I was first attracted to Vygotsky's ideas about three years ago while
reading various articles by Luis Moll. As I read more about Vygotsky, I
became intrigued by the possibility of applying dialectical materialist
thinking in the area of pedagogy and school reform - it was refreshing to
step outside the liberal/conservative paradigm and to see such things as
the whole language/phonics debate, the struggle for bilingual ed., the
school failure of "at risk" youth, etc. in a different light.
I especially appreciated John-Steiner and Souberman's Afterword in Mind and
Society, and Newman and Holzman's Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist for
making explicit connections between what Vygotsky was attempting and the
thinking of Marx and Engels. I think Moll's work is a good connection
between these ideas about human consciousness and direct applications to
practice.
I did some classroom research last year in which I found that heeding
Vygotsky's ideas on "tool and result" caused me to experience a
methodological transformation and to see my data in a new light. I had
started out trying to "look at" zpd's between peer tutoring dyads and ended
up refocusing on the classroom collective as the unit of study and seeing
such things as social constraint, creativity, and play operating all around
me and influencing the work of the dyads and all other learning activities.
I am hoping to connect with other researchers who are interested in seeing
how practice informs theory (as Moll said in his article about a
constructivist bilingual classroom) as well as in looking for ways to apply
what we know about human consciousness to reforming teaching and school
organization.
Pete Farruggio