David Ki--
Good to hear from you directly again--but I'm reposting this to the list, as you suggested, because it appears to be a pretty hot topic.
I'm afraid the translation is not that good--it's me touching up Google Translate (e.g. replacing "learning" with "teaching-and-learning" ). But it's better than the extant English versions; Minick simply uses "instruction", and Kozulin/Hanfmann & Vakar is just kiind of a loose paraphrase, as usual .
MY anwersin VERY QUIET CAPITALS (i'm not shouting....!).
--------- 원본 메일 ---------
보낸사람: David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu>
받는사람 : kellogg <kellogg59@hanmail.net>
날짜: 2012년 10월 04일 목요일, 01시 23분 35초 +0900
제목: RE: [xmca] RE: microgenesis?
Hi David,
I’m struggling through the Vygotsky quote addressing Piaget—the writing (or is it the translation) seems not to adequately tie down the ideas. I’ve provided some interpretations and questions [[in double-square brackets]]. I’d appreciate any clarifications you can offer.
David
PS. You’re welcome to reply on-line, if you’d like to open some of these questions to the listserv. Alternatively, if you prefer, I can resend this note to the listserv.
“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. [[I take it Vygotsky is laying the ground work for a critique of “the old psychology.” Whereas the old psychology sees only learning (growth/strengthening of specific facets of cognition), Vygotsky wants to argue that literacy and numeracy, in fact, change the entire configuration of cognition, leading beyond learning to development.]]
“
WELL, VYGOTSKY HAS BEEN CRITICIZING THE OLD PSYCHOLOGY FOR MANY PAGES ALREADY. WHAT HE IS LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR IS A CHARACTERIZATION OF THE OLD, THE NEW, AND THE ULTRA-NEW AND THE WAY IN WHICH EACH REPRESENTS 'A NEW START AND A DIFFERENT KIND OF FAILURE' (T.S. ELIOT).
HE OLD PSYCH IS WUNDTIAN PSYCHOLOGY, SOMETIMES INCLUDING VON HUMBOLDT AND HUM ON ONE SIDE AND JAMES ON THE OTHER.
THE NEW IS REFLEXOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGICALLY BASED PSYCHOLOGY, SOMETIMES INCLUDING AMERICAN BEHAVIORISM AND THORNDIKE.
THE ULTRA-NEW IS WHAT VYGOTSKY CALLS 'STRUCTURAL' PSYCHOLOGY: THE GESTALTISM OF KOFFKA, KOHLER, AND LEWIN, SOMETIMES INCLUDING THE WURZBURGERS (KULPE, WERTHEIMER, BUHLER) .
VYGOTSKY SAYS WE HAVE A KNOT--DEVELOPMENT AND TEACHIING-AND-LEARNING APPEAR TO BE HOPELESS TANGLED.
FACED WITH THIS KNOT, THE OLD PSYCH SIMPLY CUTS IT: DEVELOPMENT IS DEVELOPMENT AND TEACHING-AND-LEARNING IS SOMETHING ELSE ALTOGETHER. PIAGET IS, IN THIS SENSE, OLD SCHOOL.
THE NEW PSYCH SIMPLY DISREGARDS THE KNOT. DEVELOPMENT IS TEACHING-AND-LEARNING AND TEACHING-AND-LEARNING IS DEVELOPMENT. THORNDIKE IS, IN THIS SENSE, NEW SCHOOL.
THE ULTRA-NEW SCHOOL TRIES TO DO BOTH AT THE SAME TIME AND TIES ITSELF UP IN KNOTS.
VYGOTSKY DOES SOMETHING QUITE SIMILAR IN CHAPTER SEVEN WITH THOUGHT AND WORD. THE OLD SCHOOL TREATS THEM LIKE A MAN AND HIS COAT. THE NEW SCHOOL SEES NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A MAN AND A COAT AND AN ANIMAL AND ITS HIDE, WHILE THE ULTRA-NEW SCHOOL ARGUES THAT THE MAN AND HIS COAT AND THE ANIMAL AND ITS HIDE ARE BOTH EXAMPLES OF SOMETHING CALLED GESTALT. VYGOTSKY REJECTS ALL THREE VIEWPOINTS: A THOUGHT AND A WORD IS LIKE A WORD AND A THOUGHT.
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. [Here, Vygotsky seems (very clearly) to be painting Piaget into the model of “the old psychology”—that is, invested in learning, not development.]
YES, EXCEPT THAT I THINK VYGOTSKY WOULD SAY THAT PIAGET IS INVESTED IN DEVELOPMENT AND NOT LEARNING-AND-TEACHING. AND HE'S RIGHT--THINK OF 'BIOLOGY AND KNOWLEDGE' WHERE PIAGET TRIES TO SHOW THAT KNOWLEDGE IS REALLY A WORKING OUT OF THE POSSIBILITIES OF RNA.
BUT YOU ARE ESSENTIALLY RIGHT--VYGOTSKY SEES PIAGET AS AN ANTI-BEHAVIORIST AND A NON-GESTALTIST, SO IN THAT SENSE PIAGET REPRESENTS THE ABSOLUTE CULMINATION AND ENDPOINT OF AN OLD PSYCHOLOGY--PIAGET IS THE LIVING PROOF THAT THE OLD PSYCH HAS NOTHING LEFT TO TEACH US. ABOUT THE WAY IN WHICH LEARNING-AND-TEACHING AND DEVELOPMENT ARE LINKED.
“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 WHICH as a lower threshold determinE teaching-and-learning. [[Here, Vygotsky is paying attention to the Piagetian view that the stages of cognitive development happen autonomously, outside efforts of teaching and learning. But the significance of this aspect of Piaget’s position is not explicated. In the context of the prior sentences, it would seem Vygotsky takes this fact to definitively prove his point that Piaget is only interested in learning, not development.]]
SORRY--MY LOUSY TRANSLATION. IT'S JUST THE OPPOSITE. PIAGET SAYS THAT CHILDREN DEVELOP. DEVELOPMENT DETERMNES LEARNING-AND-TEACHING. BUT THE OPPOSITE IS NOT TRUE. LEARNING-AND-TEACHING CAN NEVER DETERMINE DEVELOPMENT.
VYGOTSKY'S CHARACTERIZATION OF PIAGET'S POSITION IS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT--SEE PIAGET'S 1965 ARTICLE, 'DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING" WHERE HE BEGINS WITH THE CURT STATEMENT THAT "DEVELOPMENT EXPLAINS LEARNING" AND STRESSES THAT THE REVERSE IS NOT TRUE (HE ALSO, RATHER SCANDALOUSLY, ENDS WITH THE ASSERTION THAT HIS PSYCHOLOGY IS A FORM OF BEHAVIORISM PLUS OPERATIONS!
PIAGET, J. (1964) 'DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING' IN PIAGET REDISCOVERED, RIPPLE AND ROCKCASTLE EDS. ITHACA AND NEW YORK: CORNELL 7-19.
“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.
[[In this passage, Vygotsky seems to be completely reversing his prior effort to label Piaget as part of the old psychology (i.e., as interested in learning, not development). Piaget’s interest in the child’s thinking is being characterized as an interest in the qualitative methods of thinking, rather than in the particular content of the child’s thoughts (i.e., her or his “knowledge”).]]
NO, I THINK LSV IS COMPLETELY CONSISTENT HERE. I THINK THE PROBLEM IS THAT VYGOTSKY BEGAN BY SAYING THE OLD PSYCH IS ONLY INTERESTED IN DEVELOPMENT--NOT LEARNING. THE OLD PSYCH WAITED FOR DEVELOPMENT TO HAPPEN AND THEN LAID ON A LAYER OR TWO OF LEARNING. THIS DOES, ACTUALLY, MAKE SENSE FOR VERY LITTLE KIDS. BUT BY THE TIME THE KID HAS LEARNT TO SPEAK, IT BECOMES POSSIBLE FOR SPEECH TO COMPLETELY REPLACE PHYSICAL MATURATION OVER WIDE SWATHES OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT.
BY THE WAY, VYGOTSKY INCLUDES HIS OWN WORK IN HIS CRITICISM OF THE OLD PSYCH--HE IS CRITICIZING THE WORK HE DID ON 'COMPLEXES' IN THE TWENTIES AS BEING TOO BOUND BY DEVELOPMENT AND UNWILLING TO ACCEPT THE LEADING ROLE OF LEARNING-AND-TEACHING. I HAVE ALWAYS WONDERED IF THERE IS NOT A CERTAIN CONCESSION TO STALINISM AND STAKHANOVISM IN THE IDEA OF THE ZPD.
“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.” [[What seems to have been established up to this last sentence, is that Piaget and Vygotsky AGREE on the importance of development, and the relative unimportance of learning. The only real difference is that Vygotsky believes learning can lead development, Piaget thinks that’s not possible. Why this difference is so important to Vygotsky is not clear to me. But Vygotsky seems to think it’s very significant, making the Piagetian and Vygotskyan programs completely inconsistent with one another. In the last sentence, Vygotsky reduces everything to the question of whether development, likewise learning, is based on transformation of prior cognitive structures or onreplacement of prior structures by new ones. He attributes this latter position to Piaget, presumably, the former to himself.]]
WELL, VYGOTSKY AGREES THAT SOME LEARNING-AND-TEACHING IS UNIMPORTANT, AT LEAST IN DEVELOPMENTAL TERMS. BUT SOME LEARNING-AND-TEACHING SEEMS TO BE ABSOLUTELY PIVOTAL.
THE OBVIOUS ANALOGY IS PHYLOGENESIS. AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF MUTATION IS UNIMPORTANT AND EVEN COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE. BUT SOME MUTATIONS ARE ADAPTIVE.
BUT THIS IS ONLY AN ANALOGY. HUMANS ARE CRUCIALLY DIFFERENT FROM OTHER ANIMALS, BECAUSE THEY ARE ABLE TO INHABIT AND ADAPT THE ENVIRONMENT TO THEIR OWN BEHAVIOR INSTEAD OF JUST ADAPTING THEIR BEHAVIOR TO THE ENVIRONMENT. AS A RESULT, THERE IS FAR LESS WASTAGE IN THE PROCESS OF TURNING LEARNING-AND-TEACHING INTO DEVELOPMENT. AND--AT THE LEVEL OF INHABITING THEIR OWN BEHAVIOR AND ADAPTING THEIR OWN BEHAVIOR TO THEIR WILL, THE WHOLE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION CHANGES ITS MEANING--IT IS NO LONGER A DARWINIAN ADAPTATION AT ALL, AND ENTIRELY OTHER-CENTRED ACTIONS AND SELF-CENTRED SPEECH BECOME POSSIBLE.
I THINK VYGOTSKY WOULD AGREE WITH THE REST OF WHAT YOU SAID: VYGOTSKY DOES INDEED THINK THAT WHETHER OR NOT LEARNING CAN LEAD DEVELOPMENT IS THE KEY QUESTION, AND HE DOES THINK THAT THE PIAGETIAN AND VYGOTSKYAN PROGRAMMES ARE UTTERLY INCOMPATIBLE. SEE THE WORK OF DAVID KIRSHNER ON THIS POINT--IT'S VERY ILLUMINATING.
[[There are several puzzles in this final sentence for me. First, learning (absent development) would seem to be best characterized as accretion of knowledge, rather than transformation or replacement of prior knowledge structures. So if there is still an effort on Vygotsky’s part to label Piaget as interested in learning absent development (i.e., as part of the old psychology), he’s missing the mark.)
BUT YOU CAN SEE THAT IF YOU TURN IT AROUND, AND SAY THAT PIAGET IS INTERESTED IN DEVELOPMENT ABSENT LEARNING, IT WORKS PERFECTLY. PIAGET IS ONLY INTERESTED IN THE REPLACEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE STRUCTURES (NOT THEIR TRANSFORMATION, BECAUSE PIAGET DOESN'T BELIEVE THAT KNOWLEDGE STRUCTURES ARE TRANSFORMABLE). SO PIAGET IS INTERESTED IN DEVELOPMENT ABSENT LEARNING. IF YOU LOOK AT THE PIAGET BOOKS VYGOTSKY WAS READING, E.G. 'THE CHILD'S CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD' WITH ITS LONG DISCUSSION OF HOW TO SEPARATE OUT 'PURE' CHILD THINKING FROM ADULT-CONTAMINATED THINKING, YOU WILL SEE THAT VYGOTSKY IS SPOT ON.
Second, putting some of the above pieces together, it seems Vygotsky is seeing Piaget’s belief that qualitative changes in thinking cannot be led by learning as implying that processes of progress involve replacement (not transformation) of prior cognitive structures. In other words, Vygotsky believes that only if learning can lead development is it possible to have progress that consists of transformation of cognitive structures. Why in heaven’s name would he believe that?]]
WHY WOULDN'T HE? THE COGNITIVE STRUCTURES WE ARE INTERESTED IN ARE NOT BIOLOGICAL, OR EVEN INDIVIDUAL. HOW CAN THE OUTSIDE BECOME INSIDE EXCEPT THROUGH TEACHING-AND-LEARNING?
THE OLD PSYCH SEES THE MIND AS A KIND OF IDEAL COPY OF THE BODY--IT DEVELOPS THE WAY THE BODY DEVELOPS, THROUGH MATURATION ON THE ONE HAND AND EXERCISE ON THE OTHER. BUT THIS GROWTH AND THIS DEVELOPMENT IS PARALLEL TOO (I.E. NON-INTERSECTING WITH) THE BODY'S PHYSICAL MATURATION AND EXERCISE).
THE NEW PSYCH SEES THE MIND AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE BODY--ANOTHER ORGAN, NOT IN A METAPHORICAL SENSE BUT IN A LITERAL SENSE, BECAUSE IT IS SIMPLY A FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN. SO MENTAL DEVELOPMENT IS SIMPLY ONE FORM OF PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT. THERE CAN BE NO TALK OF 'LEARNING-AND-TEACHING' SEPARATE FROM DEVELOPMENT; THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN 'LEARNING-AND-TEACHING' ON THE ONE HAND AND DEVELOPMENT ON THE OTHER IS SIMPLY THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN EXERCISE ON THE ONE HAND AND MATURATION ON THE OTHER.
THE ULTRA-NEW PSYCH SEES MIND AND BODY AS SET IN SOME HIGHER GESTALT. BUT THAT IMPLIES THAT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TWO IS ALWAYS FIXED, AND THAT REALLY CAN'T BE AS FAR AS VYGOTSKY IS CONCERNED. WE HAVE TO SOMEHOW EXPLAIN HOW THE CHILD GETS FROM AN ANIMAL-LIKE EXISTENCE WHERE MATURATION AND EXERCISE ARE ALMOST EVERYTHING TO A SOCIO-CULTURAL STATE IN WHICH MATURATION AND EXERCISE WILL EXPLAIN ONLY WHAT THE CHILD DOES IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND A FEW OTHER SKILLS LIKE TYPING AND GOLF, BUT THAT'S IT.
NOW, VYGOTSKY'S SOLUTION IS TO CUT THE KNOT--NOT BETWEEN EXERCISE AND MATURATION, AND CERTAINLY NOT BETWEEN LEARNING-AND-TEACHING ON THE ONE HAND AND DEVELOPMENT ON THE OTHER. THE KNOT VYGOTSKY CUTS IS TEACHING/LEARNING-AND-DEVELOPMENT AND VIRTUALLY THE WHOLE OF EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY, UP TO AND INCLUDING GESTALTISM.
HE DOES THIS BY REJECTING THE INDIVIDUAL MODE OF DEVELOPMENT ALTOGETHER. THE MIND IS NOT A COPY OF THE BODY AND NEVER WAS. THE MIND QUA MIND (THAT IS, NOT SIMPLY A BRAIN AND ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS, BUT THE MIND AS PART OF SOCIETY) IS A MICROCOSM OF A SOCIAL UNIT: A FAMILY, A CLASSROOM, A SPEECH COMMUNITY. THAT'S WHY THE WORD 'MICROGENESIS' IS SO IMPORTANT HERE, EVEN THOUGH AS ANDY POINTS OUT, VYGOTSKY NEVER USED THE TERM HIMSELF. THAT IS WHY PEOPLE LIKE WERTSCH AND WELLS AND EVEN ME FEEL ABSOLUTELY COMPELLED TO USE IT AND TO USE IT QUITE SPECIFICALLY AS THE MISSING LINK BETWEEN TEACHING-AND-LEARNING ON THE ONE HAND AND MENTAL ONTOGENESIS ON THE OTHER.
David Kirshner
DAVID KELLOGG
HANKUK UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of kellogg
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2012 9:56 PM
To: lchcmike@gmail.com
Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity
Subject: [xmca] RE: microgenesis?
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.
PS-- ALL-- Note David's new email. I am probably not the only one who
missed the transition to it.
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