Vygotsky and Pedagogy

Harry Daniels

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317208440
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Routledge Classic Edition of Daniels' influential 2001 text Vygotsky and Pedagogy explores the growing interest in Vygotsky and the pedagogic implications of the body of work that is developing under the influence of his theories.

With a new preface from Harry Daniels this book explores the growing interest in Vygotsky and the pedagogic implications of the body of work that is developing under the influence of his theories. It provides an overview of the ways in which the original writing has been extended and identifies areas for future development. The author considers how these developments are creating new and important possibilities for the practices of teaching and learning in school and beyond, and illustrates how Vygotskian theory can be applied in the classroom.

The book is intended for students and academics in education and the social sciences and will be of interest to all those who wish to develop an analysis of pedagogic practice within and beyond the field of education.

Chapter 1Pedagogy and mediation

10.4324/9781315617602-1

Introduction

The current emphasis on educational standards has given rise to a number of ways and means of scrutinising the outcomes of educational processes. In this book I wish to revisit the topic of pedagogy as it may be seen through a particular set of positions within social theory. My argument is that unless we understand the ways in which possibilities for learning are enacted within institutions we will be frustrated in our attempts to really raise standards. Through a review of a branch of social theory I will consider how social, cultural, historical and institutional factors may be seen to impact on processes of teaching and learning. My suggestion is that the term pedagogy should be construed as referring to forms of social practice which shape and form the cognitive, affective and moral development of individuals. If pedagogic practices are understood as those which influence the formation of identity as well as learning outcome as defined in, say, test scores, then a form of social theory is required that will allow us to model and investigate the factors which may be exercising some effect. The book thus seeks to understand the processes of education through models which allow for a broad range of influences and outcomes.

There is a growing interest in what has become known as ‘sociocultural theory’ and its near relative ‘activity theory’. Both traditions are historically linked to the work of L.S. Vygotsky and both attempt to provide an account of learning and development as mediated processes. In sociocultural theory the emphasis is on semiotic mediation with a particular emphasis on speech. In activity theory it is activity itself which takes the centre stage in the analysis. Both approaches attempt to theorise and provide methodological tools for investigating the processes by which social, cultural and historical factors shape human functioning. Neither account resorts to determinism in that they both acknowledge that in the course of their own development human beings also actively shape the very forces that are active in shaping them. This mediational model which entails the mutual influence of individual and supra-individual factors lies at the heart of many attempts to develop our understanding of the possibilities for interventions in processes of human learning and development. For many educators it provides important tools for the development of an understanding of pedagogy. Importantly, this body of theoretical work opens up, or rather insists upon, a pedagogic imagination that reflects on the processes of teaching and learning as much more than face-to-face interaction or the simple transmission of prescribed knowledge and skill. This book will discuss the theoretical developments that are taking place in this field and illustrate some of the implications through specific examples of pedagogic practice that draw from the theory.

The aim of this book is, then, to explore the pedagogic implications of the body of theoretical work that is developing under the influence of the writing of L.S. Vygotsky. His work has been translated and retranslated from the original Russian. It has given rise to a wide range of interpretations and extensions. These developments in social theory are creating new and important possibilities for practices of teaching and learning in schools and beyond. They provide us with theoretical constructs, insights and understandings which we can use to develop our own thinking about the practices of education.

Many of the ideas which inform the writing of this book were originally forged at a time of rapid and intense social upheaval – the Russian Revolution. They were developed by someone who was charged with developing a state system for the education of ‘pedagogically neglected’ children (Yaroshevsky, 1989, p. 96). This group included the homeless, of which there were a very large number, and those with special needs. In July 1924 the 28-year-old Lev Vygotsky was appointed to work in the People’s Commissariat for Public Education. He argued that the culture of education as it had existed was itself in need of profound transformation and that this was possible in the new social circumstances that obtained in Russia. He embarked on the creation of psychological theories which he and others used as tools for the development of new pedagogies for all learners.

We, also, are witnessing a period of very rapid social change. Transformations in the means and patterns of communication lie at the heart of fundamental changes in the labour market and social relations. These transformations have created new demands and also offer new possibilities for teaching and learning. At such a time the received wisdom or ‘common sense’ of education as it was practised when we were at school may no longer be appropriate.

It would seem sensible to spend some time defining the boundaries of this project. Whilst it will not comprise a comprehensive overview of all the pedagogic initiatives that have espoused a Vygotskian root, it will attempt to illustrate the pedagogic possibilities that are being generated in the theoretical work. A basic requirement for this task is an outline of the key theoretical issues along with a discussion of the field of application. I will address these issues in Chapters 2 and 3. In this chapter I will be laying down a trace of the issues to be explored more fully later on. Thus I will open the discussion on pedagogy through questions about the breadth of its definition. The discussion concerning Vygotsky will argue that the concept of mediation is a fundamental element of his thesis. In the second half of this chapter I will introduce a number of issues which will be explored in Chapters 2 and 3 through a consideration of mediation within the Vygotskian framework.

Pedagogy

Moll (1990) argues that Vygotsky considered the capacity to teach and to benefit from instruction is a fundamental attribute of human beings.

Vygotsky’s primary contribution was in developing a general approach that brought education, as a fundamental human activity, fully into a theory of psychological development. Human pedagogy, in all its forms, is the defining characteristic of his approach, the central concept in his system.

(Moll, 1990, p. 15)

He along with many others (e.g. Wertsch, 1985) suggest that whilst Vygotsky declared an interest in more broadly defined sociocultural development he spent a major part of his time focusing on a somewhat constrained operational definition of the ‘social’ in his investigations of individual development. As my concern in this book is to discuss the pedagogic implications of the work that has developed under Vygotsky’s influence I must take some time to reflect on how it is to be defined. Specifically, I wish to address the implicit definition of the ‘social’ implied by the term pedagogy itself. Moll (1990) cites Premack as an introduction to his assertion that pedagogy is central to the development of ‘uniquely human psychological processes’.

The presence of pedagogy in human affairs introduces a cognitive gap that is not found in other animals. If the adult does not take the child in tow, making him the object of pedagogy, the child will never become an adult (in competence).

(Premack, 1984, p. 33)

If ‘pedagogy’ is so important in the development of human psychological functioning it is essential that a valid model of its range and possibilities is available to theoreticians, empirical researchers and practitioners. To truncate or delimit the scope of the term would be to ignore possible sources of formative influence on research and the design of formal schooling.

Best (1988) traces the changes in the use of the term pedagogy from her perspective as Director of the French Institut National de Recherche Pedagogique. Her discussion starts with the late nineteenth-century definition attributed to Henri Marion:

Pedagogy is … both the science and the art of education. But as we must choose one or the other – the (French) language being usually reluctant to allow the same word to denote both an art and its corresponding science – I would simply define pedagogy as the science of education. Why a science rather than an art? Because … the substance of pedagogy lies much less in the processes that it brings into play than in the theoretical reasoning through which it discovers, evaluates and co-ordinates these processes.

(Quoted in Best, 1988, p. 154)

Crucially she raises the question as to whether ‘pedagogy’ conflicts with ‘knowledge’. In asking whether there is ‘knowledge to be conveyed’ on the one hand and on the other ‘methods of conveying this information’ she announces one of the fundamental concerns of this book. She suggests an early trajectory for common usage of the term from the practical consequences of psychology to the doctrine of non-directive teaching (which she attributes to Carl Rogers), within which pedagogy was seen as ‘nothing more than intuition’. Didactics – the study of the relationship between pupils, teachers and the various branches of knowledge grouped into educational subjects – was introduced into French teacher training as a reaction to the diminution of the term pedagogy. In this way she argues that general pedagogy became the philosophy, sociology and social psychology of education, and specialised pedagogy became didactics. Jarning (1997) suggests that ambiguities between its part conceptualisation and organisation as a professional field of knowledge on the one hand and as a ‘pure’ discipline based knowledge field on the other, give rise to possibilities for confusion even within the Scandinavian context where the term is in common use.

Given all this Gallic and Nordic confusion it is hardly surprising that in England, where the very word ‘pedagogy’ sits unhappily in the mouth – (hard or soft ‘g’?), Brian Simon (1985) should ask ‘Why no pedagogy in England?’ Simon, as Davies (1994) suggests, portrays an explicit relation between the social setting and educational practice:

Pedagogy involves a vision (theory, set of beliefs) about society, human nature, knowledge and production, in relation to educational ends, with terms and rules inserted as to the practical and mundane means of their realisation.

(Davies, 1994, p. 26)

More recently, Watkins and Mortimore (1999) reviewed three phases of research literature on pedagogy each of which adopts a particular focus. These are:

• a focus on different types of teachers;
• a focus on the contexts of teaching;
• a focus on teaching and learning.

In a statement on current views of pedagogy they propose a complex model which ‘specifies relations between its elements: the teacher, the classroom or other context, content, the view of learning and learning about learning. Such a model draws attention to the creation of learning communities in which knowledge is actively co-constructed, and in which the focus of learning is sometimes learning itself’, Watkins and Mortimore (1999) p. 8. Implicitly they acknowledge the force of the statement by Davies on ‘vision (theory, set of beliefs) about society, human nature, knowledge and production, in relation to educational ends’ in that they discuss the ways in which different views on pedagogy are created and contested by different social groups such as teachers and policy makers. However, they conclude their discussion with the definition ‘any conscious activity by one person designed to enhance learning in an another’, thus reverting to an account constrained to the individual level of analysis.

It may be argued that the very definition of the term pedagogy mirrors some of the issues that have arisen when researchers have approached the study of education. For example, cognitive psychologists have, in the past, studied thinking outside the natural ecology of the classroom. Anthropologists have studied many aspects of education but only recently have they looked at learning itself. They, just as the interest groups that Watkins and Mortimore discuss, have placed their own priorities/visions/values on the very definition of the field of study.

In his early writing, Vygotsky provides an emergent sociological position on pedagogy which attests to his own ‘priorities/visions/values’:

Pedagogics is never and was never politically indifferent, since, willingly or unwillingly, through its own work on the psyche, it has always adopted a particular social pattern, political line, in accordance with the dominant social class that has guided its interests.

(Vygotsky, 1997, p. 348)

Vygotsky was suggesting a process of social formation in the development of educational ideas. He distances himself from naturalistic or common-sense pedagogic positions. For him pedagogies arise and are shaped in particular social circumstances. Popkewitz (1998) analyses the situations which shaped and fashioned the ideas of both Vygotsky and Dewey. He suggests that they both worked at times of intense modernisation which involved industrialisation, urbanisation and rationalisation. His argument is that their psychologies both embodied evidence of modernity. He further suggests that:

• there was a general affinity between the Russian concern with creating a new unity of community and Dewey’s belief that disintegrated individuals can achieve unity only as the dominant energies of community life are incorporated to form their mind (ibid, p. 537);
• they were pragmatic theorists in the sense that they saw all teaching and learning as conditional and contingent … for Vygotsky teaching and learning (and upbringing) were collaborative activities in which there were no uniform methods (ibid, p. 538).

On the basis of these assertions Popkewitz develops a very broadly based definition of pedagogy.

Pedagogy is a practice of the social administration of the social individual. Since at least the 19th century pedagogical discourses about teaching, children, and learning in schools connected the scope and aspirations of public powers with the personal and subjective capabilities of individuals. This administration of the child embodies certain norms about their capabilities from which the child can become self governing and self reliant.

(Popkewitz, 1998, p. 536)

Thus, Popkewitz alerts us to the need to provide an account of pedagogic practice in which large-scale or macro factors are integrated with micro levels of analysis. This is implicit in the general definition offered by Bernstein:

Pedagogy is a sustained process whereby somebody(s) acquires new forms or develops existing forms of conduct, knowledge, practice and criteria, from somebody(s) or something deemed to be an appropriate provider and evaluator. Appropriate either from the point of view of the acqui...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Frontmatter
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Pedagogy and mediation
• 2 Vygotskian theory and education
• 3 Current approaches to sociocultural and activity theory
• 4 Applications of sociocultural and activity theory to education
• 5 The institutional level of regulation and analysis
• Bibliography
• Index