Mediating Artifacts in the Creative Chain: Agency innovating educational management

Author(s):

Monica Lemos(presenting / submitting)Fernanda Liberali

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 07 C, Innovating and Re-Signifying in Teacher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-11

17:15-18:45

Room:

A-203

Chair:

Jane Abbiss

Discussant:

Tom Russell

Contribution

This paper discusses school reports in a Creative Chain of Activities as mediating artifacts[1] in order to foster agency and transformation to cross boundaries of school subcontexts, two types of reports were developed: teacher’s classroom reports and students’ development report. This was done as a result of an interplay of senses to produce new meanings about teaching-learning activities. In this Creative Chain (Liberali, 2006) composed by coordinators’ meeting with teacher educators and consultants, school development programs with coordinator and teachers and classes with teacher and students, discussion of reports gave rise to new meanings about how teaching and learning could be enhanced and developed for all those involved.

Mediating artifact in the educational management process

In Vygotskian terms, humans never react directly to the objects or environment in activities, but have their relationship with the object mediated by cultural means. Vygotsky points out that the use of mediating artifacts is essential for the development of higher psychological functions. According to him, the use of signs leads humans to a specific structure of behavior that breaks away from biological development and creates new forms of a culturally-base psychological process. (Vygotsky 1978 p. 40). Signs recover Marx’s dialectic method in that it is a material element of reality and it also depicts or stands for something lying outside itself. They do not have any independent existence outside the joint social activities of human beings; on the contrary, they emerge as a part of human activity within which they indeed are used to stand for something.

Reports, as a form of written recollection of events, are highly emphasized in different contexts. In the educational one, it has been seen as central for the development of all the participants of the teaching-learning process. According to Liberali (2007), they allow a deep understanding of the reality that surrounds its producers and create a practice of reading and writing that one uses to reach, express and question reality. As discussed by McLaren (1997/2000) in relation to descriptions, reports are vulnerable texts that may be redescribed, modified and/or rewritten. However, they still serve as an in-the-moment understanding of practice and ideas from which one can get hold of one’s own action as a historical reality and can, therefore, transform them, as pointed out by Freire (1970).

[1] In this paper, artifact, instrument and mediating artifacts are used as synonymous.

Method

This article is a result of the intervention research conducted in a critical collaborative perspective. In this type of research, participants learn through getting involved in all moments of the research process and through becoming responsible for the shared evaluation and reorganization of practices. The context for the research was the “Management in Creative Chains Project”, coordinated by Liberali as a consultant-researcher for the Secretariat of Education. Its main objective was to enhance management through the development of professional staff, focussing on their studying, training and monitoring activities. Specifically for this paper, data analysis focused on classroom reports used in the development of verbal-visual processes for observation, analysis, interpretation and critical intervention. It analyses a teacher’s reports on her classes during four terms, two entrances on students’ development report notebooks and some oral testimonials of the coordinator and the teacher during seminars and conferences. These texts were analyzed through argumentative processes, involving the articulation of the presentation of points of views, the argumentative supports, the counterarguments, and the conclusion and/or deal.

Expected Outcomes

Both teachers’ and students’ reports acted as a mediating artifact in the development of agency and transformation in the teaching and learning processes. Besides, they also had intervention to foster an expansion of the way they wrote their reports and went deeper in their evaluation of the teaching-learning processes. As stated by the coordinator in a conference where she presented the work with reports in the school, “From the moment I am in the present I can see the past and, then, I can project actions based on my experience of the past”. Similarly, the teacher explained that if she had not written the reports on the first term, she would never be able to remember what their literacy skills were in the beginning and how much they had improved by the second semester. The reports did not simply facilitated reflection on teaching and learning; they helped shape and transform those very processes. Teachers and coordinators became agents in the teaching-learning process through the awareness of the role and importance of the reports. The reports could contribute to both organize and transform practices in the management of meaning production in the Creative Chain.

References

Bakhtin, M. (1998) ‘O discurso no romance’, in:__________ Questões de literatura e de estética: A teoria do romance. Trad. A. F. Bernadini, J. Pereira Junior, A. Góes Junior, H. S. Nazário, H. F. de Andrade. São Paulo, UNESP/HUCITEC. Bakhurst, David (2005) ‘Ilyenkov on Education’. Studies in East European Thought. (57), 261-275. Bush, Tony (2011) ‘Cultural models’ Theories of Educational Leadership & Management, 170-188. SAGE Publications LTD. Engestöm, Yrjö (2008) ‘From Teams to Knots: activity-theoretical studies of collaboration and learning at work’ New York: Cambridge University Press, FREIRE, Paulo (1970/1987) ‘Pedagogia do oprimido’. Rio de janeiro: Paz e Terra Hays, Sharon (1994) ‘Structure and Agency and the Sticky Problem of Culture’ Sociological Theory, Vol. 12, No 1, 57-72 Leiman, M. (2000) ‘De Saussure’s and Bakhtin’s Semiotic Conceptions: contrasting positions for understandingthe nature of psychotherapeutic discourse. ‘ Available at: < http://evansexperientialism.freewebspace.com/leiman.htm>. Acessessed em 08.09.2005. Liberali , F. C. (2006) Creative Chain in the process of becoming a whole. Paper presented in the 7th International Vygotsky Memorial Conference, Moscow, Liberali, F. C. (2007) ‘School Teachers in Favela Contexts: Metaphors and Metonymies they live by’. In: Mara Sofia Zanotto; Lynne Cameron; Marilda C. Cavalcanti. (Org.) Confronting Metaphor in Use. An applied linguistic approach. 01 ed. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. v. 01, 267-285. Marx, Karl (1867/1990) Capital Vol.1, London: Reprinted in Penguin Classics. McLaren, P. (2000) Multiculturalismo revolucionário. Porto Alegre:ARTMED, pp25-49. 1997. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society: The development of Higher Psychological Processes, Havard University Press, Massachusetts. Vygotsky, L. S. (1997) The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky, vol. 3 (R.W. Rieber & J. Wollock, eds.). New York: Plenum Press.

Author Information

Monica Lemos (presenting / submitting)

University of Helsinki

CRADLE

Helsinki

Fernanda Liberali

Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo

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