Vygotsky Podcast

Researcher Huw Lloyd, fluent in numerous mental models, is a good explainer of concepts -- including many I was completely unversed in. A few threads run through the entirety of this chat: development,  self-awareness, and construing an active orientation to any given situation.  

SECTION 1: Our pathways to Vygotsky  

0:36 - Reflections on Huw's recent "Vygotsky and Parenting"  (http://tiny.cc/ymqpsz) 

1:45 - Pros and cons of taking scholarly shortcuts  

6:07 - Huw's arrival to Vygotsky, in part through dissatisfaction  elsewhere  

SECTION 2: Huw's ideas about Active Orientation 

16:38 - What is Active Orientation?  

23:30 - Is Active Orientation a practice? (An exercise in self  awareness) 

31:58 - Active Orientation can be documented (microgenesis research of  Huw's) 

SECTION 3: What is Developmental Education? 

40:37 - A primer on Davydov and Developmental Education  

46:07 - Empirical thinking vs. Theoretical thinking  

50:23 - Grokking the material and the History of ideas  

52:59 - Problems are Good  

55:40 - An illustrative lesson of Davydov's  

1:03:43 - Some key characteristics of developmental education  

1:07:41 - Crises, construals, and neoformations  

1:10:20 - The Desert Oak: a developmental TRIZ problem  

SECTION 4: Imagination and Confidence-building  

1:16:07 - Imagination, flow, and problem-solving 

1:24:10 - Systems and Design Ideas (TRIZ approach)  

1:30:22 - Earned, authoritative confidence: Your tempered ideas are become Real 

1:35:20 - The importance of problem-construal or framing 

1:48:04 - Problem-creating, -solving, and -construing  

1:53:51 - This is rich, highly concentrated material (Foundational, generative,  "unfoldable" concepts)  

1:55:27 - Notational vs. developmental education (and epistemology)  

1:57:10 - Final two questions (adult-development & advice for  problem-designers) 

2:06:20 - Complex vs. complicated (and self-regulation and distance  learning)  

2:09:46 - An idea for lunch (as promised: http://tiny.cc/bvqpsz)  

References: 

http://tiny.cc/5vqpsz - "A Study of Active Orientation" (brief  introduction) 

http://tiny.cc/2xqpsz - "TRIZ: a Powerful Methodology for Creative  Problem Solving" 

http://tiny.cc/dxqpsz - "Going with the Flow: How to Engage Boys (and  Girls) in Their Literacy Learning"

Two excerpts from Peter Smagorinsky's (2012) "Vygotsky, 'Defectology,'  and the Inclusion of People of Difference in the Broader Cultural  Stream"  (Originally published August 21, 2020)

0:14 - "Vygotsky's View of the Defect" 

6:36 - "Discussion"  

Full text: http://tiny.cc/5pqosz

Three excerpts from Nikolai Veresov's "Discovering the Great Royal Seal: New Reality of Vygotsky’s Legacy"  (Originally published August 21, 2020)

0:16 - "The subject-matter of cultural-historical theory"

8:22 - "New realities and new opportunities"

11:32 - "Final remarks"

Full article: http://tiny.cc/4mnosz

An excerpt from one of my favorite books, James Wertsch's (1985) "Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind"  (Originally published August 20. 2020)

An excerpt from Seth Chaiklin's (2003) "The zone of proximal development in Vygotsky’s analysis of learning and instruction" -- from the section, "Vygotsky's Theory of Child Development"  (Originally published August 20, 2020)

Full text: http://tiny.cc/aenosz

Nikolai Veresov being provocative -- no surprise there  : )   (Originally published May 13, 2020 here: http://tiny.cc/f72osz)

Do the many benefits of (terminological) diversity outweigh the drawbacks? What if you're not an "insider"? 

Full source: http://tiny.cc/vew0oz (recommended!)

Excerpted from "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" featuring David Kellogg.  

Full video: http://tiny.cc/fyansz

In response to a question from a Chapter 6 excerpt from Thinking and Speech, Andy expands the passage and weighs in.  (Originally published August 14, 2020)  

Relevant and related content from Andy is here: http://tiny.cc/aw84iz  

Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: 

"To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness – understood as generalization – leads directly to mastery.   

Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can – like any structure – be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept."  

David Kellogg's close-reading of this same passage is here: http://tiny.cc/9vansz

Huw and I are parents of the same-aged children -- boys for him, girls for me.  Having read various of Huw's written contributions with interest, I was eager to hear his thoughts on parenting and Vygotsky.  As is often the case with topics such as these, Huw had more to contribute than he initially realized.  Thank you to Huw, and perhaps he and I can continue the conversation on developmental education, a topic I'd like to understand more clearly.  (Originally published August 14, 2020)

1:23 - Section 1: Introduction and Preamble 

28:32 - Section 2: Personal Notes, Parenting, and Vygotsky  

More from Huw here: http://tiny.cc/d6ansz   

David Kellogg offers us a Vygotsky close-reading, along with some interesting personal anecdotes, grounded in some visual storytelling about chess and xianqi.  (Originally published August 12, 2020)

More here on David's new book translation on Vygotsky's late-career lectures on pedology: http://tiny.cc/4p3nsz

Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: 

"To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness – understood as generalization – leads directly to mastery.   

Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can – like any structure – be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept."