news

was in saudi arabia
now in libya

just got a poem in my head after a long while

the awe of the ewe

i dug a well in trivandrum
the water was fresh and clear
it tasted good, it tasted pure
till one day i had to go

i went north, then over land
then over the sea, kept digging wells
they gave me water
to keep thirst at bay
but always then came
the ones who said
move over, this place is ours
so i packed up, now wonder where
the well is there that when i dig
no one will care and i can drink
sweet water, to my fill

till then my lot
to dig and dig
here and there
my spade rock-hard.

Change returns success - I Ching

Si, I'm finally off - back to univ - eng dept.

to be or not to be

to go or not to go - that is the question

12 C
many of them actually read mill on the floss - i'm proud of this achievement
they may surprise me yet....

kalpana's feedback on my lesson

1. The activity was introduced quite clearly and explained well to students.

2. Each student was asked specifically to contribute (my feedback from the last class was incorporated) and though the nature of contributions was mostly free style, it did serve to get them speaking out during the lesson.

3. The quality of discussion that ensued was good and some very relevant questions were asked especially by student 1 who was supportive throughout. (though I felt atudent 2 and 3 were trying very hard to emulate the image of a been there and done that type!!)

4. Fleshing out of student responses was done to some extent in the limited time that was available though some will have to follow in the context of the novel itself.

5. It would have been useful to take students through one chapter of the novel in class, highlighting to them how the aspects of a novel that were discussed manifest themselves. Reading independently may not always be fruitful, as you probably know by experience.

6. Alternately you could have taken them through one or two paras in the 1st chapter so as to explain how mood, atmosphere and style etc. is evident.

7. Words like dialect and ideolect, if not used in earlier classes, may need some explanation and examples.

8. A tip - discourage students from using simplistic sounding words like 'good' and 'nice' which are not precise and really do not tell you anything about the quality of the plot or character or situation.

9. A follow up class later to see how students' understanding of these terms has improved/ enhanced may help.

10. The class ended well with all the main points being reiterated again.

Thank you and it was good to have observed your class.

The class that Kalpana observed.

It was 11 C . AICE. AS Level Litt. I had written out the lesson plan. I wanted to incorporate a few of the things we had learned in our latest PPSE session like bridging and hugging and also use a GO and one of the tech tools Shuchi had introduced to us, namely concept mapping (CM).
I'm teaching Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah.
But I wanted to start with an intro to the novel. My lesson plan went through dfferent revisions and never came to a kind of fixity, but it was clear in my mind in its basics. Unfortunately I couldn't use the tech hub that day but I still used concept mapping on the board.
I'm putting in the finished lesson notes now.
Dr. A.V. Koshy
Lesson Notes
Class held on 26th October 2006.
Block F
Venue: The terrace
Time: 1.45-2.45
Subject: The novel
Content: Elements of the novel.
Activity: Had a discussion on what the elements of the novel are. Stressed how most of the elements are common to the drama and the short story. The discussion took about 20 minutes.
I used the Classification web as a GO from Suchitra Narayan’s buffet.
The answers I expected from the students were: The Plot & the story, Characterization and characters, Themes, Language, Style, vocabulary, wordplay, symbols, motifs, emblems, images, figures of speech, Background and foreground, hero, heroine, (protagonists),villain, (antagonists), flat and round characters, stock characters, prototypes, archetypes, stereotypes, static, evolving, complex, simple or one-dimensional, milieu, setting, mood, tone, voice, atmosphere, sub-texts, sub-plots, point of view, perspective etc.
It emerged yet again that students are generally confused about the difference between plot and story. Character and characterization.
I wanted to divide them into two groups – one group to find definitions and examples and read them out.
Another to make a cmap of the connections between the main elements using verbs for the links.
They were then supposed to read out what each group came up with to the other group
But since the tech hub was not available I changed my lesson. I made them all do the definitions through the discussion together.
I made them write down the elements of the novel on the classification web, with novel as the word in the centre, then four main branches and then sub-branches of three elements each.
Then I did concept mapping with them on the board. Linking the concepts by using verbs.
For example – “Atmosphere builds the novel”.
Interesting digressions were into the need
To know about the author and his life
To read criticsm.
The students came up with everything on my list except wordplay.
I summed up and asked them to come to the next class with the first chapter of the novel read.
Learning objective: Learning the elements of a novel.
Assessment opportunity: Whether understanding has happened to some measure, enough to start out with.
Aim: A kind of revision, an intro. and a bridge between prior learning and present need.
Final comment: My lesson plans have to become even more simple. Awaiting feedback.

fleetwood mac - sara - man, i love this song

Written by Stevie Nicks.

Wait a minute baby...
Stay with me awhile
Said you'd give me light
But you never told me 'bout the fire

Drowning in the sea of love
Where everyone would love to drown
And now it's gone
It doesn't matter anymore
When you build your house
Call me home

And he was just like a great dark wing
Within the wings of a storm
I think I had met my match -- he was singing
And undoing
The laces
Undoing the laces

Drowning in the sea of love
Where everyone would love to drown
And now it's gone
It doesn't matter anymore
When you build your house
Then call me... home

Hold on
The night is coming
And the starling flew for days
I'd stay home at night all the time
I'd go anywhere, anywhere
Ask me and I'm there, because I care

Sara, you're the poet in my heart
Never change, never stop
And now it's gone
It doesn't matter what for
When you build your house
I'll come by

Chorus

All I ever wanted
Was to know that you were dreaming
(there's a heartbeat
And it never really died)

Shuchi Grover's feedback

Hi Koshy,

Here are my notes on your lesson which I observed. I don't believe we ever received the entire 12 lesson unit plan from you.

Regards,
Shuchi
------------------------------

------------------------------

Lesson observed on Tuesday, 5.9.06 Block F, 1 hour by Shuchi Grover

Teacher: A.V. Koshy

Std 11 AICE

Literature

The topic was a poem "The Spirit Is Too Blunt An Instrument" by Anne Stevenson

Setting:

5 students (3 girls G1, G2, G3 & 2 boys B1 & B2) sitting in a semicircle in front of the blackboard in the Tech Hub, with Koshy in the space in between.

Specific Observation Notes:

• Koshy introduces the lesson by writing "Carol Ann Tomlinson" on the board and saying that the aim of his lesson was to teach in a way that different kids would be able to understand the poem and that it would become "fuzzy --> clear" G1 responded "You've lost me already." and Koshy smiled and dropped that thread.
• Koshy gave a brief introduction to the poem saying that it was from the "Sceince" Poetry genre.
• The students by turn then read about 4 lines of the poem each.
• Then he asked the kids to split into 2 groups; B1 & B2 in one and the 3G's in another with a short explanation from Koshy that he was leveraging "Multiple intelliegences" and verbal/ling and spatial/visual capabilities of the students. The boys were asked to look up meanings of various words on the internet and list out adjectives, see how the words were being used in the poem. The girls were asked to use the internet to pull up images of the various parts of the human body that were being talked about in the poem. Both groups were to make presentations after 20 mins.
• The kids got to work.
• After 20 mins they made their presentations along with all-class discussions about their views. The discussions were awesome!
• The class was not too impressed with the poem and questioned the poet's objectives in writing such a poem.
• Koshy asked in the end if the poem had become fuzzy--? clear and one of the kids said that it was fuzzier then before which made Koshy smile. He clarified to the student that perhaps the intentions of the poet or the subtext of the poem may be fuzzy, but he believed that they all comprehended the poem at least. I agree with this assessment of his.

Analysis:

• I did not see any reason for the teacher to explain things like Differentiated Instruction and MI to kids. It is part of the teacher's strategy and not part of the lesson. Koshy stressed that he wanted the students to know.
• Koshy explained in his lesson plan as well as to me in person that this was a very bright class and that they were all very bright kids. I felt that perhaps differentiated instruction was then not a necessary strategy at all!
• That said, I think the lesson was very well thought out and executed. I found myself enjoying the lesson thoroughly
• The tie-ups with DI were evident and well-executed

More PPSE

What is the connection between multiple intelligences, multiple literacies and multidisciplinary integration?
Worth thnking about.
Hugging and bridging are good concepts to remember David P/Berkins?
Graphic organisers are many . There's even a meta-organizer floating about.Interesting.
Geethu gave us a nice handout on docuenting and making your own book.
End of the sessions. Tara asked me if I've chewed off more than I can handle. I always do. Something makes me live on the edge. On the verge of breakdown.
Kalpana observed my class. Observed is a peculiar word. Yet to receive the feedback.
Shuch has sent me some handsome feedback on my class demonstrating differentiated instruction.
I'm tickled pink because Shuch's from Harvard.

I am caught in the vicious trap of the jungle of urban work.

PPSE Update.

We had two days of a workshop held by Geetha Narayanan.
The concepts we dealt with were teacher/bricklayer and teacher/architect , not to forget teacher/archaeologist.
The new template we dealt with was "literacy as code," "ways of world making or sense making," "materials, tools and processes" and "vulnerabilities and deprivations."
GN is an architect. Cognitive architecture is what she aims for.
Now for the assignment.
A few other things I picked up that I need to look into - null curriculum
Jo-hari window
STAD
UDL

I learned the fishbowl exercise.

The need to post and get readers/hits.

So I am going to finally move this blog into the public sphere and showcase it as one worthy of reading bcause of the fine writng it contains.
I thought I will start by putting my essay on Bruner and constructivism in here, now that it's been corrected and I got an A for it. So here goes. Heavy, but worth reading:

Deconstructing Brunerian Constructivism

Intro: The Concept Of Significance
A major development in the twentieth century for the student of theory was the evolution of a few defining terms that were seen to be highly utilitarian in their ability to refer to many of the humanities and arts disciplines simultaneously, making multiple interfaces possible. These terms are the sign, signifier, signified, signification, referent and the text - in their fullest connotations. Readers of learning theories may notice that these important terms did not leave much of an impact on the discourse of Education. My effort in this essay will not be to ask why, but to connect these theoretical terms to learning theory and my practice, finally generalizing on the output. The obvious fear that comes to the surface, whenever theories that stem from Saussurean linguistics, structuralism, post-modernism, deconstruction and political empowerment are discussed in connection with learning, is the one about whether these are anarchic and subversive and will undermine the foundations of what child-centered education is supposed to be. Deconstructionists would laugh at the idea that education is supposed, a priori, to be this or that. It is true that polyphonic discourses deconstruct commonly held assumptions. But to believe that they are automatically against learning theories like Constructivism, which is the theory I want to examine, is misleading. Au contraire, to rigorously test the philosophical concepts that underpin a system, an institution or a philosophy is to do it a great benefit.
So, to frame my present effort, through which I hope to temporarily discover my philosophy or theory of learning, let me start by asking a few questions that seem relevant. To rephrase things in terms I am familiar with as a theorist, what will be my main signifier and what will it signify? What will be its referent? What is the text and what are the subtexts? My temporary answers, simply put, are: The learner – whether in singular or plural - is the signifier under consideration. No learner, no education. The signified, consequently, is learning. The referent of the process of signification which is naught but the process of learning is - a surprisingly DesCartesian finding - the interaction and interface between the learning self and the world from which it partially learns. The text, or education, is naturally the sum of these four parts. This self-sufficient and significant system has been, contaminated, at least for me, by three subtexts which area. the ideology of powerb, the theories of learning andc. the need, due to financial, political, social and economic constructs, for ‘entrepreneurial’ middlemen between the learners and actual learning.This impasse has to be faced now because it is a reality. My attempt will be to deconstruct the subtexts after discussing some of the salient principles outlined in Bruner's version of Constructivism, of which he is only one of the proponents.

Constructivism And Bruner.
This essay is constructivist in shape. That derives partly from choice and partly from the fact that the course which is eliciting it is also, to some extent, deliberately or unconsciously, constructivist. Concurrently, the metaphoric framework I have evolved is both constructivist and deconstructive in that my key words and concepts are typical signifiers that slide in and out of one another and overlap in phallogocentric jouissance that is a reflection of the amorphousness of words and the indeterminacy of concepts that resist, ideally, fixity. Constructivism, based primarily on what Piaget stressed, the concept of cognitive structures – i.e. ; schemas - , is a wide theory of learning that comprises several perspectives and includes thinkers as diverse as J. Bruner and the neo-Marxist Vygotsky. Bruner's contribution can be summed up in the following points.1. The signifier or the learner should be the active agent in the give and take of the signified; learning.2. In the process of signification or learning the learner is not a finished referent-product, but has a sign on him that reads 'under construction,' like a good website.3. He learns not only to construct ideas and hypotheses but also to make decisions based on models that have a cognitive structure embedded in them. He thereby arrives at meaning, and patterns experience towards a definite qualitative end result and, in a sense, constructs himself with help from the world (environment) as referent.4. He learns extrapolation and transcending of subject boundaries, both typical outcomes of constructivist endeavors.5. Facilitation has to bring about the learner’s ability to recognize first principles on his own initiative.6. It must lead to a profitable exchange of views (the Socratic dialogue and method of learning).7. The top-down approach of ‘delivering’ knowledge and information has to be jettisoned for simplification, taking into consideration age and level- appropriateness.8. The building blocks or spiral method is to be followed so that by the end of the project the learner can build the entire ‘project’ by himself.9. The facilitator has to motivate structure and sequence learning, besides planning the interval and ratio of interventions that negotiate the minefield of reward and punishment.10. The historical, social and cultural aspects of the signifier have to be taken into consideration to inculcate in him the "readiness" to learn.11. The learner needs order and organization so that spiral learning will take place, whereby the learner has the skill to build on what has been previously constructed.12. Facilitation leads to the ability and potential of the signifier to learn being maximized to the extent where inferences that go beyond the mastered level lead to facility with abstractions, filling in of gaps, and decoding and remixing of all the relevant aspects of textuality. Bruner doesn't take Skinner’s concept of reinforcement into consideration and seems to place little emphasis on the learner's past, emotions or physiological needs. These can be considered flaws; not just in his theory but in constructivism in general. It is too psychological in its orientation and seems to deal only with the mind, brain, intellectual prowess and mental processes, to the detriment of other aspects of the learner and learning, unlike in the more holistic approach of Gardner. However, I remain drawn to Bruner's theory, because I am more mind- oriented than heart or body-centered.
Constructivism as a theory of learning and its postulates like Brunerism have already proved themselves quite application-friendly in U.S. and Europe and the degree of difficulty experienced by educators in trying to implement them is moderate. The Indian context requires that it be tweaked for our circumstances. It is a user friendly theory because it deals primarily with patterning the process of learning into cognitive structures for best results and thus, in its crux, is aiming at the essential. Its implementation becomes difficult only if complicated by aiming too high.


Illustrating The Theory
Coming to current practice, I would like to illustrate, using the above twelve-point explanation I have given of Bruner’s form of Constructivism, several things that I have done that parallel almost exactly his theoretical viewpoints.
To ensure that the signifier in one particular learning situation I was in last year was involved in active give and take I made them engage in activities like
a. listening to “novel readings” by two accomplished readers,
b. participating in a video-viewing exercise (the film of the novel) followed by discussion and
c attempted movie-making of one section; along with the usual activities of
d. reading and
e. writing.
The results were, I admit, mixed. But the active give and take definitely occurred.
By the end of the year, exposed to the idea of reading a by-any- standards ‘long’ novel, the group of twenty-one I have taken as the case for presentation exemplified clearly the truth that in the effort to construct and situate themselves as mature readers they varied widely in terms of achievement. While six of them actually read the entire book, which was task- fulfillment at its best, two of them read the lengthy allotted portion. The other thirteen coped by reading some of the more relevant sections of the text, listening to five chapters being read out to them, having it reinforced for them visually through watching the movie and by trying to make a section of it as a film, using auditory aid in the form of literary readings and lastly by making use of a study guide available on the net. The results of the exams showed that those who had constructed themselves as mature readers scored the highest, the ones who had done the required work came second and the others lagged behind in spite of the active give and take of the sessions. The reason for this is obvious. While all these signifiers are ‘houses’ under construction, the ones who read the entire text by themselves were the ones who participated most in the process of signification, with least intervention from the outside, and hence they were able to collect and assemble the most number of building blocks for the project. They have almost reached the target of becoming the signified in whom learning has taken place. They were deeply engaged in the process of signification – or of making sense of the text for themselves, to put it in a more germane fashion.
This was seen in their writing that is gradually developing, - reflecting not only their growth in the discipline but also personal growth – suggesting that they are beginning to imbibe not just content but the pattern of the cognitive structure embedded in the efficacious practice of learning that the theory of constructivism is when applied. They have not yet gone on to extrapolation and beyond the textual paradigms, but recognition of first principles is beginning to take place. For instance, now the group under observation has begun to understand the generalities that go into the make-up of a good novel like story, plot, setting, themes and characters and next year, by the end of the present module in its totality, they will also be able to recognize the specificities and peculiarities of a novel’s tonality that makes it stand out in literary terms due to elements like aptness of dialogue, the pictorial quality, characterization, depth in treatment of themes etc. Gradually, the constructivist approach has begun to yield profitable exchanges of views and dialogues that are definitely Socratic in nature. My approach has taken age and level- appropriateness too much into consideration. As a result of pitching the standard too low and trying to transfer concepts and knowledge in too simple a fashion to meet even the supposedly lowest common denominator, instead of delivering learning from top-down, not as much ground was gained as might have otherwise been possible. In the attempt to motivate the group as facilitator, I was able to bring the power of collaboration into play by arranging for two fine readings of sections of the novel, especially one by an expert in the field that took into consideration things like the exact accent of the local dialect that was spoken by some of the characters in the novel. The content was divided into structured units for ingestion and the ratio and interval of interventions was planned appropriately with the stress being on reward and reinforcement – an element borrowed from Skinner – rather than punishment. This bred its own kind of chaos and slackness in the group but the philosophy was not sacrificed for a year. What was most interesting was the process of whole class reviews held in camera, so to speak, to gauge the measure of group and individual learning that had actually taken place. It was an innovative venture that the group had never gone through before and led to a lot of discussion and proactive results, especially in the updating of notebooks by some of the members. An interesting facet that emerged was that gender seemed to play a part in receptivity to constructivist techniques of facilitation. Hopefully in one more year, if this whole method is fine-tuned, the group which now shows much improvement in that nineteen of them seem to have become more focused, may eventually come to a stage where all twenty-one show enough acumen to go beyond the texts and prescribed syllabus to a place where making hypotheses, spiral development and maximizing of learning potential - leading to self-improvement which is the constructivist aim - all become possible.

Conclusion: Deconstructing Constructivism As A Means To Power
Several issues swam into focus in my attempt, of a very specific nature; therefore not addressed by constructivism directly. If the three or four areas that needed to be addressed urgently were reading, writing, student variability and lack of know-how regarding researching and thinking skills; perhaps it was because Bruner’s suggestion that the historical, social and cultural contexts also need to be taken seriously into consideration to bring about a solution that would actually create “readiness” in the group was ignored. However, to do so would have opened a Pandora’s Box, one which I would love to address next year. The predicament in doing so consists of the following question. What is the price tag on education for rich kids? Is advanced theory applied to learners in select Indian settings a modus operandi of the convoluted machinations of power, whereby the children of the rich get immunity from having to do what their less fortunate counterparts have no choice but to, while being assured that power will remain in their hands because of the superiority of the quality of education they get? Does the effective implementation of theories of learning like Bruner’s indirectly foster and maintain in a country like India a new caste system, more rigid than the old, in its raising up of a class of learners who are elite because of the training they can afford and who learn, beyond cognitive structures, the only lesson valued by the ‘strong’ of the world – how to increase in power and wealth and become rulers; an end for which the means is this kind of specialized learning?
If it is so, it is a case of the ‘constructivist’ text called education being falsely constructed, without recognizing the gaps and discontinuities in the arbitrary and perennially changing relationships between the signifier, the signified, the referent and the world. The gap becomes fatal if the system does not realize that textuality is closed and kinetic but just outside of it, un-quantified by any theory, there are large human factors that consist of much more than parents, business entrepreneurs, position, fame, assets, high finance, aristocracy, influence and .... expensive education! The ‘much more’ is signified primarily, for the present writer, by elements like the children themselves, elementary and high school teachers, learning support staff and counselors, the work- force that cleans an establishment daily and the non-teaching staff, to name just a few, and many other factors that are not quantified by most of the advanced, learned theories of learning. The factors include respect, equality and a developed awareness that the earth is part of a vast, beautiful, living web of life that always finds amusing the attempts of a few strands in it to consider themselves greater than the sum of the parts. In brief, theories of learning must be supported by a socially viable network like the one Aditi is certainly striving to be, communities of practice that take history and the world into consideration in such a manner that those in the echelons of power like the management and the parents and the facilitators in authority are sensitized to the adverse effects of a system that relies only on intellectual, aesthetic, scientific, technological, economic, bodily- kinetic or academic achievement. At the same time, this shouldn’t result in a loss of motivation in creating achievers in these fields. None of these achievements are essential life skills, if they stand in isolation.
To sum up, theories with constructivist goals seem to me pragmatically sound but not humanizing enough, if its application is only limited to international schools. Education’s general theoretical drift today is similarly constricted by such theories being boxed into narrow strips in vibrant democracies like India. Any theory of learning which ultimately doesn’t send the learner in the direction of truth, and that includes responsibility to all one’s fellow men; is, by inference, incomplete and needs deconstruction so that one may come up with a practice that creates in the signifier the innate drive to ask the age-old question: What is really "significant" enough to learn in the brief life each human being has on earth?
Bibliography attached in an earlier post.

farewell to three of my wonderful students

Artist: John Cale
Song: Hallelujah
Lyrics
I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do ya?
It goes like thisThe fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Hallelujah etc.

Baby I've been here before,
I know this roomI've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew ya
I've seen your flag on the Marble Arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah etc.

There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do ya?
I remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
Hallelujah etc.

Maybe there's a God above,
all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who out drew ya
And it's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah etc,
Hallelujah etc.

I know your dream

findings

1.teaching creatively and teaching for creativity
2.dimensions of learning
3.integrated curriculum
4.multiple intelligences
5.learning about, from and with technology
6.differentiated instruction
7.bloom's taxonomy
8.maslow's heirarchies
9.understanding by design

my tool box of theories is full

i can pick and choose

makes skills and attitudes clearer for me now....

plus learned a lot of things like what a project is etc...

last part of my essay

A Select Bibligraphy

Bruner, J.S. (1960) The Process of Education, Harvard University Press, U.S.A
Lye, John (1993) CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY, Brock Review Volume 2 Number 1, pp. 90-106, USA . http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/2P70/contemporary_literary_theory.html. Last updated July 2001
Smith, M.K. (2002) 'Jerome S. Bruner and the process of education', the encyclopedia of informal education http://www.infed.org/thinkers/bruner.htm. Last updated:January 2005:
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/constructivism.html
This is a gateway to much material on Constructivism
http://www.psy.edu/PsiCafe/KeyTheorists/Bruner.htm
This site is a gateway to much material on Bruner.

finished

it's done - now for the bibliography and the formatting - yay!!!!

exactly below 2750 words.

Continuing

Constructivism as a theory of learning and its postulates like Brunerism have already proved themselves quite application friendly and the degree of difficulty experienced by educators in trying to implement them is moderate. It has been the same for me too, although theIndian context requires that it be tweaked for our circumstances.

The Essay - Part 2

Construcivism and Bruner.

This essay is constructivist in its shape. That derives partly from choice and partly from the fact that the course which is eliciting it is also , to some extent, deliberately or unconsciously, constructivist. Concurrently, the metaphoric framework I have evolved is deconstructive in that my key words and concepts are typical signifiers that slide in and out of one another and overlap in a phallogocentric jouissance that is a reflection of the amorphousness of words and the indeterminacy of concepts that resist, ideally, fixity. Constructivism, based primarily on what Piaget stressed, the concept of cognitive structures - schemas - , is a wide theory of learning that comprises several perspectives and includes thinkers as diverse as J. Bruner and the neo-Marxist Vygotsky. Bruner's contribution can be summed up in the following points.
1.The signifier or the learner should be the active agent in the give and take of the signified; learning.
2.In the process of singification the learner is not also a finished referent-product but has a sign on him that reads 'under construction' like any good website.
3. In the same process he learns not only to construct ideas and hypotheses but also to make decisions based on models that have a cognitive structure embedded in them. He thereby arrives at meaning and patterns experience towards a definite qualitative end result and , in a sense, constructs himself with help from the world(environment) as a referent.
4. This includes extrapolation and transcending of subject boundaries , both typical of constructivist endeavours.
5.Facilitation has to bring out about the ability to recognize first principles on the learner's own initiative.
6. It must lead to a profitable exchange of views ( the Socratic dialogue and method of learning)
7.The top-down approach of delivering knowledge and information has to be jettisoned for simplification, taking into consideration age and level appropriateness.
8.The building blocks method is to be followed so that by the end of the project the learner can build the entire house by himself.
9.The facilitator has to motivate, structure, sequence and plan the interval and ratio of interventions that negotiate the minefield of reward and punishment.
10. The historical, social and cultural aspect has to be taken into consideration to inculcate "readiness" to learn in the 'signifier' of learning.
11. The learner needs order and organisation so that spiral learning will take place. whereby the learner builds on what has been previously constructed.
12. Facilitation leads to the ability and potential of the signifier to learn being maximised to the extent where inferences that go beyond the level mastered leads to facility with abstractions and filling in of the gaps.

Bruner doesn't take reinforcement into consideration and seems to place little emphasis on the learner's past or emotions or physiological needs. These can be considered flaws; not just in his theory but in constructivism in general in that it is is too psychological in in its orientation and seems to deals only with mind, brain, intellect and mental prowess to the detriment of other aspects of the learner and learning , unlike in the more holistic approach of Gardner. However, I remain drawn to Bruner's theory partly because of the lack of empirical proof for some of Gardner's classifications and partly because I am more of a mind- oriented personality than a heart or body-centred personality.

Second attempt. - Intro: The concept of significance

The essay requires that I pick a theory first. This is difficult for me because I generally move with a complex, complicated, approach to theory - believing that one must have no theory to go by initially, then go on to take what is good from all the theories after being initiated into them , form one's own multi-faceted theory over time and transcend theory eventually after finding out the right balance between theory and practice. Another difficulty that presents itself to me is that I am, by nature, a strongly theory-oriented thinker/writer, and left to myself I would keep writing theory and leave out documenting the practical aspect totally, because the latter is what I'm good at.
(Leave out this first paragraph safely)

Of the given theorists , due to familiarity and inclination the ones that attract me the most are Dewey, Skinner, Piaget, Bruner, Vygotsky, Gardner and the brain-based learning theorists. This is not a value judgment. Since that's still too long a list and the brief is to choose primarily just one or two I would like to concentrate, perforce, on Bruner and constructivism, although I will be referring, if necessary, to the other theorists.

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A major development in the twentieth century for a student of theory in the transdisciplinary field of linguistics, stylistics, literature, criticism, art, anthropology, sociology, history, politics, philosophy and psychology was the evolution of a few defining terms that were seen to be highly utilitarian in their ability to refer to all the above mentioned disciplines simultaneously, making multiple interfaces possible. These terms are the sign, signifier, signified, signification, referent and the text - in their fullest connotations.

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These words or defining terms stand for key concepts that show a shift in perception that occurred in the twentieth century, bringing in a new paradigm in theory and practice in all the above mentioned fields. The shift was away from nineteenth century trends and open to twenty-first century changes which have had to take rapid breakthroughs in science and technology - resultantly in media -into consideration.

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As to what the terms stand for - to put it in a very simplistic way which subverts the very effort of the proponents of these terms to expand their frame of reference to include, if possible, all disciplines - the sign stands for anything with symbolic value, the signifier is usually its re-presentation and the signified is the interpreted or interpretative Meaning of the sign/ifier. The branches of learning which study these phenomena are called semiotics and hermeneutics. The how, why, when , where, who and what of Meaning's occurrence , also called semantics, is called signification or the signifying process and deals primarily with the relationship between the signifiers and how it generates meaning. The sign and the signifier always stand in relation to its referent - and studying the connections between such multi-pronged terms was the contribution of Structuralism which dealt with the relationship between elements rather than the understanding of the elements themselves. The final concept I have mentioned, that of the text, assumed staggering importance after Derrida's mercurial and controversial rise to prominence in the theoretical world, with his notion of textuality as perenially closed and kinetic; a chain of endless signifiers based on difference rather than identity and repetition, a notion that neatly yet radically does away with the concepts of the the signified and the referent.

Second paragraph - for the layman. Should I use it? - depends on final word count)

Naturally, with this kind of modernist theoretical grounding, theory in these disciplines moved towards post-structuralism, post-modernism, deconstruction, post-colonialism, post-feminism, post-Marxism, post- colonialism and decolonization, subaltern studies, minority and marginalized discourses being given voice etc. All this was made possible because the previous theorists had opened up whole schools of debate and their discourses dealt with subjectivity and relativization, making it difficult in the post- Nietzchean & Foucaultian ambience to come to conclusions on any "subject" without first rigorously testing whether one was thinking clearly. Theory had become meta-theoretical, a natural concomitant to its rising importance.

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As readers of learning theories may notice, these important terms did not, seemingly, leave much of an impact on the discourse of Education. My effort in this essay will not be to ask why but to connect these theoretical terms to learning theory and my practice, finally generalizing on the output. The obvious fear that comes to the surface whenever theories that stem from Saussurean linguistics, structuralism, post-modernism, deconstruction and political empowerment of the sort envisaged by Foucault are discussed in connection with learning and education is the one about whether these are anarchic and subversive and will undermine the very foundations of what education, especially child-centered education, is supposed to be. Deconstructionists will, of course, laugh at the idea that education is supposed, a priori, to be this or that . It is true that such discourses deconstruct commonly held assumptions. But to believe that they are automatically anti-constructivist is misleading. Au contraire, to rigorously test the philosophical concepts that underpin a system, an institution or a philosophy is to do it a great benefit. From this kind of scrutiny they have a chance to emerge positively cha(r/n)ged, unscathed or diminished.

So, to frame my present effort, through which I hope to temporarily discover my philosophy or theory of learning, let me start by asking a few questions that seem relevant to me. What is my main signifier and, to rephrase thnigs in terms I am familiar with as a theorist, what does it really signify? What is its referent? What is the text and what are the subtexts? My temporary answers, simply put, are: The learner is the signifier under consideration -whether in singular or plural. No learner, no education. The signified, consequently, is learning. And the referent of the process of signification which is naught but the process of learning is - a surprisingly DesCartesian finding- the interaction and interface between the self and the world. The text therefore will be, naturally, the sum of these four parts. This self-sufficient and significant system which might have been rampant once has been contaminated by bringing into it the three subtexts which are
a. the ideology of power
b, the theories of learning and
c. the need, due to financial, social and economic constructs, for (artificial?) middlemen between the learners and actual learning or education.
This impasse has to be faced now because it is a reality. My attempt will be to deconstruct these three subtexts using some of the salient principles outlined in Bruner's version of Constructivism , of which he is only one of the proponents.

apology in frostian/blakean terms

casw sessions make us wise
but, alas, a deadline doth me await
and i still have seven reports to write
yea, i still have seven more reports to write.....