Re: [xmca] Re: microgenesis?

[Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Is he speaking of micro genesis, Andy?
Mike

On Oct 3, 2012, at 5:59 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Mike, reading Chapter 6 of "Thinking and Speech" about written speech,
> it seems to me that Vygotsky takes the development of written speech as
> archetypical and a pre-requiresite for the development of true concepts
> in modern society. He actually says that in taking up instruction in
> grammar (which is always associated with the learning of written speech)
> he is deferring the formation of scientific concepts to "susbsequent
> sections"!!
> 
> As is well-known, he points to at least three characteristics of written
> speech which are significant: that it requires conscious awareness of
> the semantic, syntactic and phonetic properties of both inner and oral
> speech; it requires an abstraction from the speech-situation and in
> particular the interlocutor; finally, it requires a motivation which is
> entirely absent for the child when they begin to learn written speech.
> 
> Each qualitative leap, each /development/ in the psychological growth of
> a child is marked by a crisis and sharp change in the will, the
> development of new motivations and therewith new relationships, new
> "situations". The motivation is no longer provided by the situation, an
> answer is required when there is no question. Thus the achievement of
> written speech requires conscious control of the will in abstraction
> from the situation, and reflecting upon and controlling inner speech.
> The formulation of actions, thinking, in the absence of the actual,
> sensuous presence of the stimulus, is one of the most central
> characteristic of conceptual thought. This is a development that is
> required even in non-literate communities. But in modern societies, the
> psychic functions required for conceptual, i.e., culturally inherited
> means of action, are acquired through formal schooling and as I see it
> the means of doing so is the mastery of written speech.
> 
> Back on the 29 September, you asked:
> 
>    "Since qualitative change in the organization of sensory-motor
>    behavior appear off the table when discussing HIGHER psych
>    functions, might you turn your scalpels to the acquisition of the
>    ability to read a phonetic alphabet fluently? How am I going wrong
>    in believing that acquisition of reading is a developmental process
>    in which learning also plays an essential role that shifts in the
>    course off acquisition?"
> 
> It is really nothing to with sensory-motor behavior, even though
> sensory-motor behavior is the only means by which written speech can be
> manifested. But if a child has normal vision and normal control of their
> hands, and these functions are sufficiently developed to recognise the
> letters of the alphabet, then teaching the child to read and write them
> is a good move. But it is not development itself. What is development is
> acquisition of those functions Vygotsky talks about: abstraction from
> the semantic, syntactic and phonetic properties of oral speech;
> abstraction from interlocutor and the speech situation; and the
> development of motivations to write. None of the actions implied in this
> psychological development are possible unless the child has /some/ means
> of written speech. Learning the ABCs simply creates the possibility for
> the leap of mastering one's own thinking by the culturally-specific
> means of written speech with a phonetic alphabet.
> 
> That's how I read it.
> Andy
> 
> PS. David. "Microgenesis" is not really part of my vocabulary, but I
> think it is not warranted to apply the term to the critical phases of
> ontogenesis. These are after all ontogenesis. I have always taken
> "microgenesis" to refer to the processes whereby a given psychological
> condition, or process, or action, is manifested out of its conditions,
> ie., something which happens every second. E.g. if I have a problem and
> then I hit on the solution; or if I meet someone, and in a second or two
> recognize them and adopt an orientation to them; or I want to speak in a
> meeting, stand up and then speak. That is the context in which I say
> concepts /are/ themselves processes of development (and not just the
> product of development).
> 
> 
> mike cole wrote:
>> Thanks David.
>> 
>> So there is microgenetic DEVELOPMENT of reading, or is LSV talking about
>> the ontogenetic change that comes from mediation of activity through
>> literacy?
>> 
>> mike
>> 
>> On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 7:56 PM, kellogg <kellogg59@hanmail.net> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>>   First of all, here's Vygotsky attacking Meumann and Piaget for the
>>> view that learning to read and write is really just learning, and not a
>>> fundamental restructuring of the child's understanding. It's from Thinking
>>> and Speech, Chapter Six, Part Three. But unfortunately neither English
>>> translation is really adequate. So here is the Russian:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Обучение как бы пожинает плоды детского созревания, но само по себе
>>> обучение остается безразличным для развития. У ребенка память, внимание и
>>> мышление развились до такого уровня, что он может обучаться грамоте и
>>> арифметике; но если мы его обучим грамоте и арифметике, то его память,
>>> внимание и мышление изменятся или нет? Старая психология отвечала на этот
>>> вопрос так: изменятся в той мере, в какой мы будем их упражнять, т.е. они
>>> изменятся в результате упражнения, но ничего не изменится в ходе их
>>> развития. Ничего нового не возникнет в умственном развитии ребенка от того,
>>> что мы его обучим грамоте. Это будет тот же самый ребенок, но грамотный.
>>> Эта точка зрения, целиком определяющая всю старую педагогическую
>>> психологию, в том числе и известную работу Меймана, доведена до логического
>>> предела в теории Пиаже. Его точка зрения такова, что мышление ребенка с
>>> необходимостью проходит через известные фазы и стадии, независимо от того,
>>> обучается этот ребенок или нет. Если он обучается, то это есть чисто
>>> внешний факт, который еще не находится в единстве с его собственными
>>> процессами мышления. Поэтому педагогика должна считаться с этими
>>> автономными особенностями детского мышления как с низшим порогом,
>>> определяющим возможности обучения. Когда же у ребенка разовьются другие
>>> возможности мышления, тогда станет возможным и другое обучение. Для Пиаже
>>> показателем уровня детского мышления является не то, что ребенок знает, не
>>> то, что он способен усвоить, а то, как он мыслит в той области, где он
>>> никакого знания не имеет. Здесь самым резким образом противопоставляются
>>> обучение и развитие, знание и мышление. Исходя из этог Пиаже задает ребенку
>>> такие вопросы, в отношении которых он застрахован от того, о,что ребенок
>>> может иметь какие-нибудь знания о спрашиваемом предмете. А если мы
>>> спрашиваем ребенка о таких вещах, о которых у него могут быть знания, то
>>> здесь мы получаем не результаты мышления, а результаты знания. Поэтому
>>> спонтанные понятия, возникающие в процессе развития ребенка,
>>> рассматриваются как показательные для его мышления, а научные понятия,
>>> возникающие из обучения, не обладают этой показательностью. Поэтому же, раз
>>> обучение и развитие резко противопоставляются друг другу, мы приходим с
>>> необходимостью к основному положению Пиаже, согласно которому научные
>>> понятия скорее вытесняют спонтанные и занимают их место, чем возникают из
>>> них, преобразуя их.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> "Teaching-and-learning reaps the benefits of the children's maturation,
>>> but is in itself of no interest to development. If we teach literacy and
>>> numeracy when the child's memory, attention and thinking have evolved to
>>> such a level that it can be taught, will his memory, attention and thinking
>>> change or no? The old psychology responded to this question thus: it will
>>> change to the extent that we exercise them, i.e. it will change as a result
>>> of exercise, but nothing will change in the course of their development.
>>> There is nothing new here in the mental development of the child from what
>>> we taught him to read. It will be the same child, but competent. This
>>> view is entirely fixed by the whole of the old educational psychology,
>>> including the well-known work of Meumann, and brought to its logical limit
>>> in Piaget's theory. His point of view is that the child's thinking must
>>> needs to pass through certain phases and stages, regardless of whether the
>>> child undergoes teaching-and-learning or not. If he undergoes it, this is
>>> a purely external fact, which is not yet in any communion with his own
>>> thinking processes. Pedagogy should therefore be considered alongside the
>>> autonomous features of children's thinking, as a lower threshold
>>> determining teaching-and-learning. When a child develops, other ways of
>>> thinking and other forms of teaching-and-learning will then be possible. For
>>> Piaget, the indicator of the child's thinking is not what the child knows,
>>> not what he is able to learn, but the way he thinks in an area where he has
>>> no knowledge. Here lies the very sharpest contrast between
>>> teaching-and-learning and development, between knowledge and thinking. It
>>> is on this basis that Piaget sets the child questions with respect to which
>>> he may be assured that the child can have no knowledge whatever. For if
>>> we ask the child about things about which he may have knowledge, here we do
>>> not get the results of thinking, but the results of knowledge. Therefore,
>>> spontaneous notions arising in the development of the child shall be
>>> considered as indicative of his thinking, and scientific concepts that
>>> arise from learning-and-teaching, do not have this potential. For the
>>> same reason, once learning-and-teaching and development are sharply
>>> counterposed to each other, we necessarily arrive at the main point of
>>> Piaget, according to which scientific concepts rather displace spontaneous
>>> and take their place rather than derive from them, transforming them."
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Later on, Vygotsky dwells at some length on his disagreements with Koffka.
>>> It will be seen that the passage which Vygotsky is lingering over is
>>> precisely the one that Mike sent around:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Есть, наконец, третья группа теорий, которая особенно влиятельна в
>>> европейской детской психологии. Эти теории пытаются подняться над
>>> крайностями обеих точек зрения, которые изложены выше. Они пытаются
>>> проплыть между Сциллой и Харибдой. При этом случается то, что обычно
>>> происходит с теориями, занимающими среднее место между двумя крайними
>>> точками зрения. Они становятся не над обеими теориями, а между ними,
>>> преодолевая одну крайность ровно в такой мере, в какой они попадают в
>>> другую. Одну неправильную теорию они преодолевают, частично уступая другой,
>>> а другую . уступками первой. В сущности говоря, это . двойственные теории:
>>> занимая позицию между двумя противоположными точками зрения, они на самом
>>> деле приводят к некоторому объединению этих точек зрения.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Такова точка зрения Коффки, который заявляет с самого начала, что развитие
>>> всегда имеет двойственный характер: во-первых, надо различать развитие как
>>> созревание и, во-вторых, надо различать развитие как обучение. Но это и
>>> значит признать в сущности две прежние крайние точки зрения, одну вслед за
>>> другой, или объединить их. Первая точка зрения говорит, что процессы
>>> развития и обучения независимы друг от друга. Ее Коффка повторяет,
>>> утверждая, что развитие и есть созревание, не зависящее в своих внутренних
>>> законах от обучения. Вторая точка зрения говорит, что обучение есть
>>> развитие. Эту точку зрения Коффка повторяет буквально.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> "There is, finally, a third group of theories, which is particularly
>>> influential in European child psychology. These theories attempt to rise
>>> above the extremes of both points of view, as set out above. They are
>>> trying to sail between Scylla and Charybdis. In this case, what happens is
>>> the usual case with theories that occupy the middle ground between two
>>> extremes. They do not stand above the two theories but between them
>>> overcoming one extreme exactly to the extent to which they veer towards the
>>> other. They overcome one wrong theory by partially surrendering to another.
>>> Generally speaking, it is a dualistic theory: occupying a position between
>>> two opposing points of view, they actually result from some combination of
>>> the two points of view."
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> "This is the view Koffka, who states at the outset that the development is
>>> always dualistic: First, we must distinguish development as maturation and
>>> second we must distinguish development as learning-and-teaching. But this
>>> means to recognize in essence the two previous extreme positions one after
>>> the other, or combine them. The first point of view is that the processes
>>> of development and learning-and-teaching are independent of each other.
>>> Here Koffka repeats the argument that development and maturation are not
>>> dependent in their internal laws upon learning-and-teaching. The second
>>> point of view is that learning is development. This view too Koffka repeats
>>> word for word."
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Vygotsky goes on to discuss three positive elements in Koffka's work:
>>> First, Koffka recognizes that there are two different things and they exist
>>> in a state of mutual dependence. Second, Koffka must introduce a new
>>> conception of learning-and-teaching, namely the appearance of new
>>> structures and the completion of old ones. Thirdly, Koffka raises, although
>>> he cannot solve, the whole question of whether learning-and-teaching leads
>>> development or the other way around. It's that moment when
>>> learning-and-teaching leads development, or opens the next stage of
>>> development (as Koffka says, a pfennigsworth of learning and teaching
>>> yields a mark of development) that I always thought was called
>>> microgenesis.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> In developing that second point, on the new STRUCTURAL conception of
>>> learning-and-teaching that Vygotsky distinguishes between
>>> learning-and-teaching that offers only the skill that it offers and a
>>> transformative skill--and the example he gives of the former is learning to
>>> type. What about the latter, though? It seems to me he has already given us
>>> an example of the latter at the very outset of this discussion when he was
>>> raking Meumann and Piaget over the coals. It is when a child learns that he
>>> or she can draw speech.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> David Kellogg
>>> 
>>> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --------- 원본 메일 ---------
>>> 
>>> *보낸사람*: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
>>> *받는사람* : "eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>, kellogg
>>> <kellogg59@hanmail.net>
>>> *날짜*: 2012년 10월 03일 수요일, 08시 43분 37초 +0900
>>> *제목*: microgenesis?
>>> 
>>> Hi David- This message was begun several days ago but got hung up in my
>>> messy schedule and a delay while I got to Koffka.
>>> 
>>> I would like very much to continue the microgeneis discussion started by
>>> Greg (or was it you?) because it seems to me to get us to the heart of the
>>> learning/development issue. We made a lot of progress a few years ago when
>>> you and Andy and I tried to write down "our" theory of development, with
>>> LSV as the paternal text.
>>> 
>>> While I have been off doing my form of inquiry, you have been doing
>>> yours  including all of the intense work on Tool and Znak, and immersing
>>> yourself in the texts.
>>> 
>>> I have  have a copy of Koffka at home, so I read a bunch of places where
>>> the learning/development issue is brought up.
>>> 
>>> Rather than jump straight into conversation, I would like to provide
>>> other xmca'ites as wish, to read the texts being discussed.
>>> 
>>> To that end, I have attached a few pages from Koffka that seem
>>> particularly to the point. As I understand it, this approach, which
>>> attributes cultural influences on development only for forms of action that
>>> are species typical/universal and closely related to (acquiring a first
>>> language, acquiring the ability to walk and run and jump and duck, and so
>>> on).
>>> 
>>> So the answer to questions about development being involved in learning
>>> to ride a bike or acquing the ability to read a phonetic alphabet. The
>>> matter is forclosed. Reading is a process of learning, ipso facto, end of
>>> discussion.
>>> 
>>> You indicate in your note that LSV also had some disagreements with
>>> Koffka, but I was not clear on what they were. If you could elaborate in
>>> context I would find it helpful.
>>> 
>>> So, moving slowly, and doggedly sticking to the topic of microgenesis of
>>> functions including acquiring the ability to walk, to ride a bike, and to
>>> learn to read, and lets include acquire a language, since that is clearly a
>>> central topic, I attach the relevant pages from Koffka so others can see
>>> what we are nattering on about, and at least figure out what is at stake.
>>> 
>>> If you would indicate other parts of Koffka to read, David, if you think
>>> them relevant, I can make the pdf and distribute.
>>> 
>>> more to come.
>>> mike
>>> 
>>> PS-- ALL-- Note David's new email. I am probably not the only one who
>>> missed the transition to it.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> <kellogg59@hanmail.net>
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> 
>>> __________________________________________
>>> _____
>>> xmca mailing list
>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> 
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> 
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