Chapters 7 – “Beyond Cognition and Abstraction: Notes on Human Nature and Development” (165-189)

• Learning is not a rational or disembodied process
• Humans are immature capable curious emotional social animals
  • psychologists vs anthropologists
  • human variations vs universals
• I. Immature but capable
  • balances between: reproduce and grow
  • 3 trades-off:
    • born to learn
    • a huge amount of brain growth to be done
    • the simpler the society, the earlier members can fully participate
  • human development is not entirely age-specific
• II. Notes on characteristics of the human animal (fragmented notes)
  • curious
  • emotional
    • it seems the goal of formal education is to exclude emotion and only accept reason.
  • social
    • people learn with others, but the academic emphasizes the individuals
  • animals (embodied)
  • learning through the body
  • the body in school
  • bodies as problem, bodies as resource
  • Abstraction means absence of the body
    • learning is multimodal
• ==Notes about Attention==
  • (168) “diverting attention and energy from…”
    • attention is compared to energy; it means it can be commodified.
  • (188) “How can we wrest attention back? With the body.”
    • attention is as commodity that can be fought for.
    • attention is embodied.

Chapter 8 – “Learning in the Wild, Learning in the Cage.” (190-213)

• Connection to the ==coding literacy== project: tech comm knowledge as a purely cognitive or embodied knowledge. When we consider the rhetorical aspects, do we take them in realities?
• most people learn without direct instruction
• I. Learning in School
  • abstract, far transfer, banking model
  • but transfer never happened
  • the wastefulness of school
• II. Learning outside school
  • language learning: just hearing or watching does not lead to language learning
    • In need of meaningful and consequential use in social encounters
    • no inborn language, but only capacity for language
  • Neuroplasticity
    • metacognition: conscious, awareness
    • to automatic and unconscious part of the brain
  • Imitation
  • Careful observation
  • Doing without teaching
    • minimally invasive education
    • pedagogy vs other forms of social learning, such as observation and imitation
      • pedagogy: top-down
      • other forms of learning: bottom-up, learners are more motivated
  • Shared practice: Distributed cognition
    • emphasize the body
  • Doing
  • Apprenticeship
    • real job vs traditional college (to be irrelevant)
    • transfer does not happen, because the connection is unclear
  • Learning through Work
    • manual labor (relating to the coding literacy)
  • Learning through Challenge
    • discomfort –> greater learning
  • Learning through play
    • boundaries between work and play are less obvious
  • If Learned, It cannot be forgotten
    • repetition vs reflection
  • Learning in college:
    • different emphases:
      • content, learning to learn, transferrable skills, cultural literacy, fact, procedural knowledge
    • practice theory vs functionalist
      • functionalist: cognitive skills (more abstract and rational)
      • practice theory: more embodied
• ==Notes about attention==
  • (194) Blum notes the mistaken ideas about learning and because of these, people think “things are hard to learn.” Instead, Blum states, “we need to pay much more attention to the many ways that people learn, successfully, outside school.”
    • My notes: attention when used as the verb or action, has its transitive objects. If attention is not attended on this, it is attended on that. What I want to relate is the development of the discourse of theory: they are what they are because of the distribution of attention. Some areas becomes attentional areas.
  • (195) Distribution of attention is related to the social structure
    • “The attention paid to language…involves the acquisition of a very specific version of language…the greatest prestige…differs from the home”
      • In the public area, more attention is distributed to the public than to domestic/private
      • The socially recognized has the inherited potential to win more attention
        • So, to achieve more attention, turn the topic into a bigger public discourse.
      • The private is stigmatized
  • (197) attention and imitation
    • “we want to please others and tend to act like them”
      • attention is the prerequisite for imitation
      • attention brings in conscious work prepared for imitation
      • From the psychoanalysis perspective: Imitation might also mean the lack in unconscious, the desire for completion; other as the better.
  • (198) “open attention” (Suzanne Gaskins)
    • to attentive to environments, not fixated to the activity in question
    • be aware of the surroundings
  • (206. 209) attention and challenging tasks
    • “People pay attention when they are scared”
    • It is more about the conditions to enhance the accumulation of attention.
    • (209) Diana Ackerman, (1999) Deep Play
      • “real danger or fear focuses the attention”
      • Difficulty and challenges –> higher attention
      • If challenging task can attract more attention from individuals, then in the public, it might be the same case.