I believe that is also necessary call attention to the specific role of
play in categorial thought development process, according to Vygotsky.
Through play, the objects loose their deterministic power (in relation
to children's actions)and the behaviour of children began to be directed
by their ideas.
Another thing I think it is important to be said is that, to Vygotsky,
play is not strictlly a simbolic action as believed Piaget. Instead of
referering to this kind of action as a "simbolic play", Vygotsky prefers
to use only the word "play" ('brinquedo' in Portuguese). To him, the use
of "pivots" by children were governed by the objects
appropriate/possible
use as a "double" of the thing to be "represented". This, for him, it is
not a symbolization stricto sensu - where everything can be everything.
(A pen or a pencil could not be used as a "horse" by a child who wants
to "ride a horse")
nate wrote:
>
> Mike and others,
>
> While I definitely agree that "play" tends to be ignored at other levels (9
> and 14 year old) at least in the sense Vygotsky defined it, in younger
> children, I question if there is more than just seeing play by its outward
> appearance (not work). My understanding of play is, it is often seen as
> opposition to work or rather it becomes defined by what it is not, rather
> than what it is. In this sense if we take how Vygotsky saw play at the
> preschool age (rules and result) (tools and result) and don't see it as
> something one moves beyond, but it also develops I think there are other
> possibilities for seeing "play" at different levels.
>
> In this sense, I see Holzman and Newman's work as taking how Vygotsky saw
> the ZPD operating in play to different levels. They transform rules and/for
> results into tool and /for results with play being the former. Play
> (performance, drama, writing etc.) is not in opposition to "reality" or
> work, but connected to it. As with children who play mommy and daddy it is
> very well connected to reality, but at the same time the child can be what
> she/he is not (a head taller than him/her self). In *Schools for Growth*,
> I see "play" being elaborated at a variety of levels. In using both
> Vygotskian ideas of play and Wiittgensteinian language games the importance
> of performance is invoked. From the social therapy centers, to the All
> Star Talent Show a variety "play" activities are described.
>
> In Vygotsky's article on play and in later work (*Child Psychology*) on
> imagination in late childhood, he makes a pretty direct connection between
> the two. So, play (in the preschool period) being not simply a transition
> from rules "and" to rules "for" results, but also having an important
> relationship to creativity, imagination, or "revolutionary activity" to use
> Newman and Holzman's term. As Vera describes in *Notebooks of the mind*
> the act of creativity is not in opposition to culture but a gift to it.
>
> For me, Vygotsky arguing for the ZPD in both play and education is of
> central importance. The connection is not simply that play has the same
> function for younger children that instruction has for older children, but
> a "unity of opposites". As Vera describes in *notebooks* that creativity
> was not solely embedded within this sole individual against the social, but
> that the social; teachers, parents, friends, books etc. facilitated or
> supported that creativity.
>
> While "little league" or other activities are play in an opposition sense
> (not work) are they in the "developmental" sense. Is what Vygotsky saw as
> characteristic of play in preschool better found in other avenues. I tend
> to see the 5th D as being more consistent with play in a "developmental"
> sense.
>
> /\ / /\ | /-----
> / \ / /__\ ---|--- /---
> / \/ / \ | /----
>
> Nate Schmolze
> http://www.geocities.com/~nschmolze/
> schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu
>
> *******************************************************************
> "Pedogogics is never and was never politically indifferent,
> since, willingly or unwillingly, through its own work on the psyche,
> it has always adopted a particular social pattern, political line,
> in accordance with the dominant social class that has guided its
> interests".
>
> L.S. Vygotsky
> ********************************************************************