[Xmca-l] Re: Nate's new webpage on Vygotsky

Sat Sep 13 07:18:48 PDT 2014

I see Vygotsky's references to the stage as a reminder that mediated action takes place in social contexts which actively (and often quite deliberately) shape how participants FEEL about how they and others act. We don't understand something until we know how 'the audience' can be expected to react to it and eventually the audience is internalised as a 'super ego' or cultural awareness of 'what will people think?'. I have just been reading John Shotter's writing on 'withness thinking' and thought this passage from a piece he wrote with John Newson in 1982 touched on this idea of acting 'on stage' before a critical audience:

‘Just as the child comes to appreciate the 'suckability' of a proffered teat or the 'graspability' of a cup handle, so she also apprehends in an equally direct manner, we suggest, the moral force underlying a serious maternal prohibition, and begins to distinguish between a deliberately harmful insult to her person and one which is merely a humorous form of play. She perceives these social barrier reefs and high seas, the harbours, havens, and horizons directly in people's stony silences and fixed expressions, in their nods, winks, grimaces, gestures, stances, and smiles’. (Shotter, J. and Newson, J. (1982) An ecological approach to cognitive development: implicate orders, joint action, and intentionality. In G. Butterworth and P. Light (eds.) Social cognition: studies in the development of understanding, Sussex: Harvester: 32-52. p.38).

It may be no coincidence that Shotter was himself engaged in producing stage plays!

All the best,

Rod

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Henry G. Shonerd III
Sent: 13 September 2014 14:53
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Nate's new webpage on Vygotsky

And the mediated activity is "on stage", a real drama? My one pence.
Henry

On Sep 13, 2014, at 5:51 AM, Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com> wrote:

> Esther
>
> The zone of proximal development is constructed in mediated activity.
>
> That's my tuppence worth.
>
> Carol
>
> On 13 September 2014 11:12, Esther Goody <eg100@hermes.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> Hmmmm,
>> Re scaffolding = zone of proximal development:
>> Is it?/Are they?
>>
>> I thought zone of proximal development was in one's head ..............
>> While scaffolding, a la Brunner, by definition involves at least two
>> people.
>>
>> [Of course text-actor could be seen as scaffolding. But this leads
>> away from activity. I hope Vygotsky would not have got mired in
>> text-actor stuff ]
>>
>> I am currently obsessed by the way dialogue - real exchanges between
>> real people - seems to account for aspects of cognition.
>> So it is important to keep role of actors central.
>>
>>        Comments?
>>                Esther Goody
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
>> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Stone, Lynda
>> Sent: 12 September 2014 23:42
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Nate's new webpage on Vygotsky
>>
>> Hi All!
>>
>> I just wanted to share that I use Peg and Mike's paper in all of my
>> cognitive development classes for both undergraduate and graduate
>> students.  It has been extremely helpful---my students, I'm thrilled
>> to say, develop more complex understandings of what the zoped
>> involves.  And when I combine this article with Activity
>> Theory---
>> the leading activity not only makes sense to them but also allows
>> them to see how the intersubjective processes through which knowledge
>> is constructed are influenced by multiple aspects of a
>> context--including motives.  They even change their views about
>> "context" and come to understand it as a dynamic phenomenon--- okay,
>> I share this to say that this article is particularly helpful because
>> by reading it my students see how culture and cognition  (another
>> paper of Mike's) are constructed in the zoped.  These understandings
>> are so different from the scaffolding metaphor and most all of my
>> students have been taught that scaffolding is equivalent to the
>> zoped.
>>
>> Hope this sharing is useful---
>>
>> -lynda
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sep 10, 2014, at 2:27 PM, mike cole wrote:
>>
>> The paper Peg and I wrote which takes up scaffolding along with other
>> metaphors can be found at   http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Mike    current activity
>> for the future is the title.
>>
>> mike
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 11:02 AM, Henry G. Shonerd III
>> <hshonerd@gmail.com <mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> I appreciate ALL of the attachments! I worry that I am not Vygotskian
>> enough, and would have thought Marzano was out of the XMCA
>> mainstream. I am reminded of the XMCA conversation on direct
>> instruction a few weeks back wherein Lisa Delpit's Other Peoples
>> Children (1995) is cited as supporting DISTAR, prototypical direct
>> instruction. In the same book, is a chapter on the "Silenced Dialog".
>> I had a fantasy that Delpit could jump right in to the XMCA chat. I
>> am embarrassed to say that I tried to get in touch with her (she was
>> SO nice to me when we met some years ago), but she never responded,
>> maybe for no other reason than that she is super busy doing other
>> things. Maybe she got the message, but didn't want to join one more
>> listserve. But I am wondering what she might have transpired if she
>> joined in. I am thinking distributed cognition (Hutchins) and
>> cognitive pluralism (a term I know from Vera's book, Creative
>> Collaboration). The attachments that Phillip sent seem to find direct
>> instruction complementary with more dialogic approaches to instruction, as per the turn-over principle of Bruner.
>> Henry
>>
>> On Sep 10, 2014, at 9:58 AM, "White, Phillip"
>> <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu <mailto:Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> like Henry, i find the metaphor 'scaffolding' a useful term, and at
>> the same time i'm also strengthening that metaphor with Brian
>> Cambourne's "conditions for learning" that lead to student
>> engagement, as well as how it relates to student engagement
>> (Marzano), Fisher's "gradual release of responsibility" and Lave &
>> Wenger's "community of practice"  -  in combination these works
>> (along with critical race theory and queer theory, identity theory,
>> Foucault's understanding of power - an impoverished listing here)
>> provide a far richer, more complex understanding of student learning, than "motive" in CHAT.
>>
>> for me, theory is a mutable impression - much like a calligraphic
>> haiku
>> - in which theoretical understanding changes over time, context,
>> relationships and experiences (again, an incomplete list).
>>
>> i hope that there aren't too many attachments here.
>>
>>
>> phillip
>>
>>
>>
>> Phillip White, PhD
>> Urban Community Teacher Education Program Site Coordinator Montview
>> Elementary, Aurora, CO
>> phillip.white@ucdenver.edu<mailto:phillip.white@ucdenver.edu>
>> or
>> pawhite@aps.k12.co.us
>> <GradualReleaseResponsibilityJan08.pdf><lave(1996)_teaching.pdf><Marz
>> anoHighlyEngagedClassroom.pdf><Cambourne
>> Conditions.doc>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Development and Evolution are both ... "processes of construction and
>> re- construction in which heterogeneous resources are contingently
>> but more or less reliably reassembled for each life cycle." [Oyama,
>> Griffiths, and Gray, 2001]
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Lynda Stone, Ph.D.
>> Professor
>> Dept. Child Development
>> CSU Sacramento
>> CSUS/UC-Links Program Director
>> lstone@csus.edu<mailto:lstone@csus.edu>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----
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>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Carol A  Macdonald Ph D (Edin)
> Developmental psycholinguist
> Academic, Researcher,  and Editor
> Honorary Research Fellow: Department of Linguistics, Unisa

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