Affirming the “S” in HBSE Through the Socio-Cultural Discourses of Lev Vygotsky,Barbara Myerhoff,Jerome Bruner,and Ken Gergen

Owing largely to the pioneering spirit of Sigmund Freud, social work's understanding of human behavior and development has supported individualist discourses that essentialize the self. Socio-cultural discourses present alternatives that strengthen the intentions of many social workers when they invoke the concept of human behavior in the social environment. In particular, Lev Vygotsky, Barbara Myerhoff, Jerome Bruner, and Ken Gergen offer compelling and salient accounts for genuinely regarding human behavior as embedded, even constituted by, social environments.     

维果茨基"论心理学危机"的现实意义

维果茨基对20世纪初心理学危机的表现与实质进行了透彻分析,提出了解决危机的可能性途径。当代心理学遭遇的危机与20世纪初的心理学危机从症状到实质上都存在许多相似之处,维果茨基对危机的分析与处理为解决当代心理学的危机提供了有益借鉴。     

新维果茨基学派主导活动理论述评

新维果茨基学派继承并发展了维果茨基的儿童发展理论,把儿童的认知、动机与社会性发展整合成一个统一模式,提出了儿童发展的主导活动理论.从出生到成年,儿童先后发展出下列主导活动:与照看者建立的情感交际(0-1岁);以实物操作为中心的共同活动(2-3岁);社会戏剧游戏(3-6岁);教育环境中的学习活动(儿童中期);同伴互动(青...     

Let's not get tied into knots: a response to Newman, (2018)—Vygotsky,Wittgenstein and sociocultural theory

The September 2018 issue of this journal included an article by Newman, (2018) that challenges research carried out on second language acquisition (henceforth, SCT‐L2) informed by the psychological theory proposed by L. S. Vygotsky. We would like to respond to Newman's critique, which he problematizes as three “knots” that he then undertakes to untie through analysis of Vygotsky's writings contained in Vygotsky's two most popular works, Thought and Language and Mind in Society. We first summarize Newman's knots and his approach to untying them. We then present our response to each of these in turn.     

White historical activity theory: toward a critical understanding of white zones of proximal development

Best known for arguing that individual development is part of social and historical development Vygotsky’s entry into education may be captured by his concept of the ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD). ZPD has not yet been synthesized with a critical study of whiteness. When ZPD is used to explain racial disparities in the service of inclusion, it is usually connected with the lives of people of color. This leaves out a critical understanding of racially dominant experiences, or whiteness. This article argues that a progressive union between Vygotsky and the field of race studies generally, Whiteness Studies specifically, benefits educators insofar as the concept of ZPD is applied to the particular ideological development of white identity. Likewise, Whiteness Studies gains an explanatory framework to account for the cognitive development of the dominant racial group, in short, a learning theory of whiteness. A Whiteness Studies intervention within Vygotskian theory pushes the limits of developmental theory when it analyzes the contours of a white ZPD. When racialized to consider whiteness, certain terms and concepts, such as Vygotsky’s genotypic and phenotypic analyses, take on a different significance, even different meanings. As a racially sensitive framework, particularly within a US-based understanding, Vygotskian theory is limited without critical attention to the development of white identity and whiteness as an ideology. By focusing on this nexus, Vygotskian theory fulfills part of its historical mission as a concrete study of cultural relations.     

A Longitudinal Study of Belief and Desire State Discourse During Mother–Child Play and Later False Belief Understanding

There is considerable interest in the role of mental state language in theory of mind development. This study examines cognitive and desire state discourse of 43 mothers during play interactions with their two‐year‐old children and theory of mind as indicated by a battery of false belief tasks around the age of five. Desire state comments of mothers during free play which were appropriate to the conversational context were significantly related to children's later theory of mind, and this relation was independent of other confounding variables, including a home‐based measure of maternal sensitivity, and socio‐economic status, and an estimate of child language. The child's desire state language was concurrently related to the mother's desire state language used appropriately, and the child's cognitive state language was related to the mother's appropriate cognitive state language. Although cognitive state language was not predictive of later theory of mind, this may be because this kind of language plays a later role in theory of mind development.     

维果茨基的心理观要义述评

作为前苏联儿童发展心理学的奠基人之一,雏果茨基创立了文化历史发展学派,通过批判传统心理学提出了许多独到而科学的见解,主要表现为独具一格的心理学方法论、活动学说、中介学说、内化学说以及最近发展理论。重新审视维果茨基的心理学思想有助于反省当代主流心理学中某些固有的研究取向。     

新维果茨基学派对维果茨基儿童发展理论的发展

新维果茨基学派继承并发展了维果茨基的儿童发展理论,把儿童的认知、动机与社会性发展整合进一个统一的整体模式,创造性地将维果茨基的观点与皮亚杰的理论综合在一起,并成功地避免了这些理论的缺点,合理地解释了儿童从一个发展阶段转向另一个发展阶段的过程和机制。同时,新维果茨基学派对遗传在儿童发展中的作用有所忽略,这一理论缺陷是进一步发展应该解决的关键问题。     

Ideal football culture: A cultural take on self‐determination theory

This paper discusses cultural psychology and psychological training in football (soccer). Self‐Determination Theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1980) has shown to be pragmatically successful in sport and suggests that being regulated by autonomous forms of motivation leads to better psychological outcomes. Cultural psychologists would be tempted to dismiss SDT because it is predicated on an a‐cultural approach to mind. It is possible to nurture a stronger and more effective team culture by reframing SDT in a cultural direction. As such, this paper outlines a cultural approach that reconceptualizes SDT in a way that retains the latter's pragmatic value while not approaching mind in a self‐contained individualist manner.     

Vygotsky,Wittgenstein, and sociocultural theory

This paper considers the use made of Vygotsky's work by many who take a sociocultural perspective and, in particular, by those who use his work to advance a particular view of second language acquisition and the ‘silent period’. It is argued that Vygotsky's account as represented in Thought and Language (Vygotsky, 1986 ) needs to be thought of as consisting of two distinct aspects: first, the observations he made (or claimed to have made) and, second, the theoretical account he proposed to explain them. It is shown that some of Vygotsky's observations are problematic but that, even if they are accepted, Vygotsky's theoretical account suffers from fundamental difficulties. Thus the support claimed from Vygotsky in accounts of second language acquisition is misplaced, first because of those difficulties and, second, because many who claim support from Vygotsky, do not need or even use his theory but instead focus their attention on his empirical observations and assume incorrectly that if their own empirical observations match Vygotsky's, then Vygotsky's theory can be accepted. Wittgenstein's later philosophy is shown to provide a perspective which dispels confusions about, and gives us a clearer insight into, the issues.