Rosario Cubero

Activity Settings, Discourse Modes and Ways of Understanding: On the Heterogeneity of Verbal Thinking

Various authors in the tradition of cultural psychology have analysed the idea of the existence of different ways of thinking. Several classifications about ways of thinking have been proposed, all of them referring to similar ideas. Bruner distinguishes between narrative and propositional thinking, while Scribner distinguish between theoretical and empirical or functional argumentation. Vygotsky also assumed the existence of different ways of thinking. Once the cognitive plurality and the existence of different ways of thinking has been accepted, we are left with two questions: what changes in the different ways of thinking, and why does it change? With regard to the first question, we must consider the differences in the means employed to mediate mental processes. As for the second issue, we refer to the activity settings and practices in which individuals participate. The empirical analysis is applied in the context of adult education. Individuals in the sample belong to two different levels of adult education: basic literacy and advanced literacy levels. Two different tasks are proposed: the first consists of preparing menus and the second is a classification task. Results related to the different ways of solving these tasks show a plurality of ways of thinking in individuals in the advanced group. Our data show how school experience allows the development of new ways of thinking and the adjustment of mental functioning to task demands. Heterogeneity of verbal thinking is here interpreted and discussed as a heterogeneity despite genetic hierarchy, instead of a non-genetic one or as a hierarchy of power. From this, it appears that development is not the replacement of one mode of discourse-thinking by another, but the differentiation and co-existence of different ways of thinking connected to different practices.

Sobre el conocimiento y la práctica educativa

Resumen En este trabajo se analizan y discuten las ideas desarrolladas por Clarà y Mauri en este mismo número sobre la articulación entre el conocimiento y la práctica educativa, específicamente sobre la conceptualización de las relaciones entre el conocimiento teórico, el conocimiento práctico y la práctica educativa. Nosotros pretendemos aportar algunas reflexiones al hilo del debate que se nos propone, con argumentos e ideas que provienen de una perspectiva constructivista social de la explicación de la construcción del conocimiento, así como de las aportaciones de la teoría histórico-cultural sobre la naturaleza del desarrollo, el aprendizaje y las prácticas sociales. Concretamente, nos referiremos a aspectos tales como: los distintos niveles de análisis en los que podemos situar la relación conocimiento teórico/práctica educativa, la necesidad de adoptar un análisis genético y una perspectiva dinámica, el reduccionismo que supone concebir el conocimiento práctico exclusivamente como conocimiento tácito, los conceptos de actividad y contexto, y el conocimiento práctico como el conocimiento que se genera en una comunidad de práctica.

Accounts in the Classroom: Discourse and the Coconstruction of Meaning

Our general aim is to study the construction of meaning in the classroom through the analysis of classroom activities and discourse. We adopt a qualitative methodology to study educational practices. Our results describe how teachers create an account to narrate certain events, how teacher and students use what they consider to be the culturally valid sources of knowledge, and how students appropriate collective constructions of meanings. Our work contributes to the understanding and description of how meaning is coconstructed in educational activities.

Cultural origins and schooling influence on scientific and everyday concepts: The case of border and citizen on the border concepts

This work assumes the existence of a functional and dialectical relationship between activity settings, modes of discourse and ways of thinking. A research is developed to study the influence of schooling and the cultural origins in concepts formation. The participants were border residents from Brownsville (Texas, United States) and from Matamoros (Tamaulipas, Mexico). They belong to two different educational levels (primary and university education). Participants solved a task on concepts formation related to border and citizen on the border notions. Results showed that the subjects from a basic educational level and the Mexican citizens on the border used the most concrete values of the categories studied. We stand that different learning contexts generate different ways of argumentation and concepts, which are valid both for school activities and for everyday life in one side or other of the border.

Teachers negotiating discourses of gender (in)equality : the case of equal opportunities reform in Andalusia

This article is focused on the analysis of the narratives produced by a group of teachers, experts in coeducation, while they were discussing their everyday activities. They are responsible for the implementation of a Plan for Gender Equality in public secondary schools in Andalusia (Spain). This study is based on contributions about doing gender view, according to which gender is not an attribute of individuals, but a way of making sense of interactions and practising a complex system as functioning on three levels: sociocultural, interactional, and individual. We use these levels to understand gender culture in schools through teachers’ discourse. Our interest lies particularly in the meanings, contradictions, difficulties, and conflicts experienced by expert teachers in co-education. Our study was based on group discussions with teachers in charge of the plan for equal opportunities between women and men in school settings. Results show teachers’ conflicts about meanings and how they are supposed to apply the Equality Plan. We observed interactional levels during these conflicts and analysed how teachers construct and validate their discourse.

What do students do to agree on academic knowledge? Structured tasks and non-structured tasks for classroom-based learning / ¿Qué hacen los estudiantes para consensuar el conocimiento? Tareas estructuradas y tareas no estructuradas de aprendizaje en el aula

Abstract In this paper we study the processes of interaction among students which occur during the implementation of structured and non-structured tasks for the construction of meaning in a science class. To analyse the educational speech that is generated in these interactions, we use a qualitative methodology based on discourse analysis. Our results provide a description and comparison of structures of participation and discursive resources that occur in both structured and non-structured tasks. Our work contributes to understanding the processes of student-student interactions and to an explanation of collaborative learning with different degrees of structuring.