Mike you said:
Both LSV and Piaget are, I believe, constructivists. The issues revolve
>around the organization of the constructive process and the role of others
>(teachers) in it. Coming to Piaget from the cross-cultural literature as
>I did, I was always impressed at his distrust of schooling as a source
>of development because accomodation so dominated assimilation, blocking
>equilibration, but David is suggesting a quite different form of
>educative activity (not to be found in many classrooms at 1:30 ratios
>I am afraid) where getting a delicate balance of accommodation and
>assimilation is the goal of the teacher (my case was taken from
>afterschool, one-on-one activity).
Of course, both PGT and LSV were constructivists. But in looking at the
processes of learning and development they constructed different
figure/background images. Piaget compared different successive actions of
the individual alone as a figure against the background of social
interaction. It's not that social interaction and culture are not
influencing the activities of cognitive construction - they are, but Piaget
wanted to abstract the laws of cognitive construction and elevate them
above the "social interaction noise". On the other hand, Vygotsky's notion
of social mediation creates a theory with different
figure/background picture. The work of the individual here is not just a
Piagetian "cognitive construction", but an interaction between "congnitive
construction" and making sense of the concepts as presented in culturally
supplied symbols and tools; i.e. interpretative activity is part of the
cognitive construction. That is why Piaget's notions of
accomodation/assimilation cannot be fully compared to the cognitive
activity described by LSV.
I think that there is no smooth transition between PGT and LSV positions,
that it is not just a matter of degree of the importance of social/cultural
elements. I think the two positions are paradigmatically different. The
notion of social/cultural mediation cannot be just patched onto the notions
of assimilation/accomodation.
Ana
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