[Xmca-l] Re: ZPD and DST!

[Huw Lloyd]

Please send me a copy, Michael, and I shall aim for a terse reply.

Best,
Huw

On 30 March 2017 at 23:26, Wolff-Michael Roth <wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi all, I did not realize that my reference wasn't updated. The paper is
> here:
> https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12124-016-9376-0
>
> and by personal request Alfredo or I will mail a copy to those not
> operating at a uni with access to Springer Link.
>
> Michael
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> --------------------
> Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor
> Applied Cognitive Science
> MacLaurin Building A567
> University of Victoria
> Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
> http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/>
>
> New book: *The Mathematics of Mathematics
> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-
> directions-in-mathematics-and-science-education/the-
> mathematics-of-mathematics/>*
>
> On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 2:33 PM, Wolff-Michael Roth <
> wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi David, you will disagree even more with this one:
> >
> >
> > Roth, W.-M., & Jornet, A. (in press). Theorizing with/out "mediators."
> > Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science.
> >
> > But people like Feliks Mikhailov, and also Ekaterina Zavershneva indicate
> > that toward the end of his life, Vygotsy was moving away from mediation.
> We
> > give an extended argument for theorizing without mediators in the
> article.
> >
> > But I hope you understand that I am not out to interpret and find out
> what
> > Vygotsky really said even if he did not say it. I think you are well
> > positioned to do THAT kind of research. I want to move on. And, frankly,
> I
> > have no clue what people are saying when they write that something is
> > mediated. It seems to me that they are hiding or refraining from going
> > after what I am interested in. I am not interested in knowing that a tool
> > mediates something. I am interested in what the tool actually does, what
> > are the events in which tools participate, shape people and get shaped by
> > them.
> >
> > In the end, all this is about finding suitable discourses, and
> > descriptions, for doing the kinds of things we want to do.
> >
> > m
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > --------------------
> > Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor
> > Applied Cognitive Science
> > MacLaurin Building A567
> > University of Victoria
> > Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
> > http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/>
> >
> > New book: *The Mathematics of Mathematics
> > <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-
> directions-in-mathematics-and-science-education/the-
> mathematics-of-mathematics/>*
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 2:22 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> I think the Roth article I would recommend isn't the editorial, but
> rather
> >> this one:
> >>
> >> Roth, W-M. 2007. On Mediation: Towards a Cultural Historical
> >> Understanding.
> >> Theory and Psychology 17 (5): 655-680.
> >>
> >> There's a lot I disagree with in this paper (e.g. I disagree with the
> idea
> >> that if mediation "explains" everything then it explains nothing--it is
> >> like saying that if perception applies to all visible phenomena then it
> >> applies to none of them). But here's why I prefer it to Saeed's paper:
> >>
> >> a) Roth gets to concrete examples from direct experience almost
> >> immediately
> >> (fish feeding, on p. 656). This gives me something to go back to when I
> >> get
> >> lost in abstraction, and I need it.
> >>
> >> b) Instead of using Theory A to illuminate Theory B, Roth goes back into
> >> the historical origins of Theory A and discovers, immanently, Theory B,
> C,
> >> etc.. This has two advantages: it avoids chalk-and-cheese eclecticism,
> and
> >> it helps me understand how Theory A was formed in the first place. With
> >> Saeed's paper, I find myself missing: 1) an account of the CRITICAL
> >> DISTINCTIONS between the two theories, 2) an explanation of how each
> MAKES
> >> UP for what the other lacks, and 3) some argument for long term
> >> COMPATABILITY, some explication of why the emulsion will not
> re-separate,
> >> like vinegar and oil.
> >>
> >> c) For Vygotsky--no, for mediation more generally--the key problem is
> >> volition, free will, choice. Vygotsky once said that the most
> interesting
> >> problem in the whole of psychology, bar none, is what a human being
> would
> >> really do in the situation of Buridan's donkey (that is a situation of
> >> volition, of free will, of choice where the outcomes were either
> >> apparently
> >> equal or equally unknown). This isn't true of DST, which has, as Saeed
> >> admits, an "emergentist" account of volition (to put it uncharitably,
> >> handwaving and magic). At the very least, choice is late emerging in a
> DST
> >> account, and that makes, for example, the child's early and
> >> successful acquisition of speech very hard to explain.
> >>
> >> That said, Saeed--I DID appreciate the part on p. 86 where you remind us
> >> that learning and development are distinct but linked. As Wolff-Michael
> >> says, the point has been made before, but I think that we've got to keep
> >> saying this, until people really see that mixing up "microgenesis" and
> >> ontogenesis is, in our own time, the same kind of error that mixing up
> >> ontogenesis and phylogenesis was in Vygotsky's. If I read one more
> article
> >> which invokes the ZPD for some trivial incident of learning, I'm
> getting a
> >> tattoo that says: "Look here, mate, just because it didn't kill ya
> doesn't
> >> mean it made ya any stronger".
> >>
> >> David Kellogg
> >> Macquarie University
> >>
> >
> >
>