Intra-mental and Inter-mental Variation: The Source of Development

[kellogg]

This data shows the various developmental students' complex.

Well put. We can see VARIOUS developmental complexes.

Notice what Miyeong does NOT say.

She doesn't say that the data shows ONE developmental level. She also doesn't say that the data shows one developmental LEVEL. She knows that:

a) there are many children in the classroom, and children are different.

b) even one child has many different levels of performance.

Now, one kind of variation is inter-mental. The other one is intra-mental. But BOTH kinds of variation can cause development.

For Piaget, this variation is caused by development. Some children are more developed, and others are less so. Sometimes we perform at the very edge of what our development allows us to do and other times we fail to fully perform our competence.

For Vygotsky, this variation CAUSES development. Learning occurs when less developed children IMITATE more developed ones. Development occurs when this learning allows the child to interiorize and internalize it in the form of new mental formations.

The teacher asks the favorite program of the talent show last week to the students. It is the very beginning of the lesson so the teacher wants to talk about the programs so she expects the answers to be merely associative complexes.

Remember that the associative complex is a set of objects (or topics) that are related to some CENTRAL thing, some CENTRAL topic. An obvious example of this is a "mind map" or a "brain storm".

               fishing equipment          fishburgers

        shellfish                   fish                  jellyfish

                COEX Aquarium          fish farms

You can see that all of the elements of this particular associative complex are RELATED to the idea of fish in one way or another. But the ways in which they are related are all different. For example, there is a FUNCTIONAL relationship between "fishing equipment" and fish and a genetic relationship between "fishburgers" and fish. Shellfish do not swim and they are not really fish at all, and neither are jellyfish, even though they do.

Some conversations are like this. You can imagine a conversation that precedes a lesson about volcanoes including: Hallasan, Mount Saint Helens, Baektusan, Mount Fuji, lava, the Little Prince and the little volcanoes on his planet, how to make a little model of a volcano out of vinegar and baking soda, etc.

All of these are related to volcanoes in one way or another, but the ways in which they are related are quite different. The first four are examples, the fifth item is a component, the next two things are really fictional representations...in short, it's a heap, but the structure of its organization is objective rather than purely subjective.

I think that normal conversations are NOT like this. We saw in our study of Halliday that the TEXTUAL metafunction in English means that conversations form chains. Each turn tends to begin with information that is "given" or "old" in some way and end with information that is new. We tend to begin with something unstressed and end with something stressed. We begin with a speaker-oriented theme and end with a hearer-oriented rheme.

Once upon a time there was a mountain.     Baboons backsides are bright red.

On the mountain was a temple.                 Bright red as an apple.

In the temple was a monk                        Apples are tasty...

The monk was telling a story....                   Tasty as bananas

I think one of the reasons why Ms. Yi's data is so interesting is that it really does give us a CHAIN. Or rather, there are TWO chains about TWO slightly different themes.

Eventually she points out certain student as impressive performer of the orchestra to let other students think about their favorite program as an impressive one.

T: 산! Mountain! I was impressed by your acting, your drum.

Ss: Bum bu bum bum bum

The children do not talk about Mountain. Instead, they uptake the LAST word. They vary the initial (head) sound and repeat the coda (tail).

T: Oh, you were almost like a specialist.

The children uptake "drum" from the rheme and thematize it. What does the TEACHER uptake and thematize? Is she chaining from the CHILDREN's rheme or from her OWN rheme?

Ss: @##$%%

T: Ohh~! It's cool I think.

Now, the teacher is chaining from the CHILDREN'S rheme (drum) or for her OWN rheme (Mountain)?

Ss: @#$%#

Many students react to the teacher’s initiation with just sounds, ”Bum bu bum…” as an agreement. At the same time the teacher adds “specialist” which is not familiar to the students and the teacher adds one more concept “cool” to the students. The concepts of ‘impressive’, ‘cool’ and ‘specialist’ are not clear to students so many students try to develop the concept by their own ways with noise.

Is there any evidence IN THE TEXT? There's a lot of noise, and that can often be a sign of incomprehension. But...look at the uptake that follows!

The kids have a choice:

a) Uptake Mountain (go with the teacher's FIRST theme)

b) Uptake Drums (go with  the teacher's SECOND theme)

c) Uptake "cool" (go with the teacher's LAST rheme)

d) Change the topic. (Which we usually do by saying "By the way" or "now" or "Well" or something like that).

Let's see what they do:

S4: Oh, uh, uh, I, I like uh, 김지성‘s dance.

What is the topic? Is it a), b), c), or d)? Does that suggest that they do not UNDERSTAND "cool"?

Ss: Huh(laughs)

T: Do you like it?

Notice that the teacher uptakes the TENSE as well as the topic!

Ss: We like it.

Ss: (gigle) Hahaha.

One brave student, S4 tries to define the concept of ‘cool’ as a pseudo complex of “impressive braveness” from the teacher’s talk. He points out one brave but silly and funny performer,’김지성’ which can’t get any agreement from the teacher as a concept of “coolness” at all. The teacher replies to the pseudo concept of coolness with another unclear definition of coolness, “Do you like it?” So the students may confirm‎!! the meaning of cool is just favorites or like it

But the data shows that it is the TEACHER who uses the "cool" concept, not the children. And it's the CHILDREN who initiate "like", and not the teacher.

There's something else. The TEACHER is the one who really uptakes and follows along with what the children want to talk about and even the (incorrect) tense they use to talk about it ("Do you like it?"). There isn't that kind of adaptation to the teacher at all. 

This is kind of a risky strategy. But it works. S7 produces something that NOT ONLY suggests that the children really ARE going along with "cool" as a topic (and that "I like..." was really a kind of topical uptake) but even shows REAL creativity with the language. This is rare stuff.

S7: Mr. A

T: Mr. A (giggle) not Miss A. Ok

Ss: Hahahaha

Creativity is very rare in English class and this is a particularly beautiful, and very witty, example of it. Notice how the teacher's giggle is amplified into hearty laughter. Now, that's an uptake!

Another brave one tries another way. S7 catches the diffused complex of cool and applies to the boy’s performance to Miss. A. She put the boy’s dance into expanded complex of Miss A with a little varied form, Mr. A. However, the teacher just uptakes the pun and does not try to help building concept of cool.

Careful! A "pun" is a play on SOUNDS. Actually "bum bum bum bum bum" is a pun, because it's a play on the SOUND of the word "drum".

It's easy to understand Ms. Yi's frustration. But it's also easy to understand why the children don't follow her.

In her midterm data, we saw that the kids had a lot of trouble handling the highly indirect grammar (and also the communicative intention) behind a question like "Can you tell me why you think so?"

In this final data, we see that the kids initially have some trouble handling Ms. Yi's vocabulary ("impressed", "acting" and even "specialist" instead of "cool", "show" and "pro"). Ms. Yi's response to their incomprehension is correct: she uses a nice, concrete word, "drum" which the kids immediately uptake.

She also uses a word "cool" and this gets the kids to initiate a new topic which is NEVERTHELESS linked to the old theme of "coolitude".

Ms. Yi is frustrated and a little disgusted by the topic: it's not what she had in mind, and in some ways it's not a good direction for the conversation to go. These kids are really young; they probably can't really tell the difference between a parody and a vulgar prejudice, they cannot say whether Jiseong's performance is misogynistic or on the contrary trans-gendered.

Jiseong is really ONLY getting attention, and his "parody" is really more of a prejudice. But it's very good for young people to MAKE FUN OF the cynical marketing ploys used to get them to spend money, demean and commercialize their growing maturity, and ultimately mutilate their young bodies (with plastic surgery, eating disorders, etc.)

T: Who is cooler, Mr. A or Miss A? Why?

Piaget says that whenever children take over adult ideas, they completely reconstruct them. So for example when they see a "task" they "reconstruct" it as a kind of boring game, or even a role play. 

Vygotsky agrees (and we saw this in Kim and Kellogg 2006 too). But there's more to it than that. When children take over adult ideas (for example, when S7 turns "Miss A" into "Mr. A") they DO restructure it (as something misogynistic and maybe a little gay too, but above all as a form of performance).

But the ideas also restructure them. These kids are, you know, making their own sentences ("I like, uh, Kim Jiseong's dance") and they are even making their own NAMES ("Mr. A") but they are doing so according to English rules. 

Is that really so bad?

She only asks another favorite show and unintentionally makes the students develop chain complex.

T: Ok. Anything else?

S1: 강강술래

T: 강강술래. Why?

s3: Tired.

S2: Very very long.

Ss: (giggle)

S1: Sleep.

S4: SLEEPY!

T: Sleepy! Oh, yeah.

Ss: (giggle) Haha..

It's not very clear WHY S1 suggests Ganggangsullae. Does S1 understand that the topic is "cool" or is S1 simply introducing a NEW topic and making a heap?

But what IS clear, Ms. Yi, is that it's NOT the teacher's fault. The teacher used a very OPEN initiate, because the children were actually responding quite well, developing the topic of "cool" in a rather surprising and sophisticated way, which could lead in a very interesting and conceptually difficult direction and which already produced some creative language ("I like a Kim Jiseong's dance" and "Mr. A").

So it was quite reasonable to use an open initiate like "Anything else"). But of course, as you know, the children are not all at the same level: some of them are paying attention and others are simply introducing their own topics. So it seems at least possible that S1 is simply not paying attention to the topic of "cool" and just wants to talk about something else.

One way to think about this is in terms of "abstraction"--the topic is growing more and more abstract, the way that for example our communicative functions often do ("It's time for lunch" eventually just means "Let's eat lunch" and the concept of time loses its meaning altogether).

But don't forget that a "diffuse" concept is really quite ADVANCED and DEVELOPED. So it seems possible that the children are simply creating a kind of heap--that they are going backward and not forward.

As we notice here, the students develop the chain complex of ‘coolness’. At first, with the help of the teacher, the students have a complex of coolness as an “Impression”. She emphasizes “impression” with another difficult concept of ”specialist” and then one student just catches the impressive one to make another chain complex of “Braveness” with the Mr. A’s dance.

Good. Chain concepts do occur at many levels of development, and sometimes they get mixed up. Here's what Vygotsky says:

12

개념 발달의 두 번째 단계에 대한 우리의 연구로부터 도출되는 근본적 결론은 다음과 같이 요약될 수 있다: 복합체적 사고의 단계에 있는 어린이는, 낱말의 의미라는 관점에서 볼 때, 어른 생각의 대상과 동일한 대상에 대해 생각한다. 이는 어른과 어린이 사이의 이해를 가능하게 하지만 어린이는 어른과는 상이한 지적 작용에 기초하여 동일한 대상에 대해 다른 방식, 다른 양식, 다른 지적 조작을 통해 생각한다.

이 이론이 정말 옳다면 그것을 기능적으로 증명하는 것 또한 가능해야 할 것이다. 다시 말해 어른의 개념과 어린이의 복합체가 작용하는 모습을 검사했을 때 그들의 심리적 본성의 차이가 명백해져야 한다는 것이다. 어린이의 복합체적 사고가 개념적 사고와 다르다면 복합체적 사고의 활동은 개념적 사고의 활동과 다른 방식으로 나타날 것이다. 따라서 우리는 어린이 생각의 특성에 대한 심리적 연구와, 일반적으로는 원시적[i] 생각의 발달에 대한 연구가 확립한 데이터를 우리의 연구 결과와 간략하게 비교하여 우리가 발견한 복합체적 사고의 특정성을 기능적으로 입증할 것이다.

어린이 생각의 발달의 역사에 있어 우리의 주의를 끄는 첫 번째 현상은, 첫 번째 낱말의 의미가 순수하게 연합적인 경로를 통해 전이된다는 잘 알려진 사실이다.[ii] 어린이의 첫 번째 낱말의 의미가 전이되는 과정에서 어떤 대상의 집합이 포함되고 어떻게 이들 대상이 결합되는지 알아낼 수 있다면 우리는 우리의 실험에서 연합적 복합체와 혼합적 심상이라고 일컬었던 것이 섞여 있는 사례를 볼 수 있게 될 것이다.

아이델버거의 연구로부터 발췌한 한 사례를 들어보자. 태어난 지 251일된 아이델버거의 아들은 “바우-바우”라는 낱말을 자신이 갖고 놀고 싶은, 장식장에 놓인 도자기 인형을 가리키는데 사용하였다. 307일째 되는 날 그는 동일한 단어를, 밖에서 짖고 있는 개와 조부모의 초상화 그리고 자신의 목마와 벽시계를 가리키는데 사용하였다. 생후 331일에는 이 단어는 개 머리모양이 장식으로 달린 보온용 스카프와 장식 없는 스카프를 가리켰다. 특히 이 어린이는 유리 눈에 깊은 관심을 보였다. 생후 334일에는 이 단어가 누르면 소리를 내는 고무 인형을 가리켰으며 396일째에는 자기 아버지의 소매 단추를 나타냈다. 433일에는 드레스의 진주 장식을 보았을 때와 욕조의 온도계를 보았을 때 이 단어를 사용하였다.[iii]

이 사례를 분석하면서 베르너는 어린이가 “바우-바우”라는 낱말을 사용하면서 지칭한 여러 개의 대상들은 다음과 같은 방식으로 정렬될 수 있다고 결론지었다: 이 단어는 먼저 진짜 개와 개 인형들을 가리킨 다음 고무 인형이나 욕조 온도계등과 같이 인형 형태에 포함될 수 있는 작은 물체들을 가리키는데 사용 되었다. 그런 후 단추나 진주 구슬등과 같은 작은 물체를 지칭하는데 사용된다. 이러한 분류는 눈을 연상시키는 타원형의 형태와 빛나는 표면을 토대로 이루어진다.

이와 같이 우리는 어린이가 복합체의 원칙에 따라 각각의 구체적 대상들을 무리 짓는다는 것과, 어린이 낱말의 발달에 있어서 그 역사의 첫 번째 장은 이러한 유형의 자연적 복합체로 가득 차 있다는 것을 볼 수 있다.

흔히 인용되는 또 다른 예는, 어린이가 “쿠아”라는 낱말을 이용하여 처음에는 연못의 오리를 나타내다가 다음에는 모든 액체를 나타내고 그런 후에는 우유병 속의 우유를 지칭하는 것이다. 어느 날 이 어린이가 독수리 문양이 들어간 동전을 보고는 이 동전에 대해서도 같은 단어를 사용했을 뿐 아니라 이후에는 이 동전을 연상시키는 모든 둥근 물체를 일컫는데도 이 단어를 사용하였다. 여기서 우리는 각 대상이 다른 요소와 공통적인 특징을 가질 때에만 복합체 내에 포함되며, 대상들을 연결하는 이 공통적 특징은 무한히 변화할 수 있는 사슬 복합체의 전형적인 사례를 보게 된다.

어린이의 이러한 복합체적 사고의 형태는 동일한 낱말이 서로 다른 상황에서는 다른 의미를 가지며, 다른 대상을 지칭할 수 있다는 특징을 갖는다. 심지어 우리의 관심을 끄는 예외적인 상황에서는, 어린이들은 두 대상이 완전히 반대의 의미를 나타내더라도 이들이 포크와 나이프 같이 서로 어떤 관련성이 있다면 동일한 낱말을 사용하여 그들을 지칭한다.

 어린이가 “전(前)”이라는 낱말을 “전(前)”뿐 아니라 “후(後)”의 의미를 나타내는 데 사용하거나, 전 날과 다음 날을 가리키는 데 모두 “내일”이라는 낱말을 사용하는 것은 히브리어나 중국어, 라틴어와 같은 고대 언어에 대한 연구가 내놓은 결과와 대단히 유사하다. 이러한 언어들은 두 개의 상반된 의미를 나타내는데 같은 낱말을 이용한다.  고대 로마인들은 같은 낱말을 사용하여 높다는 의미와 깊다는 의미를 나타냈다.[iv] 이와 같이 하나의 낱말에 반대되는 의미를 짝짓는 것은, 복합체 내에 편입되는 모든 구체적 대상들이 복합체의 다른 요소들 사이에서 스스로를 상실하지 않고 그 모든 구체적 독립성을 보존하는 복합체적 사고를 토대로 해야만 가능하다.

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[i]비고츠키가 어린이들의 생각과 원시적 생각을 같은 수준에 놓고 해석하는 것에 대해 많은 독자들이 충격을 받지만, 우리는 여기서 비고츠키가 계속해서 기호-역사적 시간틀에서 구분하는 네 가지 차원을 구분할 필요가 있다. 이들은 계통 발생적 진화, 사회 문화적 진보, 개체 발생적 성장, 미소 발생적 변화이다. 계통발생적 진화가 나타났기 때문에 사회 문화적 진보는 그것을 반복할 필요가 없이, 가장 발달한 계통 발생적 진화의 산물(인간의 뇌)를 기반으로 진보를 시작하게 된다. 다른 것들도 마찬가지이다. 사회문화적 진보는 개체 발생적 성장에서 모두 반복할 필요가 없이 가장 발달한 형태로(교육) 개체 발생적 성장에 영향을 미친다. 개체 발생적 성장이 객관화됨에 따라 미소 발생은 개체 발생을 모두 반복하지 않고 그 가장 진보한 형태(발달)를 토대로 나아가게 된다.

여기서 비고츠키는 지속적으로 사회문화적 진보와 개체 발생적 성장을 비교하고 있음에 주의해야 한다. 4장에서는 침팬지와 인간의 기호 사용을 비교함으로써 인간 말과 생각의 발생적 근원을 탐구하였다면, 여기서는 개념적 생각이 아닌 복합체적 생각에 근거를 둔 생각의 방식을 가진 사회에 대해 알아보고자 하는 것이다.

 비고츠키가 어떤 사람들은 어린이와 원시인과 같다고 생각했기 때문에 그를 인종차별주의자라고 매도하는 것은, 다만 비고츠키에 대한 이해의 부족을 드러낼 뿐이다. 비고츠키는 어린이가 어른과 같다고 생각한다. 다만 어린이는 어른들이 가지고 있는 매개적 도구를 갖고 있지 않은 것 뿐이다. 이것은 생소한 생각이 아니다. 대부분은 현대 사회에서도 성인의 일상적 생활은 개념적 생각을 토대로 돌아가지 않는다.

[ii] 아기들은 특정한 대상을 단일한 명칭으로 이름 붙이는 것 보다 훨씬 많은 일을 첫 낱말을 통해서 이루고자 한다. 아기들은 다양한 대상들에 대해 동일한 낱말을 사용한다.

[iii] the example is cited second-hand, from a work by H. Werner, namely Einfürung in die Entwicklungpsychologie [Introduction to developmental psychology]

[iv] 라틴어에서 ‘높다’와 ‘깊다’는 격에 따라 ‘altus, alta, altum’으로 표현된다.

Eventually, the other students join in a kind of funny and silly answers with “강강술래” while they build another chain complex of cool, “Boringness”. So boring 강강술래 is nothing to do with impressive 산’. Finally, the students just made a collection of the talent show while they are talking about the favorite show in the program.

Good--I think this is probably the best way to characterize the data as a whole: it's a collection of utterances linked by a common function, which is to review the talent show (and not to say which performance was best).

This data shows how the children vary the complex in many ways without right help from the teachers. The teachers’ intention was just build a collection of favorite program and didn’t help appropriately here, so children just stay at the level of complex.

Actually, I see the teacher helping A LOT. But "appropriate" does not mean 눈높이. We all know that 눈높피 is a fiction: there are various children, and even individual children have different "levels" which coexist like geological strata, with one built on top of and mixed into the others.

What does "appropriate" mean? I think, actually, it means exactly what we see. The teacher sets the bar too high. The children do not jump. She lowers the bar. Some children jump. Some children try to move the bar themselves. Isn't that the only way we can really hope to organize a social environment of learning?

Tomorrow I want to talk a LITTLE bit about the "Classroom Management" portion of our class, and then we'll talk about discourse!

dk