Re: Piaget and the Social

Luiz Ernesto Merkle (merkle who-is-at csd.uwo.ca)
Sat, 2 May 1998 11:44:03 -0400 (EDT)

Hi,
About the Piaget-Vygotsky issue I do not see as a question of
either or. Both have made and are still "making" important contributions
to our field.
I see theories also as artirfacts that mediate interactions in
between humans and in between humans and the associated partially
constructed environment in which they live.
Yes, there are differences between Piaget and Vygotsky, and from
my pregmatic point of view I'm glad there are. Of course, a comparison is
always useful, and it is even necessary if we wnat to go further.
From my naive perspective I would risk a comment that does not do
justice to their whole work, and sorry about that.
From the little I read from both, I would say that a comparison
between Piaget's and Vygotsky's research focus could be compared between
the work of a "screw driver" and a "wrench". Both are used to mediate
turning in order to go deeper. When the former uses an "internal"
perspective the latter uses an "external" one. (individual versus
society). They are comparable only to a certain extent, after which they
could be both compared to a hammer. The difficulties, if possible, are to
determine when to use each one. In other words, the question is to
determine where are interwined boudaries, when one is preferable than the
other, and where they are equiparable. There are limits of what we can do
with only one "tool".

Luiz

Ps: I did not receive a message I've sent yesterday containing some
bibliographic references concerning the above subject. I'm appending
them here again. The third time now.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi everybody,
The volume 39, 1997 of the journal "Human Development" is a
special issue on Piaget and Vygotsky. Although it is not my area, the
references of included articles and others on the subject are appended in
a BibTeX format. BibTeX is and editor used in the computer science
community. Luiz

who-is-at Article{Bruner:Celebrating_Divergence,
author = {Bruner, Jerome},
title = {Celebrating Divergence: Piaget and Vygotsky},
journal = {Human Development},
year = 1997,
volume = 40,
pages = {63-73}
}

who-is-at Article{Kitchener:The_Nature_of_the_Social_for_Piaget_and_Vygotsky,
author = {Kitchener, Richard E.},
title = {The Nature of the Social for Piaget and Vygotsky},
journal = {Human Development},
year = 1996,
volume = 39
pages = {243-249}
}

who-is-at Article{Desforges:Piaget-Vygotsky,
author = {Desforges, Charles},
title = {Piaget-Vygotsky: The social genesis of thought - Edited
by Anastasia Tryphon and Jacques Von\`eche},
journal = {British Journal of Educational Psychology},
year = 1997,
volume = {67 - Part 2},
month = {June},
pages = {258-259},
note = {Book Review}
}

who-is-at Article{Furth:Human_Mind_in_Human_Society,
author = {Furth, Hans G.},
title = {Human Mind in Human Society},
journal = {Human Development},
year = 1996,
volume = 39,
pages = {264-268}
}

who-is-at Article{Meacham:Mind_Society_and_Racism,
author = {Maecham, Jack},
title = {Mind, Society and Racism},
journal = {Human Development},
year = 1996,
volume = 39,
pages = {301-306}
}

who-is-at Article{Smith:With_Knowledge_in_Mind,
author = {Smith, Leslie},
title = {With Knowledge in Mind: Novel Transformation of Learner
or Transformation of Novel Knowledge},
journal = {Human Development},
year = 1996,
volume = 39,
pages = {257-263}
}

who-is-at Article{Tomasello:Piagetian_and_Vygotskian_Approaches_to_Language_Aquisition,
author = {Tomasello, Michael},
title = {Piagetian and Vygotskian Approaches to Language
Aquisition},
journal = {Human Development},
year = 1996,
volume = 39,
pages = {269-276}
}

who-is-at Article{Valsiner:Whose_Mind,
author = {Valsiner, Jean},
title = {Whose Mind?},
journal = {Human Development},
year = 1996,
volume = 39,
pages = {295-300}
}

who-is-at Article{Vidal:Towards_Re-REading_Jean_Piaget,
author = {Vidal, Fernando},
title = {Towards Re-Reading Jean Piaget},
journal = {Human Development},
year = 1997,
number = 40,
pages = {124-126},
note = {Commentary}
}

who-is-at Article{cole96:_beyon_indiv_social_antin_discus_piaget_vygot,
author = {Cole, Michael and Wertsch, James V.},
title = {Beyond the Individual-Social Antinomy in Discussions of
Piaget and Vygotsky},
journal = {Human Development},
year = 1996,
volume = 39,
pages = {250-256},
note = {http://www.massey.ac.nz/~ALock/virtual/colevyg.htm /
Vygotsky Project Page -http://www.massey.ac.nz/~ALock/virtual/project2.htm
/ Virtual Faculty Homepage - http://www.massey.ac.nz/~ALock/virtual/}
}

who-is-at Article{van_der_Veer:Vygotsky_and_Piaget,
author = {van der Veer, Ren\'e},
title = {Vygotsky and Piaget: A collective monologue},
journal = {Human Development},
year = 1996,
volume = 39,
number = 5,
pages = {237-242}
}


_____________________________________________________________

Luiz Ernesto Merkle merkle who-is-at csd.uwo.ca
University of Western Ontario voice: +1 519 858 3375 (home)
Department of Computer Science fax: +1 519 661 3515 (work)
N6A 5B7 London Ontario Canada www.csd.uwo.ca/~merkle