Central to cultural-historical approaches to the study of mind is the assumption that characteristically human psychological processes are culturally mediated, historically developing, and arise from the socially organized activities of everyday life. The three articles presented in this issue of MCA each illuminate and elaborate upon different aspects of this basic starting point.
Geoffrey Saxe begins with the point that fundamentally new approaches to a scientific problem require thorough rethinking of the methods of research and analysis. As Saxe notes, the 1970's were a period in which those who pursued cross-cultural studies using standard psychological techniques experienced severe doubts about both methods and the theories that justified those methods. In many cases, these doubts were generated by discrepancies between conclusions warranted by existing psychological procedures and those obtained by participation in the life of the people being studied. At some point, critiques of the old began to give way to proposals for a new way of doing things, of which Saxe's approach is one exemplary result.
The methodology Saxe describes combines certain elements of the cultural- historical approach followed by A. R. Luria in his cross-cultural work with a developmental approach proposed by Heinz Werner and Bernard Kaplan. While this combination is uniquely Saxe's, it has the interesting property of re- connecting two historical lines in the study of culture and cognitive development, as Werner's early work had a major influence on the development of the Russian cultural-historical school. From Luria, Saxe adopts the idea that periods of rapid cultural change and historical discontinuity, offer especially rich opportunities to observe the dynamics of cognitive change. From Werner and Kaplan, he adopts a dialectic of form-function transformations in which new functions embodied in cultural practices give rise to abandonment of old cognitive forms and the search for new, more adequate forms; when new forms adequate to new functions are achieved, cultural practices change and the conditions are then ripe for the discovery of new functions. Note that these ideas are illustrated in both domestic and cross-cultural research, emphasizing the point that cross-cultural research is only one way to study culture and cognitive development.
Sherry Turkle's article illustrates a quite different kind of cultural practice and equally different mediational meansÑthe new forms of activity afforded by role playing games instantiated on international computer networks, an infrastructure which, as Turkle comments, means that the world that people inhabit, in conventional terms, does not even exist, giving rise to the popular notion of virtual reality.
As Turkle makes clear, the kind of gaming she describes cannot be dismissed as simple escape. Rather, it has an instrumental function in people's lives, although it is not a strictly utilitarian activity. Here we see a connection between Turkle's characterization of the function of computer-mediated role playing games and Marx Wartofsky's (1979) ideas about the existence of a special kind of artifact he dubbed "tertiary artifacts" " . . which can come to constitute a relatively autonomous "world," in which the rules, conventions and outcomes no longer appear directly practical, or which, indeed, seem to constitute an arena of non- practical, or "free" play or game activity (p. 208)."
Wartofsky remarks that such "possible worlds" provide candidates for conceivable change in existing practices. Such imaginative artifacts, he suggests, can provide tools for changing current praxis. In modern psychological jargon, modes of behavior acquired when interacting with tertiary artifacts can transfer beyond the immediate contexts of their use. Although Wartofsky applies this hierarchical conception to works of art and processes of perception, they seem entirely appropriate to Turkle's objects of analysis, extending significantly the range to which the notion of artifact mediation can be applied.
Elizabeth Finkel and Jim Stewart introduce yet another system of activity and mediation, high school science lessons. Although they do not mention his name, their work can be seen as an analysis of the processes that occur when schools engage students in authentic activities, as Dewey long ago urged they should. Their starting point is the work of sociologists of science who highlight the facts that scientific research involves collaboration, knowledge is used to produce knowledge, and cognitive strategies change in the process of knowledge production. The processes of change they document are quite heterogeneous, but it is striking that the normative pattern is one that accords quite well with the process of change proposed by Saxe: once anomalies are discovered, a period of "mucking around" begins as a result of which new cognitive forms emerge, which in turn leads to application of new forms to the "old" problems. The authors analyze students' use of models in learning science. Models are a potentially powerful type of mediating cognitive artifact, heavily used for example, by V.V. Davydov in his pathbreaking instructional experiments. The exploration of this and other mediational modalities will surely be a continuous concern of this journal.
References Wartofsky, M. (1979). Models. Dordrecht: D. Reidel
This paper sketches the development of a research framework for analyzing the interplay between culture and cognitive development in cultural practices and the methodological tensions that gave rise to the framework. The framework consists of three components geared for analyzing intrinsic relations between culture and cognitive development. The first focuses on the analysis of individualsÕ goals as they take form in everyday practices. The second is concerned with the shifting relations between cognitive forms and cognitive functions in individualsÕ efforts to accomplish those goals. The third focuses on the appropriation and specialization of forms structured in one practice to accomplish emergent goals in another. Applications and progressive refinements of the framework are discussed in analyses of practices of economic exchange in a remote group in Papua New Guinea, number play in middle and working class children in Brooklyn, New York, and candy selling in Northeastern Brazil.
There are over 300 multi-user games based on at least 13 different kinds of software on th known as the Internet. Here I use the term "MUD" to refer to all the various kinds. All provide worlds for social interaction in a virtual space, worlds in which you can present yourself as a "character," in which you can be anonymous, in which you can play a role or roles as close or as far away from your "real self" as you choose. In the MUDS, the projections of self are engaged in a resolutely postmodern context. Authorship is not only displaced from a solitary voice, it is exploded. The self is not only decentered but multiplied without limit. There is an unparalleled opportunity to play with one's identity and to "try out" new ones. MUDS are a new environment for the construction and reconstruction of self.
Recent proposals to improve science education (e.g., AAAS, 1989; Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1990) have stressed the importance of providing high school students with a broad knowledge base consisting of a body of core concepts and theories. Science educators (Duschl, 1990; AAAS, 1989; Peterson & Jungck, 1988) have also argued that while concepts are an important part of any education, no student's scientific education can be considered complete without a complementary knowledge of the nature of science, including an understanding of the tentative nature of scientific knowledge and how it is constructed. In this paper we describe a science classroom in which students are given opportunities to construct and use scientific knowledge to solve realistic genetics problems, and suggest that allowing students to engage in the production of scientific knowledge can support science learning.
back to MCA Journal Index