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xviii I once wrote that my dream was to make Lev Vygotsky a household word. [JLJ - didn't work, Lois]
p.9 The search for method becomes one of the most important problems of the entire enterprise of understanding the uniquely human forms of psychological activity. In this case, the method is simultaneously prerequisite and product, the tool and the result of the study. (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 65)
Vygotsky is proposing a radical break with the accepted scientific paradigm in which method is a tool that is applied and yields results. In this case, the relation between tool and result is linear, instrumental and dualistic, what Newman and I call tool for result methodology (Newman and Holzman, 1993). Vygotsky proposes a qualitatively different conception of method - not a tool to be applied, but an activity (a "search") that generates both tool and result at the same time and as a continuous process. Tool and result are not dualistically separated, neither are they the same or one thing. Rather, they are elements of a dialectical unity/totality/whole. Method to be practiced, not applied, is what Vygotsky was advocating. To capture the dialectical relationship of this new conception, Newman and I call this tool-and-result methodology (Newman and Holzman, 1993). [JLJ - sometimes you have a good day. Discovering this made today a good day.]
p.9-10 Newman and I believe that this tool-and-result methodology is not only the relevant one for studying human development but as well is an apt and rich characterization of the activity of human development itself.
p.10 The Western scientific worldview is filled with problems. I mean that literally - problems are the "stuff" of life... Problems are what we are taught to see; solutions are what we are taught to search for... Vygotsky's tool-and-result method provides a way out of the problem (but not a solution)... Tool for result methodology... is essentially a problem-solving approach. In contrast, tool-and-result methodology rejects this way of viewing and living in the world, in favor of a more unified, emergent and continuous process approach.
p.14-15 Activity is one alternative to behavior... Vygotsky found in Marx the concept of activity, which he adopted and expanded upon. To understand Marx's conception of activity it is essential to recognize that, for Marx, human beings are social beings. He did not set the individual in opposition to society, as can be seen in this remark: "It is above all necessary to avoid postulating 'society' once again as an abstraction confronting the individual. The individual is the social being" (Marx, 1967, p. 130).
p.15 "As society itself produces man as man, so it is produced by him. Activity and mind are social in their content as well as in their origin; they are social activity and social mind" (Marx, 1967, p. 129). Thus, for Marx activity is fundamentally social, communal, reflexive and reconstructive - it is human beings exercising their power as "activity-ists," that is, as transformers of totalities (themselves and their environments).
p.16 Social in both content and origin, activity is a cultural-historical phenomenon that emerges and transforms along with transformations in economic and cultural production. It is how human beings transform the existing circumstances, develop as individuals and as a species, and create culture. Activity - the ordinary person's "search for method" - is the human capacity to make tools-and-results.
[JLJ - Margaret Archer would be more specific - "activity" is much too vague. It is our concerns that lead to our projects and which lead to our practices. It is about making our way through the world. Children seem to be "active" simply because they are children and are possessed by the spirit of play to investigate objects immediately in front of them. Perhaps this is child-active. Adults and young adults are adult-active because they more fully understand the forces in the social environment and can creatively form complex plans to satisfy their needs - their activity is performed with this in mind. A child is more fully developed when he/she can perform in the role of a member of society, perhaps with some guidance at first.]
p.16-17 In most contemporary work carried out by activity-theoretic psychologists, educational researchers and others, activity is understood as the specifically human form of socio-historically produced behaviors that are motivated by... needs and goals, mediated by... tools, such as language and other artifacts
p.17 I see Vygotsky's work... Not as a theory of mind, but as a theory of becoming... Activity provides the foundation to move psychology from the study of "what is" to the study of "what is becoming" (which entails "what is").
[JLJ - so the question the mind asks itself is not just "how do I go on?" but rather "what are the consequences of this or that behavior, in light of what am I becoming?" A plant just becomes, based on the environment. A human ponders what it might become, and changes course based on projections of activity and forces in the environment, including others becoming. Ultimately the mind creates musings, then ponders them, asking at first, "How much should I care about that?"]
p.18 Vygotsky... conceptualized learning and development not as discrete particulars that interact, but as a dialectical unity in which learning leads development (Vygotsky, 1987).
p.18 Newman and I see something other than the mastering of a mediational means of acquiring knowledge about the world (that is, using an instrumental tool). What we see is the creating of a developmental environment and development - simultaneously (that is, making a tool-and-result). We see a glimpse of what the dialectical process of being/becoming looks like - how young children are related to simultaneously as who they are and who they are not (who they are becoming), and that this is how they develop.
p.18 The process of learning and the product of learning are created together. Through their joint activity, young children and their caretakers, siblings, etc., create environments for learning leading development and, in the practice of that dialectical activity, they create the unity, learning and developing.
How do they do it? ...Newman and I call it performing in the theatrical sense of the word
p.19 Development... is the activity of creating who you are by performing who you are not... Vygotsky's zone of proximal development is not a zone at all... but an activity - simultaneously the performance space and the performance
p.19 A paradigm... prioritizes thought over action. It is, in effect, a guide to action. It is a very sophisticated form of tool for result.
p.20 Vygotsky... recognize[d] that human beings do - and must do - more than use existing tools, make new instrumental tools and acquire knowledge. He discovered that human beings also do dialectics - reshaping the very environments that determine them, performing who they are becoming, creating culture and transforming the world.
p.24 minds and the processes and functions presumed to be carried out "in" them (conceptualizing, problem solving, thinking, speaking, imagining, and so on) are social phenomena.
p.26 Cognition, we concluded, is a social and cultural achievement that occurs through a process of people collectively constructing environments in which to act on the world. It is located not in an individual's head, but in the "person-environment interface" (Cole, Hood and McDermott, 1978). [JLJ - cognition is pointless unless it involves positioning or re-positioning the body (or self) in the physical (or social) environment. Cognition is the reduction of the environment to symbols that can be processed using schemes.]
p.34 People are primarily performers, not thinkers or knowers.
p.36 There is perhaps nothing, in Western cultures at least, that people relate to in language and thought as more fundamentally individuated and less social than feelings. Feelings are the bottom line: "These are MY feelings. That's how I feel." Beginning and end of story.
p.36 growth comes from participating in the process of building the groups in which one functions.
p.40 when people are speaking, what they are doing is not saying what's going on but creating what's going on... The human ability to create with language - to complete, and be completed by, others - is, for adults as well as for very young children, a continuous process of creating who we are becoming, a tool-and-result of the activity of developing.
p.40 If, as Vygotsky appears to be saying, language and thought are a dialectical process, a unified activity, then the dualistic divide between inner and outer vanishes. There are no longer two separate worlds, the private one of thinking and the social one of speaking. There is, instead, the complex dialectical unity, speaking/thinking, in which speaking completes thinking.
[JLJ - One never truly thinks just for thinking's sake. We are always in the midst of a predicament of some kind. Heidegger can have his nonsensical "being" (when you are a tenured professor you can simply "be"), everyone else has a predicament. That is just life. A rabbit caught in a trap (I caught one today, by the way, and released it away from my house) is in a predicament - it is not "being". A snapshot at any point in life is a portrait of us-in-our-environment, and us-in-our-plans-or-schemes-doing-what-we-want-in-that-environment. We always have our current situation, and the plan, or kind of a plan, to deal with it. But is there a better way? Is it time to change how I do this? One thinks as part of a scheme or social maneuver of some kind, because others are maneuvering or scheming, and are perhaps threatening my position or social capital. How can I do this? What would he say? Can I get him to do this for me? Can I get to the store and then on to my other errand, in time to do this other thing?
Our thinking is not complete until it is explained to the group, because our insight is limited. The insight of the group can correct or complete our thinking. We should check that our thinking is acceptable to the group. We get approval from the group or some other insight is obtained from the group, or we make another attempt to explain it to the group. Thinking is necessary to perform basic social maneuvers. We use language to communicate thought, but we must do this as a resolution of the predicament we are in. One could argue that it is the predicament that we are in that requires speaking and thought. One thinks until one is ready to speak. One stops speaking when it is time to think. The predicament we are in determines whether we need to speak or think, or listen to others.]
p.48 The task of the typical school is the production of knowers, not learners... current educational policy is officially acquisitionally oriented (No Child Left Behind Act of 2001/Public Law 107-110). [JLJ - yes, but to know you somehow had to learn]
p.53 in order for learning past early childhood to be developmental, it needs to be done playfully.
p.61 might we think of human life (indeed, human history) as one long improvisation? To me, improvisation is a way to characterize the being/becoming dialectic that is development... the improvisational nature of human development throughout the life span is, I believe, a rich area for exploration.
p.62 I saw improv as a tool-and-result activity, in which the creating of the scene and the scene come into existence simultaneously.
p.89 "Life in a complex world, and a life which reflects and values the complexity of both self and world, requires the ability to improvise - to deal with, and indeed to create, the unforeseen, the surprise" (Montuori, 2003, p. 240). [JLJ - the quote from Montuori continues: Interestingly, the Latin root of improvisation is improvisus, or unforeseen. Increasingly, it seems, life in or out of organizations requires of us the ability to both react appropriately to unforeseen events, and actually generate those events--to act creatively and innovatively. Football players have to react to surprising moves from the opposition, and also generate moves that catch opposing players off guard. They have to feed off the opposition’s mistakes, the contingency of the bouncing ball, and the condition of the pitch. A jazz musician both generates novelty, by making rhythmic, harmonic, or melodic choices that are surprising, and reacts to the novelty generated by his or her fellow band-members. A piano player might place an unusual chord behind a soloist in what would normally be a predictable harmonic progression. This creates a slightly different context, a surprise, which can lead the experienced improvising soloist to find new ways to navigate a song. This kind of creative dialogue is at the heart of much of what makes jazz a unique art form. It is an example of self-organizing social creativity in small groups (Bailey, 1993; Berliner, 1994; Monson, 1996; Montuori & Purser, 1999). Creativity and improvisation might be said to serve at least a dual role, therefore. They allow us to adapt in our own way to complex environments, and they allow us to express our own (inner) complexity through the performance of our interaction with the world. The concept of improvisation is, I believe, crucial to the existential reality of complexity.]
p.101 Play creates a "space" to perform imagining, and imagining involves challenging the assumptions of everyday "reality" - this is no small part of what makes it developmental.
p.113 I have come to believe that it is as performers that people are able to engage, in a developmental way, the paradox of experiencing what is a social existence as a separate and individuated one. Children become, Vygotsky showed, through their joint performances as other than who they are (speakers, artists, readers, caregivers, and so on).... Their performance as learners leads their development.
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