[Xmca-l] Re: "Which one question . . .?"

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Hi Anthony,

I will take a crack at this, but I'm only piecing together a patchwork of things I've learned and then sewing it together. If anyone wishes to correct me, I won't mind. It's just to kickstart a collaborative discussion.

Previously, that is 19th-century-wise, people did not know that children's minds develop. It used to be that children were thought to be little adults, so remembering what adults used to think about children's minds is important context.

Piaget was innovative at the time, indicating that children had distinct phases of development, but Vygotsky while appreciating the distinct phases of development, did not accept that these phases were age distinct or age dependent, but that there was something more to it. He intuited a dialectic process with the child's environment that was not taken into account in Piaget's theory of development.

(I'm not sure from where the quote comes from, but it sounds like early work.)

A simplification or a pseudo-mnemonic, is that Piaget stated that learning follows development. Whereas for Vygotsky, development follows learning. I suppose that's your elevator statement, which may be stated in less than 2 minutes.

Vygotsky maintained that it is not nature vs nurture, which is a false argument, but that development of the child's mind depends upon nature AND nurture together, and the way it happens depends upon the nature (genetic material)  the child is born with and the nurture (environmental material) the child is born into, combined.

This is what he means when he states the child's development is

"...a complex dialectical process that is characterized by a complex periodicity, disproportion in the development of separate functions, metamorphoses or qualitative transformation of certain forms into others, a complex merging of the processes of evolution and involution, a complex crossing of external and internal factors, a complex process of overcoming difficulties and adapting."

That there are several phases of development that are not linear in nature, and that there is a flooding of processes that push and pull, where some developmental processes bridge to others while others disintegrate from being pushed out of the way by other underlying competing processes.

This is actually correct from what we know about neuronal brain development. Vygotsky basically understood that all these processes were plastic, but not arbitrary, that there is an underlying structure and predictable dynamic, but what this structure and dynamic actually is had yet to be determined at that time. And still is, actually.

His insight was innovative because theories at the time were stuck at an impasse, indicating it was all nurture or all nature. If it's all nurture, then we are all blank slates, which does not explain differences in inclinations and aptitudes given the same environment; if it's all nature, then how to explain improvement in development when and where there is opportunity or failing when and where there is a lack thereof?

Vygotsky was a new voice to say it was both, but the nut to crack was how is it both?

Kind regards,

Annalisa


________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2021 6:50 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] "Which one question . . .?"


  [EXTERNAL]

Recently I was asked: "In a room of experts, which question would you most like to hear a range of responses to?"

On the spot, I had no answer, but I do have one now:

This question: "What do you think all this means? (excerpted from Collected Works, Vol 4)

  *   ". . . the problem that confronts psychology is to detect the true uniqueness of child behavior in all the fullness and richness of its actual expression and to present a positive picture of the child personality. But a positive picture is possible only if we radically change our representation of child development and take into account that it is a complex dialectical process that is characterized by a complex periodicity, disproportion in the development of separate functions, metamorphoses or qualitative transformation of certain forms into others, a complex merging of the processes of evolution and involution, a complex crossing of external and internal factors, a complex process of overcoming difficulties and adapting" (Vygotsky 1997, Vol 4. pp. 98–99)

It seems the question can only be answered in less than 2 minutes or more than 45 minutes. Is a middle range even possible?

If you have any thoughts, please share.

Thanks, and happy new year ~

Anthony Barra


P.S. For context, here are two preceding paragraphs to the excerpt above:

  *   "Should we want to characterize in a single general statement the basic requisite that the problem of development raises for contemporary research, we could say that this requisite consists in studying the positive uniqueness of child behavior. This requires some explanation.
  *   All psychological methods used thus far for studying the behavior of the normal and the abnormal child, regardless of the great variety and differences that exist between them, have one common characteristic that links them in a certain respect. This characteristic is the negative description of the child that results from existing methods. All the methods speak of what the child does not have, what the child lacks in comparison with the adult, and what the abnormal child lacks as compared to the normal child. We have before us always a negative picture of the child personality. Such a picture tells us nothing about the positive uniqueness that distinguishes the child from the adult and the abnormal child from the normal child." (p. 98)
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