Re: [xmca] Piaget's Periods

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Thanks, David. I see what you are piecing together. Cute to be able to quote
me and what I wrote there certainly seems true to me now as then.

I was following the wrong track entirely in trying to follow your prior note
and the discussion with Martin. I had not realized you were doing mediation
vs activity-- wrong enough so that I did not think to connect what you were
saying with the work of the Kharkov school. They certainly focused on the
activity side and the absence of reference to Vygotsky is very notable.

But I am always cautious about interpreting both the various accounts of who
said what to whom and why about this issue because it is so complicated. I
am especially cautious when it comes to what Russians and Ukrainians wrote
about each other and world psychology at the time. I always struggle to try
to understand what is said out of fear, what out of conviction, what on the
basis on what sort of
empirical evidence. The tilt of Russians toward Stalinism in their writing
between 1930-1954 is clear enough and Leontiev has come in for his share of
criticism in this regard. But I find it a little hard to imagine him
"thumbing his nose" at Vygotsky. Warding off charges of idealism, and the
consequences of being so identified and erring on the side of unfortunate
formulations of the razor's edge of cultural mediation and activity makes
more sense to me.

The main question for me, and I think a lot of relevant food for thought
about this is contained in the notes you and Martin have written recently on
the topic, is how we, the temporarily living, can come up with more adequate
formulations that help us to keep our balance and organize our practice.

In how many places in his writing did Leontiev use the term "psychological
operations" in relation to to the development of consciousness, I wonder.
The term, "psychological operations" changed meaning a good deal over the
years, and I doubt if he was using operation in the way in which we
currently interpret his work. But it would take some of that great detective
work you are so good at to figure that out.

Thanks again
I'll go back and read yours and Martin's discussion with this new
orientation in mind. I also need to get the "enculturation/domestication"
with respect to this discussion better under control.

mike





In re-reading Kozulin,


On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 8:24 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:

> Mike:
>
> On p. 25 of Kozulin's "Psychological Tools" he has a great quote, first
> from Leontiev:
>
> "Development of the consciousness of a child occurs as a result of the
> devleopment of the system of psychological operations, which in their turn,
> are determined by the actual relations between a child and reality".
>
> Kozulin then quotes one of Luria's later students, Mike Cole:
>
> "As even a superficial reading of this work indicates, Leontiev and the
> young researchers who worked with him established a good deal of distance
> between themselves and their teacher Vygotsky."
>
> Kozulin himself has this to say:
>
> "The Kharkovist's emphasis on practical activity as a source of
> psychological functions fit well into the Soviet ideological climate of the
> 1930s, which glorified concrete labor as a major source of the socialist
> transformation of the human being. Somewhat ironically, it was also closer
> to the Piagetian programme of exploring the internalization of sensory-motor
> actions, rather than to the original Vygotskian emphasis on symbolic
> psychological tools."
>  What I get from Cole, and from Kozulin, is really the same thing I get
> from Martin's post. The differences between Vygotsky and Piaget are not
> really where people say they are: in 1934, Piaget is the one who is really
> talking about the "domestication" or "enculturation" of the child's mind,
> and Vygotsky is the one who stresses the reality orientedness of the child's
> activity.
>
> But here is one difference that is real and enduring, though perhaps missed
> by activity theorists who are rather more inclined to the Piagetian view of
> language than the truly Vygotskyan one. Piaget goes on arguing, to the very
> end of his life, that speech is always a consequence and never a cause of
> thinking; it's always a result and never a reason (Sinclair de-Zwart was
> very important to him for making this argument, and Karmiloff-Smith broke
> with him over it).
>
> When Leontiev insisted that "language is not the demiurge of thinking", he
> was thumbing his nose at Vygotsky, not Piaget. In Thinking and Speech,
> language is not just the demiurge of thinking. After about age two, it's a
> fully-fledged urge.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
> --- On *Thu, 2/10/11, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>* wrote:
>
>
> From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Piaget's Periods
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Thursday, February 10, 2011, 7:51 PM
>
>
> David --
>
> Could you spell out the Leontiev position here such that it lines up with
> Piaget?  I always have a lot of trouble understanding ANL, never mind
> Piaget, and I am having trouble following the parallels and divergences
> here.
>
> mike
>
> On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 6:04 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
> >wrote:
>
> > I think Martin's insight--that the Piaget that is being excoriated in
> > Chapter Two of T&S is really the way most of us (including
> > Leontiev) understand Vygotsky--is completely right, and more than mildly
> > brilliant. I also like the idea that the Stern being dressed down in
> Chapter
> > Three of T&S is really the next incarnation, Piaget II. After all, "Die
> > Kindersprache", which is the volume that Vygotsky is attacking, is
> written
> > along much the same lines as Piaget's books on sensorimotor intelligence:
> it
> > consists of William and Clara Stern's observation of their three
> children.
> >
> > But I have some reservations. First of all, as Carol points out, Piaget
> > II is, at least by his own account, really not a psychologist at all, but
> > only using ontogenesis as one form of evidence in something he calls
> > "genetic epistemology", an attempt to show how the child replicates and
> > fails to replicate the categories found in Kant and even in Plato (see,
> for
> > example, Kohlberg's Piaget-inspired work on the child as Platonic
> > philosopher). I have always taken this assertion on the part of Piaget
> (and
> > Elkind) with a block of salt, the way I take Saussure's assertion that
> > "semiotics" is after much bigger game than mere linguistics (and Freud's
> > idea that his insights into a particularly narrow and uninteresting
> > form human sexual behavior gives him the right to pronounce on
> anthropology,
> > art history, and life after death). But Carol takes it seriously, so I
> guess
> > I need to as well. And if Piaget II is a "genetic epistemologist" and not
> a
> > psychologist
> >  then his idea that the ontogeny of knowledge simply recapitulates its
> > phylogeny is meant to be a schematic epistemology and not a history.
> >
> > Secondly, I think that there is ANOTHER irony late in Chapter Two of T&S.
> > The way we serve Piaget and Vygotsky to unsuspecting undergrads on tests
> in
> > Korea goes something like this: for Piaget, the child is a lonely
> explorer,
> > but with Vygotsky he never walks alone. Yet philosophically, it is (First
> > Period) Piaget who denies the idea of an objective, material, verifiable
> > reality behind the social categories; it is Piaget I who insists that the
> > categories come to the child through socialization and through
> socialization
> > alone, not through the lonely explorations and superimpositions of
> > "the-space-that-can-be-sucked", "the-space-that-can-be-touched" and
> > "the-space-that-can-be-moved-about". It is Vygotsky, and Lenin, who
> insist
> > that reality has tangible, palpable, material and not merely social
> > objective significance to the child; development is, among other things,
> a
> > constant process of checking one's categories against social and also
> > perceptual
> >  experience, a position that is far closer to Piaget II. (Carol: I am not
> > really sure to what extent Piaget II can be called Kantian; when he says
> > that logical categories do not really have a beginning, isn't he making a
> > statement about evolutionary gradualism rather than apriorism?)
> >
> > Thirdly, I think it's useful to keep in mind that Piaget doesn't really
> > change his mind the way Vygotsky does. With Vygotsky, you have a period
> > where he labels everything a "reaction", even the "esthetic reaction"
> > (Educational Psychology, The Psychology of Art) and then, starting about
> > 1928, he never uses the word again. You have a period where he serves you
> > mediation with absolutely everything. And then, starting about 1932, he
> > hardly uses the idea at all. And you have the explicit statement, right
> > there at the end of the preface, that he had to tear everything up and
> start
> > over at least twice in the course of his work.
> >
> > That doesn't happen in Piaget.  One of the thing that really annoys
> > Vygotsky about the Sterns is that there is very little DEVELOPMENT over
> > twenty years of their work: he finds that if anything "Die Kindersprache"
> is
> > even more personalist and non-developmental than their earlier work
> "Person
> > und Sache". What would he have said about Piaget's work, which is in many
> > ways even less?
> >
> > Piaget starts using "assimilation" as his basic principle of development
> in
> > "Language and Thought", and it's still there half a century
> > later. Vygotsky's position on the relation between learning and
> development
> > changes from a basically reactological inability to see any distinction
> at
> > all to a very subtle articulation of the two in Chapter 6 of T&S, but
> Piaget
> > starts by saying that only development can "explain" learning and ends up
> > that way too.
> >
> > Although Piaget I claims, in "Language and Thought in the Child" that he
> > only wants to stick to the facts and that the theoretical explanations
> will
> > arise cladistically from the data at the end of "Judgment and Reasoning
> in
> > the Child", he also gave an interview in the sixties in which he pointed
> out
> > that a lot of the basic conclusions, even in his late work, can be found
> in
> > the philosophical novel he published when he was undergoing a religious
> > crisis as a teenager ("Recherche").
> >
> > Rene van der Veer says (and Karmiloff-Smith confirms) that Piaget's usual
> > response to criticism, and to countervailing evidence, was simply not to
> > listen to it, and that this, rather than any anger or lese-majeste,
> explains
> > his refusal to respond to Vygotsky's critiques, of which, protestations
> of
> > ignorance to the contrary notwithstanding, Piaget MUST have been at least
> > vaguely aware (even Piaget's eventual response to Vygotsky suggests a
> very
> > partial and superficial reading of only parts of Chapters Two and
> Six--there
> > is NO mention of the experimentum crucis on his work in Chapter Seven).
> >
> > So I think there is a sense in which Piaget, unlike Vygotsky, has no
> > periods at all. Only stages.
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> >
> >
> > --- On Thu, 2/10/11, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=packer@duq.edu>>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=packer@duq.edu>
> >
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] Piaget's Periods
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >
> > Date: Thursday, February 10, 2011, 1:37 PM
> >
> >
> > Thanks, David, for pointing to the database of Piaget's publications at
> the
> > Jean Piaget Foundation website. I didn't know about this, and it's a very
> > useful resource.
> >
> > I think Flavell had already helped me narrow down the time when Piaget
> > moved from period one to period two of his work, and the publication
> > database clinched it. It contains a copy of the 1927 article that I
> > mentioned, based on a presentation Piaget gave in London earlier that
> year
> > to the British Psychological Society. The database includes a brief
> > commentary, which begins thus:
> >
> > "this article marks a milestone in the progression of the developmental
> > psychology of Piaget. It bridges the gap between the early work of
> > psychology whose purpose was the thought of children between 4 and 12
> years
> > ago, and the second stage of Piagetian research whose main purpose is to
> > study the birth of the sensorimotor intelligence, within two years
> following
> > the birth of a child.”
> >
> > I'm willing to conclude that in 1927, perhaps 1926, a year or so after
> the
> > birth of Jacqueline, his first daughter, Piaget was moving from an
> account
> > of development as socialization to one of development as adaptation.
> >
> > This means that when LSV published his critique of Piaget in 1932, the
> > introduction to the Russian translation of Piaget's earlier books, which
> > became chapter 2 of Thought & Language, Piaget had already abandoned the
> > conceptual framework that LSV analyzed, one in which the child is
> > egocentric, even autistic, and must have logic and reason forced on them
> by
> > adults.
> >
> > Does that mean the chapter is of no interest today? Far from it, in my
> > opinion. First, the Piaget that LSV critiques in chapter 2 is very close
> to
> > the way many people have interpreted Vygotsky! Piaget’s emphasis is on
> > socialization as a necessary correction to the child’s egocentrism and
> > irrationality. LSV is often interpreted as offering a theory of
> development
> > through “enculturation,” where experts in some field of knowledge guide
> the
> > child to expertise. LSV does us a service here by in effect explaining
> how
> > he is not a “socialization” theorist. Piaget even wrote, in a review of
> the
> > state of French psychology published in 1926, “But the great innovation
> in
> > genetic studies is the appeal made to sociology in explanations of the
> > higher psychological functions” (1926, p. 442). On the face of it that
> > sounds very like LSV, and LSV is interpreted by many as seeing
> development
> > as a process of enculturation. I have a chapter coming out in a book
> >  edited by Tim Koschmann that is titled "Schooling: Domestication or
> > Ontological Construction" because it is a response to a sociocultural
> > theorist who argues that schooling is, and should be, a "domestication"
> of
> > the child's mind.
> >
> > That's exactly the position that LSV found in early Piaget, and it's one
> he
> > rejects completely. It "loses" the concept of development.
> >
> > But we do need to recognize that the Piaget critiqued in chapter 2 is not
> > the Piaget of structuralist stages that many of us know and teach. And
> > Piaget didn't change his mind because of LSV's critique; he'd moved on
> five
> > years earlier. However, and here's an irony, in the second period of his
> > work Piaget was surely guilty of the charge of “intellectualism” which
> LSV
> > makes in chapter 3 of Thought & Language! Piaget argued that by the time
> the
> > child enters preschool, the stage of preoperational thought, he or she
> > possesses, albeit on a practical level, what amounts to a newtonian
> > understanding of space and time.
> >
> > Chapter 3 is short, and it is focused on Stern, a psychologist who most
> of
> > us have forgotten. But the problem that LSV addressed in this chapter --
> the
> > tendency to "intellectualize" the young child's abilities - has grown
> > enormously in importance since he wrote. Since the cognitive revolution
> in
> > the 1950s the majority of developmental psychologists have come to
> believe
> > that even young infants form "theories" about the world that differ from
> > adults’ concepts only in unimportant ways.
> >
> > In other words, LSV’s argument in chapter 3 is much more relevant to
> modern
> > Piagetians than his argument in chapter 2. It is also still very relevant
> to
> > modern developmental psychologists. And chapter 2 is still relevant to
> block
> > interpretations that LSV was proposing a theory of "socialization" rather
> > than sociogenesis.
> >
> > Martin
> >
> >
> >
> > On Feb 10, 2011, at 4:07 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
> >
> > > Bakhtin and Medvedev remark, a propos the formalists, that a strong
> > opponent is better than a weak ally, because a strong opponent will make
> you
> > stronger, but a weak ally is likely to kill you.
> > >
> > > I think there's a good reason why Vygotsky relentlessly sought Piaget
> out
> > as an opponent. Only Piaget and Lewin were really strong enough to make
> > Vygotsky stronger. Leontiev almost killed him off entirely (I agree with
> > Kozulin; we are STILL trying to recover from what was essentially a
> > compromise with Piaget, namely Leontiev's idea that the child's
> > object-oriented activity by itself can drive development).
> > >
> > >
> > > One of the things that makes periodizing Piaget difficult is that his
> > books were translated into English much later than they were written in
> > French. There is, however, a very useful list of the French originals
> HERE:
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.fondationjeanpiaget.ch/fjp/site/bibliographie/index_livres_chrono.php
> > >
> > >> From a cultural historical perspective, I think Piaget's first and
> best
> > period begins with what Vygotsky calls his "three whales" (Language and
> > Thought in the Child, Reason and Judgment in the Child, and the Child's
> > Conception of Reality). It ends with "Moral Judgment in the Child".
> > >
> > > In 1936, Piaget makes his choice. He completely gives up the idea of
> > using "sociological language" to explain "biological development of
> > knowledge" (by which he means psychological development). Perhaps the
> reason
> > was that Piaget started having his own children, and he became fascinated
> > with the parallels between his newborn kids and the snails and animals he
> > had started his studies with. So the next books ("Origin of Intelligence
> in
> > the Child, etc.") are almost entirely concerned with the "sensorimotor"
> and
> > nonlinguistic sources of logic, and for this reason they are much less
> > challenging and interesting from a cultural historical point of view.
> > >
> > > In 1945 he comes back to sociological language with "Play, Imitation
> and
> > Dreams", which is really his book about symbol formation. But his
> sociology
> > is rather Freudian--I guess the idea that biological sexual drives were
> at
> > the bottom of symbol formation was too attractive to him as a biologist.
> The
> > rigid distinction he makes between assimilation and accomodation (again,
> on
> > the basis of a biological metaphor, that of cellular equilibration) makes
> > him assign almost the whole of play activity to egocentrism--a colossal
> > mistake (and again one that we can find in Leontiev).
> > >
> > > I guess I disagree with Jay Lemke about late Piaget, which I would date
> > to the sixties and seventies: I find "Biology and Knowledge" extremely
> > structuralist, that is, mechanistic. It's not surprising that he went off
> in
> > the direction of finding memory--and therefore intelligence--in RNA! (See
> > "Memory and Intelligence", co-authored with Sinclair-de Zwart).
> > >
> > > David Kellogg
> > > Seoul National University of Education
> > > --- On Wed, 2/9/11, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=packer@duq.edu>>
> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=packer@duq.edu>
> >
> > > Subject: [xmca] Piaget's periods
> > > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu<http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >
> > > Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 11:45 AM
> > >
> > >
> > > Harry Beilin has an interesting article in which he distinguishes four
> > periods or phases in Piaget's work. But he doesn't specify very precise
> > dates for these, and I am trying in particular to figure out when the
> break
> > between the first and the second would have taken place.
> > >
> > > In the first period Piaget conducted clinical interviews to investigate
> > children's conceptions of the world around them. He emphasized the
> > importance for development of language and social interaction, in what
> > amounted to what some have called a sociological model of development.
> This
> > research was reported in four books, Language and Thought of the Child
> > (1923), Judgment and Reasoning in the Child (1924), The Child's
> Conception
> > of the World (1923), and The Child's Conception of Physical Causality
> > (1927). It was for this work that Piaget received an honorary degree from
> > Harvard in 1936: his work was known there by sociologists and the
> business
> > school, but he virtually unknown in the psychology department (Hsueh,
> 2004).
> > >
> > > The second period of work was Piaget's elaboration of an adaptive model
> > of intellectual development, focused on the sensorimotor stage, and based
> on
> > Piaget's studies of his own three children.
> > >
> > > The third period was a detailed elaboration of a structuralist model of
> > development. The fourth and final period (in the 1960s) involved the
> study
> > of figurative thought in the elementary school-age child.
> > >
> > > Working backwards, the fourth period started in the 1960s. The third
> > period dated from the middle to late 1930s. But how can we date the first
> > and second periods? The first period of work must have been conducted
> > roughly from 1921 to at least 1925, the period during which Piaget was
> > research director of the Rousseau Institute in Geneva. Piaget's children
> > were born in 1925, 1927 and 1931, so the second period must have started
> > somewhere in those years and may have continued until the late 1930s.
> From
> > 1925 to 1929 Piaget was chair of Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy of
> > Science at Neuchâtel. In 1929 he accepted the position of Director of the
> > International Bureau of Education, and also became Professor of the
> History
> > of Scientific Thought at the University of Geneva. In addition he was
> first
> > assistant director and then codirector of the Rousseau Institute. When,
> > during these many changes, did the second period start? The principal
> texts
> > from this
> > > period were published in the 1930s: The Origins of Intelligence (1936)
> > and The Construction of Reality in the Child (1937), but of course the
> work
> > was conducted earlier.
> > >
> > > Now, I've just got my hands on John Flavell's text, and Flavell writes
> > that it was from 1923 to 1929 that Piaget had positions in both Neuchatel
> > and Geneva, and that he was during that time conducting two lines of
> > research, the first on children's responses to changes in weight and
> volume,
> > the second his infancy work. Flavell cites a paper on the latter topic
> > published in 1927 [La premiére annêe de l’enfant. Brit. J. Psychol, 1927,
> > 18, 97-120]. This suggests to me something of an overlap between the
> first
> > and second periods, and it also shows that the second had certainly begun
> > before 1927.
> > >
> > > Does anyone have additional info that throws light on this? Can we
> narrow
> > down the start of the infancy research still further? (The earliest would
> be
> > 1923, the latest say 1926). Why all the interest? Well, in part because
> > Berlin writes, “When Piaget learned that Vygotsky was among those
> critical
> > of the linguistic version of this notion, he wrote (Piaget, 1962a) that
> had
> > Vygotsky been aware of the later version that substitutes the concept of
> > decentration for egocentricity, he would unlikely have approved.
> Vygotsky's
> > English-speaking followers, at least, appear to have been anything but
> > sanguine about the change” (p. 192). I want to become sanguine!
> > >
> > > Martin
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Beilin, H. (1992). Piaget's enduring contribution to developmental
> > psychology. Developmental Psychology 28: 191–204.
> > >
> > > Hsueh, Y. (2004). "He sees the development of children's concepts upon
> a
> > background of sociology": Jean Piaget's honorary degree at Harvard
> > University in 1936. History of Psychology, 7(1), pp.
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