RE: International course on CHAT

From: Ana Marjanovic-Shane (anamshane@speakeasy.net)
Date: Sun Aug 11 2002 - 22:02:23 PDT


Of course, Gordon. You are quite right.
It is just a curiosity and an attempt to understand a development of a
theory. Not an attempt to freeze the meaning or to become dogmatic. The
process of theoretical change and differences in the meaning cannot be
stopped - but it could be understood.
What do you think?

----------------------------------------
Ana Marjanovic-Shane
home: 1-215 - 843 - 2909
mobile:+267 -334-2905

-----Original Message-----
From: Gordon Wells [mailto:gwells@cats.ucsc.edu]
Sent: 11 August 2002 22:31
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: RE: International course on CHAT

Elina and Ana,

Thank you for raising the issue of multiple interpretations of Vygotsky's
"kernel". While I think it is interesting and worthwhile to try to
understand Vygotsky's "intentions" when he formulated this kernel, I don't
think we should restrict ourselves to that enterprise. In my understanding,
a theory is a tool for thinking with and, like all tools, it is modified
over time as it is put to use in different contexts and for different
purposes. In any case, the world we live in today in our different
political, cultural and linguistic societies is certainly different from
that in which Vygotsky formulated his ideas. So, even if we could be sure
we were correctly interpreting his ideas, we should still have to adapt them
to our current, cultural-personal situations. The most important issue is
to keep the dialogue going, isn't it?

Gordon

--
Gordon Wells
UC Santa Cruz.
gwells@cats.ucsc.edu            http://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells/



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