I began by teaching literature because as I explained to all of my peers in
college, science and math are about right answers but in literature we get
to talk about all the messy things in life: love, passion, emotion, values,
personality, etc. I think I even recall saying something like “the lettuce
in your teeth”! I was very enthusiastic and naïve. I mention this because it
coincidentally parallels Vygotsky’s start as a literature teacher, and is
also interesting in regard to Rey’s characterization of Vygotsky’s first
moment as emphasizing “the generative character of the psyche, the emotions
and fantasy”.
Personally, as a teacher, I changed what I could by conducting my own
classes. I worked within the schools trying to change them from within by
developing networks and professional development communities. I could see
outside forces exerting pressure, much like Andy describes in his
illustrations of the transformation of everyday life by institutions. Not
only did we have a ban on smoking (there was a smoking lounge in the high
school I started teaching in), but methods were affected by No Child Left
Behind because of the accountability factor requiring changes in the
emphasis on high-stakes tests. At the same time, I could see some
institutional practices, such as the practice of having Early Childhood
Education programs housed in Family and Consumer Sciences in the College of
Agriculture as indicative of how approaches to language learning and
literacy were still narrowly defined in the curriculum and in the domain of
Education (and Psychology in another realm altogether), as one of the
sources for a modularized way of thinking that blocked teachers and parents
from understanding the very important relationship between development and
learning. So after some consideration, I quit my full-time teaching job to
become a full-time grad student. Will I affect any kind of change this way?
I can only hope to stretch the range of my influence by a bit. I teach
education classes now at the University level where I try to teach and model
different theoretical approaches in practice with my own students, who will
hopefully take some of it with them into the classrooms with children. One
of the biggest things I try to change is the impression my students have
that there is “one right answer”, that truth exists and it is just out there
for the picking. I see a high number of students who are successful in
traditional school models who want to “play teacher” with a more traditional
“factory model” of education, just because it worked for them, without any
consideration of the fact that the children they will be teaching may not
come from anywhere near the same background and not have had the same
cultural and therefore language interaction as they. I also like to put my
students into real-situations with children (that’s my service learning
bit). A better understanding of the importance of culture in learning comes
from interacting at the situated level of experience—something you
understand.
I am always interested in this topic of the practicalities of teaching. But
now how does this relate to Rey’s article on Vygotsky, and how do the theory
and research wind together around the development of psychology as a
science, the methods and instrumentalism, and its separation from what Rey
is calling “the category of sense”? I started out there as a literature
teacher and a poet and I feel like we may be able to weave this back into
our methods and ground it with more contemporary theory.
From: mike cole [mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2011 1:17 PM
To: Monica Hansen
Subject: Re: Fernando on LSV
Nice that you posted on xmca. I will need to pull up the Sinha article.
A really good question is to inquire how, as a teacher, you would change
practices
depending upon which view you espoused. I think there are some real
differences, but
wonder what others would say.
Yes, using theory as a tool for life is what I try to do... darn weak
theories but then life has its complexities!! :-)
mike
mike
On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 6:16 PM, Monica Hansen
<monica.hansen@vandals.uidaho.edu> wrote:
Thanks for the reply, Mike. Did you mean to reply offline?
I think I am starting to get a handle on it. Watching and listening to the
discussion going back and forth is useful for me in constructing my
understanding. I can see where Rey is going in his interpretation of
Vygotsky. I am a Vygotsky enthusiast and have been for a long time (not as
long as you), but I am not a Vygotsky scholar, I am a teacher and graduate
student trying to finish my PhD; because of my day job, I am always looking
to understand how student’s(and really all) minds work so I can understand
how better to approach the practical day to day of learning situations in
school and at home with my own kids. I take a broad view because I don’t
have the luxury of living in a world where everyone says what they mean and
act as though they mean it. Most of the time, I see a lot of hurt feelings
and rash behavior, and that is just speaking of the grown ups ;). The
affective-and volitional have always factored into my fascination with
Vygotsky, so maybe I read his work with that lens?
Only I am still left, as you all are, trying to figure out a way to work,
write and research between those same poles as Vygotsky and others. You
posted Chris Sinha a while ago, did anyone take up with that? I have skimmed
back through the discussions and didn’t see it mentioned, but I might have
missed it. I think his work is relevant to this discussion of loss of the
meaning making with the overly simplistic view of sign and tool. Also, from
the same volume that article appeared in, a piece by William Croft, Toward a
social cognitive linguistics. At least from my perspective. Both, pay close
attention to expression and gesture as conveying meaning, and as you mention
allow for the possibility of polysemy. I intend to bring them up in the
discussion of Rey’s article. I hope there are more participants in the
discussion.
Monica
From: mike cole [mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2011 4:23 PM
To: Monica Hansen
Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re:Fernando on LSV
As I understand it, Monica, Rey is claiming (and in this agrees with many on
xmca, but not others) that the LSV of Psychology of Art was displaced for
several years by an instrumentalist Vygotsky. LSV liked to quote Bacon:
Neither hand nor mind alone, left to themselves, amounts to much;
instruments and aids are the means to perfection. Bruner highlights this
idea in his 1962 preface to LSV.
This view was easily assimilatable by American learning theorists in general
and those interested in the role of culture in learning in particular. For
the former, it appeared to be a rephrasing of what was called "mediated
stimulus-response learning" diagramed in a triangle with an x at the apex.
For the latter (me, for example) that little x and that kind of
instrumentalism provided a perfect way to think about culturally mediated
psychological processes. Similar interpretations can be made of Dewey.
But such instrumentalism has several (at least) drawbacks. Firstly, it
under-guestimates the polysemy of tools (and of course, the "tool of
tools."). In such under-guestimation it over specifies the goal (e.g., it is
easily reduced to the kind of functionalism that many argue against).
Thirdly, when these two pits are fallen into, it makes meaning MAKING, the
process of constantly imagining the future to be able to act in the present,
disappear from view.
Presumably, according to this line of thinking, the late Vygotsky has thrown
off instrumentalism and become a semiotic theorist. Then the problem becomes
one of not tipping over into idealism in which all is interpretation
obdurate reality "only" imagined.
I am not being so foolhardy to say that any of this is correct. But it is
how I interpret Fernando's argument. Anton, David, Van der Veer, Valsiner,
and others are the one's who can provide a more nuanced view of sequences
and relationships across the 1924-1934 period.
mike
On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 12:26 PM, Monica Hansen
<monica.hansen@vandals.uidaho.edu> wrote:
I am still working on the taking in the Rey article. Some of you are so
fast! I need a couple of nights of sleep at least.
In looking at the last bit of this post, Mike, can you clarify a couple of
things? You write that the work from Rey's "middle period" of Vygotsky's
work was more "easily assimilable"? What does that mean? And for who was it
more easily assimilable? For the translators and editors of the earlier
English editions or for the American and English reading audience who would
then go on to use it in their work? And then also, what issues of Larry's
and others do you think the "middle period" fails to orient us on? Is it the
issue with "instrumentalism" and "reductionist" methods and the following
"objectivism"?
Just trying to catch up and discuss. I know I have more to read in postings
so you may have already clarified.
Thanks,
Monica
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 7:59 AM
To: ablunden@mira.net; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Article for Discussion
The answer to your question, Andy, is that you should ask if we can post the
williams article for discussion in papers for discussion. After we discuss
Fernando's paper, we could turn to it. I agree, its very relevant, taking up
the Lave-McDermott Marx-->Learning paper from Outlines (I think) and arguing
for use value in education.
As to Fernando's paper, I have a different view.
Roughly, I interpret him as arguing that the focus on the period when LSV et
al were doing "instrumental" psychology, the instrumentalism involved
reductions that had unfortunate consequences but it was this aspect/period
of the work that English speakers focused on. The ties to Dewey here are
obvious and behaviorism ditto
(Skinner was in many ways following the lessons of his interpretation of
pragmatism).
Fernando, reading the outpouring of materials in English sees what he thinks
is a narrow focus and seeks to counter by pointing backward toward Psych of
art and forward to the late work. So, rather than focus on periodization,
wouldn't it be more
productive to focus on the extent to which the middle period which
interested us so
much, perhaps because it was more easily assimilable (for which see passim
all the criticism you care to read on the topic!) fails to orient us to the
issues that Larry and others have been focusing on?
mike
On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 7:46 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
Mike, I've been reading this article by Fernando Gonzales Rey, but I
really
am not interested in discusssing it. His periodisation of Vygotsky does
nothing for me. I mean, to describe Vygotsky's view of the development of
higher psychological functionse, as "objectivist" and some kind of
regression from the period before he wrote "Historical Crisis", which puts
him in the same basket as Behaviourism, is just so remote from how I read
Vygotsky, I would rather just bow out of the discussion. I admit, I
stopped
reading before I got through reading Rey on this period in which Vygotsky
apparently went backwards.
Any chance we could squeeze two articles out of Taylor & Francis for
discussion? I would like to see a discussion about Julian Williams' effort
to connect up a critique of formal education and Marx's analysis of
capitalism and commodity production. Could we have two going at the same
time?
Andy
mike cole wrote:
THNX FOR PICKING UP THE MISTAKE< ANDY
M
On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 6:35 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:
ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
Mike, you forgot to cc us all, but is the cc above still right for
Fernando?
andy
mike cole wrote:
Fernando Rey on turning points in Vygotsky's thinking was selected in
a last
minute rush of votes. I am having the article posted for all the
world
to read, but meantime, see attached.
The author, currrently living in Brasilia, is cc'ed.
mike
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*Andy Blunden*
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Book:
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<http://www.brill.nl/default.**aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
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*Andy Blunden*
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<http://www.informaworld.com/**smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=>
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Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
Book:
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<http://www.brill.nl/%0Adefault.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
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