HCC class lecture 4 comments

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HCC classlecture 4 comments
John Canny1/31/05
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Administrivia
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Vygotsky - bio

• Early life was extraordinary mastered fine
  arts, especially literature, philosophy, art and
  law.
• This continued throughout his life. Later he
  worked closely with Eisenstein (film), and
  Stanislawsky (method acting) in his work on
  defectology.
• Very much a pragmatist in philosophy. Well
  acquainted with the works of the American
  pragmatists Peirce and William James. He applied
  his ideas to the practice of education, etc.

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Vygotsky - bio

• 1917 The year of the first post-revolutionary
  provisional government in Russia, which
  abolished the death penalty and fought for civil
  liberties - overthrown by the Bolsheviks.
• Vygotsky takes on several critical social
  challenges
• Education Much of the country is un-schooled and
  illiterate
• Mental health There are no institutions to deal
  with mental health problems, esp. in children.
• Language How to unite a country that has dozens
  of former national languages.

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Vygotsky - bio

• He starts to develop theories of development and
  language based on Marxist principles
  emphasizing the role of social forces and history
  on the individual.
• Vygotsky recruits some extraordinary students
• Luria does pioneering work in cultural and
  neuro-psychology
• Leontev develops Activity theory.

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Genetic domains

• Marx emphasized understanding of social phenomena
  through their history and (social, political)
  context. Vygotsky considered history on 4
  planes
• Ontogenesis Psychological development of the
  individual.
• Socio-historical Development of cultural
  practices in a society.
• Micro-genesis Development of single
  competencies.
• Phylogenesis Evolution of the human species.
• His main contribution was the mutual influence of
  the first two.

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ZPD

• The Zone of Proximal Development the set of
  tasks the child can do with help from a more
  advanced peer or adult. Children learn rapidly
  here.

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Mediation

• Vygotsky paid much attention to mediation
  childrens use of tools to achieve a task. His
  perspective is very close to a phenomenological
  one.
• He also treated language as a mediational tool.
  This is very consistent with Piagets findings.

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Internalization

• Vygotskys viewed development as starting on the
  social (or socio-historical) plane and moving to
  the psychological plane (individual development).
  
• Language is first encountered by the child in the
  social plane, but is gradually internalized as
  the child masters new concepts.
• This process is also called appropriation
  (Rogoff).

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Self-regulation and private speech

• Private speech is a fascinating phenomenon in
  young children in which they spontaneously voice
  commands, descriptions and reminders to
  themselves.
• In Vygotskys hands, private speech is a powerful
  clue to the linguistic character of human
  thought.

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Discussion topic 1

• Can you think of examples where you have used
  private speech for a new task?
• More generally, how much of your own thought is
  explicitly linguistic?
• Is it difficult to answer this question? If so,
  why?

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Discussion topic 2

• Discuss the proposition language is a tool?
  What are some differences and similarities
  between language and other types of tool?

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Discussion topics

• Can you think of examples where you have used
  private speech for a new task? More generally,
  how much of your own thought is explicitly
  linguistic?
• Discuss the proposition language is a tool?
  What are some differences and similarities
  between language and other types of tool?

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Reading for next time

• James Wertschs introduction to Vygotsky. More
  complete but more challenging that this reading.
  Volunteer?

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(No Transcript)