Charles,
I wonder how do you understand accommodation/assimilation as a biological
mechanism? I always thought of them as concepts that describe phenomena
placed into the psychological domain. What exact biological processes go on
in the brain's "guts" is for me an unknown.
Staying in the domain of psychological activity (as I understand
accommodation/assimilation) social cultural mediation opens up the "skull"
and inserts another component into the process: one does not relate to the
environment only directly through physical senses (within the "skull") but
through using symbols and tools (socially and culturally constructed
devices) which change the sensory input through a "program of instruction
in how to use the senses, what to do with objects and how to use the
feedbacks from our activity". Social artifacts (tools and symbols) mediate
every "accommodation" and every "assimilation".
But all of the above describes phenomena in the psychological domain. What
happens with biological processes (neural activity; growth of nerve cells
and their grouping and "wiring"; "storing" of information in some shape)
during thinking, learning and experiencing in general? And how can we
connect the two (or three) realms?
This ties also to David's claim that to explain the example Mike gave, one
need not cultural historical explanation, a "constructivist" (a.k.a
Piagetian?) one would suffice.
One of the reasons I see Piagetian and Vygotskian approach (not what they
said then, but what it means for us now) as two different paradigms is the
difference in basic premises of the two.
For Piaget (and constructivists) - and organism develops from within, by
growing a more powerful nervous system and becoming able to become social
as something secondary and of a higher nature than individual development
of other animals. Piaget's explanation of the so called "egocentric speech"
clearly states that paradigm: from autistic, through egocentric toward
socialized. In this paradigm one talks about "enculturation", about
"socialization" as a goal of development of a species and of an individual.
Social processes and culture are always seen as something outside of the
individual and secondary to the individual - a great help, indispensable
but still just an outer layer of the evolution.
The socio-cultural paradigm, on the other hand, has "social" as precursor
of the "individual". Development of cognition and self consciousness,
according to this view (known as Vygotsky's in psychology and education,
but not only his, and not his in the first place either) is a development
from a social (not 'socialized"!!!) being who performs various actions in a
collective of others, into a self sufficient, self conscious, and
self-guiding individual. A psychological individual is the end point of
evolution, and that individual's particular constellation is a result of
the cultural historical moment and her/his particular personal history.
Somewhere in the evolution, according to Vygotsky, two distinct "natural"
psychological functions began interacting in a revolutionary way:
sensory-motor way of learning and knowing the environment, could have never
lifted itself beyond simple conditional reflexes were it not for the
communication using symbols. Vygotsky's explanation of the phenomenon of
egocentric speech is that far away from being just a little less
"autistic", egocentric speech is a form of using communicational tools not
for "communication" but for cognition. Therefore, development goes from
first social, through "egocentric" to individual. being able to do alone,
what one had previously done only in a real interaction with others
("appropriation", "internalization") is the result of development, and
results in individuals who are self-conscious humans who can plan and
direct their own actions, and use discourse and other people's knowledge to
learn more than their own "real" experience.
Cognitive construction is always an active effort on the part of each
person, but culture (at a particular historical point) and social
interaction which uses culturally made cognitive and symbolic tools are the
modes of this construction.
A fascinating discussion!!
Ana
At 05:21 PM 2/10/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>Ana, you said,
>
>>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.
>
>I believe I can understand assimilation/accommodation, even if
>metaphorically, as a biological mechanism, but the mechanism of
>social/cultural mediation is sort of black-boxed for me. If we don't use
>assimilation/accommodation, what mechanism can we use for mediation?
>
>Charles
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