[Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: Text

[Jonathan Tudge]

Hi, Mike,

There are a couple of problems with the 2005 book.  One is that the papers
are drawn from UB's writings from the 1970s to the early part of this
century.  As is true of Vygotsky's writings (and probably any theorist who
wrote over a significant span of time) it's really important to know the
date of publication.  The other problem is that at least one of the
chapters is incomplete, and there are errors in at least one other.

As for the concentric circles or the matrioshka--they're both excellent
examples of how powerful metaphors can go powerfully wrong!  Both are
utterly misleading, in that they really focus attention on the different
layers of context (and even then don't make sense--the mesosystem consists
of overlapping circles, as in a Venn diagram).  Nonetheless, you're
right--UB continued to use the metaphor in his final publications.

However, his theory really developed a lot from the 1970s onwards (see Rosa
and Tudge, 2013; Tudge, 2013), and from the early 1990s onwards "proximal
processes" were the centerpiece of his Process-Person-Context-Time (PPCT)
model.  These are essentially the everyday activities in which developing
people engage, and they always and only occur in microsystems.  However,
what goes on in microsystems is always influenced by (a) the person
characteristics of the developing individuals of interest and those of the
others with whom they interact, (b) the characteristics of the context,
both proximal (as in the nature of the microsystem in which those
activities are occurring) and distal (the macrosystem, which for him was
culture, whether considered at the level of society or within-society
cultural groups), and (c) time, which includes both the need to study over
time (longitudinally) and in time (the prevailing social, economic, and
political climate).    A graphic representation that better reflects his
developed position than the concentric circles can be found in Tudge
(2008), on page 69.

I actually think that he rather dropped the ball on culture,
unfortunately.  I really like his writings on this in his 1979 book and in
his 1989 (or 1992) chapter on ecological systems theory.  Reading his 1998
(or 2006) handbook chapters you'll find virtually no mention of the impact
of culture (or macrosystem) despite drawing on Steinberg et al.'s research
on adolescents from different racial/ethnic groups.

Don't feel bad, though, if you have always just thought of Bronfenbrenner's
theory as one of concentric circles of context--you're no different in that
regard from just about everyone who has published an undergrad textbook on
human development, not to mention a majority of scholars who have said that
they've used UB's theory as foundational for their research (see Tudge et
al., 2009, 2016).

If anyone would like a copy of any of these papers, just send me a private
message to jrtudge@uncg.edu

   - Tudge, J. R. H. (2008). *The everyday lives of young children:
   Culture, class, and child rearing in diverse societies.* New York:
   Cambridge University Press.
   - Tudge, J. R. H., Mokrova, I., Hatfield, B., & Karnik, R. B. (2009).
   Uses and misuses of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory of human
   development. *Journal of Family Theory and Review, 1*(4), 198-210.
   - Rosa, E. M., & Tudge, J. R. H. (2013). Urie Bronfenbrenner’s theory of
   human development: Its evolution from ecology to bioecology. *Journal of
   Family Theory and Review, 5*(6), 243–258. DOI:10.1111/jftr.12022
   - Tudge, J. R. H. (2013). Urie Bronfenbrenner. In Heather Montgomery
   (Ed.), *Oxford bibliographies on line: Childhood studies*. New York:
   Oxford University Press.
   - Tudge, J. R. H., Payir, A., Merçon-Vargas, E. A., Cao, H., Liang, Y.,
   Li, J., & O’Brien, L. T. (2016). Still misused after all these years? A
   re-evaluation of the uses of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory of human
   development. *Journal of Family Theory and Review*, *8,* 427–445. doi:
   10.1111/jftr.12165.

Cheers,

Jon




~~~~~~~~~~~

Jonathan Tudge

Professor
Office: 155 Stone

Our work on gratitude: http://morethanthanks.wp.uncg.edu/

A new book just published: Tudge, J. & Freitas, L. (Eds.) Developing
gratitude in children and adolescents
<https://www.uncg.edu/hdf/faculty/tudge/books/dev-gratitude-in-children-and-adolescents-flyer.pdf>,
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

My web site:http://www.uncg.edu/hdf/faculty/tudge

Mailing address:
248 Stone Building
Department of Human Development and Family Studies
PO Box 26170
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
USA

phone (336) 223-6181
fax   (336) 334-5076






On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 6:20 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> Hi Jon --
>
> Nice to see your voice!
>
> I only have Urie's 2005 collection, *Making Human Beings Human, *to hand. I
> checked it out
> to see if the terms activity and context appeared there. Only sort of!
> Activity is in the index, but context is not (!). I attach two pages from
> the book for those interested (and able to read my amateur
> photos). Here it seems that activity and context coincide at the micro
> level, but perhaps only there?
>
> Concerning embedded circles and context. It turns out that the person who
> induced Sheila and me to write a textbook on human development was U.
> Bronfenbrenner. And this same U.B. discussed with us how to represent his
> perspective circa 1985, pretty early in the task of writing the first
> edition. His use of matroshki (embedded dolls) as a metaphor and his
> rhetoric at the time (and in 2005 as well) invites
> a concentric circles representation. We discussed other ways of trying to
> represent the idea and he
> said that our representation came as close as he could figure out.
>
> In the 2005 book he refers to my work as combining a Vygotskian notion of
> context with an anthropological one (p. 126), and uses the term "ecological
> context." I assume that most of my Russian colleagues would argue that LSV
> used the concept of "social situation of development," not context. I have
> no idea how he would respond to Yrjo's declaration that the activity is the
> context, but it does not seem too far off from what is written on the pages
> attached.
>
> Perhaps someone on xmca who is skilled at searching texts in cyrillic could
> search for his use of the term, context. I have always been curious about
> what such a search would turn up, but lack the skill
> to carry out the query.
>
> And perhaps you have written something about the mistake of interpreting
> U.B.'s notion of contexts using embedded circles we could learn from??
> Certainly the passages on p. 46 remind me of the work of Hedegaard and
> Fleer, who also draw upon U.B.
>
> mike
>