Date: Wed Sep 24 2008 - 07:01:43 PDT
If this email was posted successfully the first time around, please accept
my apologies for this one in response to gremlins unnamed.
_____
From: Paula Towsey [mailto:paulat@johnwtowsey.co.za]
Sent: 24 September 2008 02:52 PM
To: 'xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu'; 'David Kellogg'
Subject: RE: [xmca] The Strange Situation and picking up the threads
Dear David and the Study Group
It's a holiday here today which gives me time to pick up on some of the
threads you wrote about, David. And seeing it's a holiday, my weaving here
is more conversational and less chapter and verse - but in the process,
hopefully, without too many glossings-over or glitches - and I hope this is
okay with you.
I have on occasion found it helpful to view Chapter 5 of Thought and
Language as an executive summary to the extensive and more detailed research
work which underpins it. This research work, as I see it, would include
that of Vygotsky, Sakharov and company on the more than three hundred
subjects referred to in the chapter, and also could include the work done by
other scholars in the intervening years. Viewing the chapter as an
executive summary allowed me to forgive it for being frustratingly vague at
some times and to make allowances for the lack of presentation of empirical
examples when it is rather assertive at others. I think this also helps me
with its implicitness as coming before Chapter 6 and after Chapter 4,
coupled with its almost wholesale importation by Vygotsky four or five years
after the work had been conducted: the implicitness, for me, is that it has
links to the other chapters but one needs to find them. And tracing
threads, David, is a good way to do this, I think.
Some of the threads I've traced are in connection with what to me are the
most obvious differences in circumstance between a child learning a
rationalist concept al la Chapter 6 compared to al la Chapter 5, because,
for me, these threads link back to what's missing in Chapter 5: for
starters, the ZPD; the enrichment by everyday concepts; and no contextual
cues.
So, then, first to the contextual cues (the directing influence of adult
speech): the blocks are a method of double stimulation in that there are
objects of the activity (the blocks) and signs which help to organise the
activity (cev, bik, mur, and lag), as well as an experimenter, but there is
no contextual clue for the children to pick up on. There's no adult
involvement in usage as there is in 'house' and 'brother', and, equally,
there's no presentation of the funny words as a system of interrelated ideas
as there would be in explicit instruction for 'revolution' and
'hibernation'. This is for me the 'freedom' that Vygotsky writes about
which allows experimenters to see how children go about forming new concepts
without interference from the context of word usage that points to their
meaning: sure, the words do have a meaning that the experimenter has in mind
- and children under 14 in my study were given the idea the words came
(possibly) from children near the North Pole and so therefore they have some
kind of meaning - but the lack of contextual clue makes the
learning/problem-solving activity of the blocks more like presenting
children with a list from a dictionary - the meaning is there but you have
to ascend to the concrete to get to it.
And then, next, there's the absence of a ZPD - at least overtly - and at
least one which wasn't discussed or bandied about when the work in Chapter 5
was being done. Yet, in the blocks situation, when children are able
overcome the bewildering confusion of colour and shape, and when they are
able to be guided by the notion that the words mean something in particular
and are not just another characteristic of the blocks (ie, as more than
merely denoting that different names indicate a different kind of block and
as more than simply another characteristic like colour or shape), these two
abilities point to whether the task is within or above their zone of
proximal ability. In the DVD which I posted to you and Eric yesterday, you
will see something about intervention that I won't discuss here until you've
seen the DVD, but what I can tell you is that I intervened with six or seven
of the five-year-olds as I do in the DVD and the results were very
different. But the thing for me about the blocks is that they are not about
the ZPD: if anything, they're there to counter the supposition that some
scholars may have in believing that anything can be learned by a less
capable peer, irrespective of their level of intellectual development; the
types of connections they are likely to make; how consistent they are likely
to be in focusing on these connections; and whether they are able to take
advantage of the means provided for them in the learning situation or not.
The bottom line of these blocks, for me, is that they show the types of
connections that children would be most likely to make in the absence of a
contextual clue.
And, thirdly, enrichment by everyday concepts: just as a thought experiment,
David and the Study Group, how would your notion of everyday concepts be
affected if you were to consider that part of their richness and complexity
is due to the inconsistent, wobbly, 'because-they're-different',
flexible-to-the-point-of-not-bothered-by-contradictions,
'what-do-you-mean-I-have-to-grasp-the-task-as-a-whole-to-see-the-bigger-pict
ure-and-the-overall-system?', the solipsism of syncretic perspectives, and
all and any of the other (wonderful) characteristics that can be found in
Vygotsky's discussion of preconceptual reasoning? When I do this, my
appreciation for the processes involved in constructing 'everyday' concepts
- and in the way we play with and invent new words - is immeasurably
enriched, and I become a bit of a complex detective.
And then, if we extend this thought experiment further, to the traces of
complexes which may exist in many kinds of language usage by adults (eg,
Kozulin's great discussion on the kinds of 'gates' since 'Watergate'), then
perhaps we can appreciate how widespread these kinds of complex reasoning
strategies are. BUT (to use David's form of emphasis), the important thing
as I see it about finding complex-type thinking strategies and approaches
lurking in one form or another in the world around us is this: what
distinguishes a child's complex thinking from an adult's is that the child's
is INCONSISTENT. You and I have a system to compare things with, to
juxtapose (or, as Patrick Miller says, "to juxtasuppose") things against; we
have the ability to do this far more consistently than the children in the
blocks situations do, or, at the least, we have, or can have, an awareness
that we're being inconsistent. But the children who're inconsistent in
their approach to the blocks (or in working out the essential as opposed to
the functional characteristics of a group of blocks or a new word) aren't
doing this because they're being ornery, but because they can't be
consistent, because they're learning how to generalise and to abstract, and,
it seems to me, part and parcel of this learning is becoming more consistent
and aware of your actions (the conscious realisation and mastery, David?).
The reason I make this kind of statement is because in my experience with
the blocks an adult would never say "I put this one here because it is the
same shape, and this one here because it is the same height, and this one
here coz it's the same shape as that one next to it and the same colour as
the one next to that."
David and the Study Group, there are so many layers and levels to working
with the blocks and I hope to get the opportunity to discuss the ones I have
come across with you. At ISCAR I was able to compare notes with Mohammed
Elhammoumi (who's worked with them since 2001) and find that children in
Southern Africa and Saudi Arabia were doing the same things with the blocks
(although, to be sure, with cultural variation: for example, towers were
described as the House of the Big Bad Wolf in one part of the world and as a
minaret of a mosque in another(!)).
So now to pick up on some of your threads email. David, you wrote:
I think the gap between Chapters Five and Six is just one of the most
obvious of these pieces of the tapestry that needs patching. I also think
that LSV himself knew this, and he lets us know it:
"The system which emerges with the scientific concept is fundamental to the
entire history of the development of the child's real concpts. It is a
chapter of that history that is inaccessbile to research based on the
analysis of artificially or experimentally formed concepts." (Minick Trans.
pp. 223-224)
And my response is that I agree absolutely with Vygotsky's assertion here
(and with the substance of your argument, David), because to my mind the
italics should be around the words "The system". Because, firstly, I
believe that a 'system' depends on an ability to abstract and to generalise
consistently, and that, secondly, the blocks experiment as conducted by
Vygotsky and Sakharov, which seems is a more cumbersome approach than the
slightly different variation suggested by Hanfmann & Kasanin (and which I
found makes the whole process more flowing and less contrived), did not,
according to Vygotsky, allow for hierarchical thinking or generalisation
building mechanisms to be revealed. But these don't just, I believe,
pertain to the 'absence of a system' or, because it is another 'chapter',
negate the generalisability of the blocks findings. In the case of the
presence or absence of a system, Valsiner's analysis and Van der Veer's
argument elsewhere bring to light the meaning-making elements of the method
of double stimulation, inherent in the processes and actions of the
participants, and on the individual/individualised sets of experiences that
the subject brings to the experimental situation (and over which the
experimenter has little control) and which will influence how the subject
takes up or responds to the experiment. And then, as far as the
inaccessible chapter is concerned, for me the point that Vygotsky is making
here is that "THE SYSTEM" is not revealed in the study of artificial
concepts, perhaps because the blocks were never designed to provide an
account of systematic, 'scientific', rationalist thinking - what they were
designed to do was to allow the development of concepts spontaneously to
unfold before the experimenter, to demonstrate what happens when there is
'the absence of a system', and where there is no contextual clue. I've
included just one example below of how I've discussed aspects of this
before:
In the photograph below, this subject (S801F), twelve minutes into
the session, demonstrated several aspects of Vygotsky's assertions: what the
method of double stimulation allows to be seen in concept and language
development when "freed from the directing influence of the linguistic
milieu" (1986, p. 120) and "the absence of a system" (p. 205) in spontaneous
concept development.
In this subject's (S801F) explanations for the four groups, there continued
to be a lack of a consistent principle across them.
The mur blocks (bottom left) were now described as "tall, not as short;
round", whereas previously, they had been "pointy". When the subject's
attention was drawn to the mur triangle, she said "and one's not round".
The cev group (top right) was described as "short".
The bik group (top left) was described as "feelings", where the lag circle
had been placed next to the lag square of the same colour; the trapezoid was
put next to the triangle (flat?), and the green semi-circle next to the
green trapezoid (colour).
The lag group (bottom right) had been described as "the square ones" and
when the subject's attention was drawn to the blue bik circle, she had just
moved it across to the bik group before this photograph was taken (and the
yellow bik semi-circle remained in the group of "square ones").
And then, in relation to more than the presence or absence of a system, what
I agree is lacking here - and which I need to read more about (perhaps you
can provide me with pointers) - is where in Vygotskian psychology is an
account provided for the arrival of scientific, rationalist, abstract,
systematic thought? What is the explanatory mechanism which accounts for
it? If it is the social, then where did the socials get it - from the
history of previous generations of (adult) socials? From each other?
Piaget, I seem to remember, argued for reversibility.
Another thread, David, is where you wrote:
Shortly after this passage, he explicitly discusses why he thinks that
syncretic concepts, complexes, preconcepts and true concepts do NOT
correspond to the logical structure of concepts as learnt by the child in
school.
This is quite consistent with what he said in Chapter Five (on p. 161 of
Minick and elsewhere) about the difference between the concept as defined
and the concept as developed under experimental conditions: the
psychological categories revealed by Sakharov are based on the concept of
inclusiveness rather than logical hierarchy (that is why LSV harps so much
on the "rose" "flower" "plant" example).
To answer you in two parts: Firstly, I think, as I mentioned to you in a
previous email, that what you didn't provide in your fantastically mammoth,
rather-than-watch-Harry-Potter analysis of Chapter 5 was the potential
concept. By including the potential concept alongside the complexes, we get
two sides of the equation: generalising is what complexive thinking is
learning to do, and abstracting is what potential concepts are learning to
do. I would also argue that one needs a system that is more than merely
comparing 'same' and 'different' in order to be inclusive. Secondly, as I
have argued elsewhere, while it is true that the blocks don't allow
themselves to be thought of in hierarchical terms, it is only when one has
abstracted and generalised across two not readily noticeable characteristics
of the blocks (height and size), when one is able to do this without losing
sight of them once abstracted, and when one is able to assign them
hierarchical prominence (as opposed to concrete and factual observations of
what the blocks look like), it is then that one is able to conceptually
solve the problem of the blocks by framing the solution in terms of the
double dichotomy.
And then, David, concerning what you wrote about freedom and attention spans
and why I will continue to argue and present you with evidence to
demonstrate that the results of these blocks experiments, whether they be
Vygotsky's, Sakharov's, Stones & Heslop's, Mohammed Elhammoumi's or mine,
are not merely the results of 'strange situations':
At the very least, I think we need to accept what LSV says on p. 143 of
Minick's translation: "the child is not in fact free to develop the meanings
he receives from adult speech", and so the Sakharov experiment does merely
show us something hypothetical; what the child would do about concepts IF
the child were free to discover for himself the meanings of adult speech
(and also IF the child had an almost unlimited attention span!)
And that brings me to your first comment, about the extent to which the
Sakharov experiment can be said to be eco-specific. Rene van der Veer and
Valsiner (in Understanding Vygotsky) points out that the experiments were
VERY time consuming. This alone makes it strange situation, I'm afraid.
We can add an adult to make sure the child stays on task, of course. But it
will be a strange adult and it will make the situation even stranger.
Nor does it make the time significantly longer. The materials used in
Chapter Six cover a span of two years (and even then LSV feels obliged to
"extend" it hypothetically into a parallelogram of development which covers
the whole of elementary school. How can we compare an experiment, no matter
how long, to six years of school experience?
In response to your first paragraph here, my discussion of 'what's missing
in Chapter 5' at the start of this email offers my perspective on your
argument here.
And next, in response to the accusation of a very time consuming process
(and therefore a strange (and-to-be-discounted?) situation), I agree that
the approach discussed by Sakharov appears very time-consuming and stilted.
Now because it was my intention to conduct a replication of the original
study and its results, I admitted upfront in my paper that I was unable to
find evidence that links the original blocks and their specific method with
the particular method of double stimulation that we in the West have
inherited from Hanfmann & Kasanin. To put it simply (despite the danger of
oversimplifying things), I began my approach for each and every subject with
what I could glean from the Sakharov approach (focusing on one group at a
time) or the Hanfmann & Kasanin approach (which combines the options of
putting 'the blocks you think are the same as this kind, mur, here' with
trying to work out what the four groups could be right from the beginning),
depending on the cues that I got from each of the subjects, irrespective of
their ages. Then too, there is the aspect that Mike touched on, concerning
the behaviour of the experimenter, both inside and outside of the blocks
procedure. So much depends on the personality and behaviour of the
experimenter that is more than only the sensitivities paid to the subject:
as far as these sensitivities are concerned, though, I am a teacher (both
ends of the spectrum - preschoolers and adults) and so my sensitivities to
attention spans and emotions and getting it right or wrong and boys and
girls and games for kids and solutions that escape me even though I'm an
intelligent adult - all of these are the kinds of 'stuff' that we dealt with
and which in some measure is reported on in the scoring approach of Hanfmann
& Kasanin - both qualitative and quantitative, with their caveat about the
quantitative being considered incoherent without the corresponding context
of the qualitative.
And so how can we compare a long and strange situation with six years of
schooling? I hope my threads here will go some way to persuading you and
the Study Group that it is possible and also that following threads from the
journeys each of us takes before arriving at where you write the following
(and where we kind-of agree) is really what the social construction of
knowledge is about:
I think that's why Vygotsky is willing to accept that Sakharov's experiment
reveals processes that do not go away but play an important role in REAL
concept development; he believes that the categories of syncretism,
complexive thinking and preconcepts are all there even in the child's school
based thinking because underlying each is a mental act of generalization
which is not based on perception and memory but rather on conscious
awareness and mastery.
And also where you write:
In some ways, I think that Chapter Seven contains some of the answers I'm
looking for:
a) the compatibility of complexive thinking and even syncretism with
conceptual thinking is not absolute, but it is real: we can see it in poetic
language, and also in metaphor, upon which scientific thinking is highly
dependent (Halliday 2006).
b) conceptual thinking is not particularly widespread in modern man.
Concepts are based on language, but things are not at all the other way
around: language is by no means a matter of creating counters for concepts.
I do hope that we don't have to wait for another public holiday before I
manage to talk to you again because there remain many of the questions you
asked as yet unanswered by me - but perhaps the lack of public holidays is
just as well, because shorter and sweeter answers would probably be more
appreciated by everyone!
Paula T
Ps - I don't know if they (Columbus and Franklin) were complexifying when
sailing and Northern Passaging: perhaps what they were doing, which could be
the nub of scientific thinking, was building on the incomplete rather than
the pseudoconcept, because they were seeking those elements that were
essential (and which guaranteed survival) as opposed to merely functional
(which would allow for more day-at-a-time solutions). I think.
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