"nate" <schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu> on 07/14/99 03:10:29 PM
Please respond to xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
cc: (bcc: David H Kirshner/dkirsh/LSU)
Subject: Re: sociogen redux
>> From this perspective, the link between social and cultural
>> processes and individual development is a direct one.
>> Students' mathematical conceptions are said to be
>> directly derived or generated by interpersonal relations and
>> their use of cultural tools. (Cobb et al., 1997, p. 152)
>I was curious who were these Vygotskians. I can see this to a certain
>extent if we are talking about neo-vygotskians such as Tharp and
>Gallimore's description of the ZPD. If we are talking about Vygotsky
>himself , I would have to strongly contest such a characterization. The
>development of a function, process, knowledge etc. did not become
>internalised in its social form but had a history of its own which the
>individual had a role in shaping. Even in his more Pavlovian days he
>utilized his "double stimulation" approach in which the subject went
>through two reactions one from the stimulus, and another inside the head
>prior to the effect. To describe this procedure he used Marx's famous
>quote on reflection (bees) that is in *Mind in Society*. I think a point
>that needs to be remembered with Vygotskians is what they are contesting.
>Vygotsky came into psychology within the theory of "idealistic"
>constructivism, rather than the behaviorism he was attempting to overcome.
>Within this context the active role of the individual/s is assumed not
>contested. Vygotsky's genetic law makes no sense without an assumption of
>constructivism - a "material" constructivism.
Nate, Let me give the full paragraph context of the above quote.
As a matter of course, researchers working in the
sociocultural tradition initiated by Vygotsky give
priority to social and cultural processes when
accounting for an individual's mathematical activity
(Kozulin, 1990; Wertsch, 1985). Thus as Vygotsky
(1979) himself put it, "the social dimension of
consciousness is primary in time and in fact.
The individual dimension of consciousness
is derivative and secondary" (p. 30).
From this perspective, the link between social and cultural
processes and individual development is a direct one.
Students' mathematical conceptions are said to be
directly derived or generated by interpersonal relations and
their use of cultural tools (cf. Forman, 1996; Minick, 1987;
van Oers, 1990). Analyses conducted in this tradition
therefore leave little room for psychological approaches,
such as constructivism, that focus on the individual.
(Cobb et al., 1997, p. 152)
I feel uncomfortable interpreting what Cobb et al. _might_ have
meant, but at least let me attempt a redescription. It seems
that they are interpreting the notion of individual consciousness
as "derivative and secondary" as indicating that it is directly
derived from the social dimension. Now you may argue that
Vygotsky's notion of "derivative and secondary" incorporates
a true dialectic. But how this is theorized (and not just claimed)
is by no means obvious. If two elements are dialectically
constituted, can one speak of a major and minor partner?
In their emergent approach Cobb et al. are arguing for a balance,
which, perhaps, is a more natural way to conceive a dialectic.
....
>> Their emergent approach, then, becomes associated with L&C's
>> second branch. This works for me, in that I've more or less assimilated
>> their second branch as all approaches that frame a dialectic
>> between inner mental life and outer social practices. Importantly,
>> as L&C point out, a dialectic is not a reduction of one to the other.
>> This interpretation of Cobb also squares with L&C's emphasis in the
>> second branch on the "as if" character of social engagement--
>> paralleling one interpretation of Cobb's "taken-as-shared" knowledge.
>I may be misunderstanding the first approach, but I assume it could be as
>dialectic, non reductive as the emergent approach. It would seem in
>certain situations the individual/s as a social macrocosm would have
>certain benefits. For example, some of the more post-modern, discourse
>approaches are overly "productive", as in telling one how a discourse is
>produced, but rarely deals with the consumption issue. I find Wertsch's
>"mediated action" as fitting into the first approach and offers a way to
>keep subject/world/tools as a dialectical unit. For me its a double nature
>of "mind in society" and "society in mind". Vygotsky in *Psychology of
>Art* and in discussing his "instrumental approach" saw them connected
>rather than appossitional. An approach that was concerned with ethnic
>psychology and the developmental history of the individual. I would assume
>Activity Theory would not negate one for the other. One could take a
>perspective of a subject and study the externalization (more competence) or
>internalization (developmental, individual change).
I appreciate your cogent discussion, and I fear that I may be oversimplifying
Lightfoot and Cox's position. But let me replay parts of my earlier quotations
from their chapter that leads me to see the first approach as reductive:
Those who are inclined toward a view of the child as part of a larger
whole [the first approach] deal typically with the issue of boundary
management by avoiding all talk of inner mental life, if not dismissing
it outright, in favor of the more material and publicly accessible plane of
action. (p. 7)
Proponents [of the second approach] have insisted that to
neglect intramental processes is to collapse psychological
development onto social contingency. Instead, it is typically argued
that individuals are separate from their environments, although
interdependent with them, and that the intersubjective world that
they forge together by way of transcending subjectivity, and to
which we refer as common or collective, is in fact only partially
shared. (p. 9)
David
Cobb, P., Gravemeijer, K., Yackel, E., McClain, K., &
Whitenack, J. (1997). Mathematizing and symbolizing: The
emergence of chains of signification in one first-grade classroom.
In D. Kirshner & J. Whitson (Eds.), Situated cognition: Social,
semiotic, and psychological perspectives (pp. 151-234).
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Lightfoot, C., & Cox, B. D. (1997). Locating competence:
The sociogenesis of mind and the problem of internalization.
In B. D. Cox & C. Lightfoot (Eds.), Sociogenetic perspectives
on internalization (pp. 1-21). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.