[Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: Text

[Jonathan Tudge]

Greetings, Mike, XMCA folk, Jean, and Ray,

I think, Mike, that you captured what I was trying to get at quite well.

I'm attaching one paper that probably does the best job of getting at the
relation between activity and context, though it of course wasn't our main
focus when writing it.  Most of the paper can safely be ignored, I think,
in that our aim was to assess the extent to which scholars were
appropriately using the mature version of Bronfenbrenner's theory, but in
the initial part we explain why the theory is contextualist rather than
mechanist (using Pepper's [1942] meanings of these two terms).  As such,
neither person characteristics nor context are separate from activities
(proximal processes) but, to use Ray's language, interwoven.  Better yet,
from my point of view, what results are emergent properties that can't be
broken down into "person" or "activity" or "context" elements.

I think that it's in large part because of the concentric rings that
Bronfenbrenner is still routinely thought of as a mechanist, who believed
that context (in its varying layers) determined a person's development.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

Thinking about the Fifth Dimension (which you must have been just starting
when I was with you as a predoctoral intern 35 years ago!!!!!) in terms of
Bronfenbrenner's systems, I'd be interested in how the students'
participation in it is influenced by their experiences in their school and
home contexts (a mesosystem analysis) and by the broader culture
(macrosystem) that has a notion of schooling that doesn't involve the types
of activities that are encouraged in the Dimension (at least in the US at
the given historical period).  But to understand the types of activities
that routinely occur within the Fifth Dimension (and which I think would
get progressively more complex over time) it would be just as important to
focus on at least some of the relevant person characteristics (age, gender,
motivation, persistence, past experiences with learning, etc. etc.) of both
the students and the adults who are working together.

Cheers,

Jon


~~~~~~~~~~~

Jonathan Tudge

Professor
Office: 155 Stone

Our work on gratitude: http://morethanthanks.wp.uncg.edu/

A new book just published: Tudge, J. & Freitas, L. (Eds.) Developing
gratitude in children and adolescents
<https://www.uncg.edu/hdf/faculty/tudge/books/dev-gratitude-in-children-and-adolescents-flyer.pdf>,
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

My web site:http://www.uncg.edu/hdf/faculty/tudge

Mailing address:
248 Stone Building
Department of Human Development and Family Studies
PO Box 26170
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
USA

phone (336) 223-6181
fax   (336) 334-5076






On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 12:20 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> Thanks for all the background and additional references, Jon. Is there
> a particular article/chapter among those that you would recommend we
> read to get clearer about thinking about context and activity in
> Bronfenbrenner's
> final model?  It seems from your summary below that at the micro-level, the
> activity
> is the context a la Yrjo, and above that level there is a better way to
> think about it
> than Bronfenbrenner offers.
> "proximal processes" were the centerpiece of his
> Process-Person-Context-Time (PPCT)
> model.  These are essentially the everyday activities in which developing
> people engage, and they always and only occur in microsystems.
>
> Do I have that right? Psychological analysis takes as its units of analysis
> children engaged in joint activities with other members of their community?
>
> One problem for me in thinking about this issue is that context is a
> relational term, con-text. There is an instructive discussion of this
> problem by Ray McDermott in the same volume where Yrjo wrote that the
> activity is the context. I attach the paper. The whole paper may be of
> interest, but the core idea he puts
> forth is on pp. 275-277, and particularly, the two figures on p. 276. This
> exercise seems to help get at the relationality of "the context."
>
> A second problem I have when thinking about my research participating in an
> after school program is the way that the matroyshki metaphor seems
> particularly well suited for. I habitually have described
> The Fifth Dimension program as an activity that goes on insider of a boys
> and girls club. The club is
> one of many organizations and institutions in the suburban town I live in.
> That town is north of san diego in the southern california region.  Of
> course you need to combine this with the time scales appropriate to each
> level of scale (using the concentric circles as proxies for scale and
> remembering that at each scale people of different ages, all developing).
>
> And, of course, I also find it necessary to think about the "weaving
> together" metaphor of context, which, when combined with the
> matrochki/circles metaphor suits my intuitions about developmental
> processes well.
>
> These thoughts provoked my mention of the cover of the second edition of
> Luis' work. Only the concentric circles remained, the triangle had been
> airbrushed from history.
>
> Anyway, thanks for the provocation to think about these matters. Always
> food for thought.
> mike
>
> On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 7:24 AM, Jonathan Tudge <jrtudge@uncg.edu> wrote:
>
> > Hi, Mike,
> >
> > There are a couple of problems with the 2005 book.  One is that the
> papers
> > are drawn from UB's writings from the 1970s to the early part of this
> > century.  As is true of Vygotsky's writings (and probably any theorist
> who
> > wrote over a significant span of time) it's really important to know the
> > date of publication.  The other problem is that at least one of the
> > chapters is incomplete, and there are errors in at least one other.
> >
> > As for the concentric circles or the matrioshka--they're both excellent
> > examples of how powerful metaphors can go powerfully wrong!  Both are
> > utterly misleading, in that they really focus attention on the different
> > layers of context (and even then don't make sense--the mesosystem
> consists
> > of overlapping circles, as in a Venn diagram).  Nonetheless, you're
> > right--UB continued to use the metaphor in his final publications.
> >
> > However, his theory really developed a lot from the 1970s onwards (see
> Rosa
> > and Tudge, 2013; Tudge, 2013), and from the early 1990s onwards "proximal
> > processes" were the centerpiece of his Process-Person-Context-Time (PPCT)
> > model.  These are essentially the everyday activities in which developing
> > people engage, and they always and only occur in microsystems.  However,
> > what goes on in microsystems is always influenced by (a) the person
> > characteristics of the developing individuals of interest and those of
> the
> > others with whom they interact, (b) the characteristics of the context,
> > both proximal (as in the nature of the microsystem in which those
> > activities are occurring) and distal (the macrosystem, which for him was
> > culture, whether considered at the level of society or within-society
> > cultural groups), and (c) time, which includes both the need to study
> over
> > time (longitudinally) and in time (the prevailing social, economic, and
> > political climate).    A graphic representation that better reflects his
> > developed position than the concentric circles can be found in Tudge
> > (2008), on page 69.
> >
> > I actually think that he rather dropped the ball on culture,
> > unfortunately.  I really like his writings on this in his 1979 book and
> in
> > his 1989 (or 1992) chapter on ecological systems theory.  Reading his
> 1998
> > (or 2006) handbook chapters you'll find virtually no mention of the
> impact
> > of culture (or macrosystem) despite drawing on Steinberg et al.'s
> research
> > on adolescents from different racial/ethnic groups.
> >
> > Don't feel bad, though, if you have always just thought of
> Bronfenbrenner's
> > theory as one of concentric circles of context--you're no different in
> that
> > regard from just about everyone who has published an undergrad textbook
> on
> > human development, not to mention a majority of scholars who have said
> that
> > they've used UB's theory as foundational for their research (see Tudge et
> > al., 2009, 2016).
> >
> > If anyone would like a copy of any of these papers, just send me a
> private
> > message to jrtudge@uncg.edu
> >
> >    - Tudge, J. R. H. (2008). *The everyday lives of young children:
> >    Culture, class, and child rearing in diverse societies.* New York:
> >    Cambridge University Press.
> >    - Tudge, J. R. H., Mokrova, I., Hatfield, B., & Karnik, R. B. (2009).
> >    Uses and misuses of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory of human
> >    development. *Journal of Family Theory and Review, 1*(4), 198-210.
> >    - Rosa, E. M., & Tudge, J. R. H. (2013). Urie Bronfenbrenner’s theory
> of
> >    human development: Its evolution from ecology to bioecology. *Journal
> of
> >    Family Theory and Review, 5*(6), 243–258. DOI:10.1111/jftr.12022
> >    - Tudge, J. R. H. (2013). Urie Bronfenbrenner. In Heather Montgomery
> >    (Ed.), *Oxford bibliographies on line: Childhood studies*. New York:
> >    Oxford University Press.
> >    - Tudge, J. R. H., Payir, A., Merçon-Vargas, E. A., Cao, H., Liang,
> Y.,
> >    Li, J., & O’Brien, L. T. (2016). Still misused after all these years?
> A
> >    re-evaluation of the uses of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory of
> > human
> >    development. *Journal of Family Theory and Review*, *8,* 427–445. doi:
> >    10.1111/jftr.12165.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Jon
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~
> >
> > Jonathan Tudge
> >
> > Professor
> > Office: 155 Stone
> >
> > Our work on gratitude: http://morethanthanks.wp.uncg.edu/
> >
> > A new book just published: Tudge, J. & Freitas, L. (Eds.) Developing
> > gratitude in children and adolescents
> > <https://www.uncg.edu/hdf/faculty/tudge/books/dev-
> > gratitude-in-children-and-adolescents-flyer.pdf>,
> > Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
> >
> > My web site:http://www.uncg.edu/hdf/faculty/tudge
> >
> > Mailing address:
> > 248 Stone Building
> > Department of Human Development and Family Studies
> > PO Box 26170
> > The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
> > Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
> > USA
> >
> > phone (336) 223-6181
> > fax   (336) 334-5076
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 6:20 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Jon --
> > >
> > > Nice to see your voice!
> > >
> > > I only have Urie's 2005 collection, *Making Human Beings Human, *to
> > hand. I
> > > checked it out
> > > to see if the terms activity and context appeared there. Only sort of!
> > > Activity is in the index, but context is not (!). I attach two pages
> from
> > > the book for those interested (and able to read my amateur
> > > photos). Here it seems that activity and context coincide at the micro
> > > level, but perhaps only there?
> > >
> > > Concerning embedded circles and context. It turns out that the person
> who
> > > induced Sheila and me to write a textbook on human development was U.
> > > Bronfenbrenner. And this same U.B. discussed with us how to represent
> his
> > > perspective circa 1985, pretty early in the task of writing the first
> > > edition. His use of matroshki (embedded dolls) as a metaphor and his
> > > rhetoric at the time (and in 2005 as well) invites
> > > a concentric circles representation. We discussed other ways of trying
> to
> > > represent the idea and he
> > > said that our representation came as close as he could figure out.
> > >
> > > In the 2005 book he refers to my work as combining a Vygotskian notion
> of
> > > context with an anthropological one (p. 126), and uses the term
> > "ecological
> > > context." I assume that most of my Russian colleagues would argue that
> > LSV
> > > used the concept of "social situation of development," not context. I
> > have
> > > no idea how he would respond to Yrjo's declaration that the activity is
> > the
> > > context, but it does not seem too far off from what is written on the
> > pages
> > > attached.
> > >
> > > Perhaps someone on xmca who is skilled at searching texts in cyrillic
> > could
> > > search for his use of the term, context. I have always been curious
> about
> > > what such a search would turn up, but lack the skill
> > > to carry out the query.
> > >
> > > And perhaps you have written something about the mistake of
> interpreting
> > > U.B.'s notion of contexts using embedded circles we could learn from??
> > > Certainly the passages on p. 46 remind me of the work of Hedegaard and
> > > Fleer, who also draw upon U.B.
> > >
> > > mike
> > >
> >
>
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