My input would be to wait til Monday - giving at least this week to see if
something develops with chapter 2. Reflection seems to be a central theme -
at least with the Russian research that followed -Venger, Zap, Galperin etc.
Paul, what are your thought?
-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Blunden [mailto:a.blunden@pb.unimelb.edu.au]
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 5:01 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: Leontiev Ch. 2 ... 3?
Time's slipping by ... any objection to me sending something by way of
starting discussion on Chapter 3?
Andy
_________________________________________
At 21:46 04/10/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>>>>
Dear xmca'ers, I have been following the posts for the last five days from a
non-personal computer and been unable to respond to the calls to move on to
Ch 2. I get the feeling that people are waiting for me to start it. I do
have all the notes from careful reading(s) of the chapter ready to write a
precis and expect to post that on Thursday morning. It's Wednesday night
right now and I just got back home. But if anyone is anxious to start the
discussion of Ch. 2, please feel free to post away since I don't think that
my role as chapter facilitator includes any function analogous to that of
the buzzer at Olympic races or, maybe more to the point, school bell
alerting everyone that it's time to file into the classroom. And although
Yrjo Engestrom didn't find any way to summarize the discussion, I'm
wondering if anyone else might dare to boil down some salient points of
convergence or disagreement beyond the "individual activity" issue already
raised. But with reference to that exchange I'd like to draw on a quote from
Leont'ev that James Wertsch used in "Vygotsky and The Social Formation of
the Mind.", p.211. " . . . human psychology is concerned with the activity
of concrete individuals, which takes place either in a collective--that is,
jointly with other people--or in a situation in which the subject deals
directly with the surround world of objects--for example, at the potter's
wheel or the writer's desk. However, if we removed human activity from the
system of social relationships and social life, it would not exist and would
have no structure. With all its varied forms, the human indivdual's activity
is a system in the system of social relations. It does not exist without
these relations. The specific form in which it exists is determined by the
forms and means of material and mental social interaction (Verkehr) that are
created by the development of production and that cannot be realized in any
way other than in the activity of concrete people. It turns out that the
activity of separate individuals depends on their place in society, on the
conditions that fall to their lot, and on idiosyncratic, individual
factors." Hoping that doesn't jump the gun on later chapters :)
Reflectively, Paul H. Dillon
**************************************************
* Andy Blunden, Teaching Space Support Team Leader
* Email ablunden@unimelb.edu.au or andy@mira.net
* http://home.mira.net/~andy/
* University of Melbourne 9344 0312 (W) 9380 9435 (H)
**************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 01 2000 - 01:01:16 PST