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Cognition

Note A Post-modern Perspective On Curriculum '''Doll, W. E. (1993). A post-modern perspective on curriculum (Vol. 167). New York: Teachers College Press'''

Chapter Five What is MIND/COGNITION?

Following are static definition of mind: Descartes (1664a/1985): Mind is “a metaphor for the unique, self-conscious, self-organizing, and often unpredictable qualities displayed by functioning and reflecting humans” (p.110)

Descates’ division of views of minds: res cognitans (“mind as an immaterial but controlling object or force”: i.e. Immanuel Kant, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Noam Chomsky) and res extensa (mind as a physical, material object, usually ‘the grey matter’ of brain”)

“Since Decartes we have tended to think of mind as a place where reality itself is represented” (p.110)

Lockean tradition of mind: “blank tablet”, “ideas are written or imposed” (p.110)

Chomsky “balckbox” (p.110)

Davis: “computer”, mind as the “software” and body as the “hardware” (p,117)

Thrust of movement encourage us to find a new epistemology, which goes beyond the task of assessing how accurately our ideas and facts mirror reality. Instead, we wish to develop an epistemology which is more generative than representational, that “endows our lived experiences” with meanings. (p.110)

Bruner: “An individual’s personal ability to represent the world, its reality and culture” (p.119)

Then we see mind from a dynamic perspective: Aristotle: “Unlike Plato, he does not see this (mind) as a power inherent in the soul’s nature; it is developed through use” (p.112)

“The metaphor of mind shifted from being an abstract quality of the soul to being a “thing” in the body”. (p.113) Rene Descartes 1828 Yale Report: “Muscle” to describe mind. “Muscle needed ‘daily and vigorous exercise’” (p.113)

Knowledge Greek idea: “equated with wisdom, not with the accumulation of facts” (p.111)

Dialogue Through proper dialogue, as in the Memo, this knowledge is recollected by questioning (p.112)

From 17th century on, “knowledge has been increasingly defined in mechanistic and mathematical terms” (p.112)

“social reciprocity” (p.119)

Vygotsky: “learning posits social interaction as an essential ingredient” (p.119)

“Learning through, by, or with others, learning is not isolated” (p.119)

“we need to develop curricular plans and instructional strategies that utilize student-student and student-teacher dialogue interactions”, “ human learning comes from this interaction-via the conflicts that create the dilemmas which generate growth” (p.120)

Vygotsky zone of proximal development: learner is able to use hints from others, to take advantage of others’ help”; “through the interaction between one’s own reflective understanding and that of another, an individual is able to transform and heighten personal consciousness” p.122 maybe we can relate this idea with the value of triggering event

Layers of cognition Spirit, appetite, reason (Plato) (p.110) “Reason is broader than the solving of problems or achieving of right answers, it is making good judgments. Factual knowledge, needed for good judgments, is considered only remembrance.”

1Material objects, 2meatal events, 3social organizations: each level is more complex than the preceding one, more systemic; higher levels grow out of former, simper ones (p.117)

“The concept of challenging or pushing personal structures so they are transformed to higher, more comprehensive levels of organization is a point Bruner shares with Piaget.” (p.123) This is consistent with Garrison’s statement that, the pushing from the instructor is good for the continual development of cognitive presence.

“This growth process, interactive and personal by nature, will not proceed in a linear, sequential, accumulative, and stable manner; rather, it will occur sporadically and spontaneously as each individual builds a rich matrix of representation, utilizing multiple perspectives, consciousness presuppositions, and personal subjectifications. These three are feature of literary or historical discourse, not of philosophical analysis-of hermeneutics, not of logic”. (p.124)

Pedagogy Classroom pedagogy does not question assumptions, beliefs, and paradoxes, as Scocrates did; Rather, it begins with what is self-evident or given and moves in linear links to reinforce, establish, or prove that already set and valued” (p.115)

Spontaneous generation: “help students develop their own creative and organizing powers’ (p.118)

Bruner argues, we need to “pay far more attention to this most important and unique ability-learning form others” (p.119) “we need to develop curricular plans and instructional strategies that utilize student-student and student-teacher dialogue interactions”, “ human learning comes from this interaction-via the conflicts that create the dilemmas which generate growth” (p.120)

“Bruner see all learners as constructors whose construction improve through tool use, social interaction, and recursive thought” (p.122) “curriculum based on 1)experience with symbol manipulation, 2)public dialogue,3) private reflection can transform the learner from a copier of others patterns to a generator of one’s own” (p.122)

“Maturing individuals now have multiple means for representing their words; and, in turn, their own growth is influenced by multiple perspectives. Bruner believes education should take advantage of these multiple means and not confine curriculum to the logical and analytic” (p.123)

“The teacher’s art is in translating the structures of whatever subject is being studied into the learners’ ‘way of viewing things’ and then operating in the zone of the development just beyond the learners’ sense of comfort” (p.124)

Others “Mathematical chaos theory shows that development overtime often produces bifurcation points….where past patterns are qualitatively transformed into new and different patterns” (p.118)

“Every complete action can serve as a new beginning” (p.118)

Karl Lashley