Anna Stetsenko and Igor Arievitch's paper "Constructing and deconstructin=
g
the self: Comparing post-Vygotskian and discourse-based versions of socia=
l
constructivism." from the last year's conference in Geneva is a great
analysis of the different branches of the social-cultural-historical
approach. There was some discussion of it last year on XMCA just after th=
e
conference, but I don't know how many people actually heard or read this
paper.
It is a very systematic analysis of the general "constructivist" approach
and then of its different branches. The authors see the principal
difference between the two main strands - the discourse theories and the
post-Vygotskian studies - to be in the way the researchers relate to the
subject matter and to the subjects of their study. While the discourse
analysis stays removed from the actual contexts and situations it studies
and de-constructs them in the process of analysis, the post-Vygotskian
researchers take a more active and involved approach by participating and
actively co-constructing those situations and contexts together with the
participants/subjects of the study. The difference in the attitude toward
the subject matter and subjects of the research produces very important
theoretical differences.=20
The authors also see two slightly different approaches within the
post-Vygotskian perspective. The Russian strand (Gal=92perin, 1989; Davyd=
ov,
1988; Zaporozhets and El=92konin, 1971) focuses on internalization; the
American strand (Cole, 1992; Lave, 1991; Rogoff, 1994) on intersubjectivi=
ty.
This is just a brief synopsis of Stetsenko's and Arievitch analysis. I
found it very helpful in organizing my understanding of different
social-cultural-historical (and constructivist) views.
Ana