Beth Ferholt

Adult and Child Development in the Zone of Proximal Development: Socratic Dialogue in a Playworld

This article analyses adult and child development in the zone of proximal development in an educational practice based in Vygotskys theories of play: the playworld educational practice. The playworld educational practice is a central component of a Scandinavian play pedagogy that promotes shared responsibility amongst adults and children for engaging in adult–child joint play. The playworld practice, which is based on a work of childrens literature, includes joint adult–child scripted and improvisational acting and set design. We explore conditions under which playworld activities create a zone of proximal development that fosters development in both adult and child. Our analysis, based on data from a K-1 classroom, expands Vygotskys concept of the zone of proximal development so that we see not only the unidirectional development of a child toward an adult stage of development but also the simultaneous development experienced by adults participating in the zone with the child.

Perezhivaniya as a Means of Creating the Aesthetic Form of Consciousness

ABSTRACT Until recently scholars have placed the emergence of perezhivaniya in the later stages of childhood or in adolescence. This article clarifies the meaning of the term perezhivanie by describing perezhivaniya across the life span. We also delineate stages of perezhivaniya. We take into account the work of a range of scholars and artists whose studies of the properties of perezhivaniya have converged, often without their using, or possibly even being aware of, the term perezhivanie. We derive our claims from empirical material from a Swedish preschool and a playworld that took place in an elementary school in the United States.

'The Playing-Exploring Child' : Re-conceptualizing the Relationship between Play and Learning in Early Childhood Education

In this article, the authors problematize the dichotomization of play and learning that often shapes the agenda of early childhood education research and practice. This dichotomization is driven in part by the tendency to define learning in terms of formal learning (i.e. learning as an outcome of direct instruction and school-based approaches that focus on teacher-led, goal-directed activities and declarative knowledge). The authors argue for a reconceptualization of early childhood education that understands learning and development not as an outcome, primarily, of instruction and teaching, but as an outcome of play and exploration. They develop this argument by drawing on Vygotsky’s theories of play, imagination, realistic thinking and creativity. These theories challenge another dichotomy – that between imagination and reality – by arguing that imagination is implicated in the meaning-making of both play and exploration. Instead of relating play to learning where play is characterized by imagination and learning by reality, the authors’ reconceptualization relates play to exploration and proposes that learning, defined as leading to human development, is an outcome of both of these activities. The authors further develop their argument by presenting ethnographic material from a qualitative research project implemented in three Swedish preschools whose practices are influenced by the Reggio Emilia pedagogical approach. The research conducted in this study contributes to new perspectives on the relationship between play and learning by introducing exploration as a counterpart to play, and this new perspective has implications for the design and practice of early childhood education, as well as for early childhood education research.

Teacher Support of Student Engagement in Early Childhood: Embracing Ambivalence through Playworlds.

Abstract Ambivalence is a relatively little advanced concept for studying young people’s engagement in education. We present a case study in which a teacher of a kindergarten-first-grade classroom works within an activity called a playworld to engage a child who had been excluded from certain classroom practices, after having been perceived by his teachers as disengaged and disruptive. Playworlds are defined as adult–child joint play activities inspired by Vygotsky’s theories of play, art, and imagination. We argue that when the teacher embraced this child’s ambivalent participation, ambivalence itself appeared to be an important component of an evolving process of personally meaningful engagement. We showcase those elements of the playworld activity that may support early childhood teachers in embracing ambivalence.

Creativity in education : Play and exploratory learning

The title of the book covers a variety of activities, environments, settings and contexts. The title also suggests a common theoretical-conceptual approach to contemporary cultural-historical activity theory. The topic fits the needs and abilities of modern man because of the impact of activity systems, globalization and cultural integration. More specifically the contents of the book unfold contemporary resources of collective endeavors. One reason for choosing a shared individual and collective theme is to learn about the impact of computer supported instrumentalism. The new technology poses a threat to traditionally acknowledged resources like co-ordination, cooperation and co-construction between people. So, there are cultural-historical experiences to share between people who use their ability to communicate as an impetus to systemic innovation of shared activities operating for the good of communities, societies and nations. From one point of view families, teams, orchestras, courts of law, hospitals etc. are self regulating human organizations. From another point of view – which the contents of this book suggest - many approaches to learning enable for “change agents” to support, co-ordinate, study, understand, re-design, manipulate and improve practices.

Identity, Knowledge, Power, and Educational Reform

This, the second issue of 2018, presents five original articles, followed by three book reviews. Although all of these are independent works, two main threads appear pervasive across several of them: the important issue of identity and emotional experiences, and the question of how relations of knowledge distribution and power may be critically revised through scholarly as well as everyday praxis. Our first article, “Learning and Becoming Writers: Meaning, Identity, and Epistemology in a Newsroom Community of Practice” by Mariana Pacheco, celebrates the educational processes for pre–high school adolescent student journalists in a community newspaper project—the monthly Southside Free Press—which has a circulation of tens of thousands and a history of publishing for several decades. A yearlong ethnography in the newsroom community of practice analysed literacy learning and identity development using Rogoff’s three planes of analysis: apprenticeship, guided participation, and participatory appropriation. The report focuses on the engagement of relatively novice and old-timer “staff writers” in the preparation of articles into the shape required by their “teen editors” for publication; these engagements critically offer opportunities to learn. For instance, one key idea is that texts need to be reviewed, redrafted, and edited for as long as it takes to pass muster, a process requiring considerable persistence and even resilience from youngsters not used to this rigor. Less is said about the development of the teen editors and staff members, but they clearly bring a professionalism to the enterprise, as well as sensitivity to the educational needs of new participants for legitimacy; love of learning and democracy is central to discourse in this community that goes beyond what might be expected in a professional newspaper shop floor. But then the charitable status and value to the community, after all, depends to an extent on the enterprise of developing these youth, as well as producing a journalistic product. Finally, one is left to reflect on why such educational activities are not so easily propagated in schooling institutions. One can point to several elements of the Free Press community that run counter to schooling: Staff are volunteers, and applicants are recommended or at least selected (no one with less than a certain grade point average is recruited). They are paid and, as professionals, they can be expected to deliver. Perhaps also important, the circulation goes beyond the community of practice and into the wider community, giving their product a wide audience outside of academe. There may be other key elements that make the Free Press free to do “real” education: An analysis of the educational capital available to the organization was beyond the scope of this ethnography. In the book review section, Natalia Panina-Beard reviews Dana Walker’s book A Pedagogy of Powerful Communication: Youth Radio and Radio Arts in the Multilingual Classroom, Minding the Media, which explains how a media project was implemented in a school serving a large Hispanic community. The Youth Radio and Radio Arts approach is argued to be productive for working with multilingual students “who do not ‘fit in’ with a mainstream school structure and organization of learning” (p. 177) as it encourages their Spanish language culture and draws on “highly professional supports such as bilingual artists and writers, a radio mentor and the researcher available to the youth (that) were key resources in their engagement” (p. 179). If one were to draw together conclusions from this book and the Free Press project, it would seem that both offer students culturally meaningful contexts and learning opportunities with rich resources, a sense of communicative audience, and a refreshing space to work and learn free from much of the claptrap of schooling. The theme of developing identity is further germane to the second article in this issue, “Resituating Funds of Identity Within Contemporary Interpretations of Perezhivanie” by Adam MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY 2018, VOL. 25, NO. 2, 101–104 https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2018.1453274

Development: The Dialectics of Transgression and Social Transformation

This issue comprises five articles and two book reviews. One theme in the articles is social change and transformation in or through activity, which seems to be grounded in conceptions of dialectics of development, at least implicitly. Sometimes transformation is associated with transgression of norms, and we can also consider this dialectically as a potential for development. As we introduce the articles and reviews, we ask whether or when transgression and change become transformational, and their relation to the dialectics of development. The book reviews are themselves helpful in this regard, as both books are at least partly concerned with the roots of activity theory in Marx and Hegel. We begin this introduction with these reviews then. Although Vygotsky is at the center of the discussions, the books reviewed extend to discussions of the whole of cultural-historical theory and activity theory from the Marxist perspective. In the first book review, Vesa Oittinen examines S. N. Mareev’s book L. S. Vygotskij: Filosofija– psikhologija– iskusstvo. Sergei Mareev is professor of philosophy in Moscow and one of the most well-known “Ilyenkovians” in Russia. The book, published on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of Lev Vygotsky’s birth, attempts to show that Vygotsky was not only a psychologist but also a philosophical thinker of merit, too. Ottinen presents a nuanced discussion and critique of Mereev’s claim that despite the fact that Vygotsky himself always stressed the importance of a philosophical stance in solving methodological problems of psychology, there has been little research on Vygotsky as a philosopher. Ottinen explains that Mareev’s new book continues along the lines of the analysis begun by David Bakhurst (1991), in Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy, but that Mareev does not accept the received view, which treats Vygotsky as a follower of the tradition of Plekhanov and Deborin, founders of the official current of Dialectical Materialism. Mareev argues instead that Vygotsky is best seen as a part of a theoretical development that leads to Ilyenkov. This is significant to our discussion in pointing to the importance of the “ideal” within a monist, materialist philosophy: Transformation then would be seen as an accomplishment of ideal concepts and not only of materials. But then, such concepts need, in Hegel’s and Marx’s terms, to ascend to the concrete, and we would look for transformations on this continuum. As we introduce the articles, we note that the work of transformation in some cases still seems quite abstract, and has some way to travel in practice. Next, Alfredo Jornet reviews Carl Ratner and Daniele Nunes Henrique Silva’s edited volume, Vygotsky and Marx: Towards a Marxist Psychology. Jornet positions this edited volume within a growing body of literature attempting to restore Vygotsky’s legacy within a larger epistemological framework that would allow moving it beyond current uptakes. Jornet explains that what distinguishes Ratner and Silva’s edited contribution from these other works is its explicit—almost sole— focus on clarifying and further developing the Marxist roots of Vygotsky’s work. As the review suggests, this is an exercise of going back to the sources that moved and informed Vygotsky’s theory, in order to move beyond that theory, which the author himself left unfinished, an open-ended project. In this spirit, Ratner and Silva critically revise some of today’s most influential uptakes and note a lack of attention to Vygotsky’s roots in Marxism. Jornet argues that, although Ratner and Silva may indeed have overlooked aspects of the work of the scholars they critique, their critique is most

Returning to Meaning Making as Essential for Praxis

The threads that draw these articles together are formed by questions of meaning making, not simply for research participants, but for researchers as well. Whether attempting to document the meaning making that co-constitutes participants’ social practices, or to examine how meaning is made relationally in a particular social institution, questions always already exist that researchers must ask themselves about their own research perspectives and the perspectives made available through the theoretical lenses they use. These questions include: What concepts am I using, how are they grounded in theory, and how am I interpreting and applying them? How much can I press against the definitional boundary of a concept before I need to include a differently located concept? When is it time and on what basis do I offer a new concept? How we respond to questions of this sort shapes both the knowledge we generate and the physical and psychological action that becomes possible as a result of our research. It shapes how we realize praxis made possible by our work. Questions are part of the ongoing work of researchers as we take up and utilize theoretical ideas that were introduced historically, well before we joined the larger “historical conversation” that makes up our field (Burke, 1973). Yet this work is also specific to an intergenerational process that is shared between researchers as novice researchers borrow the concepts and interpretations of others, thus populating them with their own intentions (Bakhtin, 1981). Borrowing and populating are dialogical processes; both entail interpretation, appropriation, and ownership. Although some research efforts focus on attempts to use a concept as it was used previously, others focus on extending concepts in new ways, and still others focus on offering new concepts to the conversation. Each approach is significant. Together they enable the intergenerational movement of concepts, as well as a sense of ownership so important for building from the given to create anew. The seven articles, including one with commentary and response, and two book reviews in this issue have at their center issues of meaning making and offer, through empirical and conceptual scholarship, vivid applications, and extensions of theoretical concepts, as well as new concepts that may enable researchers to think and act in new ways. In “Bridgework: Diversity and Collaboration in an Undergraduate Preengineering Course,” Christina Convertino and Erika Mein write that using bridgework as a theoretical concept makes visible contradictions and multivoicedness in interacting activity systems. Based on ethnographic research in an undergraduate precalculus review course, this research demonstrates changes in patterns of activity, as well as illustrating the complexity inherent in collaboration. Brendan Jacobs, Susan Wright, and Nick Reynolds investigate and deepen conceptualizations of the relation between abstract and concrete categories of knowledge in “Reevaluating the ConcreteExplanatory Animation Creation as Digital Catalyst for Cross-Modal Cognition.” They advance the work of scholars who argue that abstract and concrete are neither fixed categories nor in vertical relationship. Using socially shared semiotic tools, they argue that transmediation—the changes that occur as ideas move between modes of expression, for example, as an idea moves to articulation in words or as what was said is reflected in an image—enhances cognition. In Masato Fukushima’s “The Experimental Zone of Learning: Mapping the Dynamics of Everyday Experiment,” the meaning of “experimentation” is investigated as contextualized in everyday life. Building from the notion of “laboratory studies,” as well as the field of science and technology studies, the author argues that the experimental zone of learning may address some of the challenges that occur when laboratory and everyday life are dichotomized. Further, the author offers additional concepts to describe the local conditions of the everyday experiment and the particularity of the experimental zone of learning, including toxins, constraints, and sociotechnical devices. MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY 2017, VOL. 24, NO. 4, 283–284 https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2017.1393168

Early Childhood Perezhivaniya

Our overarching response to this collection of articles on perezhivanie is that the great range of topics across the articles makes necessary more specific conference discussions and papers: those that tackle methodological questions; applications; contextualization within various theoretical traditions, fields, and professions; lacunae in the research; translat ion issues; and more. The articles all confirm our understanding that perezhivanie is a concept that is important to, and can create a fruitful dialogue between, the fields of cultural psychology and early childhood education. We therefore offer a composite response to those points made in several articles, which help us to think in new ways about our claim that the difference between adult and child perezhivaniya is one of degree, not of kind. Veresov and Fleer’s (this issue) argument that perezhivanie as a concept productively contributes to the study of children’s development helps us to clarify the fact that our own argument includes a reverse perspective: We also claim that an understanding of children’s development can be of use in the study of perezhivanie (the concept and the phenomenon). We are particularly intrigued by Roth and Jornet’s (2016) emphasis on “the kind of world that becomes possible for human beings, whose social lives are defined by ethics and freedom” (p. 323), in part because this offers an understanding that social lives in early childhood are also defined by ethics and freedom. Furthermore, we too appreciate that emphasizing the phenomenon of prolepsis is essential in developing an understanding of perezhivanie, in particular an understanding of the ways that perezhivaniya take place in social relations in early childhood and then appear, later in life, to be an individual achievement. González Rey (2016) challenges our assumption that perezhivanie is a useful concept for developing the field of early childhood education by challenging its current use in psychology. We are intrigued by his proposal regarding subjectivity and are interested in how this work could challenge and vitalize the concepts of learning and development. The notion that what is at stake is a challenge to the notion of objectivity helps us to contemplate relations between perezhivanie; recent interest in intra-active pedagogies in early childhood education, in which materials are understood to be active and performative agents (Lentz Taguchi, 2010); and our long-standing interest in the work of Martin Buber, which we have included in previous discussions of perezhivanie through the concept of coexistence (Aspelin & Persson, 2011) from relational pedagogy: “Co-existence is a goal in itself; i.e. meaning is inherent in the relationship” (Aspelin & Persson, 2011, p. 10). Clarà’s (2016) discussion of the difference between Vygotsky’s and Vasilyuk’s uses of the term perezhivanie as experiencing-as-struggle and the meaning that mediates experience-as-struggle makes us wonder if the study of this distinction in early childhood perezhivaniya might lead us to note significant differences between adult and early childhood perezhivaniya. We are still working to formulate relevant questions from this supposition, but the following are some attempts. What is the difference between the death of the loved one, for an adult, and the death of a loved one when one is not yet old enough to understand death in the same terms that adults use to understand death? What is the difference between the death of a loved one for an adult and the experience of finding, for the first time, that one’s body is breakable, even when one is not knowingly taking a risk, when one is a young child? For instance, when a 4-year-old person who has just fallen from her bike and is bleeding from her knee exclaims with fury and wonder, “I just closed my eyes very quickly. I was still pedaling! I was riding!” then she is, perhaps, facing