Re: Chapt 9 (to Peter S.)
vera p john-steiner (vygotsky who-is-at unm.edu)
Mon, 9 Oct 1995 16:47:37 -0600 (MDT)
Francoise,
The bias Peter is speaking about--that of the unique centrality of
language as the mediating process in cognition--hit me when I first
started to work on the Navajo nation. There, children used drawings,
dramatic play, to re-present and communicate about the consequences of
their past experience. I was startled, and as a language-dominant Vygotskian,
in need of rethinking. Thus, my notion of cognitive pluralism. And in my
teaching, which is ever so verbal, I rely on my students' facility with
diagrams,
concept maps, mathematical notational systems, etc. I see my limitations
in this regard as the outcome of my Central European and French schooling,
both of which I value deeply, but both of which were profoundly verbal.
Vera
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Vera P. John-Steiner
Department of Linguistics
Humanities Bldg. 526
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
(505) 277-6353 or 277-4324
Internet: vygotsky who-is-at triton.unm.edu
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