Re: [xmca] Re: microgenesis?

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

well we are sure agreed about the context dependent part. I arrue for
different principles of change in what Huw refers to as sociogenesis and I
refer to as cultural-historical genesis. I am just real uncertai about how
to characterize more micro levels of development/context/historical.....
change.

Wertsch's paper is one of several treatments of the topic, the only one I
could put my bytes on quickly and as a followup to Vera's suggestion. There
are other papers with other
examples. But first, what about what we have??

mike

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 8:51 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> **
> I will read the Wertsch puzzle, Mike. It is good to see (I think) that we
> are getting closer to the same page at last. I have reservations about
> seeking a context-independent meaning for "development" which does not
> constantly refer back to achievement of adult self-determination qua
> citizenship, which, as it happens, can be quite safely taken for granted in
> the case of elementary school children learning to read. Could I just
> mention, on the off-chance that it may be useful, the allusion I made to
> the Hegelian concept of "illusory." This means that a concept (form of
> activity within a situation) may appear, but then may turn out to be
> "illusory," a flash in the pan, so to speak. This is kind of the other side
> of "development." It does not provide something which can be built upon.
>
> I turn to my reading for today ...
> Andy
>
>
> mike cole wrote:
>
> I believe you are correct, Andy, it is indeed a germ cell approach to the
> acquisition of reading where "the whole task of reading" is present as an
> interactional "force field" within the setting. Precisely for this reason
> reading is not reduced to decoding, but no serious literacy scholar does.
> The big trick as the matter is usually formulated is that you first get
> the decoding right and then when it is automated or as it is automated,
> reading as comprending/interpreting the world emerges. That is sort of the
> Jean Chall approach, which should not be dismissed although I disagree with
> it; she was a very experienced, smart, scholar. But the problem with
> treating things in this level 1-level 2, lower-higher, order in organizing
> acquistion is that you are missing the "structure of the whole" at the
> beginning, reducing, too often, acquistion of reading to stimulus-response
> learning -- which in the cases of acquiring English literacy can be a
> challenge, ours being a mongrel language.
>
>  But all of this speaks to the question of what is meant by development
> in this entire line of discourse. Generality of a conceptual change is
> certainly an aspect of what is meant, along with generality of how one is
> treated by others. But always and again, at what scale? In relation to what
> other scales?
>
>  I am attaching an early Jim Wertsch paper that illustrates clearly the
> puzzle experimental procedure and how he and colleagues wrote about
> it early on. It is the kind of study Vera was referring to. I attach it as
> a means of making it possible to establish joint reference for those among
> us who are unfamiliar with the evidence being rererred to.
>
>  mike
>
> On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 7:50 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
>>  OK, I get what you want to discuss, Mike. I guess you posed the question
>> in terms of learning vs development in response to criticism posed in those
>> terms, but the whole controversy seems to function as a destraction
>> (Freudian typing mistake), doesn't it? Given all the caveats I so heavily
>> laboured in my contributions, there is really no problem with learning
>> which is taking place within the ZPD being called "microgenesis." The
>> momentary formation of an action which lies *outside *the ZPD is not
>> developmental for the child, so the situation is "illusory" (to use a
>> Hegelian term), so it makes sense to restrict the term "microgenesis" to
>> formation of actions-within-a-situation which child-and-carers can and can
>> only manage with the carers assisting the child, and the child cannot yet
>> manage alone. It is certainly obvious that ontogenetic development cannot
>> happen without such accomplishments.
>>
>> Going to your PS, David tells us that Vygotsky got the one-step-two-step
>> quip from Koffka. It ties up with Vera's observation about "generalisation"
>> of a new achievement, doesn't it. I guess that does not happen instantly.
>>
>> I would like to see you pursue the idea that Davydov's (and Vygotsky and
>> Marx and Hegel and Goethe's) idea of "germ cell" contains the germ of the
>> question you want answered here. I am a little torn by the proposition
>> because, on the one hand, I am drawn back to learning-perspectives which
>> have a whole subject matter in mind (e.g. comparing objects as the germ
>> cell for mathematical reasoning) and a conception of the germ cell which is
>> not just a reified object *or* an isolated action, but self-consciously
>> references a *situation. *But those two takes on the idea don't really
>> conflict, do they? That what was so impressive about the paper you shared:
>> the team went to the whole situation to redefine the problem of reading,
>> not just print, but "the world."
>>
>> I would like to hear your thoughts about this question. Wasn't the idea
>> of reading being "*expanding* the ability to mediate one's interactions
>> with the environment by interpreting text" the germ cell (if only it could
>> be formulated as such) of Question Asking Reading? Isn't there a germ cell
>> of microgenesis somewhere in there?
>>
>> Andy
>>
>>
>
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