Andy--
I guess I am simply having trouble interpreting texts on xmca at the
moment in general! Sorry
The issue of the "back end" of the transition to adulthood is not
passe, of course! Quite the opposite, it is a new academic industry
and a major life issue of millions of people around the globe in ways
that were unanticipated by our forbearers. And it certainly is
fraught! Both for participants and analysts. Ask any 35 year old
unemployed BA living at home with parents or the parents or Ethiopian
high school leaver who cannot find work!!
Does LSV use the term, institutionalized age-levels? The institutions
part of this process ordinarily goes under-theorized by psychologists
and I seem to have missed that.
mike
On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 8:18 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
I did not mean to impute a framing of the question in those terms
to you Mike, but I can't quite see why you describe the idea of
what Vygotsky calls the "transitional period" ending in the
"beginning of adulthood" as something passe and fraught. Is there
a country in the industrialised world which does not have an age
(or ages) at which the person qualifies to vote, drive cars, give
informed consent, join the army, run for election, serve on juries
- all those rights which characterise adult citizenship in a country?
Vygotsky says these instituionalised age-levels "depend on
enormous practical experience" (LSV CW 5p187) so it seems a fair
conclusion to draw that there is some reality behind a
hear-universally institutionalised idea, some basis in patterns of
child development in the given society.
Mind you, he also says "We do not include youth (i.e. the period
between adolesence and adulthood) in the scheme of age periods of
childhood for the reason that theoretical and empirical studies
equally compel opposition to stretching child development
excessively and including in it the first twenty-five years of
human life. In the general sense and according to basic patterns,
the age eighteen to twenty-five years more likely makes up the
initial link in the chain of mature age than the concluding link
in the chain of periods of child development." (LSV CW 5p196) But
that is really not my concern. I am not writing a book on child
development! :) It's those youth I am most interested in. The
development which proceeds on the basis of a person's thinking and
acting in concepts is a different kind of development than that
which he or she goes through during childhood, and does not
exhibit the same laws.
Andy
mike cole wrote:
We also did not write about the transition to adulthood at
what used to be called the beginning of adulthood, a frought
notion indeed. There is not a large literature on that topic
which is only pre-figured in the first edition of our textbook
when we were allowed to include a life-span treatment of
development.
mike
On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Andy Blunden
<ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>> wrote:
Apologies Gregory. I slipped a note about Vygotsky in the
middle
of my commentary on Cole, whereas in fact, Mike did not
refer to
Vygotsky in this chapter.
Culpa mia.
Andy
Gregory Allan Thompson wrote:
Ivo and Andy,
Also in the adolescence section of Mike's textbook is
reference to William Damon. He has a wonderful 3-D
graphic of
the development of self-concept from infancy through
adolescence.
His writings on moral development are quite good too. The
major point that I always appreciate is that moral
development
should not be considered separately from development of
self-concept (Andy, you might appreciate the way in which
development of self-understanding and development of social
understanding are caught up with each other - the
development
of an I that is We?).
Although I don't recall any explicit reference to
Vygotsky, he
draws on an Vygotsky's kin (according to some), the
American
pragmatists James Mark Baldwin and William James.
Damon and Hart 1992. Self-understanding and its role in
social
and moral development. In Lamb, M. and Bornstein, M. (Eds.)
Developmental Psychology: An advanced textbook. pp.
421-464.
Graphic is on p. 433.
I'm happy to share a copy directly but prefer not to
distribute widely.
-greg
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