This week’s reading was dense and full of comparison/contrast to the then current theories of psychology – particularly stimulus-response theory. I interpretted Vygotsky’s main issue with stimulus-response theory, as practiced by the majority of psychologists, to be that it focused on objects instead of process. It seems like he is promoting a learning theory and methodology that focuses on the process that people use to get from the stimulus to the response.
He describes this process as a spiral where children begin at one naive level, then progress to a new transitional level, then progress to a third level where the response looks a lot like the original level but in actuality the process used to get to the response is very different.
This reminds me of a hermeneutical spiral approach to literary criticism (an extension of Ricoeur’s hermeneutical arc) – when a person first confronts a text, they are naive about what it might mean. After learning more about the context (we actually went through the song American Pie in the course I took a long time ago) the reader no longer can approach the text with a naive understanding – instead the understanding has developed to contain new layers of information which exist regardless of whether the person wants them to or not.
I am wondering how this learning theory fits with brain based learning approaches (or approaches that emphasize developmental stages). Several places in the text mention the differences in learning process modeled by people of different ages.
“The reader no longer can approach the text with a naive understanding – instead the understanding has developed to contain new layers of information which exist regardless of whether the person wants them to or not.”
This is what I was struggling with in terms of how Vygotsky interpreted the learning of young children with the mind (and new layers of information) of an adult. It reminds me of the koan “What was your true face before your parents were born?” Being able to directly access or at least remember the naive state seems like it could be a boon for the practice of helping students–especially young children–learn.