Hi Andy-- Maybe I am off on a totally mistaken path here. It
would not be the first time. But in raising the examples I
have, I have been seeking to clarify a question, i think
initiated by greg about microgenesis.
Here is the question I have been trying to get clear about.
Is there such a process, in a Vygotskian framework, as
micro-genesis that involves development? Or is all
microgenetic change "learning." (As in the
learning/development distinction).
So each time an answer comes back that moves the genetic
domain from
microgenesis to ontogenesis from *my* perspective, its a
change of topic,
not an answer.
David pointed us to Vygotsky/Koffka on maturation
(development? ravitie?) and learning (obuchenie), which
introduces its own ambiguities?
I want to print out the materials that David posted to read
more carefully and am hoping we can either dismiss my
question as a misunderstanding of what the conversation was
about or hone in enough on the topic so that we all feel like
we are talking about the same thing. Right now I am pretty
sure we are not.
mike
On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 6:25 AM, Andy Blunden
<ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
No, I don't believe Vygotsky is speaking of microgenesis,
Mike.
My PS was responding to David saying:
"It’s that moment when learning-and-teaching leads
development, or
opens the next stage of development (as Koffka says, a
pfennigsworth
of learning and teaching yields a mark of development)
that I always
thought was called microgenesis."
Andy
Mike Cole wrote:
Is he speaking of micro genesis, Andy?
Mike
On Oct 3, 2012, at 5:59 AM, Andy Blunden
<ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
Mike, reading Chapter 6 of "Thinking and Speech"
about written speech,
it seems to me that Vygotsky takes the
development of written speech as
archetypical and a pre-requiresite for the
development of true concepts
in modern society. He actually says that in
taking up instruction in
grammar (which is always associated with the
learning of written speech)
he is deferring the formation of scientific
concepts to "susbsequent
sections"!!
As is well-known, he points to at least three
characteristics of written
speech which are significant: that it requires
conscious awareness of
the semantic, syntactic and phonetic properties
of both inner and oral
speech; it requires an abstraction from the
speech-situation and in
particular the interlocutor; finally, it requires
a motivation which is
entirely absent for the child when they begin to
learn written speech.
Each qualitative leap, each /development/ in the
psychological growth of
a child is marked by a crisis and sharp change in
the will, the
development of new motivations and therewith new
relationships, new
"situations". The motivation is no longer
provided by the situation, an
answer is required when there is no question.
Thus the achievement of
written speech requires conscious control of the
will in abstraction
from the situation, and reflecting upon and
controlling inner speech.
The formulation of actions, thinking, in the
absence of the actual,
sensuous presence of the stimulus, is one of the
most central
characteristic of conceptual thought. This is a
development that is
required even in non-literate communities. But in
modern societies, the
psychic functions required for conceptual, i.e.,
culturally inherited
means of action, are acquired through formal
schooling and as I see it
the means of doing so is the mastery of written
speech.
Back on the 29 September, you asked:
"Since qualitative change in the organization
of sensory-motor
behavior appear off the table when discussing
HIGHER psych
functions, might you turn your scalpels to the
acquisition of the
ability to read a phonetic alphabet fluently?
How am I going wrong
in believing that acquisition of reading is a
developmental process
in which learning also plays an essential role
that shifts in the
course off acquisition?"
It is really nothing to with sensory-motor
behavior, even though
sensory-motor behavior is the only means by which
written speech can be
manifested. But if a child has normal vision and
normal control of their
hands, and these functions are sufficiently
developed to recognise the
letters of the alphabet, then teaching the child
to read and write them
is a good move. But it is not development itself.
What is development is
acquisition of those functions Vygotsky talks
about: abstraction from
the semantic, syntactic and phonetic properties
of oral speech;
abstraction from interlocutor and the speech
situation; and the
development of motivations to write. None of the
actions implied in this
psychological development are possible unless the
child has /some/ means
of written speech. Learning the ABCs simply
creates the possibility for
the leap of mastering one's own thinking by the
culturally-specific
means of written speech with a phonetic alphabet.
That's how I read it.
Andy
PS. David. "Microgenesis" is not really part of
my vocabulary, but I
think it is not warranted to apply the term to
the critical phases of
ontogenesis. These are after all ontogenesis. I
have always taken
"microgenesis" to refer to the processes whereby
a given psychological
condition, or process, or action, is manifested
out of its conditions,
ie., something which happens every second. E.g.
if I have a problem and
then I hit on the solution; or if I meet someone,
and in a second or two
recognize them and adopt an orientation to them;
or I want to speak in a
meeting, stand up and then speak. That is the
context in which I say
concepts /are/ themselves processes of
development (and not just the
product of development).
mike cole wrote:
Thanks David.
So there is microgenetic DEVELOPMENT of
reading, or is LSV talking about
the ontogenetic change that comes from
mediation of activity through
literacy?
mike
On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 7:56 PM, kellogg
<kellogg59@hanmail.net
<mailto:kellogg59@hanmail.net>> wrote:
First of all, here's Vygotsky attacking
Meumann and Piaget for the
view that learning to read and write is
really just learning, and not a
fundamental restructuring of the child's
understanding. It's from Thinking
and Speech, Chapter Six, Part Three. But
unfortunately neither English
translation is really adequate. So here
is the Russian:
Обучение как бы пожинает плоды детского
созревания, но само по себе
обучение остается безразличным для
развития. У ребенка память, внимание и
мышление развились до такого уровня, что
он может обучаться грамоте и
арифметике; но если мы его обучим грамоте
и арифметике, то его память,
внимание и мышление изменятся или нет?
Старая психология отвечала на этот
вопрос так: изменятся в той мере, в какой
мы будем их упражнять, т.е. они
изменятся в результате упражнения, но
ничего не изменится в ходе их
развития. Ничего нового не возникнет в
умственном развитии ребенка от того,
что мы его обучим грамоте. Это будет тот
же самый ребенок, но грамотный.
Эта точка зрения, целиком определяющая
всю старую педагогическую
психологию, в том числе и известную
работу Меймана, доведена до логического
предела в теории Пиаже. Его точка зрения
такова, что мышление ребенка с
необходимостью проходит через известные
фазы и стадии, независимо от того,
обучается этот ребенок или нет. Если он
обучается, то это есть чисто
внешний факт, который еще не находится в
единстве с его собственными
процессами мышления. Поэтому педагогика
должна считаться с этими
автономными особенностями детского
мышления как с низшим порогом,
определяющим возможности обучения. Когда
же у ребенка разовьются другие
возможности мышления, тогда станет
возможным и другое обучение. Для Пиаже
показателем уровня детского мышления
является не то, что ребенок знает, не
то, что он способен усвоить, а то, как он
мыслит в той области, где он
никакого знания не имеет. Здесь самым
резким образом противопоставляются
обучение и развитие, знание и мышление.
Исходя из этог Пиаже задает ребенку
такие вопросы, в отношении которых он
застрахован от того, о,что ребенок
может иметь какие-нибудь знания о
спрашиваемом предмете. А если мы
спрашиваем ребенка о таких вещах, о
которых у него могут быть знания, то
здесь мы получаем не результаты мышления,
а результаты знания. Поэтому
спонтанные понятия, возникающие в
процессе развития ребенка,
рассматриваются как показательные для его
мышления, а научные понятия,
возникающие из обучения, не обладают этой
показательностью. Поэтому же, раз
обучение и развитие резко
противопоставляются друг другу, мы приходим с
необходимостью к основному положению
Пиаже, согласно которому научные
понятия скорее вытесняют спонтанные и
занимают их место, чем возникают из
них, преобразуя их.
"Teaching-and-learning reaps the benefits
of the children's maturation,
but is in itself of no interest to
development. If we teach literacy and
numeracy when the child's memory,
attention and thinking have evolved to
such a level that it can be taught, will
his memory, attention and thinking
change or no? The old psychology
responded to this question thus: it will
change to the extent that we exercise
them, i.e. it will change as a result
of exercise, but nothing will change in
the course of their development.
There is nothing new here in the mental
development of the child from what
we taught him to read. It will be the
same child, but competent. This
view is entirely fixed by the whole of
the old educational psychology,
including the well-known work of Meumann,
and brought to its logical limit
in Piaget's theory. His point of view is
that the child's thinking must
needs to pass through certain phases and
stages, regardless of whether the
child undergoes teaching-and-learning or
not. If he undergoes it, this is
a purely external fact, which is not yet
in any communion with his own
thinking processes. Pedagogy should
therefore be considered alongside the
autonomous features of children's
thinking, as a lower threshold
determining teaching-and-learning. When a
child develops, other ways of
thinking and other forms of
teaching-and-learning will then be
possible. For
Piaget, the indicator of the child's
thinking is not what the child knows,
not what he is able to learn, but the way
he thinks in an area where he has
no knowledge. Here lies the very sharpest
contrast between
teaching-and-learning and development,
between knowledge and thinking. It
is on this basis that Piaget sets the
child questions with respect to which
he may be assured that the child can have
no knowledge whatever. For if
we ask the child about things about which
he may have knowledge, here we do
not get the results of thinking, but the
results of knowledge. Therefore,
spontaneous notions arising in the
development of the child shall be
considered as indicative of his thinking,
and scientific concepts that
arise from learning-and-teaching, do not
have this potential. For the
same reason, once learning-and-teaching
and development are sharply
counterposed to each other, we
necessarily arrive at the main point of
Piaget, according to which scientific
concepts rather displace spontaneous
and take their place rather than derive
from them, transforming them."
Later on, Vygotsky dwells at some length
on his disagreements with Koffka.
It will be seen that the passage which
Vygotsky is lingering over is
precisely the one that Mike sent around:
Есть, наконец, третья группа теорий,
которая особенно влиятельна в
европейской детской психологии. Эти
теории пытаются подняться над
крайностями обеих точек зрения, которые
изложены выше. Они пытаются
проплыть между Сциллой и Харибдой. При
этом случается то, что обычно
происходит с теориями, занимающими
среднее место между двумя крайними
точками зрения. Они становятся не над
обеими теориями, а между ними,
преодолевая одну крайность ровно в такой
мере, в какой они попадают в
другую. Одну неправильную теорию они
преодолевают, частично уступая другой,
а другую . уступками первой. В сущности
говоря, это . двойственные теории:
занимая позицию между двумя
противоположными точками зрения, они на самом
деле приводят к некоторому объединению
этих точек зрения.
Такова точка зрения Коффки, который
заявляет с самого начала, что развитие
всегда имеет двойственный характер:
во-первых, надо различать развитие как
созревание и, во-вторых, надо различать
развитие как обучение. Но это и
значит признать в сущности две прежние
крайние точки зрения, одну вслед за
другой, или объединить их. Первая точка
зрения говорит, что процессы
развития и обучения независимы друг от
друга. Ее Коффка повторяет,
утверждая, что развитие и есть
созревание, не зависящее в своих внутренних
законах от обучения. Вторая точка зрения
говорит, что обучение есть
развитие. Эту точку зрения Коффка
повторяет буквально.
"There is, finally, a third group of
theories, which is particularly
influential in European child psychology.
These theories attempt to rise
above the extremes of both points of
view, as set out above. They are
trying to sail between Scylla and
Charybdis. In this case, what happens is
the usual case with theories that occupy
the middle ground between two
extremes. They do not stand above the two
theories but between them
overcoming one extreme exactly to the
extent to which they veer towards the
other. They overcome one wrong theory by
partially surrendering to another.
Generally speaking, it is a dualistic
theory: occupying a position between
two opposing points of view, they
actually result from some combination of
the two points of view."
"This is the view Koffka, who states at
the outset that the development is
always dualistic: First, we must
distinguish development as maturation and
second we must distinguish development as
learning-and-teaching. But this
means to recognize in essence the two
previous extreme positions one after
the other, or combine them. The first
point of view is that the processes
of development and learning-and-teaching
are independent of each other.
Here Koffka repeats the argument that
development and maturation are not
dependent in their internal laws upon
learning-and-teaching. The second
point of view is that learning is
development. This view too Koffka repeats
word for word."
Vygotsky goes on to discuss three
positive elements in Koffka's work:
First, Koffka recognizes that there are
two different things and they exist
in a state of mutual dependence. Second,
Koffka must introduce a new
conception of learning-and-teaching,
namely the appearance of new
structures and the completion of old
ones. Thirdly, Koffka raises, although
he cannot solve, the whole question of
whether learning-and-teaching leads
development or the other way around. It's
that moment when
learning-and-teaching leads development,
or opens the next stage of
development (as Koffka says, a
pfennigsworth of learning and teaching
yields a mark of development) that I
always thought was called
microgenesis.
In developing that second point, on the
new STRUCTURAL conception of
learning-and-teaching that Vygotsky
distinguishes between
learning-and-teaching that offers only
the skill that it offers and a
transformative skill--and the example he
gives of the former is learning to
type. What about the latter, though? It
seems to me he has already given us
an example of the latter at the very
outset of this discussion when he was
raking Meumann and Piaget over the coals.
It is when a child learns that he
or she can draw speech.
David Kellogg
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
--------- 원본 메일 ---------
*보낸사람*: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com
<mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>>
*받는사람* : "eXtended Mind,
Culture,Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>>, kellogg
<kellogg59@hanmail.net
<mailto:kellogg59@hanmail.net>>
*날짜*: 2012년 10월 03일 수요일, 08시 43
분 37초 +0900
*제목*: microgenesis?
Hi David- This message was begun several
days ago but got hung up in my
messy schedule and a delay while I got to
Koffka.
I would like very much to continue the
microgeneis discussion started by
Greg (or was it you?) because it seems to
me to get us to the heart of the
learning/development issue. We made a lot
of progress a few years ago when
you and Andy and I tried to write down
"our" theory of development, with
LSV as the paternal text.
While I have been off doing my form of
inquiry, you have been doing
yours including all of the intense work
on Tool and Znak, and immersing
yourself in the texts.
I have have a copy of Koffka at home, so
I read a bunch of places where
the learning/development issue is brought up.
Rather than jump straight into
conversation, I would like to provide
other xmca'ites as wish, to read the
texts being discussed.
To that end, I have attached a few pages
from Koffka that seem
particularly to the point. As I
understand it, this approach, which
attributes cultural influences on
development only for forms of action that
are species typical/universal and closely
related to (acquiring a first
language, acquiring the ability to walk
and run and jump and duck, and so
on).
So the answer to questions about
development being involved in learning
to ride a bike or acquing the ability to
read a phonetic alphabet. The
matter is forclosed. Reading is a process
of learning, ipso facto, end of
discussion.
You indicate in your note that LSV also
had some disagreements with
Koffka, but I was not clear on what they
were. If you could elaborate in
context I would find it helpful.
So, moving slowly, and doggedly sticking
to the topic of microgenesis of
functions including acquiring the ability
to walk, to ride a bike, and to
learn to read, and lets include acquire a
language, since that is clearly a
central topic, I attach the relevant
pages from Koffka so others can see
what we are nattering on about, and at
least figure out what is at stake.
If you would indicate other parts of
Koffka to read, David, if you think
them relevant, I can make the pdf and
distribute.
more to come.
mike
PS-- ALL-- Note David's new email. I am
probably not the only one who
missed the transition to it.
<kellogg59@hanmail.net
<mailto:kellogg59@hanmail.net>>
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