In the context of this discussion, I hope I will be excused for posting a
rather lengthy message as my take on this issue. It is an extract from
the paper that I gave at ISCRAT last year in the seminar, "Human Agency i=
n
Cultural-Historical Approaches: Problems and Perspectives"=20
<http://www.oise.on.ca/~gwells/iscrat.agent.html> The section from which
it is taken is sub-titled 'Individual Development'. I'd apprecciate
reactions.
Gordon Wells
-----------------------
It is in accounts of individual development, however, that there is the
greatest tendency to downplay agency. Whether attributed to the
maturation of universal predispositions, as in Chomskyan accounts of
language development, or to the influence of the social environment, as i=
n
accounts couched in terms of enculturation, development is widely
conceived of in terms of things happening to developing individuals rathe=
r
than in terms of their active participation in the process. This even
tends to be true of those who conceive of development in terms of
participation in communities of practice. Lave and Wenger (1991), for
example, who object to the Vygotskian concept of =91internalization=92
precisely because of its =91transmissive=92 implications, are remarkably
reticent about spelling out a more agentive alternative. While having the
merit of avoiding the separation of learning from actual engagement in th=
e
practices of a community, their concept of =91legitimate peripheral
participation=92 still has little to offer by way of explanation of how t=
he
knowledge and skills necessary for more central participation are activel=
y
made part of the individual=92s repertoire.
Constructivist accounts of development, by contrast, give due weight to t=
o
the individual=92s active role in the process of making sense of his or h=
er
encounters with the material and social world, but tend to ignore the
critical contribution to development made by those with whom the
developing individual interacts.
In this context, despite the criticisms currently levelled against
Vygotsky=92s use of the concept of =91internalization=92 to explain the
processes involved in individual development, it seems to me that there i=
s
still much to be gained from his insight that children=92s development an=
d,
in particular, their construction of =91the higher mental functions=92, t=
akes
place through their participation in joint activities in which others
provide guidance and assistance that enables them to go beyond what they
are able to do unaided. Fundamentally, his is a co-constructive account,
in which both the learner and those who provide assistance are agents in
the zone of proximal development.=20
Nevertheless, the objections that have been raised against some of the
better-known formulations of this insight, such as found in =93the genera=
l
genetic law of cultural development=94 (Vygotsky, 1981, p. 163), also hav=
e
force, for, in them, Vygotsky seems to draw what is now considered to be
an unacceptably sharp distinction between internal and external and
between social (intermental) and individual (intramental) functioning.=20
Here, I should like to consider these objections by focusing on the
temporal sequence in which functions are said to appear, =93first on the
social plane, and then on the psychological plane.=94