I think that I was most struck by the empahsis on a change in thinking about learning and teaching which was explicit in the article about transformations and more subtle in the article about the Kosrean people. The Transformations article's focus on potential for future learning is both an evaluative mechanism as well as a kind of ideology. Learning becomes more fluid and about forming new ways of thinking rather than learning particular facts, which was more explicitly stated in the NRC article. I think that it complemented Michalchik's article well. The comparison between the types of participation and showing learning in church and in school was very poignant. I liked the idea in the church setting of not judging an individual's progress because there was no time frame in which to learn the information because it was expected that each person would be learning new things about each topic throughout the rest of his or her's life. The emphasis is on community and learning at one's own pace while still making a contribution overall. In both articles there was a sense that people will be learners for the rest of their lives.
Dan Gilbert Good comments, I'm especially interested in the role that time plays in all of this and how a space and an organization can connect with an individual's lifelong learning, especially as those of us that live in larger metropolitan areas move among communities very rapidly.
Deb Kim: Yes! I say yes in my biased perspective and approach to learning as participation in activity and as something that is dynamic and constantly changing due to the space, it's affordances, how activities are organized and how the individual participating in the activity relate to the content and to each other and they themselves develop over time. So from my perspective I say yeah, you go it. I'm glad you've taken the time to chew on the concepts presented in the readings, and hope soon you'll begin to also challenge and find ways the perspectives don't always work and how they might fit into a rubric for the design of learning spaces. Different kinds of spaces and are they only applicable in certain kinds of spaces?... Thanks for sharing your thoughts.