From First Principles: Toward a More Reflexive Social Science

In the United States and in other countries as well there are a number of government and philanthropic initiatives to help more people, particularly those from low-income backgrounds, enter and succeed in postsecondary education. These initiatives typically involve remedial education (because a significant number of students are academically underprepared) and vocational or occupational education (called Career and Technical Education in the United States) because many students elect an occupational pathway. On the remedial front, policy makers are calling for reform of remedial education, for it has proven to present various barriers to degree completion. On the CTE front, policy makers want more academic work integrated into career courses believed to better prepare students for the demands of the new economy. But both remediation and CTE emerge from and carry with them assumptions about knowledge and learning that limit their effectiveness, and these assumptions are reinforced by institutional structures and status dynamics and by the forces of social class. This article (based on a talk given at the American Educational Research Association) examines these assumptions with the goal of moving beyond them. It also offers some reflection on the research methodology best suited to explore such complex social topics as remediation and occupational education.     

Of Disciplined Minds and Disciplined Bodies: On Becoming an Ecologist

Phenomenologically speaking, the body is the hinge between the sociomaterial world and individual knowing. To illustrate the importance of this hinge in the making of ecologists, we draw on a two-year ethnographic project among field ecologists. Our study shows that becoming an ecologist involves not just the acquisition of skills and conceptual knowledge or just enculturation to a set of practices, such as occurs in university schooling, but also a disciplining of both mind and body, deriving from the physicality of engaging in the fieldwork itself. Becoming an ecologist therefore involves a disciplining that mingles the mental and the physical.     

Knowing,Participative Thinking,Emoting

In this paper, I refer to two notions which are basic to the theory of Cognitive Pluralism. First, there are multiple semiotic means. Language is a primary one, but it is not the only one. Second, semiotic means are based on cultural practices. In the theory of Cognitive Pluralism, as in other pluralistic theories, musical and mathematical notation systems, diagrams, maps, and other semiotic means are examined. The use of diverse cognitive approaches is illustrated by the accounts of experienced thinkers. I discuss analytical and analogue cognitive styles in mathematics in relation to historically shifting emphases in the discipline. The developmental and cultural implications of this theory are illustrated with analyses of narratives as they are retold by children. In closing, a contrast between Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences and the theory of Cognitive Pluralism is presented.     

Solidarity and Responsibility,Ontologically (Categorically)

Vygotsky proposed that schools have an essential role to play in the socialization of scientific or academic concepts. The aim of this article is to expand and revise Vygotsky's proposal using Grice's work on the informal logic underlying everyday conversations. We argue that both academic and everyday conversations rely on Grice's Cooperative Principle and his maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner. These two types of conversations do differ, however, in terms of the degree and type of accountability to which the participants are subjected. For example, even among familiar interlocutors, mathematics explanations must exhibit informativeness, logical coherence, veridicality, relevance, and clarity. One teacher's requesting and revoicing strategies (types of conversational metamessages) are examined to illustrate the contributions of a Gricean perspective to our understanding of the socialization of the mathematics register.