Showing papers on "Social constructivism published in 1992"

Discourse towards balanced rationality in the high school mathematics classroom : Ideas from Habermas' critical theory

Abstract: This paper aims to contribute to research in mathematics education which is exploring, from social constructivist perspectives, the prospects of reconstructing the microculture of the traditional classroom learning environment. A Habermasian perspective is adopted on the need to make invisible and subject to critical scrutiny the hidden frames of reference which constitute the dominant instrumental ideology of traditional mathematics teaching. Three powerful and congruent frames of reference

Perspectival realism and social constructivism: Commentary on Irwin Hoffman's “discussion: Toward a social‐constructivist view of the psychoanalytic situation”∗1

Abstract: (1992). Perspectival realism and social constructivism: Commentary on Irwin Hoffman's “discussion: Toward a social‐constructivist view of the psychoanalytic situation”∗. Psychoanalytic Dialogues: Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 561-565.

Narrative and Chaos

Abstract: S IGNIFICANT PORTIONS of our culture, ranging from performance artists to academic critics, have grown increasingly chary of narrative. We tend to express this discomfort in two ways. We either actively pursue the disruption of narrative through antinarratival experiments or we concede the power of narrative but cynically assume that it invariably veils some ideological agenda whose demystification is the proper work of analysis. In this essay I will argue that the first of these positions inevitably undermines itself and that the second, although useful in cultural critique, is vulnerable to generalization into the incoherence and impotence of radical social constructivism. In their place, I propose to sketch the outlines of an affirmative theory of narrative. Informed by recent work in biogenetic anthropology, information theory, and the science of chaos, this theory will attempt to rehabilitate narrative by suggesting that it can be a principal agent of cultural change. It is, I think, unnecessary to give an extended account of the attacks to which traditional narrative has been subjected in recent critical theory. However, in the interests of framing the central concerns of this essay, I will begin by outlining some seminal antinarrative positions. (1) Derridian deconstruction, with its emphasis on fragmentation, destabilization, bifurcated writing, multiplicity and the nonlinear nature of the trace, tends to group narrative with logocentric, metaphysical discourse. (2) Radical feminist theory, especially that associated with the French, suggests that traditional narrative is a prime example of patriarchal phallic hierarchical oppression.' The French feminist revolution is fueled by "writing through the body," a kind of writing which enacts a supposedly archaic female economy, a plural, scattered, polymorphic, autoerotic, contradictory, nonself-identical and radically anarchic being in the world. (3) From a neo-Marxist perspective, Fredric Jameson qualifies nineteenth-century narrative as linear and bourgeois, and condemns it for its participation in capitalist domination.2 In another typical

Feminist Theory and Historical Practice: Rereading Elizabeth Blackwell

Abstract: This essay assesses the value of social constructivist theories of science to the history of medicine. It highlights particularly the ways in which feminist theorists have turned their attention to gender as a category of analysis in scientific thinking, producing an approach to modern science that asks how it became identified with "male" objectivity, reason, and mind, set in opposition to "female" subjectivity, feeling, and nature. In the history of medicine this new work has allowed a group of scholars to better explain not only how women were marginalized in the profession but also the manner in which politics, male anxiety about shifts in power relations between the sexes, social and political upheaval, professional concerns, and changes in the family all had an impact on the production of knowledge regarding the female body, including the "discovery," definition, and treatment of a wide range of female ailments, from anorexia nervosa to fibroid tumors. Building on the work in the history of medicine already accomplished, the essay offers a critical rereading of the writings of Elizabeth Blackwell, a pioneer nineteenth-century woman physician and leader of the woman's medical movement. It contends that Blackwell, who lived through a revolutionary change in medical thinking brought on by discoveries in immunology and bacteriology, remained critical of "objectivity" as the "best" form of knowing and suspicious of the laboratory medicine that promoted it so enthusiastically. Moreover, her critiques of radical objectivity and scientific reductionism deserve to be recognized as foreshadowing the maternalist strain of thinking among contemporary feminist philosophers and thinkers such as Sara Ruddick and others. In the last thirty years, ever since Thomas Kuhn demonstrated that culture has historically influenced the pursuit of science and helped shape which scientific paradigms eventually prevail, the image of scientific knowledge as neutral, value-free, and privileged has become slightly tarnished. Indeed, post-Kuhnian debates within a variety of disciplines have only added to suspicions that the structures of knowledge that have informed and dominated Western culture since the Enlightenment are less authoritative than they originally seemed. Busy philosophers from many different perspectives are rejecting the foundationalism that has guided the post-Enlightenment search for "truth," itself premised on * The author wishes to thank George Sanchez, Ann Lombard, Mario Biagoli, Emily Abel, Anita Clair Fellman, Margaret Finnegan, Barbara Bair, Gerald Grob, and especially Louise Newman, who rendered helpful critical readings of this essay. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.128 on Mon, 18 Jul 2016 05:53:38 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 52 REGINA MORANTZ-SANCHEZ the belief that thoughtful and reasonable people can, indeed, explain the world as it actually exists. Instead, they prefer versions of William James's argument that "What we say about reality . . . depends on the perspective in which we

Teachers' Changing Conceptions of Writing Instruction.

Abstract: In the 1970s a shift in the dominant theory of writing instruction began, away from a focus on the written product and form of writing toward an emphasis on the writing process in all of its complexity (Freedman, Dyson, Flower, & Chafe, 1987). Several overlapping but distinct definitions and theories of process writing arising from cognitive, social constructivist, and naturalistic frameworks have evolved. For instance, Hayes and Flower (1980; 1986) have seen writing as a goal-directed cognitive activity involving planning, translating, and reviewing that requires rhetorical knowledge, subject matter knowledge, and strategic knowledge. Other researchers emphasize writing as a social activity associated with particular practices (Bruffee, 1984; Freedman, Dyson, Flower, & Chafe, 1987; Scribner & Cole, 1981). As a social process, the features of audience and purpose are highlighted. Shaunessey (1977) sees composing as a socialization process in which the writer brings his/her thinking in line with discourse conventions of the community of readers. Nystrand (1989) argues in a similar way that writing is a social interactive process between readers and writers within discourse communities. Educators and researchers from a more naturalistic tradition see writing as a natural process that can be activated by encouraging environments (e.g., Emig, 1981). Graves (1983) and Calkins (1986) also see the establishment of a literate environment as crucial to teaching students how to express themselves. Although these theories of writing and their links to process approaches dominate the literature, a gap remains between the theories and how they are enacted in classrooms (Applebee, 1986). Applebee found that writing was used primarily to assess learning, that prewriting activities constituted a minimum amount of time, and that peer response groups occurred in only a minority of classrooms. District-wide writing tests, minimal support for instructional innovation, and system-wide pressure for improving achievement tests scores are some of the reasons researchers have suggested for the difficulties of changing classroom norms that would support process approaches (Florio-Ruane, 1991; Michaels, 1987; Ulichney & Watson-Gegeo, 1989). Additionally, teachers' views about writing may play a role in how they implement writing programs within classrooms similar to the relationship between teachers' stated beliefs about the reading process and their classroom practices (Richardson, Anders, Tidwell, & Lloyd, 1991). If teachers hold traditional views of writing as consisting of appropriate syntax, grammatical structures,

Creating the Culture of Journalism.

Abstract: The high school journalism classroom provides a natural environment for learning in the context of a discipline's culture. This environment can provide the backdrop for moving the student toward the thinking and behavior of professional journalists. To understand this thinking, journalism teachers can turn to the research in cognitive psychology which has identified automaticity and complex problem solving abilities as characteristics of expert skills. Social constructivism also sheds light on the collaborative nature of journalism. A description of specific teaching strategies for the journalism classroom illustrates a model for teaching high school journalism which involves: (1) understanding the thinking and culture of professionals; (2) creating a classroom environment that fosters expert-like thinking and group interaction; and (3) implementing teaching strategies that assess students' preconceptions about journalism and enable students to confront these preconceptions and build new concepts that move them toward expert thinking. (Thirty-one references are attached.) (Author/RS) *********************************************************************** AepioaucLions suppixeo oy r.liha are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Others of Educational Researcn and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) viThis document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization ongtnating it C Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction duality Points of new or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OE RI position or pohcy -PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." Creating the Culture of Journalism Janet R. Irby Doctoral Student University of Washington Paper Presented at AFJMC Convention, Montreal August 8, 1992

Gender and the New Sociology of Technology

Abstract: First it was said that gender was not an issue in the objective world of technical decision-making; then that gender could only be studied as it appeared in the interest talk of techno-scientists and engineers, or as conscious strategic interventions in the practices constitutive of technological networks. Analysts of technology in this latter mould say they are breaking down the dichotomy between subjective and objective decision-making, between the technical and the social. But they have been strangely blind when it comes to analyzing investments in gender. Those of us who daily struggle with networks of power which produce and represent women as inferior, as lacking, cannot afford to ignore the articulations of gender in and through technologies. It is not enough to remove technical action from the pedestal of reason. It is not enough, when 'following scientists and engineers around', to misread their actions as the totality of the social, and as sufficient explanation for the success, or failure, of technological networkbuilding strategies.' Feminism Confronts Technology is a most welcome work that addresses precisely this issue of how gender can be registered as significant in the making of technologies. Written from a social constructivist perspective, it is a work that synthesizes a large body of feminist work on technologies, and in so doing reasserts the importance of gender to what has been called the new sociology of