cep900 11.06.07

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cep900 11.06.07

• Remaining schedule
• RDP requirements and general feedback
• Proper citation plagiarism
• Vygotsky introduction

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readings

• Becker, H. S. (1986). Freshman English for
  graduate students
• Becker, H. S. (1986). Persona and authority. In
  Writing for social scientists.
• Labaree, D. F. (2003). The peculiar problems of
  preparing educational researchers
• About Plagiarism
• Citation Machine

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remaining schedule

• Nov 13 Graduate Life, Academic writing
• Nov 20 Prosem Fieldtrip Ann Arbor Hands-on
  Museum
• Nov 27 RPD Presentations
• Dec 4 RDP Presentations

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Final RDP

• Requirements
• http//www.educ.msu.edu/DWongLibrary/CEP900f07/RDP
  Guidelines.html

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Final RDP

• General feedback from meetings

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text

• Csikzentmilhalyi talk Flow and learning
• Erickson 252
• Monday, 10 am

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text

• need advisors name (again)

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The big idea

• What we do and how we interact play a fundamental
  role in the development of cognition

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The context of vygotskys work

• Vygotskys ideas can only be understood in their
  historical and ideological context
• His theory was a direct reflection and response
  to the what was happening at that time
• In fact, ALL ideas are best understood in the
  context from which they emerged

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vygotsky resources

• Vygotsky
• http//www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/
• http//tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html
• http//www.kolar.org/vygotsky/
• Marxism
• http//www.marxists.org/
• Russian History
• http//www.pbs.org/weta/faceofrussia/timeline-inde
  x.html
• http//www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/classroom/aleve
  l/rus.htm

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basis and superstructure of a society

• Basis - the material, economic, and social
  relations in a society (natural conditions,
  technological means, and economic modes of
  production)
• Superstructure - the way a society thinks, kinds
  of political institutions, laws, religions,
  morals, art, philosophy, and science
• Superstructure emerges from basis

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historical materialism

• Mutual influence between society's culture
  (consciousness) and the bases of society
• Examples?

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historical materialism

• Examples?
• Modern industrial age emphasis on efficiency,
  accuracy, power
• Capitalism emphasis on accumulation,
  individualism, private ownership
• Other modes of economic modes and consciousness
  tribal, feudal, communism

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dialectic a process of development

• Dialectic between Man and Nature. In altering
  Nature, we also transform our consciousness.
• Activity is not uni- directional, either we
  acting on the world or the world acting upon us.
  In some sense, it is not even both. The
  activity, the dialectic, is an indivisible unity
• An implication One creates oneself through work.
  Work is positive and essential. Though work,
  you exist - your life belongs to you.

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marx's critique of capitalism

• In capitalist system, labor does not belong to
  the worker. Consider Russia and England at the
  time (late 1800s)
• The worker becomes alienated from his work and,
  thus, from himself. Your work, and thus you,
  belong to someone else.
• Profits (part of the laborer) go to enriching the
  lives of the capitalist. The workers lives are
  exploited, literally taken away.
• A capitalist basis of society separates labor
  (activity that produces the capital or
  necessities) from capital (means to get
  necessities)

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From this context, emerges Vygotskys ideas

• Vygotskys psychological theory
• Highlights the relationship between
  consciousness, activity, and tools
• Emphasizes the fundamentally social and
  collective nature of knowledge and consciousness
• The most powerful tool of all belongs to the
  group (language), not a small elite. People can
  be their own masters.

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vygotsky's big ideas

• Child-in-activity-in-context as unit of study
• Zone of proximal development
• Socio-cultural origins of mental functioning
• Mediation of intellectual functioning by tools
  provided by culture

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child-in-activity-in-context

• One cannot understand learning at all without
  considering the child-activity-context. They are
  not simply interacting, but form an indivisible
  unity
• In research, the unit of analysis cannot be the
  child(ren), but must be child(ren)-activity-contex
  t.

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example

• A child works on a blocks puzzle - with his
  mother - in a research study.
• What can you say about the child, without regard
  to the task or context? What can you say about
  the task, without regard to the child or context?
• Another example What can you say about a student
  who misbehaves in school, without regard to
  history and context?

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interpsychological and intrapsychological

• Every function in the child's cultural
  development appears twice first, on the social
  level, and later on the individual level first,
  between people (interpsychological), and then
  inside the child (intrapsychological). This
  applies equally to voluntary attention, to
  logical memory, and to the formulation of
  concepts. All the higher functions originate as
  actual relations between human individuals
  (Vygotsky, 197857)

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interpsychological and intrapsychological

• Young infants give very little indication that
  they are trying to communicate when they yell. It
  seems likely they are just distressed. But we
  adults-as-parents worry about what it is they are
  crying about, and do something in an effort to
  help them. We treat their yells as a cry for
  help we treat them as if they were communicating
  with us.This is an example of what Vygotsky means
  by an intermental ability the ability the infant
  has to communicate his or her state cannot be
  located within the infant, but only in the
  relationship between the infant and the other
  person who acts so as to constitute yelling as a
  means of communication.
• When the infant has figured out that this is the
  functional status of yelling, and can use it in
  order to get someone to do something, then we are
  talking about an intramental ability.

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interpsychological and intrapsychological

• Development is not learning to do something new,
  but taking over the control of something you can
  already do in concert with somebody else.

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zone of proximal development

• the distance between the actual developmental
  level as determined by independent problem
  solving and the level of potential development as
  determined through problem solving under adult
  guidance or in collaboration with more capable
  peers (Vygotsky, 1978 86)

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zpd implications

• Intelligence is what one can be with the help of
  others. Emphasizes potential, possibility, how
  present and future are linked
• Intelligence is neither an individual nor a
  static quality
• Highlights Vygotsky's view of the fundamentally
  social nature of human activity

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zpd implications

• What are other views of intelligence and their
  theoretical and historical origins?
• In learning, there is a mutual influence between
  the learner and more knowledgeable other
• Gives rise to the ideas of
• learning as apprenticeship, and legitimate
  peripheral participation (Lave Wenger)
• The importance of scaffolding by others
• Learning (the ability to do things) precedes,
  rather than follows, mental development
  (consciousness, internalization)

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Socio-cultural origins of mental functioning

• Vygotsky was fascinated by the power of language
  (background in literature)
• Higher mental functions appear twice in
  development between people (intermental) and
  within the child (intramental)
• An emphasis on language highlights
• (a) the fundamentally social nature of knowledge
  and thought, and learning
• (b) how knowledge is never really the sole
  possession of the individual. It belongs to the
  collective.

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mediation of thought by cultural tools

• Mediate to be between two sides, to be part of
  both sides, to be part of the whole process
• Without mediation, something is im-mediate,
  taking place directly
• Experience and thought are not directly connected
  to each other.

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mediation of thought by cultural tools

• "Humans master themselves from the outside
  through psychological tools"
• Recall the Marxist idea that in a given period,
  the tools (means of economic production)
  determines cultures consciousness (working
  conditions, cognition, beliefs, values,
  perception of reality, etc.)

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mediation of thought by cultural tools

• Psychological toolsdirected inward
• Technical tools directed outward
• Examples of psychological tools?
• Why are these tools cultural

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psychological tools examples

• Language
• Writing
• Counting systems
• Charts, maps
• In what ways do these tools fundamentally shape
  (not just influence) our consciousness?

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language the tool of tools

• Why is language considered the tool of tools?
• Affords greater freedom of action than just tool
  use of animals
• Action becomes less impulsive, more planful
• Children become both the subject and objects of
  their own behavior, their own masters
• Language empowers the helpless it is a tool
  under the control of the user

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