Oh yeah - - just a little bit more of bandura. Wondering aloud a bit, with the
recognition that sometimes doing it on xmca brings something in return.
There are other areas that social learning theory leaves open to activity
theory, even though Bandura addresses social aspects of efficacy, i.e.
"collective efficacy": this is the shared belief of what a collective can do,
and leaves some important details out. And still with bandura ( I am drawing
upon a 1997 book) the major concepts have to do with cognitive structures
"inside the head" and little having to do with the greater structuration
"inside-and-outside the head", among people and things (as alfred is known to
write) and also having little to do with *processes*, i.e. operations and
actions that are similarly distributed. So mediation is not at all obvious in
AB's theoretical framework. Although there is a good deal of words in the
treatment of agency, I still have the impression that for bandura, a lot of
causation is that directed inward, and causation in the opposite direction is
left dangling, and in comparison not so richly developed.
The word culture does not appear a whole lot in his writing. Nevertheless, the
work on efficacy and role models, IMHO, are highly useful for understanding
ontogenesis. So in a way, I am a bit surprised at the article that Bruce
posted, because for most of his work, bandura has not payed a lot of attention
to artifacts and tools, and signs and symbols -- in fact, of these 4 terms only
the last appears, though scantily, in the subject index of his 1997 book, which
supposedly presents the social learning framework in its entirety. Of people
and things, every "thing" is left out.
=====
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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