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Re: [xmca] LSV's use of metaphor
Thanks for your excellent examples Mike and of course for the lines from Little Gidding. I am heartened to learn of your love of poetry and that verse hit the spiral exactly.
I am excited about getting to know this community of learners!
Thanks to all of your for the treasures of metaphor use from the mind of LSV!
RL
Robert Lake Ed.D.
Assistant Professor
Social Foundations of Education
Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Georgia Southern University
P. O. Box 8144
Phone: (912) 478-5125
Fax: (912) 478-5382
Statesboro, GA 30460
"Democracy must be born anew in every generation and education is its midwife".
-John Dewey
>>> mike cole 10/10/10 2:44 PM >>>
Thanks for all that Robert.
As I mentioned, I am interested in LSV's metaphors of development and I have stored up some to
put together and present back to the group to think about,
Just to respond to the bruner staircase metaphor and its embodiment in the interesting graphic:
Spirals result when you put a circle into motion. I think that the idea of a spiral of development has to be very old indeed. It is all over catholicism. For example, T.S. Eliot, in Little Giddings" writes
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
I have been thinking that the "penetration/sticking into" combined with the "spinning around its axis" ideas could be usefully combined, especially when one of the examples the Russian dictionary gives is poking yourself with a stick! And the two examples given in the authoritative Dal dictionary following the "growth" branch of vryashchivanie" bear some thought.
1. An ingrown toenail.
2. A hut being absorbed by the earth.
How is it that the toe and whether and how it is encased in leather part of the day influences the ingrowing process?
The hut, made of brick and beam and metal fittings cannot be absorbed by the earth as if it was like the mixing of two bags of sugar. The beams and metal fittings would, in more a pierce mode than an absorbative mode be incorporated, grow into, be asorbed by the earth. The earth would, in the short run at least, be modified by what it absorbed. The process can last a long time. See a classic archeological site or visit Verdun.
So we need time going both directions, "inside out and outside in" (where inside and outside are themselves complex relational concepts) and parts of the process (the metal beams vs the mud walls) disintegrating and being absorbed into, with minimal structural change) the earth below the hut.
Metaphorically speaking.
mike
PS-- The diagram you sent is itself worth extensive discussion as a potential embodiment of the idea of developmental instruction.
On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 11:47 AM, Robert Lake wrote:
Mike,
Here is a link to an interesting and simple illustration of Bruner's "spiral" curriculum at work.
http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/images/5/59/Cognitive_9.gif
RL
Robert Lake Ed.D.
Assistant Professor
Social Foundations of Education
Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Georgia Southern University
P. O. Box 8144
Phone: (912) 478-5125
Fax: (912) 478-5382
Statesboro, GA 30460
"Democracy must be born anew in every generation and education is its midwife".
-John Dewey
>>> mike cole 10/07/10 10:20 PM >>>
You need to say more for me, Robert. How would that work?
Spirals. Now there is an interesting geometric shape to consider. How did
Bruner deploy it?
mike
On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 6:38 PM, Robert Lake wrote:
> David,
> Could the dialectical relationship between personal metaphor creation and
> the processes involved in the "assimilation of terminology" provide an
> example of Vygotsky's quest for synthesis between the disparate views of
> early 20th century psychology? Or perhaps to use Bruner's metaphor of the
> spiral staircase........need I say more?
> RL
>
> Robert Lake Ed.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Social Foundations of Education
> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
> Georgia Southern University
> P. O. Box 8144
> Phone: (912) 478-5125
> Fax: (912) 478-5382
> Statesboro, GA 30460
>
> "Democracy must be born anew in every generation and education is its
> midwife".
> -John Dewey
>
> >>> David Kellogg 10/07/10 8:07 PM >>>
> Vygotsky's metaphors are many and varied: peas in a sack (child concepts),
> guerrilla warfare vs. prolonged seige (theoretical vs. empirical research),
> and my all-time favorite, "science concepts do not drop into the child's
> mouth like a flock of already roasted-pigeons".
>
> But it seems to me that any discussion of his use of analogy should include
> his discussion of the LIMITS of metaphor. This is in the context of his
> analogy between the learning of scientific concepts and the learing of
> foreign language words, which can be found, in the Minick translation, in
> Volume One, p. 223, of the Collected Works. Here's OUR translation:
>
> "In substance, our analogy always treats the development of two aspects of
> a single and same process by their psychological nature: verbal thinking. In
> the one case, that of the foreign language, what comes into the forefront is
> the external, sonorous, phasal* properties of verbal thinking; in the other,
> the development of scientific concepts, it is the semantic process of the
> same process. For this reason the assimilation of a foreign language
> doubtless requires, even though in a minimal measure, the mastery of the
> semantic aspect of the foreign language, just as the development of
> scientific concept requires, even to a minimal extent, some effort to master
> scientific language, the symbols of science, which intervene in an evident
> fashion during the assimilation of terminology and symbolic systems, such as
> that of arithmetic. For this reason, one might expect from the very
> beginning that we might find the analogy that we are developing here. Yet we
> know
> that the development of the phasal and semantic aspects of language do not
> repeat themselves but follow specific ways, and so we must expect that our
> analogy will prove to be incomplete like any other analogy and that the
> assimilation of a foreign language with respect to the maternal tongue shall
> present resemblances to the development of scientific concepts with respect
> to that of everyday concepts in some determined relations, while in others
> there will be profound differences."
>
> And it seems to me that there's a very SIMPLE explanation for the failure
> of the analogy, too. Every foreign language represents, in the final
> analysis, somebody ELSE'S everyday concepts.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
> --- On Thu, 10/7/10, Achilles Delari Junior wrote:
>
>
> From: Achilles Delari Junior
> Subject: RE: [xmca] LSV's use of metaphor
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Date: Thursday, October 7, 2010, 4:37 PM
>
>
>
> Well...
>
> I also remember that in 1929 Vygotsky compared old psychological views with
> the "Comedia del'Arte", because the fixed roles of the psychic functions
> compared to the fixed roles of the characters in that kind of drama... This
> is at the paper "Concrete human psychology" in English it was published at
> Soviet Psychology, 1989, v. 17, n. 2 - but I don't have my copy of the
> English version here anymore.... only a Portuguese version. In the same text
> is present also the metaphor about consciousness as telephonist in contrast
> and complementation to Pavlovian metaphor about brain as telephonic central,
> if I remember well... This same subject was repeatead at the book "The
> history of development of higher mental functions" from 1931 (In Spanish
> edition of the Works, as in Russian, it is the Volume III)... A metaphor
> with trains and rails was used as well, in reflexological discussion, for a
> comparison with Sherrignton's contributions about much more afferent ways
> (rails) than efferent ones... but by memory I don't know more if this is
> at that reflexological text from 1924 or from 1925... (Consciousness as
> problem of behavior psychology). In the Psychology of Art, certainly he also
> repeat the Sherington formulation, but I am not so sure about where was the
> "train metaphor"... If you have interest in this "train" metaphor, I can
> localize the actual sources, for this too...
>
> Best.
>
> Achilles.
>
>
> > Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2010 15:05:08 -0700
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] LSV's use of metaphor
> > From: lchcmike@gmail.com
> > To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >
> > Woa, not so sure about the train track metaphor. The train moves freely
> up
> > and down a pre-scribed
> > track and the only thing that can vary "independently" is speed! Brrrr.
> > mike
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 2:20 PM, Colette Murphy wrote:
> >
> > > One that I like a lot:
> > >
> > > According to Vygotsky the teacher should be the track upon which the
> train
> > > coaches move freely and independently. The track only gives the coaches
> the
> > > direction of their own movement.
> > > (Vygotsky, A Reawakened Star:
> > > http://www.marxist.com/science-old/vygotsky_501.html)
> > >
> > > Best
> > >
> > > Colette
> > >
> > > Dr Colette Murphy
> > > Senior Lecturer
> > > School of Education
> > > 69 University St
> > > Queen's University
> > > Belfast BT7 1HL
> > >
> > > tel: 02890975953
> > > ________________________________________
> > > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf
> > > Of Robert Lake [boblake@georgiasouthern.edu]
> > > Sent: 07 October 2010 21:15
> > > To: Culture Activity eXtended Mind
> > > Subject: [xmca] LSV's use of metaphor
> > >
> > > Hi Everyone,
> > > I am gathering the use of metaphors in Vygotsky's work for a
> publication
> > > and want to be sure to include as many as possible.
> > > without any knowledge of Russian along with the fact that I have
> > > only recently begun a serious investigation of his work.
> > >
> > > In her essay on Vygotsky on Thinking and Speaking in the Cambridge
> > > companion to Vygotsky,(2007) Vera John-Steiner cites some of Vygotsky's
> most
> > > famous examples, i.e. inner speech as "speech turning inward"; thought
> as a
> > > "cloud shedding a shower of words"; "consciousness is reflected in a
> word in
> > > a word as the sun in a drop of water". (p.151).
> > >
> > > Yes I know "tool" is a controversial example to some people :-).
> > >
> > > Can you folks think of any others ?
> > >
> > > Thank-you in advance for any help with this.
> > > Robert Lake
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Robert Lake Ed.D.
> > > Assistant Professor
> > > Social Foundations of Education
> > > Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
> > > Georgia Southern University
> > > P. O. Box 8144
> > > Phone: (912) 478-5125
> > > Fax: (912) 478-5382
> > > Statesboro, GA 30460
> > >
> > >
> > > Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
> > > midwife.
> > > -John Dewey.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > xmca mailing list
> > > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
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