>Here's a blast from the past! In rereading some old papers in support of a
>new conference paper I'm preparing, I came across work done by Gordon Pask
>in the 1960s which is, it seems to me, very relevant to our recent debate
>on participative teaching and learning strategies.
....
>Most of this seems very compatible with constructivist ideas of sociality
>and Boxer's notion of regnancy in collaborative construing. I suspect that
>it has influenced the thinking of other people who were around in Brunel
>University in the early 1970s, when Laurie Thomas taught a group of PhDs
>like Pam Denicolo and Maureen Pope, (Laurie having participated in seminars
>with Pask). And there's a lot of it present in the work of more recent
>constructivists, to the extent, perhaps, that you'll tell me that Pask's
>ideas are old hat.
etc.
Your suspicions are probably right, Devi. I remember that Pask made play a
good deal with the concept of "conversational learning", cf. Thomas et.
al.'s recent title "Learning Conversations" and the sub-title to
"Self-organised Learning", viz. "Foundations of a conversational science for
psychology".
I remember encountering Pask many years ago at a conference of the Institute
for Information Sciences on the impact of new technology. He came across as
an original thinker in spades for whom I think that the psychology of
learning was not (and may not yet be) ready!
Bill Ramsay,
w.ramsay@strath.ac.uk.
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