Mediating artifacts in Russian teacher-training

textbooks: cultural-historical analysis

Anna Popova

ISCAR 30 September 2014

•Cultural-historical theory

•Some aspects of sociology

•Education studies•Empirical data in education/childhood settings and contexts

•Vygotsky, Leontiev, Luria,

•M. Cole, Y. Engeström, H. Daniels , A. Edwards, Y. Valsiner, D. Holland.

•The world and individuals are constructed by social events, and add to the construction of social events

•Trained as a teacher in the former Soviet Republic of Russia

•The UK education – very western but with a cultural-historical theory bias.

I am a teacher

I am a constructi

vist

I rely mainly on

CHAT scholar

History and education

Popkewitz, (2011: p.2)

• The task of the history of the present in this discussion is to consider the system of reason that orders and classifies what is seen, talked about and acted on in schooling. Reason, as I explore below, is not merely something of the mind to obtain a better representation of reality. The rules and standards of reflection and action are historically generated within social and cultural practices that change over time and space.

Mediating artifacts

A typical mediating device is constructed by assigning meaning to an object and then placing it in the environment so as to affect mental events. It is important to remember that Vygotsky saw these tools for the self-control of cognition and affect as, above all, social and cultural. “Assigning meaning” and “placing in the environment” are not just individual acts. Rather, mediating devices are part of collectively formed systems of meaning and are products of social history (Holland and Lachicotte, 2007, p. 110).

The invisible and implicit place of history in CHAT

• The cultural-historical dimension of Vygotsky’s theory aimed at the analysis of historical transformations of human psychological functions under the influence of changing psychological tools. It was assumed that the transition from natural functions to cultural ones takes places not only in ontogenesis, but also in human history. “Primitive mentality” should, therefore, correspond to a system of psychological tools essentially different from those of the modern mind, which is to a great extent a product of such mediating systems as written language and logicomathematical operations (Kozulin, 1986, p. 267).

Why textbooks? Why Russia?

• [the narrative texts] are important. Such accounts do not simply reflect different objective viewpoints to be accepted or not in a dispassionate way. Instead, they reflect strongly held commitments to a particular narrative account, commitments that are often masked by the tendency to think that our account simply relates what happened (Wertsch, 2002, p. 9).

1970S, 1980S AND 1990S

• Personhood and vospitanie

• Personhood – part of society, a person, all ideas required by society at the time

• Vospitanie - process by which personhood is formed.

70s

• Polyanskii (1972) referring to the Programme of the Communist Party claims

The Party considers the fight against bourgeois ideology and ethics, and with the remains of mentality of private ownership as part of communist vospitanie. [...] Collective accusation of selfish and anti-social actions will soon become the tool of changing old-fashioned bourgeois values (p. 108).

80s

• The later publication (Babanskii et al., 1988) also makes clear that vospitanie creates personhood that will serve the needs of the Soviet state.

If the aim of the school is to create slaves of the capitalist society, then an appropriate method will be chosen, and science will be used to achieve this; if the aim of the school is to create the future builders of communism, then all achievements of the science will be used to develop abilities to think creatively and act according to the needs of the collective, at the same time developing initiative and independence (Krupskaya, 1978, cited in Babanskii et al., 1988, p. 124).

90s

• In comparison, Mudrick (2000) makes no reference to the Marxist pedagogics. However, the role of vospitanie is ascribed an equally important role.

It is vospitanie that to a certain extent determines that an individual acquires positive values, and not anti-social norms of behaviour. Vospitanie helps an individual realise himself effectively in society (p. 28).

2000-2013Even in a context where the narrative accounts of the past seem to change radically, this underlying narrative template ensures a degree of continuity. The characters, events, and even the plot may appear to change in important ways, but the influence of this narrative template is present at a deeper level” (Wertsch, 2002, p. 113).

In general, the inclusion of “new” information in post-Soviet textbooks raises a set of challenges to employment that have not yet been adequately resolved. Specifically, it raises problems for authors as they attempt to employ the same narrative template to grasp events together while at the same time including new events that have little place in it. As a result, it sometimes seems that new information has been dropped into a narrative with little consideration for how or whether it fits into the overall text (p. 112).

Reformulation of the narrative template

Educators who wrote these textbooks

• Dialogue with the past

• Dialogue with the West

• Dialogue with themselves or other authors

Dialogue with the Soviet Past

Golovanova acknowledges in the Soviet past the role of vospitanie was linked to the political ideology. She claims that “there are still a lot of regrets in education about the loss of ideological orientations of the current vospitanie”.

• Podlasii uses the same definition of vospitanie as in the Soviet textbooks. Vospitanie is a purposeful and organised process of personhood formation. In pedagogics vospitanie is used in a broad and narrow meanings. Broad meaning: vospitanie is as old as humanity, and it is an eternal category. Narrow: institutions influence an individual in order to form knowledge, opinions, values, political orientation, preparation for life.

Dialogue with the West

Golovanova claims that there is an attempt in Russia to promote ‘western’ views of educations, and borrowing mainly from the English language publications. She argues this is due to the fact that the English language literature does not use the term ‘vospitanie’, and since it is not used, it might be good to get rid of it in the Russian education literature.

Podlasii mentions the names philosophers, educationalists and researchers who are famous in the West without a particular explanation of how they helped Russian educational thought. He writes about Jan Komenkii, Jhon Lock and D. Didro in one section of thechapter (p. 15). Yet at the end of the chapter he makes a claim that Ushinkii is a worldwide known educationalist.

Dialogue with themselves or others

Golovanova discusses the concepts of the subject and object in the process of vospitanie. The way in which she discusses the link between these two concepts is although she does not really know whether the concepts of the subject and object are really useful. She says that the adult is the subject, but the object can also be the subject. It seems that the internal dialogue has roots in the strong tradition of the Russian educationalists to rely heavily on the activity theory developed by Leontiev, who claimed that every human cultural-historical activity is focused on the object. So, Golovanova seeks the necessity of the object in the conceptual framework, yet, she is having trouble explaining how the two concepts can help her explain a more equal basis for modern vospitanie

• Holland, D. & Lanchicotte, W, Jr. (2007). Vygotsky, Mead, and the new sociocultural studies of identity. In H. Daniels, M. Cole & J. Wertsch (Eds.), Vygotsky. Modern Masters Series (pp. 101-136). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.