Today, April 16, 2009, at 5pm, there was a Speaker that my class and I went to. My last blog entry was about sematics; the way people relate to things in inspring their imagination. Well, today, we heard a speaker talk about the same things.
Dr. Tania Zittoun, from Switzerland, Professor of Education came to UNC to give a speech of her theory. She is a Psychologist with a background in literature. She works as a Psychologist and in Education. Her speech was about: How Young people use cultural elements in their life or experiences in their trajectories.
She talked about social pyschology. A pyschology as a person, interacting with other objects; they all are in constant change. Imaginations, interactions, the way we interpret things. The meaning is very important; primacy of meaning processes.
Socially shared (meaning) <=> personally significant (sense)
AN example of this is: The room is different from you who come here everyday compared to me who is just speaking here once.
Dr. Zittoun says youth changing from childhood to adulthood is not a transition, but the youth are going through a period rich in transitions. Examples of this is school to work, leaving perents house, etc. We as humans go through life growing and changing. We have a routine, we understand our lives to a degree and if little things aren't quite normal we can deal with them to a degree. Well, Dr. Zittoun uses the word RUPTURE; something that challenges the daily routine, something like a good friend who moves far away. This rupture causes some changes. Life slowly goes on until there is anohter rupture, and we learn to adapt and get used to a new way of doing things again.
In my mind...I think of this at the UPS and DOWNS, the Rollercoater Ride that is life. There are different interpretations, but in the sense of Dr. Zittoun's study, a Rupture is what causes the challanges we as humans face.
She also discussed Symbolic resources; little punctrues of things that can affect us to change. Things like social, cultural, personal elements that are used to mediate psychological elements. Using something with intention links it to something else, giving the person a symbol of something. Listening to music after a hard day at the University or discussing about films with someone to know him or her better. These Symbolic resources are to give the youth in this case or any person for that matter the elements needed to understand something better.
The main point of her study is: ***Cultural elements used as symbolic resources can support youth transition processes (learning, identity, senses).***
She gave an example of this young girl Julia. Julia's grandma recently died and she recently also left home to go to University. The Manic Prechers (I think that's the full band's name) was a music group that Julia listened to quite frequently. The Manic Prechers helped Julia get through the transition of this change. They helped change her. She began to become more and mroe interested in the band and other bands with a simular sound, message, and lyrics that relate to how she was feeling. Julia also began to read books that this band may have particularly mentioned. She be gand to think about other things, but more importantly the world she lives in. AND, consequently with the music as her LINK through this transiton, it was used as the way she was able to understand everything.
I found this speaker very interesting. One...she had a French accent, so I was just listening to her accent, and as a theatre major was trying to mimic it slightly in my head...but once I GOT over the whole thing, and focused myself on the presentation at hand, I really understood what she was saying. It helped hearing it explained better then reading about it, like the the Torino article I discussed in my last blog entry. I realize that this theory is an interesting one. I never really thought about development in this way, and it was nice to see another view. It makes sense why we are the way we are. :)
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