ansannin@unisa.it
University of Salerno
Via Ponte Don Melillo, 1
84084 Fisciano (SA)
Italy
Objects of educational practices
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Breaking out of a professional abstraction: The pupil
as materialized object for teacher trainees
University of Salerno, Italy
Annalisa Sannino
This paper discusses the topic of the materialization of the pupil as a
professional object for elementary school teacher trainees who are involved
in a project of developmental intervention. The research project aimed at
introducing in the school a computer-mediated learning practice
internationally known as ‘Fifth Dimension’ or 5D. 5D was promoted as a
research intervention within a project of collaboration between the
University of Salerno and the local elementary school.
The 5D intervention was meant to be an experimental demonstration of a
more active role of trainees in the school. 13 third-year university students
were involved in the project as trainees. In the 5D site one or two first- and
fourth-grade pupils were assigned to each trainee who assisted them in
accomplishing learning tasks during weekly sessions of three hours for a
period of three months.
The analysis is based on 113 ethnographic fieldnotes written by the
trainees. A comparison between the fieldnotes through the 5D intervention
shows that the trainees were initially captives of abstract features of the
ideal pupils.
From a theoretical point of view the analysis draws on Leont’ev’s notions of
need and object, and on Davydov’s notions of empirical and theoretical
generalization. Paraphrasing Leont’ev, the meeting of the need to teach
with the pupil as an object is an extraordinary act. In the case of these
teacher trainees, the need to teach is fed with a pseudo-object, a
professional abstraction. The extraordinary act does not consist just in
finding the object, but in breaking out from the pseudo-object. The pseudoobject may be conceptualized using Davidov’s notions of generalization.
The pseudo-object trainees meet when they go through a successful
internship in traditional classroom situations is this formal generalization of
pupils based on abstract and superficial features.
Four parameters of abstraction are identified in the fieldnotes written during
the first two months of the project: 1) objectification of the pupils, 2)
normative attitude toward learning processes, 3) judgmental views on the
behaviour of pupils, 4) strict concern for making pupils follow and complete
the script of a task. The fieldnotes written during the last month of the
project, instead, go in the direction of a progressive reduction of the four
parameters of abstraction, and of an emergence of parameters of
personification and contextualization of pupils’ individual characteristics.
The emengence of the extraordinary act is documented in this change of
the fieldnotes which is conceptualized as a movement from emprirical to
theoretical generalization (i.e., from a superficial abstract view of pupils
toward a complex systemic view of each pupil).
The analysis in this paper leads to the conclusion that active exposure and
increased interaction with pupils individually, in a developmental context
such as a 5D research intervention, can provide a chance for these
trainees to dwell in the materiality of the object of their future profession.
The paper suggests that the parameters found may be used as tools for
facilitating and empowering developmental processes among teacher
trainees involved in 5D type of research and interventions.