"I find that reading chapter 13 is enlightened by reading chapter 14, on
social development. Could there be a segue created between the two
chapters? I don't know the relevant research on the issue of how schooling
promotes social development, but the fact that it throws children together
for so many days of the year, with significant mediation by adults,
schedules, rules, etc. must have some effect on people's ability to
interact later in life, whether in work or play settings. The shifting
emphasis in schooling from individual to group work may also have some
impact on the aspects of cooperation and competition as well."
I know from my teacher training I found the segregation of these two
(cognitive, social) quite frustating. Actually they were not only two
seperate classes, but two different departments (family studies and
education). This has what has attracted me so much to Elkonin's work - a
synthesis of Freud/Erickson and Piaget along with Vygotsky's ideas. A look
at a thing called development and schooling that does not severe the
social/emotional from the cognitive. While following a strict synthesis of
El'konin's ideas may not be the way to go, it seems that uniting those
aspects of development with an emphasis on how they relate to and transform
each other would be friutful.
That is how I understand Gee's argument in the New Literacies which he
credits the sociocultural folks and Wertsch's discussion of recipical
reading. Recipical reading success being somewhat related to the social
aspect as in Wertsch's reference to "appropriation" (Mind as Action 128).
He mentions Palincsar and Brown's (1984) research in which it was compared
to other approaches that would give the same cognitive benefits but leave
the participant structure unchanged (ZPD). My understanding with both
approaches is there is a social/cognitive dialectic which can not be
explained on solely a cognitive dimension. When the cognitive was
abstracted from recipical reading it did not achieve the results of
recipical reading as a dialectical social/cognitive unit.
In one of my classes we looked at some textbooks overtime and it was
shocking how the same topics, chapters, sections from the 60's were
present in the 90's. I would be curious of constraints or lack there of
that occurs when writing such a text book. I would assume there are some
very strong historical contraints which one has to function under.
Nate