Vygotsky Podcast

with Francine Smolucha, Vygotskian translator, researcher, & teacher  (Initially posted Nov 17, 2022) Full chat: http://tiny.cc/6g65vz

A few more tools for reading fictional literature and "fictional reality”: Impression management, narrator reliability, and a transferable question set that can be carried wherever one goes. This excerpt is from "Thinking and Feeling Our Way Through Fake News" with Michael W. Smith http://tiny.cc/m1v1vz

Francine Smolucha has been translating, teaching, and researching Vygotsky since the 1980s. Along with an interesting personal history, we get a great look at creativity’s line of development from infancy through fully-realized adulthood.  Highlights include:  0:48 - Francine’s interesting backstory  5:00 - Can people consciously direct their imaginative thinking?  10:38 - Visual isomorphism is useful - and fun!  18:00 - Why do creativity exercises?  24:06 - Artists and intuition  27:50 - Do children have innate creative imaginations?  36:48 - Vygotsky on the role of play in development (pretend play and object substitution)  42:48 - How (and when) do higher mental functions and psychological systems interact?  46:50 - Vygotsky and neuroscience  51:20 - What comes first: brain or concept (or function) development?  56:34 - What does “word meaning develops” mean?  1:05:38 - Development of concepts vs. that of word meaning  1:09:56 - Vygotsky’s idea of a fully developed adult  1:17:00 - Pros and cons of scientific concepts (and “restrictive frames”)  1:22:45 - Frame flexibility and being different  1:24:35 - Francine’s role in the Vygotskysphere  1:29:05 - Vygotsky as film character and as role model  1:32:50 - The role of conflict resolution and perseverance in Francine’s own development  1:45:03 - Ideas for everybody  1:52:15 - Some ideas for maintaining creative development through adolescence  1:59:26 - Honoring everyday creativity : )  Links & References: "Vygotsky’s theory in-play: early childhood education" - http://tiny.cc/m321vz  "Why Man Creates" - http://tiny.cc/n321vz  "An interesting assignment" - http://tiny.cc/p321vz

David Kellogg discusses key challenges to talking about Vygotsky in public-friendly ways (main reason: it's hard, for teachers and learners). Storytelling, he says, can create helpful meeting points between concrete and abstract ideas, provided the stories aren't too misleading. After discussing various difficulties, David offers two stories as a means of explaining Vygotsky's main project. Highlights include: 0:42 - some points of embarrassment 2:34 - barriers to making Vygotsky accessible to non-experts 5:00 - learning & teaching (via Walter Benjamin) 7:48 - esoteric and exoteric knowledge, differences and links 13:03 - more barriers to linking the esoteric and exoteric (maybe) 18:03 - the main reason: teaching is hard (and so is learning) 20:00 - stories as meeting-point between the concrete and abstract (including misleading ones) 25:00 - family stuff: a talented and smart bunch 27:49 - a better way to tell stories (i.e., metaphors) about our brains & development 29:47 - the spinal cord story (Master story 1, with its four levels) 35:36 - the human development/Vygotsky story (Master story 2, with its four stages) 44:00 - Vygotsky said THAT these two kinds of stories are distinct yet LINKED (a mega story, a meta story, a story of stories) 45:35 - Halladay helps to show HOW the two big stories are linked: expansion and projection 50:10 - an illustration, at the language level (using transitions - elaboration, extension, and enhancement) 1:00:29 - neoformations and disrupted lines of development (a follow-up) 1:07:34 - helpful perspectives for parents 1:13:38 - other lines of development 1:17:07 - development crises vs. mental illness (i.e., a crisis that doesn't culminate) References: ResearchGate: David Kellogg - http://tiny.cc/dog0vz "How to Grow My Brain" (Khan Academy) - http://tiny.cc/48b0vz "Angelus Novus" (Klee) - https://magazine.artland.com/stories-of-iconic-artworks-paul-klees-angelus-novus/

(First posted May 21, 2021) David Kellogg notes the benefits and limitations of conceptualizing neoformations as thread and as pattern.   Full chat: http://tiny.cc/16xxtz

Vygotskian scholar Holbrook Mahn helps to illuminate the essence of concepts and how they might be purposefully developed.   Highlights include:  1:40 - Holbrook's role in (and relationship to) the "Vygotsky-sphere"  6:28 - Advantages of Holbrook's pre-Vygotsky background   8:51 - The importance of dialectics and process-oriented study   11:28 - The unity, not the identity, of learning and development  14:06 - Different aspects of the "system of concepts" concept  16:22 - What is a concept and what are the origins of concepts?   19:22 - Animals have concepts (pre-human concepts; potential concepts)   24:00 - Brain/mind unity, meaning, & sense - the creation of concepts  26:55 - Generalization and affect  34:45 - What is a "conceptual neuronal network"?  39:50 - Everyday & academic in classrooms (conceptual knowledge & conceptual understanding)  45:00 - Making everyday & academic concepts visual and explicit  48:55 - The ALA Protocol -- helping students access & develop academic concepts (see link below)  55:34 - Thinking in concepts 1:02:00 - Dialectical thinking (origins in the universe itself?)  1:06:06 - The process of constructing ALA prompts (a demo)   1:14:52 - Ending, not starting, with the verbal definitions  1:17:32 - Tribute to Mom   Additional resources:  Notes for teachers on Holbrook's Academic Literacy for All (ALA) Protocol: http://tiny.cc/0lsmuz More from Holbrook here: https://home.edweb.net/people/holbrook-mahn/ Hierarchy of concepts snapshot: https://ifioque.com/psyche/concept-formation  My online grammar course is here: http://tiny.cc/rpsmuz (contact me directly for discounts)

Should a simple question get a simple answer?  Marxism archiver Andy Blunden offers his response.

Using art, David Kellogg grounds a conceptual discussion of "neoformations" through an extended focus on a single line of development (negation) and its varied and accompanying neoformations. This conversation features David's recent translation of Vygotsky's Pedological Works, cross-cultural challenges of developmental education, and ideas for navigating a dangerous world.  (First published May 22, 2021) Highlights include:  1:42 - knowing vs. owning a word: Ant's background and aims for the discussion  4:38 - Another interesting word: What is the Synopticon?  6:15 - Yet another: переплетение (intertwining) -- and lace-making (Vermeer's "The Lace Maker")  9:42 - Pedology: a "murdered" science studying the unity of mind/body development  13:24 - Reminder: the map is not the territory  18:30 - Real problems in a dangerous world -- "the crisis of no" (Netscher's "The Lacemaker")  24:29 - Real problems, cont. - "the crisis of no" in Korea (mind, body, culture)  31:54 - When education is not a game (tricky problems and tragic consequences)  33:18 - Unplanned break (due to power outage)  33:22 - Theory picks up where metaphor stops; Vygotsky concurs  35:30 - Trying to understand neoformations using metaphor  38:50 - Limits of the thread metaphor  43:31 - Where are neoformations located?  49:40 - Consulting Vygotsky in times of crisis  51:56 - More types of neoformations - critical and stable ones  55:38 - What is picked apart and rethreaded? More cool examples  59:03 - Unraveling the social situation of development: the environment/child meeting point  1:05:02 - Visualizing 'thread patterns' within and between people (Halliday and Vygotsky)  1:12:14 - Answers without questions: potpourri (Ant's mic stopped  working)    “. . . with each new epoch, the design must be picked apart and the old  materials reknitted in a new way into a new form” - Unraveling Some  Threads (early draft) - http://tiny.cc/t4xxtz   "I think teaching children to say no - when they're not really sure what  they are saying no to - teaching children to say no to adults is kind of the most concrete, most specific, most practical way of thinking  about developmental crises. And in fact, when we go back over the developmental crises that Vygotsky was talking about, we see that "No" plays a very important role." - 23:20

Andy Blunden weighs in on a question I've been asking for a while: "What do you think the following passage means?" (Initially published January 25, 2021) Additional responses, via xmca listserv, are here: http://tiny.cc/3l27tz   The passage in question: [A better understanding of child psychology is possible] "...only if we  radically change our representation of child development and take into  account that it is a complex dialectical process that is characterized  by a complex periodicity, disproportion in the development of separate  functions, metamorphoses or qualitative transformation of certain forms  into others, a complex merging of the processes of evolution and  involution, a complex crossing of external and internal factors, a  complex process of overcoming difficulties and adapting" (Vygotsky 1997,  Vol 4. pp. 98–99)

Excerpts from a 2009 curriculum design paper titled, "A genre theory  model of collaborative inquiry."  (Initially published December 20, 2020) This middle section of the paper references Bazerman, Bawarshi, Bruner,  Devitt, Freadman, Halliday, Hillocks, Smith & Wilhelm, and Wiggins  & McTighe.   The first section, not included, introduces the project and review  curricular theory from Addams, Apple, Bobbitt, Dewey, Eisner,  Montessori, Noddings, Pinar, and Popham.    The final section of the paper aims to combine genre theory and  collaborative inquiry in a hybrid-learning model, via an online  class-blog. Paper here: http://tiny.cc/3l27tz

In a previous chat, Huw Lloyd introduced "5 epistemological forms  implicated in cognitive development."  Here, Here Huw digs into various  finer details of how such forms may develop, and also discusses how and  why the trio signs, actions, and operations can be a helpful system for  construing psychological development.  Part 1 is here: http://tiny.cc/4om6tz  (Initially published December 13, 2020) Highlights include:   0:28 - Getting more into the formative process of cognitive development (or recapping/clarifying some key parts of part 1)  3:45 - Some useful ways to think about epistemological forms  5:25 - We can choose to treat anything - within our perception - as a sign  8:42 - Situation- and setting-based reasoning   13:25 - Knowing where to look: epistemology can fuel confidence in setting-based situations   16:50 - Empirical vs theoretical orientations  20:24 - The compelling nature of not knowing  25:30 - Planting a flag to recap the chat thus far  26:50 - The relation of Huw's work to Activity Theory and CHT   28:12 - Actions as goal-directed movement & thinking (made manifest through signs)  30:39 - Automatic vs. autonomic operations    35:44 - Operations don't require conscious attentions and are not serial (brick wall analogy)  38:44 - Conscious actions can turn into unconscious operations  42:29 - A "middle ground" where a residue of external signs still remains (w/ examples)  48:00 - The role of active orientation in expressing intention  50:22 - Actions and reactions (and emotions regulating actions)  55:11 - Productively distinguishing emotion from feeling   1:02:07 - How signs can suggest strategy and thus orientation (followed by a demonstration)  1:04:30 - Discerning AO by studying microdevelopment and morphogenesis of actions into operations  1:10:30 - Capturing neoformations and demonstrating conscious awareness and independence  1:14:16 - Does this kind of analysis transfer to many domains?   1:15:40 - Development is not just about importing culture but increasingly sophisticated sign use  1:16:59 - How might similar investigations go with older learners?  1:21:27 - Some quick closing questions   Some quotations:  - "these epistemological forms are representative of degrees of sophistication with using signs"   - "signs are like one side of the coin of which the other one is awareness"   - "as your reasoning improves, the richness of where you can put your attention improves"  - "he knows where to look" and has confidence  - "those signs that become used can detach themselves from the necessity of conscious awareness of them"  - "by looking at the configuration of signs at play, you can discern strategy, and from strategy you can discern orientation"  -"development is not just about importing culture" but increased "sophistication in the use of signs"   Lloyd, H. (2020) "A Study of Active Orientation, Part 1: A Perspective-Based Theory of Cognitive Development" - http://tiny.cc/vua6tz

Nikolai Veresov looks to the concept of perezhivanie to answer the question.  (Originally published October 12, 2020) The full lecture, "Demystifying Perezhivanie: understanding development in the cultural-historical framework," is here: http://tiny.cc/87ezsz