Cultural-Historical and Discursive Tools for Analyzing Critical Conflicts in Students' Development

1. Cultural-historical and discursive toolsfor analyzing critical conflicts in students’ developmentAnnalisa SanninoUniversity of Salerno, Italy 16º InPLA - Intercâmbio de Pesquisas em Lingüística Aplicada Minicourse 2nd-5th of May 2007, São Paulo

2. Introduction: • a journey • through my teaching experience at the University of Salerno

3. Two starting points: • The meeting for welcoming students to the 2003-2004 academic year • My class on Psychology of Learning and Memory

4. Two modes of involvement: • passionate • vs rational approach to studies

5. A contradiction rises and hits the instructor: students wanting to make their life as easy as possible, and then choosing the hardest evaluation mode

6. The contradiction is recognized as an opportunity for change: The instructor becomes a teacher-interventionist-researcher

7. 2. Theoretical framework: Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT)

8. CHAT… • …brings subjective human experience into connection with the external material world • …promotes transformation in the subject and in her way to operate in the world

9. In this inquiry CHAT is used for… • …exploring the developmental potential of the identified contradiction for both my students and myself as a teacher • …promoting transformation in my students and myself as a teacher

10. What is the nature of the transformation in the subjectI aimed at as a teacher-interventionist-researcher?

11. Transformation aimed at: • Learning how to deal with critical situations, i.e., situations in which the subject faces the impossibility of realizing internal necessities that would fulfill her expectations in life Using Vasilyuk’s (1988) terminology and key concept… • …promoting the process of experiencing, i.e. promoting or reinforcing engagement in struggling against impossibility, in order to realize internal necessities

12. Transformation aimed at: • Learning how to deal with critical situations, i.e., situations in which the subject faces the impossibility of realizing internal necessities that would fulfill her expectations in life Using Vasilyuk’s (1988) terminology and key concept… • …promoting the process of experiencing, i.e. promoting or reinforcing engagement in struggling against impossibility, in order to realize internal necessities

13. Contradiction (Ilyenkov, 1977): a key concept used in CHAT to interpret critical situations Mismatches through which activities renew themselves

14. Conflict (Vasilyuk, 1988) : a key concept used in psychology to describe critical situations The individual surrendering in face of contradictory motives that, in the given form, can’t be subjectively solved

15. An example of the individual surrendering in the face of contradictory motives Student University teacher Nourishing intellectual interests Being a productive academic Being a successful student Being a caring teacher

16. Difference between conflict experiences and contradictions

17. Difference between conflict experiences and contradictions Shift to exploring the roots of conflicts

18. Transitional object (Winnicott, 1974; Leiman, 1999) : a key notion used here to conceptualize the shift between action level of conflict to activity level of contradiction Objects to which individuals are attached to and, at the same time, struggle to separate from

19. Learning to shift from the level of conflict to the level of contradiction • Individuals becoming conscious of being transitional objects for themselves • and internalizing their transitionality as both a weakness and as a strength

20. An example of weakness and strength of being transitional • Weakness: Students shaping themselves as potentially competent professionals are also exposed to live through conflicts in the university in a more painful way than other parties, which already have the economic and professional security that students aim at achieving through their studies • Strength: Students, because they are not bound by any permanent position or economic tie, have the potential to turn their conflicts into developmental initiatives

21. Processes of experiencing… … as both processes of life and processes of acting upon life

22. The intrinsic autobiographical nature of experiencing

23. 3. The setting of the inquiry

24. My class of Psychology of Memory and Learningin the Faculty of Education at the University of Salerno • 128 students, future elementary and kindergarten teachers

25. 4. Methodology

26. Turning the class in an object-oriented intervention for understanding and re-designing unfolding critical events in the students’ life at the University

27. Using pragmatic discourse analysis for studying discourse as it occurs in these specific teaching and research-intervention situations as a pragmatic phenomenon

28. Redefining autobiography by focusing on its transformative potential

29. Main phases in the intervention • Making introspective inquiries and autobiographical texts on the students’ experiences of communicative critical events • Working on common tasks to share each others’ perspectives, build new knowledge about the critical events, and develop innovative solutions for the future • After experimentations with the new solutions the day normally reserved for the final exam is spent evaluating the innovations carried out during the intervention, and for future-oriented joint accounting

30. Students read each other’s autobiographical texts When the conflict experiences they wrote about involve directly others present in the class, participants work on their respective texts during separate sessions of the intervention

31. 5. Analyses

32. Some conflicts and ways in which students live, recognize and work them out individually • conflicts stemming from difficulties in the choice of University ending up at the university because of the lack of work outside • conflicts with professors during classes or oral examination sessions extreme representations of the professors

33. Few excerpts Antonia, February 2004 (excerpt from the interview during the final exam): (…) When you are 32 years old you want to work. Instead of waiting outside, at least we get here another academic degree, and all these titles may give us more chances to work. Livia, December 2003 (excerpt form the text of her speech during the second intervention in the classroom): When you go to the exam you see the professor as a God, somebody to be afraid of, because you know he can harm you; that’s why one is afraid to go to take an exam. That’s at least what happens to me. We should learn to see the professor as a person, and be aware that he can make you pass or not.

34. The emergence of an intermediate level between the level of conflict and the level of contradiction, while the students confront each others’ autobiographical texts

35. The emergence of an intermediate level between the level of conflict and the level of contradiction, while the students confront each others’ autobiographical texts

36. The emergence of an intermediate level between the level of conflict and the level of contradiction, while the students confront each others’ autobiographical texts

37. The emergence of an intermediate level between the level of conflict and the level of contradiction, while the students confront each others’ autobiographical texts

38. The emergence of an intermediate level between the level of conflict and the level of contradiction, while the students confront each others’ autobiographical texts

39. The emergence of an intermediate level between the level of conflict and the level of contradiction, while the students confront each others’ autobiographical texts

40. A step toward the level of contradiction Conflict-contradictory experiences emerged during the last phase of the intervention

41. Students articulated differences between this and other classes • Students recognized developmental tensions that ‘pushed them’ through the class in a stimulating way • Students articulated future-oriented accounts on the basis of what they have learned

42. Few excerpts Angelica: The class developed on the basis on what actually the students already knew, and was built on that, instead of imposing itself on the basis of what the ideal student has learned before. Marta: The way the class has been organized pushed us to study and motivated us, but, also, we experienced this sparkling tension, between curiosity and fear, when coming to the class we said “Let’s see what she will bring us today!” Alessia: I have decided to ask other professors to do the same as you for their classes, especially the most complex ones, because this way to carry a class has lightened our work load without penalizing learning.

43. 6. Discussion

44. Two main steps in the progression of the collective work

45. a. Change in the nature of the tools through the process of the intervention

46. b. Flow in the subject-object positioning during the class and the intervention

47. b. Flow in the subject-object positioning during the class and the intervention Students Teacher The intervention as an historically recursive self-reflective event

48. c. Conflicts occurring as actual daily worries for students, which justify their questions often considered as inopportune or impertinent by professors d. Being transitional and amplification of the subject sensitivity in regard to possible developmental resources available in the environment

49. 6. Conclusion

50. a. The beginning of a definition of zone of proximal development in this setting paraphrasing Vygotsky (1987, p.209)… this study allowed to measure the distance between the actual level of this students’ development, as determined by their capacity to deal alone with the conflicts related to their university experiences, and the level of potential development, as determined by their capacity to work on these conflicts in collaboration with other students and the teacher