The term "institution-mediated mind" is made up by me.
I would like to emphasize the importance of institution when we talk about
human development in specific socio-hisitorical setting.
Vygotsky proposed a tool-mediated action and the idea was very interesting
to consider mind living in everyday. And he also emphasized an interpersonal
relationship for human development. The idea of 'Zone of Proximal Development'
was one of concepts related with it. But his theory and investigation lacked
the analysis of insitutional level. Every people lives as a socio-historical
person so that we should grasp the socio-historical person itself, not an
abstracted
person. "Institution" is a key term to catch whole person in a specific
community.
For example, I investigated a lesson in a first grade classroom. I
continued to
observe the same class a month for one year. All of them who included one
teacher
and about fifteen children constitued a specific class system.
In Japan, there is a greeting before and after each lesson, the children
on duty should say the greeting message for the teacher in the first and
the other children followed it. The teacher warned any children who did
not take a good manner form the standpoint of the teacher in April when the
school life started for them.
However, when few months went, the watchperson was taken the place
by children. Students on duty themselves gave any advices to the other
students and they often warm the other students strictly. The specific
power relation was produced in the classroom.
This phenomena looks like an internalization process. Some may say the students
learned or internalized teacher's manner in a school.
But I do not think so because the children's warning words were not as
same as teacher's ones. They were beyond the teacher's ones. The teacher
in July said to the student on duty " Do not warm so trivial things. "
Probably children acquired not only teacher's words but also teacher's
voice or a teacher itself. The concept " Panopticon' proposed by M.
Foucaut( See Discipline and Punish published by Vintage books in English)
can explains this phenomenon.
Therefore, children came from preschools 'be' students in the
school system.
We should take the student as a social existence into an object of our
research. We should construct the theory to understand an
institution-mediated mind. How can I comprehend the students in the
specific system not an abstract child in the air ?
That is my interest.
Please give me further ideas. Thank you.
Hiroaki Ishiguro
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At 11:48 AM 95.9.14 -0700, Esteban Diaz wrote:
>I was very taken by the term "institution-mediated mind". Could
>you please say more about this and provide me with some references?
>
>I think that this concept has great signficance in the context of the
>'back to basics' discussion that has started.
>
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H I R O A K I I S H I G U R O
Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education,
Miyagi University of Education
Aramaki Aza Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980 Japan
Phone/Fax:022-214-3523 E-mail :h-ishi who-is-at ipc.miyakyo-u.ac.jp
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