Re: Culture as dialogic relation

[Peter Moxhay <moxhap@portlandschools.org>]

Eugene wrote much of interest, ending:

> For me the
> biggest problem with Galperin's dualism is pragmatic and not even 
> conceptual
> (although it is there as well).

While acknowledging your concerns and problems with developmental 
education,
Eugene, it seems to me that the main task in reading Arievitch on 
Gal'perin
is precisely to consider what G. might in fact bring, *conceptually*, 
to the understanding
of internalization. It seems to me that the main immediate task is to 
evaluate the
relevance, to our own concrete problems, of at least two aspects of 
internalization:

1) the collective-individual aspect (initiated by Vygotsky, I suppose), 
and

2) the formation of an "internal plane of consciousness" (or some other 
way of
putting it) -- which was Gal'perin's particular concern.

My understanding is that 2) was particularly intensively studied in 
Russia, beginning
in the 1950's, by Gal'perin, Davydov, Talyzina, and others, and to some 
extent
eclipsed 1) for a while. But that the aspect 2) is perhaps, currently, 
in turn, in
eclipse, internationally.

Arievitch is raising the interesting question of whether it is 
worthwhile to reconsider
the aspect 1) of internalization. Could this in fact lead to some kind 
of conceptual
breakthrough in understanding "internalization"?

Also, does not Arievitch point out that Gal'perin did not actually 
consider himself
primarily a pedagogical psychologist?

In this connection, I would also refer people to the very interesting 
article by
Davydov and Andronov, which Mike was kind enough to post. For me, one of
the most interesting things about this article is that it is one place 
where
Davydov considers the development of children's *spontaneous* concepts 
--
of addition, in this case, with a special emphasis on how children use 
object
actions and gestures to spontaneously resolve the dialectical conflict 
between
ordinal and cardinal number. This article describes quite detailed 
empirical
research along the lines sketched out by Gal'perin.

Although Davydov-Andronov makes some mention of possible instructional
applications, it really does seems to focus on a general aspect of 
internalization
that ought to be considered for its conceptual interest independent of 
instruction
or of any "agenda" for developing children into adults seen as "better."

What do you think?

Peter