MEETING OF THE MINDS TEA PARTY

PART I: Creating Your "Ticket" to Attend

Your "ticket" to get into the tea party will be a hard copy (paper) notes summarizing the most important aspects of "your" (i.e. your theorist’s work). To do this you will need to find at LEAST 3 separate internet websites about your theorist, and print them off. Here are the steps:

1.  Locate websites for theorist and print

2.  Using 4 different colored highlighters, begin to highlight where you find answers to the following about your theorist:
 

The relative importance of heredity and the environment on development

The historical and cultural milieu at the time you were developing your theory

What types of data you used to develop your theory, and/or what other theorists influenced your thinking.

What mechanism or mechanisms cause change to occur over time
3.  Once highlighting is completed, compile your own notes from these sources listing only the information in each of the above categories. (this is not a formal essay, therefore paragraphs are not necessary) You can list, outline, make a web, whatever helps you to integrate the information from several sources. In your notes, summarize your theory and the key vocabulary you as theorist use, and what that vocabulary means. If your theory says that development proceeds in a stage-like fashion, clearly specify how the stages differ from one another. Make clear what mechanism or mechanisms you think cause change to occur over time.
Notes must be word-processed, 3-4 pages and saved on disk!

Your ticket to attend will consist of your compiled notes plus the highlighted webpage printoffs.

PART II: Tea Party

You will turn in your ticket to enter the tea party. So, make sure you make a separate copy of your notes to refer to while you are mingling. You will be mingling with other important theorists attending the conference social hour. You and your colleagues are all well-known in your field and anxious to share with each other your perspectives on matters to which you have devoted your lives. As is usually the case at such functions, this is a very important occasion to:

During the tea party, you will mingle with your peers, engaging in conversation about your work and your views on: STAY IN CHARACTER, but don’t actually reveal your name in the conversation. Keep moving. Argue. Probe for the weaknesses in each other’s views. Try to convince others of the rightness of your position. Form "alliances" with those who seem to hold similar positions to your own. Be a powerful voice in this field about which you are passionate!

PART III: Forming Schools of Thought

After socializing and sharing views with your colleagues, you should feel you have at least some familiarity with the views of everyone in the room. You will be asked to tentatively organize yourselves into clusters of "kindred spirits" (This may require some further discussion, and there may be disagreements who belongs and who does not). Within each group, guess who might be your long-lost twin (each of you will have one).

Each group will be given a large sheet of butcher paper to record the following:

® 1. A name for your "School of Thought" Choose a title that clearly captures your essential shared features.

® 2. A list of Core Principles to which you can all agree.

® 3. A summary of how your individual theories make a unique and important contribution to the school of thought.

® 4. One or two sentences aimed at convincing parents and educators how your school of thought best serves them.

Each group will orally present their posters with the rest of the class. Convince us that yours is the most rational and relevant of all the schools of thought!
 

PART IV: Revealing Identities

Once schools of thought have shared their posters everyone will reveal their theorist’s names.