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Wednesday classes will be sub-divided into brief and quasi-formal, "lecture" times, and extended seminar discussion periods that will focus on the readings/topic for that week. There will be workshops on new media, video selections and some guest speakers. Regular attendance, careful preparation for class, ongoing participation in E-mail settings, and informed/cooperative discussions are required.
Jan 10th: "Ancients, Moderns, Postmoderns: The Plot So Far...." Introductory Discussion "Tradition"? What's new? Theory/Story
The Modernist Educational Project of Enlightened Self Formation (and
Lyotard, critique) Habermas and the shift to Language, Language and
Post-Structuralism, Foucault, Intro to Walkerdine; Key educational terms
and questions, see how they are re-defined.
Seminar :participants' research questions/focii
Reading: Walkerdine's "Mastery...
Assignments: Prepare chapter summary/ Get unix id
Jan. 17th: Power/Knowledge: Walkerdine's Mastery Of Reason
Lecture: Walkerdine's main contributions to re-thinking educational theory.
Connecting with "the Greeks": Telling the Story-- Where do contemporary
theories originate? Grandiosity in theory (Haraway's "God's-eye
view"). What are the key features of a "contemporary" educational theory?
Workshop: E-mail workshop in the CET @ 4:30
Seminar: Chapter summary questions
Video: Bill and Ted...(excerpts)
Readings: Wertsch: Voices of the Mind (1st half)
Foley: "Subversion and Oppositionality in the Academy"
Assignment: E-Mail journal entry;
Jan. 24: Re-configuring basic terms--
Lecture: "What psychology has to offer to education", re-considered.
Workshop: Basic videocam techniques
Video: Wertsch on "What is socio-cultural theory?"
Readings: Second half of Wertsch
Assignment: E-Mail journal entry
Jan. 31st: Hearing Voices II
Lecture: Wertsch on Vygotsky and Bakhtin
Workshop: Using Video in Research
Video: Hoop Dreams (excerpts)
Reading: TBA
Assignment: E-Mail
entry
Feb. 7: Re-mediating Education: Hypertext, Video, the Internet
Apprenticeships etc...**Part I of major project due*
Lecture: Why contemporary theory includes
new media research. Socially
mediated practices. Apprenticeship.
Workshop: Intro to internet (in CET)
Reading: Lave and Wenger: Situated Learning
Goodnow: "The socialization of cognition: What's involved?"
Wenger's Thesis
Assignments: E-mail entry and Section I (problem statement) of major project
Feb. 14th: Community/Ability/Activity/Identity:
Lecture: Lave and Wenger's Analyses of the Distribution of Competence:
"Position" and "Identity"
Readings: Cole and Wertsch: Individual-Social: Piaget-Vygotsky
Postmodernism for Beginners
Rattansi: "Changing the Subject? Racism, Culture and
Education" 11-47
Assignment: E-Mail entry
Feb. 21st: Instructor away at a conference. Work on major project, reading catch-up stuff, and/or E-Mail activities.
Feb 28th: Postmodernism/s???!
Readings: Lyotard: The Postmodern Condition (excerpts)
Haraway: "A Cyborg Manifesto"
Lather: pp19-50, and ch 6.
Assignment: E-Mail entry
Mar. 6th: **Part II of Project to be handed in**Reconstituting Subjects
Readings: Technologies of the Self: Foucault and others
Hall: "New Ethnicities" pp252-259 in Donald, J. & Rattansi,
A. (ed) Race, Culture and Difference, Open
University/Sage, 1992
Scott: "Experience" in Butler, J. & Scott, J.(eds)
Feminists Theorize the Political (1992)
Haraway: "Situated Knowledges":
VIDEO :"School Colours"
Seminar: Participants' own analyses?
Assignment: E-Mail entry and partII of major project
Mar. 13: Critical Pedagogies?
Lecture: Critical and Progressive Pedagogies in theory and in practice.
Readings:
Seely-Brown, Collins, & Duguid: "Situated cognition and the culture
of learning"
Luke and Gore: Feminisms and Critical Pedgogy (essays by Ellsworth,
Walkerdine, Lewis, Luke & Gore)
Britzman: "Stop Reading Straight"
Mar. 20: And now, Dear Reader,...Forbidden Tales
Knowledge is not itself power, although it is the magnetic field of
power....Ignorance and opacity collude or compete with it in moblizing the
flows of energy, desire, goods, meanings, persons.
Mar. 27th: ***902 Glossary Due***
ASSIGNMENTS (see also evaluation)
Description:
Contents of E-Mail Entries: Your weekly email entry can be in response to
one of the readings and/or can pertain to your progress to-date vis a vis
your major paper/ongoing research. When you come to the Wednesday
discussion session, you should have a starting point for the dialogical
work of the class. Keep entries reasonably succinct and informal.
E-Mail Discussion/Facilitation: Each week, one student will be responsible
for synthesizing all of the contributions (including email) pertaining to
that week's topic. S/he will generate a brief summary of the entries and a
critical/reflexive analysis of the major themes, points of agreement,
disagreement, and the like. The facilitator will discuss the significance
of the conceptual framework used by the authors of the articles/chapters
under discussion, and generate a critical analysis of both theoretical and
methodological strengths and shortcomings. Prepare a maximum of 20 minutes
of material. The facilitator will then animate an open discussion. If you
cannot attend class on the day for your facilitatation, please remember
that it is your responsibility to switch with a colleague and to inform the
instructor.
Major Paper: In this assignment, you will write a major research-based
paper (or project) normally involving either: (a) a case study that is
constructed and represented within a contemporary educational framework, or
(b) a theory-based review of contemporary educational literature pertaining
to a problem/question of specific import. The paper should demonstrate
general knowledge of the current literature in the domain covered in the
case study/review essay and should communicate the concepts effectively,
persuasively, and reflexively.
This project is prepared in a series of successive stages, with feedback
from one stage often being necessary for success on the next. Consequently,
strict adherence to the due dates is requested; I will strive to return
assignments quickly. Required format for final draft: (a) typed
double-spaced, (b) correct spelling and punctuation, and (c) APA Guidelines
published in the 3rd. Edition of the Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association (or reasonable equivalent: but don't make it up!)
The assignment will be done in three stages (as described below) with
feedback at points I and II leading to refinement of the conclusions and
production of the final paper (III).
Due *Feb. 7th., Part I/Problem Statement (maximum length 2 pages)
In this text, you should try to formulate a cogent summary of the
particular problem that you will deal with in your major project. If you
are doing a case study, you proposal will also include a brief summary of
the relevant characteristics of student/context variables. Make sure that
you effectively summarize a conceptual problem that you intend to deal with
in your work- do not describe a general topic or generate an unreflective
and non-critical summary.
Due Mar. ** 6th., Part II/Review of literature and Re-formulation of
problem statement (maximum length 7 pages)
In this text, you should try to summarize your work to-date in terms of the
literature you have read and the theory-building work you have done
(include relevant case study experiences if you choose this option). Your
initial summary should be goal-directed, leading to a re-formulation of the
problem statement submitted in Section A.
Due April*** 3rd, Final Draft of paper --Please drop paper off at my
mailbox in the main education reception desk, or in MPX 8545 if instructor
is available in office-- (maximum length 15 pages)
In this text, which should resemble a journal article in format, sections A
and B will be integrated with all your subsequent work so as to constitute
a single coherent and reflective report which presents the results of your
research within a general context provided by the literature in the
particular domain of concern. Make sure to include information and analysis
pertaining to (a) what you think you might do differently should you tackle
a similar conceptual problem at another time, and (b) what you learned from
the "experience".
Evaluation of Assignments:
One Suggestion for Evaluation:
(a) Classwork: (50%)
*Normally each student will be asked to take responsibility for a
brief but thoughtful exposition of one chapter of the weekly reading. It
will be most helpful if all students can complete the text as a whole, in
order to formulate the most useful account of the individually assigned
chapter.
*On one occasion over the course of the term, each student will be
asked to attempt a "critical synthesis and application" presentation, in
which they are responsible for bringing together the text as a whole, based
largely on the expositions of individual chapters supplied by fellow
students in class the prior week. The purpose of this is to re-consider the
work, and to attempt to identify ways in which it might most productively
be applied to work ongoing--whether the students own research or that of
others.
(b) Individual: (50%)
*Students will prepare throughout the term a 'glossary' of
'keywords' which have been consequential for their thinking, particularly
(but not exclusively) in relation to their thesis research. This
'glossary', which can and indeed should reflect students' supplementary
reading arising in the course of 902, must be NO MORE THAN 10 pages long,
and is due on Mar. 27th.
*A paper focussed on students' own research but solidly based upon
the curriculum of 902, of no more than 15 pages, is due from April 3
Pre-Reading: Patti Lather: Getting Smart (Routledge)
Required: C. McCarthy and W. Crichlow: Race, Identity and
Representation in Education, (Routledge)
J. Wertsch: Voices of the Mind (Harvard, 1991)
V. Walkerdine: Mastery of Reason (Routledge)
J. Lave and E. Wenger: Situated Learning (Cambridge, 1991)
C. Luke and J. Gore: Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy
(Routledge, 1992)
Recommended:
M. Grumet: Bitter Milk
V. Walkerdine: Schoolgirl Fictions
bell hooks: Teaching to Transgress
Peter McLaren: Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture
and essays by Ellsworth, Burbules/Rice and Leach, POMO ED papers in Ed
Theory, Ranciere. Sedgwick, Foucault, Lyotard, Pinar, Britzman, etc...
Additional Reading: Add and subtract at will...
Mikhail Bakhtin: Speech genres and other essays (1986)
Lecture: Textuality and Identity: The role of popular fiction in
identity-construction
VIDEO "Forbidden Love"(NFB 1993)
Readings: Selections from Identity, Race and Representation in
Education
Sharene Razak "Storytelling for Social Change" in H.
Bannerji (ed) Returning the Gaze(1993), Sister Vision
Press
Pratt: "Going Public: Political Discourse and the Faculty
Voice" pp35-51 in M. Berube and C. Nelson: Higher
Education Under Fire (1995)
deCastell/Bryson Radical In
in Press)
Bristor: The chilly climate at a Canadian business school
Re/Mediations: Applications, Implications, Demonstrations and Research
Agendas
Collaborative Lecture: What kinds of research are most likely to produce
interesting results?
Assignment: Final E-Mail entry; (Major Paper is due from April 7rd)
E-Mail Journal: Throughout this course, students will be asked to
'dialogue' on E-Mail: to record reflections, musings, responses by other
students, contradictions, scribbles, insights and so on... Each week,
students will asked to make one Email entry . Early in the term, a
staff-member from ETC will provide a tutorial in the basics of E-Mail
To be negotiated individually with each student, based largely upon their
thesis research/writing . Seminar work (including email discussion) will
normally make up 50% of the grade
Mikhail Bakhtin: The dialogic imagination (1981)
The University of Sheffield: Bakhtin Centre
Himani Bannerji (Ed.) Returning the Gaze: Essays on Racism,
Feminism and politics (1993)
Deborah Britzman: Practice Makes Practice (1991)
Suzanne de Castell and Mary Bryson (Eds.): Radical In(ter)ventions:
Identity, Politics, and Difference in Educational Praxis (in press)
Michel de Certeau: The Practice of Everyday Life (1984)
Dennis Dworkin and Leslie Roman (Eds.): Views Beyond the Border
Country (1993)
Gary Morson and Caryl Emerson: Rethinking Bakhtin (1989)
Carolyn Steedman: The Tidy House (1982)
Vera John-Steiner: Notebooks of the Mind (1985)
L.S. Vygotsky: Mind in Society, Harvard Univ. Press (1978)
Sandra Weber & Claudia Mitchell: Funny,You don't look like a
teacher (1996)
Lois Weis and Michelle Fine (Eds.): Beyond silenced voices: Class,
race, and gender in United States Schools (1993)
James Wertsch: The concept of activity in soviet psychology (1979)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: The Postcolonial Critic (1990)