Understanding Educational Psychology: A Late Vygotskian, Spinozist Approach (Cultural Psychology of Education, 3)

This book takes up the agenda of the late (but unknown) L. S. Vygotsky, who had turned to the philosopher Spinoza to develop a holistic approach to psychology, an approach that no longer dichotomized the body and mind, intellect and affect, or the individual and the social. In this approach, there is only one substance, which manifests itself in different ways in the thinking body, including as biology and culture. The manifestation as culture is premised on the existence of the social. In much of current educational psychology, there are unresolved contradictions that have their origin in the opposition between body and mind, individual and collective, and structure and process--including the different nature of intellect and affect or the difference between knowledge and its application. Many of the same contradictions are repeated in constructivist approaches, which do not overcome dichotomies but rather acerbate them by individualizing and intellectualizing our knowledgeable participation in recognizably exhibiting and producing the everyday cultural world. Interestingly enough, L. S. Vygotsky, who is often used as a referent for making arguments about inter- and intrasubjective "mental" "constructions," developed, towards the end of his life, a Spinozist approach according to which there is only one substance. This one substance manifests itself in two radically different ways: body (material, biology) and mind (society, culture). But there are not two substances that are combined into a unit; there is only one substance. Once such an approach is adopted, the classical question of cognitive scientists about how symbols are grounded in the world comes to be recognized as an artefact of the theory. Drawing on empirical materials from different learning settings--including parent-child, school, and workplace settings--this book explores the opportunities and implications that this non-dualist approach has for educational research and practice 1 Vygotsky, Spinoza, and Cultural Psychology of Education ................ 1 What Vygotsky Might Have Glimpsed ..................................................... 2 Marxist Foundations of Vygotsky’s Work to Come ............................ 3 Towards a New Psychology................................................................. 8 Restoring Life in and to Vygotsky’s Legacy ............................................. 10 Steps Towards a Non-dualist Discipline ................................................... 14 Transcending Dichotomies .................................................................. 15 Knowing-How and Life’s Power to Act .............................................. 18 Concrete Human Psychology .............................................................. 22 Conceptual Sketch of the Remainder of This Book .................................. 24 References ............................................................................................ 25 Part I Foundations 2 Biology | Culture...................................................................................... 33 From the Origin of the Psyche .................................................................. 35 Modeling Morphogenesis ......................................................................... 40 From Biology to Culture ........................................................................... 44 The Thinking Body and the Body–Mind Problem.................................... 48 Coda: Intermeshing of Body and Culture ................................................. 51 References ............................................................................................... 53 3 Communicating | Thinking .................................................................... 57 Relation of Thinking and Speaking .......................................................... 58 Unity/Identity of Opposites ....................................................................... 61 Finding Thinking in Communicating ........................................................ 63 Moving to Know ....................................................................................... 67 From the First Dim Stirring of a Thought to Its Formulation ................... 72 Coda: Thinking and Communicating as Intransitive Verbs....................... 78 References ......................................................................................... 80 4 Intrasubjectivity | Intersubjectivity ....................................................... 81 Common Approaches to Intersubjectivity................................................. 82 Givenness of the World ............................................................................. 85 The Word as Reality for Two Persons ....................................................... 89 Coda: Revisiting Intersubjectivity and Mediation .................................... 96 References ..................................................................................... 99 5 Primacy of the Social and Sociogenetic Method .................................. 101 Ways of Theorizing the Social .................................................................. 103 The Social Constructivist Way ............................................................ 103 The Ethnomethodological Take ........................................................... 105 The Social for a Cultural Psychology of Education ............................ 105 The Social in Mathematical Reasoning ............................................... 107 The Social Nature of Joint (Social) Work ................................................. 111 Sociogenetic Method ................................................................................ 114 Ontogenetic Origin of Mathematical Reasoning ................................. 115 Identity Is at Stake ............................................................................... 119 Coda: Demystifying Internalization .......................................................... 123 References .................................................................................... 124 6 Learning | Development .......................................................................... 127 Classical Studies of Reasoning on the Balance Beam .............................. 129 Reasoning on the Balance Beam in a Classroom Setting ......................... 134 Reasoning in Context .......................................................................... 135 Reasoning and Social Relations .......................................................... 139 A Monist Account of Reasoning on the Balance Beam ............................ 144 Coda: What Changes in Learning and Development ................................ 147 References ................................................................................... 150 Part II Case Studies 7 The Social Nature of Reading ................................................................ 161 From the Origins of Reading .................................................................... 163 Reading Aloud .......................................................................................... 170 Coda: Reading Is a Mode of the Thinking Body ...................................... 176 References ......................................................................................... 179 8 Intention—A Product of Joint Social Work ......................................... 181 Rethinking the Genesis of Intention ......................................................... 183 The Paradox of Learning-motivated Task ................................................. 186 Coda: Motivation and the Unity of Affect and Intellect............................ 194 References ........................................................................................ 196 9 Culturing Conceptions............................................................................ 199 On Misconceptions and Situated Language Use ...................................... 199 On Finding Conceptions ........................................................................... 204 Lifeworld and Language ........................................................................... 211 Misconceptions From and For the Other .................................................. 213 Against the Reduction of the Nonverbal to the Verbal .............................. 217 Coda: From Concepts (Meanings) to Sense-Giving Fields ...................... 221 References ...................................................................................... 223 10 Natural History of the Sign .................................................................... 225 Problematizing the Sign ............................................................................ 226 Genesis of Signs in Practical School Activity ........................................... 233 Genesis of Signs in Adult Activity ............................................................ 236 Coda: Investigating the Sign as Historical Process ................................... 242 References ..................................................................................... 245 11 Genesis of the Zone of Proximal Development ..................................... 247 {Teaching | Learning} and Social Relations ............................................. 250 Noticing a Problem of Seeing-as ......................................................... 251 Searching for a Way of Letting the Phenomenon Reveal Itself ........... 253 Coming to See as the Phenomenon Reveals Itself .............................. 257 Coda: The Zone of Proximal Development Redux ................................... 260 References ....................................................................................... 263 Part III Implications 12 The Thinking Body ................................................................................. 269 A Lesson Fragment ................................................................................... 271 Words and Relations ................................................................................. 274 Manifesting, Producing, and Being (in) the Relation .......................... 275 Addressivity and the Intra-intersubjective Nature of Talk................... 275 Thinking Body and Affects ....................................................................... 277 Body Position and Orientation ............................................................ 278 Changing Functions of Hand/Arm Movements .................................. 279 Prosody ................................................................................................ 281 There Is but One Substance ...................................................................... 283 Transcending the Mind—Matter Opposition ...................................... 284 {Thinking | Communicating} .............................................................. 288 The ‘Other Within’ for the Psychologist ............................................. 291 Coda: A Monist Approach for Educational Psychology ........................... 293 References .................................................................................... 294 13 “The Way to Freedom” in/for Education .............................................. 297 The Problem of (Learning) Context .......................................................... 299 Historical Senses of Context ............................................................... 300 Bracketing and Rethinking Context .................................................... 301 Schooling and Re/Production ................................................................... 304 Re/Production of Inequality ................................................................ 305 {Objectifi cation | Subjectifi cation} ..................................................... 308 Towards an Education that Matters ........................................................... 310 Activist Transformation ....................................................................... 312 Transforming Whole Persons .............................................................. 314 From Anthropogenesis to Freedom ........................................................... 317 References ..................................................................................... 317 Appendix: Transcription Conventions .......................................................... 321 Reference .................................................................................... 322 Index ............................................................................................ 323 This volume takes up the agenda of the late (but unknown) L.S. Vygotsky, who had turned to the philosopher Spinoza to develop a holistic approach to psychology, an approach that no longer dichotomised the body and mind, intellect and affect, or the individual and the social. This book takes up the agenda of the late (but unknown) L.S. Vygotsky, who had turned to the philosopher Spinoza to develop a holistic approach to psychology, an approach that no longer dichotomized the body and mind, intellect and affect, or the individual and the social. In this approach, there is only one substance, which manifests itself in different ways in the thinking body, including as biology and culture. The manifestation as culture is premised on the existence of the social. In much of current educational psychology, there are unresolved contradictions that have their origin in the opposition between body and mind, individual and collective, and structure and process-including the different nature of intellect and affect or the difference between knowledge and its application. Many of the same contradictions are repeated in constructivist approaches, which do not overcome dichotomies but rather acerbate them by individualizing and intellectualizing our knowledgeable participation in recognizably exhibiting and producing the everyday cultural world. Interestingly enough, L.S. Vygotsky, who is often used as a referent for making arguments about inter- and intrasubjective "mental" "constructions," developed, towards the end of his life, a Spinozist approach according to which there is only one substance. This one substance manifests itself in two radically different ways: body (material, biology) and mind (society, culture). But there are not two substances that are combined into a unit; there is only one substance. Once such an approach is adopted, the classical question of cognitive scientists about how symbols are grounded in the world comes to be recognized as an artefact of the theory. Drawing on empirical materials from different learning settings-including parent-child, school, and workplace settings-this book explores the opportunities and implications that this non-dualist approach has for educational research and practice This book takes up the agenda of the late (but unknown) L. S. Vygotsky, who had turned to the philosopher Spinoza to develop a holistic approach to psychology, an approach that no longer dichotomized the body and mind, intellect and affect, or the individual and the social. In this approach, there is only one substance, which manifests itself in different ways in the thinking body, including as biology and culture. The manifestation as culture is premised on the existence of the social. In much of current educational psychology, there are unresolved contradictions that have their origin in the opposition between body and mind, individual and collective, and structure and process—including the different nature of intellect and affect or the difference between knowledge and its application. Many of the same contradictions are repeated in constructivist approaches, which do not overcome dichotomies but rather acerbate them by individualizing and intellectualizing our knowledgeable participation in recognizably exhibiting and producing the everyday cultural world. Interestingly enough, L. S. Vygotsky, who is often used as a referent for making arguments about inter- and intrasubjective zmentaly zconstructions,y developed, towards the end of his life, a Spinozist approach according to which there is only one substance. This one substance manifests itself in two radically different ways: body (material, biology) and mind (society, culture). But there are not two substances that are combined into a unit; there is only one substance. Once such an approach is adopted, the classical question of cognitive scientists about how symbols are grounded in the world comes to be recognized as an artefact of the theory. Drawing on empirical materials from different learning settings—including parent-child, school, and workplace settings—this book explores the opportunities and implications that this non-dualist approach has for educational research and practice This book series focuses on the development of new qualitative methodologies for educational psychology and interdisciplinary enrichment in ideas and practices. It publishes key ideas of methodology, different approaches to schooling, family, relationships and social negotiations of issues of educational processes. It presents new perspectives, such as dynamic systems theory, dialogical perspectives on the development of the self within educational contexts, and the role of various symbolic resources in educational processes. The series publishes research rooted in the cultural psychology framework, thus combining the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, education and history. Cultural psychology examines how human experience is organized culturally, through semiotic mediation, symbolic action, accumulation and exchange of inter-subjectively shared representations of the life-space. By taking this approach, the series breaks through the ontological” conceptualization of education in which processes of education are localized in liminality. In this series, education is understood as goal-oriented personal movement that is at the core of societal change in all its different forms—from kindergarten to vocational school and lifelong learning. It restructures personal lives both inside school and outside the school. The cultural psychology approach to education fits the global processes of most countries becoming multi-cultural in their social orders, refl ects the interdisciplinary nature of educational psychology, and informs the applications of educational psychology in a vast variety of cultural contexts. This book series: • Is the first to approach education from a cultural psychology perspective. • Offers an up-to-date exploration of recent work in cultural psychology of education. • Brings together new, novel, and innovative ideas. • Broadens the practical usability of different trends of cultural psychology of education. Preface from the Series Editor 6 Foreword 8 Contents 12 Chapter 1 Vygotsky, Spinoza, and Cultural Psychology of Education 16 Part I Foundations 42 Chapter 2 Biology | Culture 48 Chapter 3 Communicating | Thinking 72 Chapter 4 Intrasubjectivity | Intersubjectivity 96 Chapter 5 Primacy of the Social and Sociogenetic Method 116 Chapter 6 Learning | Development 142 Part II Case Studies 168 Chapter 7 The Social Nature of Reading 176 Chapter 8 Intention—A Product of Joint Social Work 196 Chapter 9 Culturing Conceptions 214 Chapter 10 Natural History of the Sign 240 Chapter 11 Genesis of the Zone of Proximal Development 262 Part III Implications 280 Chapter 12 The Thinking Body 284 Chapter 13 “The Way to Freedom” in/for Education 312 Appendix: Transcription Conventions 336 Index 338