Subject: structure
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Mon 08 Nov 1999 - 05:40:34 MET
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 14:40:34 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: structure
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On Fri, 5 Nov 1999, Farhad Saba, Ph. D. wrote:
> As far as predictive validity of the term is concerned, in system science
> the objective is not prediction and control, but understanding myriad
> relationships in complex systems. The best we can do is to optimize the
> conditions for the instructor, and the learner. No one, not even the student
> and the instructor, can predict the outcome of their encounter,
I can predict the outcome of such encounters inasmuch as defined in the
criteria you mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph. I
understand the variables in terms of the contexts of their production and
can predict when the learner will be given a chance to think critically
and when this chance will be removed from them. Is there anything else
that I should predict, assess or know?
> Probable outcomes can be guessed, but with no certainty.
depends where we look for certainty. However, here a more interesting
issue emerges. If we need to know more than I already know about the
conditions appropriate for development of critical thinking, how can then
the question of conditions be tied to the question of structure? If
structure is about designing a path, how can anyone claim to have found
the optimal path for all and to be applied to teaching? Dialogue the way
this notion is used seems like such a path.
> 1- The relationships among dialogue, structure and transactional distance
> should be subjected to many studies,
I would think that assessment of this relationship even if tested will be
a function of the beliefs which underlie the assessment procedures. So
maybe, the quality of this relationship is not a matter of experiments but
a matter of analysis of the premises on which it sits.
> 2- There is no inherent face value for structure, dialogue, and
> transactional distance.
But one thing is certain: structure is a product of the conditions which
designed it. My question here will always be: who is the designer and by
virtue of what mechanism?
> These vary for different learners, instructors, and
> subject matters as teaching and learning progresses AT EACH MOMENT IN TIME.
> Dynamic systems, in other words, are time-based. What is of importance here
> is finding consistent PATTERNS of behavior over time.
why? to push students to those statistically derived model of processing?
Isn't so doing, to paraphrase Bourdieu like that of those who when they
find the logic in things they make it the logic of things? WHat is it that
teachers really need to know and what is it that is predictable and
what is not?
> 3- The judgment, for example, that "My own experience, and that of my
> colleague in this field, is that decreased structure results in decreased
> dialogue" could be true, useful and appropriate at a particular moment of
> instruction. However, what we observe in dynamic systems is not reality as
> frozen in time, but a general pattern of behavior over a relatively long
> period of time.
I would disagree. I think that always what we see is not reality but
reality as we seem to put it together at any time and for any length of
time in question. Judgments as to quality are a product of a process which
is not different of that of vision: we see what we construct. Eyes are not
a window to reality for us to witness it. The conclusions thus obtained
from any experiment are as true as the logic behind them.
> 4- Finally; I don't think there is any dogmatism here. Those of us who have
> been studying the concept of transactional distance for the past 10 years or
If you do think it is a 10 years well spent, what do you think is the
most important realisation so far?
> Transactional theory draws its theoretical
> validity from the American school of Pragmatic psychology. I'd be, however,
> the first to consider alternative models of explaining distance in education
> the moment a reasonable alternate model is presented to me. Geographic
> determinism has not resolved the problemetique of "distance" in education;
> and comparative studies explaining cause and effect of two variables frozen
> in a moment of time have only brought us "no significant difference"
> results. I, for one am open to new suggestions; in the meantime,
> transactional distance is what my students will learn and in which they will
> conduct their empirical, data-based studies, using system dynamics as a
> methodology.
why will your students do this rather than that which makes sense to them?
best wishes
Ania
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