsay, do you think by having the same curricula means they should ultimately have learned the same things? Not that they receive it in the same time frame or format?
ReplyDeleteOr, is it because it is a cultural delivery they should receive the same curricula but we should have different expectations?
I agree, this statement is contradictory.
If we are stuck in an agrarian/industrial state in education now, what should it look like or be? A technological/informational state? Or a creative/independent state? I'm tossing out terms for which nothing exists.
Matt I think that Bruner is stating that ideally all students should learn the same things, that we should have the same expectations for all students, and that all students should be given the same opportunities. I believe that his point in explaining this tenet is that although this is how it "should" be, it will never be this way because education can never exist independently of culture. As a result of our ridiculously messed up human culture (with regards to racism, sexism, and every other "ism" out there), education is also messed up because it is impossible to educate in a vacuum where these "isms" do not exist.
DeleteMatt, I think in as much as possible students should have a choice about their own curriculum. We discussed the possibility of having perhaps an exploratory time in middle school in curriculum theory last semester. All students could be given the "basics" in elementary school. Though past reading,writing, basic math and some inculturation :), I'm not even sure what that would consist of. In a tedtalk by Rita Pierson, entitled, Every Child Deserves a Champion, she says, teaching and learning should bring joy. Perhaps to pie in the sky of an idea, but high school would be the ultimate jigsaw, with students perhaps addressing the same essential questions, but in different ways, with perhaps even different content.
ReplyDeleteLindsay this is an interesting thought, and although I see merit in this model, I wonder how likely it would be to occur in American schools? I think that some foreign educational systems already have this model in place, or at least something similar, where students are placed in "tracks" of some sort, based not only on their interests, but also on their strengths. Many of these systems also employ some sort of "elimination" system that reflects an attitude of something similar to constraints mentioned in Tenet #2 on p.17. (This is always an important piece to consider when comparing educational systems and which ones are superior to others.) Interesting to me is that the countries that have this system in place have significantly lower unemployment rates, as well as other positive societal benefits. It all makes sense, and I know there is always another side to the story, however I think it is something worth talking about when we are trying to determine how to best educate those who are failing in the current system.
DeleteAdam I was really drawn towards Tenet #9- the Narrative Tenet. In particular one part that stuck out to me was this quote from p. 41...
ReplyDelete"Obviously, if narrative is to be made an instrument of mind on behalf of meaning making, it requires work on our part- reading it, making it, analyzing it, understanding its craft, sensing its uses, discussing it. These are matters much better understood today than a generation ago."
While I agree with this statement, I wonder exactly how true it is in today's American educational system, with the infiltration of high-stakes tests and their impact on instructional goals and methods.