Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995
From: Francoise Herrmann (fherrmann@igc.apc.org)
Subject: Chapter 9 (and oj on the breakfast table?)

-What kind of insight do we get in data analysis of peer collaboration when we interpret in light of Vygotsky's theoretical framework? How much more do we see and how is this perspective really different from a traditional pre-test, post-test analysis of activity where all approaches to learning meet in their quest to show cognitive growth? Chapter nine of Contexts for Learning answers each of these questions clearly and unambiguously. -In a nutshell, using such Vygotskyan concepts as mediated action, intervening socio-cultural variables and the unsplit relationship between cognitive development and other forms of development such as the social and the emotional, we get a healthier and more human picture of peer-collaboration, where the focus is on the relationship between co-participants and its success. This picture is shown to sharply contrast with a traditional pre-post test approach where what counts has been necessarily pre-determined.

Francoise Francoise Herrmann

Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995
From: Francoise Herrmann (fherrmann@igc.apc.org)
Subject: Chapter 9

Hi Mike, Here is additional info re: chapter 9 of Contexts.

Chapter 9 Vygotskyan perspective on children's problem solving activities. Ellice Forman and Jean McPhail

Two above average 7th grade girls Cindy and karen were observed during five sessions (pre and post test sessions included) as they manipulated the kinds of shadows that could be projected from different shapes onto a screen. The format of the session was prediction, hypothesis testing and drawing inferences about their activity. The experimental task is then analyzed in light of the two interpretive traditions: Vygotskyan and standardized test assessment. Analysis in the Vygotskyan tradition draws attention to the differences in language use between the two girls and how these differences circumscribe the task differentially. For example one of the girls (via an analysis of pronoun usage) approaches the task from a scientific perspective while the other approaches the task from a mathematical perspective. These differences however are shown to function in complementary ways as each of the girls adopts apsects of each other's view points and definition of the tasks at hand.

The tradtional analysis is shown to priviledge the scientific approach to the definition of the task thus one of the girls appears to perform better. The analysis of language use in contrast points to the success of the collaborative relationship, where "differences" were recognized and respective intellectual abilities respected. The description of how the task is approached via language uses was especially interesting to me in that it really shows that how a task takes life and shape in language use. Because the girls use different registers, the task is really both a math problem and a scientific one (i.e.; when one talks radius and isosceles triangles, that's cooking maths; in contrast when one talks detailed descriptions like "When you move it closer to the light... more light is blocked by the shape, and so less light gets on the screen and the shape gets bigger", that's cooking science.) And in the end because both girls adopt some each other's language uses, it is a math-science pie.

Francoise Francoise Herrmann

Date: Sun, 08 Oct 1995
From: SMAGOR@aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu
Subject: mediated action

Francoise, in response to your statement that "it is almost axiomatic in Vygotskyan theory that action is mediated by language": My reading of Vygotsky is that action is mediated by tools and signs, *primary* among which is language (or speech, according to some translations, which is the more dynamic term). To me it's a cultural bias that speech is the primary tool. I'm much more comfortable with the broader idea that people have access to a "tool kit" of mediational means (see Voices of the Mind) that gives them choices about which tool to use in which circumstance.

Peter Smagorinsky

Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995
From: Francoise Herrmann (fherrmann@igc.apc.org)
Subject: Re: Contexts, Chapt.9

Hi Mike, I think that what makes the analysis Vugotskyan is the emphasis as you suggest on joint MEDIATED activity, and I am highlighting the "mediation" part, while you highlighted the "joint" part. My understanding now, after having read that chapter, and perhaps gleaned a little before that, is that it is almost axiomatic in Vygotskyan theory that action is mediated by language. And because of this essential premiss and view point on human activity, a whole new world of description and observation opens up where the language use can become a primary unit of analysis. It follows for me then that this is also joint activity because unless the Speaking Subject is an island, the fact that s/he is speaking implies communication and joint activity (as if by definition of how language is). That makes for the Societal part of the Speaking Subject I suppose. And as the book "The Societal Subject" says:

"No person is an island, but essentially a part of the greater whole we call society. Yet every person is an individual and a subject in her own right. The duality of this statement -expressed in the title of this book- is one of the primary challenges to psychology".

- The pre and post sessions as far as I can see also involved joint activity, that is of the five sessions two were used for pre and post. Like a different net thrown on the same data, with one important difference. With the pre and post test net you have to have some kind of pre-determined idea of what it is that you are coding for; what it is that counts as successful performance. In contrast with an analysis of mediated action, it is the action in an of itself that is of relevance and I think that one cannot really know in advance what it is that will be salient.

- With respects to the issue of institutionalizing educational practices, I thought as I read your question to Bill, and Bill's response, that perhaps some of the issue is a little like "Castro-ism" without Fidel. Is there Castro-ism without Castro, and if so what forms does/can it take? In the book "Urban Sanctuaries" which I read, for example, the single most important factor that accounts for the success of all the programs is the WIzards and in particular "how they do it" rather than "what" they actually do. Of course we can learn from them and try to walk in their footsteps, but it seems that the bottom line has a lot to do with the relationships the are established, the affective and passionate desires to do good and the beliefs that fuel all of this into concrete realizations. These thoughts connect real well with Bill's question about the implementation of practices. But somehow I think that we also need optimism and "faith" that beyond the Wizards, there will be new Wizards (i.e.; factoring in the fact that no-one is forever, while problems like poverty and negative educational practices are longstanding, though perhaps getting better.)

Francoise Francoise Herrmann

Date: Sun, 8 Oct 1995
From: Francoise Herrmann (fherrmann@igc.apc.org)
Subject: Re: Chapt 9 (to Peter S.)

Hi Peter, I also like the term "tool kit" which I thought was from Gordon Wells' new investigations of learning communities. I wonder though what the tools may be beyond language? In chapter 9, Forman and McPhail refer to mediation as semiotic mediation (written or oral discourse). Of course there are simple and complexe artifact-tools such as pens, pencils and computers, that mediate action and function much like language, but I don't know that I would consider them primary in human activity. And perhaps that the same difference could be said of oral and written language (phylognetically?) and for the human species. I am blind to the bias that you are referring to!

Francoise Francoise Herrmann

Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995
From: vera p john-steiner (vygotsky@unm.edu)
Subject: Re: Chapt 9 (to Peter S.)

Francoise,
The bias Peter is speaking about--that of the unique centrality of language as the mediating process in cognition--hit me when I first started to work on the Navajo nation. There, children used drawings, dramatic play, to re-present and communicate about the consequences of their past experience. I was startled, and as a language-dominant Vygotskian, in need of rethinking. Thus, my notion of cognitive pluralism. And in my teaching, which is ever so verbal, I rely on my students' facility with diagrams, concept maps, mathematical notational systems, etc. I see my limitations in this regard as the outcome of my Central European and French schooling, both of which I value deeply, but both of which were profoundly verbal.

Vera P. John-Steiner
Department of Linguistics
Humanities Bldg. 526
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
(505) 277-6353 or 277-4324