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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: August 29, 2003
Latest Update: August 29, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Sharing Experiences of The Narrative Identity of Learning

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, August 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

On Wednesday, August 27, 2003, Michael Griffin, CSUDH, wrote:

Jeanne,
So good to be plugged back into the stream ...
I took the summer off and worked on restoring a 38 foot wooden yacht that had been built in 66 or 67, nineteen that is...in Yokuska Japan...Burmese teak, clipper bow sprits,,,it's like a drug these old wooden boats, when ships were made of wood and man made of iron...

Now that makes me want to pull out a canvas and paint. How wonderful that you brought that image of your yacht to share. jeanne

I was perusing habermas looking over the materials and I came across "identity in learning". An interesting thing happened to me during the closing moments of our last session. The lady behind me asked me a rather simple question about filling out an add card. She called me Michael, and I didn't know her. Flattering. I guess she got my name from your comments to and about me, like my dropping my plastic cup. I didn't realize it at the time as it was a simple request, one to which I had the answer. It was later that I realized that she had reached out to me from a knowing part of her, and I answered from the same notion. It caught me later how isolated I was even in a room full of people, and just how that isolation can vanish at the very mention of my name. I was called to service and now I reflect that "service" may be part of my identity. The little seemingly unimportant aspects of our lives, and how they can be brought in to sharper focus if one just alters one's perspective even a little...In this case the altering came from the utterance of my name from one whom I did not yet know... Michael

On Friday, August 29, 2003, jeanne answered:

Very good conceptual linking, Michael, to pair your reactions to identity in learning. The learning identity example to which I was referring in Identity in Learning was the unique way in which each of us go about cramming information into our memories. In particular, learning vocabulary words. The problem with measuring that kind of learning is that most of it is latent. It seems as though I haven't learned the word when I look it up the third time, the fourth time, and so on. But really the neural connections have changed. It's just going to take more neural connection changes before I recognize the word, and then can recall it, and then, eventually can use it. All that time I'm building neural connections it's called latent learning, and it's hard to measure.

In your example you transferred that latent learning into another example. When the student you didn't know, was it Denise? she was sitting next to you - called you Michael, the fact that you were not an anonymous Other, but Michael, caught your attention. And as you so accurately reported, you "didn't realize it at the time. . . It was later tha I realized . . . It caught me later. . . " Here, you got the whole message in your short term memory, but it took a while to translate it from the subconscious to the conscious. You were bringing your understanding of our expressed goal of forming a community of learning to consciousness. And you expressed very well what that aesthetic process felt like: " It caught me later how isolated I was even in a room full of people, and just how that isolation can vanish at the very mention of my name. I was called to service and now I reflect that "service" may be part of my identity. The little seemingly unimportant aspects of our lives, and how they can be brought in to sharper focus if one just alters one's perspective even a little...In this case the altering came from the utterance of my name from one whom I did not yet know..."

Oh, by the way, that's an A submission.

love and peace, jeanne

References:

Sources if you want to read more on the Narrative Identity of Learning:

• Discovering Your Identity in Learning
• Contextual Formation of Identity

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