Summary of the second day, Tuesday, July 1, 2014 by Svetlana Strokova and Anton Zhelyabin
Wake up, ladies and gentlemen, you are in Povedniki centre, taking part in ISCAR summer university. It’s nine o’clock. You are walking through an apple garden to the dinning hall for a breakfast. The sun is shining, the grass is green, you feel this plenty of ideas in atmosphere of community. What would you like for the breakfast? Porridge, eggs, yogurt, crisps. The main thing is that you don’t have to wash the dishes afterwards.
Lecture
Then the program starts and we are already in the conference hall with Milda Bredikyte and Pentti Hakkarainen greeting the participants.
Pentti Hakkarainen: “Kyla se tasta vicla parance!”
Milda and Pentti are tradition-keepers of ISCAR. Here are some of the traditions:
- To communicate, ask questions, especially if you have the relative fields of researching, because everyone should study here.
- Be active. You can be passive but it less helpful for you.
- Respect each other, be tactful. It’s already stressful – to present your project.
- Keep attention to time bounds.
- Everybody can suggest something new for the ISCAR-program.
- There should be two persons every day for chairing the organization of students’ presentations, and two other persons for describing events of the day.
Natalya Ulanova: “Error! Error! Error is not something that you have to be afraid of.”
Then there was professor Manolis Dafermakis’s lecture “Dialectics and Cultural-Historical Psychology”. The lecture was so interesting, that it stimulated an active discussion, which continued in the second half of the day.
Manolis Dafermakis’s lecture “Dialectics and Cultural-Historical Psychology”
The resume of the lecture:
- Dialectical thinking is a process that changes historically.
- Cultural historical psychology was the first attempt to put dialectics to psychology.
- Vygotsky in contrast to Hegel, tried to investigate not a pure mind, but a concrete development. Following him we have to investigate the logic of matter, the formation of matter.
- Psychologists use the principles of dialectics in their researches.
Milda Bredikyte:”Philosophy is the science of science!”
Then there was Dmitry Lubovsky’s lecture “Continuity and mutual addition of cultural-historical psychology and activity approaches: methodological potential” D. Lubovsky helped us to understand “Psychology of art” by Vygotsky: “The art is a social technology of feelings”. We tried to answer Vygotsky’s question: “Is an aesthetic reaction just a reaction or is it an action?’’ The answer was that every mental function appears twice: first as a social activity (reaction) and then as an action, internal activity.
Anne Mia Steno Hansen: “Very interesting talk about the dialectics. How to move with and beyond and how to be and become?”
After a tasty launch 2 students presented their projects. They were the first students who get the word.
Anton Zhelyabin (Russia)
Anton Zhelyabin presented his report “Psychotechnical methods of development of complex subject”. In process of the conversation professors helped Anton to fined more exact translation of his leading term. Now “complex subject” is named “cumulated subject”. This project is so unique that everybody needed more time to understand it completely, but the time was bounded and we have to moving on.
Nikolay Veresov: “Great cumulative (aggregative) subject in becoming in a zone of proximal development.”
Constance De Saint-Laurent presents her research of remembering the collective past. She has already collected data twice and now she still has some doubts: how appropriate her model is to understand her data?
And now is half past thee, and we united into two groups for discussing two basic topics:
1. “Dialectics and Cultural-Historical Psychology”
Main thesises:
- To understand cultural-historical theory we need deep knowledge of traditional German philosophy. That is the reason of difficult Americans have in understanding the Theory.
- Interprtating Hegel Nikolai Veresov argued two kinds of systems: mechanisms and organic systems. Dialectical is the method of analyses of development of organic systems.
- Development is drama. Drama includes crises and incites. Constant crises are the way to development of adults.
- Vygotsky follows Spinosas, Florenskys and Shpets ideas.
- Vygotsky is romantic (nonclassical) scientist.
Constance De Saint-Laurent: “Looking at the river as being always the same and as never being the same is not necessary contradictory.”
2.“CHT versus Activity approach and does CHAT (cultural-historical activity theory) exist”.
Discussed questions:
- Problem of individual approach in CHT,
- Galperin’s theory and using it in the experience of different countries: the Netherlands (in the Bert van Oers’s experience) and Mexico and Colombia (in the Claudia Ximena Gonzalez Moreno’s experience).
- Using the CHT in the organizing of children plays.
Glykeria Fragkiadaki: “I had a bad understanding about what exactly CHT is, and I started understanding!”
And finely there is Harry Daniels’s Skype-lecture with a beautiful presentation about the influence of school’s design on student’s, parent’s and teacher’s actions and perceptions.
One of his main thesises was about the cooperation of designers, architects, builders and psychologists in creating educational space. And sometimes it can happen that the ideal plan of the project can differ from the real object.
Manolis Dafermakis: “Contradiction is the source of development!”
Summary of the day
Resuming the day, we can just say that the main goal of ISCAR is dialectics, dialogs between students and professors. We try to look at the CHT from different points of view, connect it to the each unique research of the participants. CHT is not just a theory, it is the way of thinking.
Lobby interviews continued till the end of evening.
Jenny Ros: “Everything is always more complex then expected. And I need to take a swim in the lake!”