Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T10:55:05.601Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

14 - Creating zones of possibilities: Combining social contexts for instruction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Luis C. Moll
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
James B. Greenberg
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
Get access

Summary

Of great value, in both scientific and practical respects, would be the pedagogicalpsychological investigation of the reciprocal relation between learning activity and the productive labor that pupils undertake together with adults. This problem has received precious little attention by developmental and pedagogical psychology in the Soviet Union, although the development of learning activity is closely tied precisely to productive activity.

V. V. Davydov (1988, p. 34)

One of the most interesting and important contributions of Vygotskian psychology is the proposal that human thinking must be understood in its concrete social and historical circumstances. As Luria (1982) explained it, to understand thinking one must go beyond the human organism. One must search for the origins of “conscious activity,” not in the “recesses of the human brain or in the depths of the spirit, but in the external conditions of life.” “Above all,” Luria continued, “this means that one must seek these origins in the external processes of social life, in the social and historical forms of human existence” (p. 25). He later reiterated as follows:

The basic difference between our approach and that of traditional psychology will be that we are not seeking the origins of human consciousness in the depths of the “soul” or in the independently acting mechanisms of the brain. … Rather, we are operating in an entirely different sphere – in humans' actual relationship with reality, in their social history, which is closely tied to labor and language.

(1982, p. 27)
Type
Chapter
Information
Vygotsky and Education
Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology
, pp. 319 - 348
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×