[Xmca-l] Re: bio-social-behavioral shift and Problem of Age

Wed Jul 30 18:22:20 PDT 2014

This note is a sort of an answer to the questions raised by Holly that have
relevance to the observations of Katie and others.

Regarding the textbook:

Neither my wife nor i have had any input to the process of the revision of
our book in its current instantiation. Cynthia Lightfoot took over the
heavy work of revision two editions ago, adding some marvelous material on
evolution and phylogeny and made other modifications as well. The
disappearance of the notion of bio-social-behavioral shift could have come
about for any number of reasons, but I do not know what they are. The
relentless need to simplify might be involved.

My own work has been enormously influenced by writing that text with Sheila
who has been my con-spiritor since early adolescence. We wrote the book as
our own children were going through that storied time of life. I still
believe that the idea of bio-social-behavioral shifts occurring in specific
cultural-historical, ontogenetic circumstances is a useful way to conceive
of the constituents of development. While it may have disappeared from
textbooks it lives both in articles about culture and development and as a
guide to my long standing project on the development and sustainability of
tertiary artifacts/activity systems.

The ideas in the Cole and Cole textbook and how they appear in the context
of international discourse about culture and development is pretty well
represented in the following article -- for those who wonder what the hell
we are talking about and would like to find out.

http://lchc.ucsd.edu/People/MCole/InteractiveMinds0001.pdf

mike

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 12:44 PM, Tonyan, Holli A <Holli.Tonyan@csun.edu>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I've been reading posts for a while and have not posted before.
>
> This line of discussion prompts me to write a question that I've had in
> mind for a while.  Before Mike's textbook "The Development of Children" was
> reorganized for the 6th Edition when Cynthia Lightfoot became the first
> author, the concept of a bio-social-behavioral shift was used to organize
> the text.  The new edition has dropped that.
>
> For those of you not familiar, this was a concept that served at least in
> my mind to make a more culturally-historically based notion of stages
> instead of "stages" that are all too often presented in textbooks as fact
> rather than a cultural construction.  The textbook referenced Emde and
> talked about times when changes occurred across biological, social, and
> cultural areas of children's lives.  Development was presented with shift
> points around:
> - birth
> - 2.5 to 3 months with the emergence of the truly social smile
> (reciprocal, endogenous)
> - the end of the first year with self-locomotion
> - 2-3 years with the emergence of a system of language
> - 5 to 7 years with the "age of reason" and the emergence of more
> systematic, logical thought and the loss of baby teeth
> - and puberty
>
> I really liked this feature of the textbook and was sorry to see it go.
>  Although I've just summarized it here, each shift has changes across
> domains associated with it and new capacities for the child that change the
> child's social relations with others around him/her as well as
> possibilities for thinking.  It seemed a nice way to get away from "stages"
> as defined by a theory, just biology, or a particular cultural-historical
> context by basing the shifts on points in development where biological
> changes tend to be marked across a range of local settings with changes in
> social expectations and cultural institutions.
>
> Mike and others...
> - For scholarship, is this a line of work that others are taking up?  Who
> are scholars that are writing about shifts and turning points drawing from
> biological, social and cultural changes?
> - For teaching, what do you think is lost by taking out the explicit
> mention and discussion of these shift points and instead presenting the
> material organized around those shift points without explicitly addressing
> the concept and what it means?
>
> I look forward to reading more on the Problem of Age and a
> bio-social-behavioral shift.
>
> Holli A. Tonyan, Ph.D.
> ------------
> Associate Professor | Department of Psychology | California State
> University, Northridge
> Postal Address: 18111 Nordhoff Street | Northridge, CA 91330-8255
>
> Tel: (818) 677-4970 | Fax: (818) 677-2829
> Office: ST322
>
> http://www.csun.edu/~htonyan
> http://csun.academia.edu/HolliTonyan
> http://www.csun.edu/~ata20315/GE/general_experimental_psychology2.html
>
> **check out**
>
> Tonyan, H. A. (in press).  Everyday routines: A window into the cultural
> organization of family child care.  Journal of Early Childhood Research.
> http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1476718X14523748
>
> Tonyan, H. A., Nuttall, J. (2014).  Connecting cultural models of
> home-based care and childminders’ career paths: An Eco-cultural analysis.
>  International Journal of Early Years Education, 22, 117-138,
> http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669760.2013.809654
>
> Tonyan, H. A., Mamikonian, A., & Chien, D. (2013).  Do they practice what
> they preach?  An Ecocultural, multidimensional, group-based examination of
> the relationship between beliefs and behaviours among child care providers.
>  Early Child Development and Care, 183:12, 1853-1877.
> http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03004430.2012.759949
>
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>
> Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
> change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. - Margaret
> Mead <http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Margaret_Mead/> US
> anthropologist & popularizer of anthropology (1901 - 1978)
> On Jul 30, 2014, at 12:13 PM, Katherine Wester Neal <wester@uga.edu
> <mailto:wester@uga.edu>> wrote:
>
> I agree that a monumental crisis takes place between the age of 2 and 3. I
> wouldn't call it the "terrible twos," but I think it results from the
> "language explosion" that often occurs at that age. A child learns that all
> these sounds s/he has been hearing can be used meaningfully as a tool for
> exerting control on the world around him/her and faces a crisis in how to
> use them.
>
> I think the crisis around 6 years old comes from the understanding that
> what one does in the world has consequences. That change, as I understand
> it, is the basis for laws that place the age of culpability around 5-6 in
> the U.S. (In many U.S. states, children under this age can't be charged
> with a crime because they don't have the capability to understand that
> they've done something wrong.) Perhaps there are other suggestions? And
> what typifies the crisis at 1? How is it biological?
>
> Katie
>
> Katie Wester-Neal
> University of Georgia
>
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:
> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:
> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of peter jones <
> h2cmng@yahoo.co.uk<mailto:h2cmng@yahoo.co.uk>>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2014 2:20 PM
> To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The ideal head
>
> The one at 2-2.5 is easy - "terrible twos"? :-)
> Is this just a myth though?
>
> More seriously, there do appear to developmental milestones however:
> Use of and ambivalence in Yes / No?
> Regards,
> Peter (father of three)
> -------------------------------
> Peter Jones
> Lancashire, UK
> Blogging at "Welcome to the QUAD"
> http://hodges-model.blogspot.com/
> h2cm: help 2C more - help 2 listen - help 2 care
> http://twitter.com/h2cm
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Wed, 30/7/14, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The ideal head
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Wednesday, 30 July, 2014, 18:30
>
> Martin,
> Vygotsky's Problem of Age is a difficult
> essay. I wonder if you could say a
> bit more
> about the crisis at 6 (7,8?) years and the one at 12 years?
> The
> others are fairly self explanatory but
> those two are a bit more
> complicated. Among
> other things, it isn't clear what is different about
> the
> crisis at 2.5 and the crisis at 6.
> -greg
>
>
> On
> Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 6:44 AM, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co
> wrote:
>
> Though in other texts he wrote of
> adolescence as such a time of crisis
>
> that the whole stage should be considered a transition. In
> the lectures on
> child development
> Vygotsky describes the following crises:
>
> Birth: the child is
> differentiated physically
> 1 year: the
> child is differentiated biologically
>
> 2.5 years: the child is differentiated psychologically
> 6 years: inside & outside of self are
> differentiated
> 12 years: actual &
> possible selves are differentiated
>
> Martin
>
> On Jul 28, 2014, at 6:36 PM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net>
> wrote:
>
>
> Francis, most of the crises which Vygotsky mentions in
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1934/problem-age.htm
> are associated with childhood before
> school. (It is an unfinished work).
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
>
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>
>
> FRANCIS J. SULLIVAN wrote:
> ...
>
>
> In any case, I wonder
> if Vygotsky considered whether schooling itself
> might
> be
> responsible, at least partly, for the child's apparent
> alienation
> from
>
> schooling at these moments.
>
>
> Francis J. Sullivan,
> Ph.D.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Gregory A.
> Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 883
> Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young
> University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>
>
>
>
>
>