Summary of the fifth day, Friday, July 4, 2014 by Anne Mia Steno and Jenny Ros

For some of us, the day started with Yoga in the apple garden embracing the sun. The class was led by Esther Ramani and our special guest Pantilimon, the flexible tiger cat.

Then we had a surprising and fortunate visit of Professor Fyodor Vasilyuk who (with the efficient translation of Maria Oraevskaya) gave a fascinating lecture on the concept of perezhivanie. This poetic and deep talk was really inspiring for the whole group and led us all wanting to learn Russian.

Then there was a session with three presentations by PhD students which were all cleverly rooted in the social and political context of their own countries.

Ann-Thérèse Arstorp gave a presentation about directedness as analytical concept in the field of teacher education.

She was followed by Dewi Mulia who talked about “Re-conceptualizing scaffolding concept of teaching English as a foreign language through action research in early childhood in Indonesia”.

At the end of the session Carita Portilho de Lima and Ana Paula Gomes Moreira gave a joint presentation about respectively:  “The motive and the activity of study: subsidies for the psychologist’s performance along with the relationship between schools and families from a cultural-historical perspective” and “Limit-situation and Elementary Education: from comprehension to preventive intervention in School Psychology”

It was a pleasure to listen to those really important projects dealing with reflections on the training of teachers and psychologists, and the relationship between schools and families.

The second part of the day the group was divided into small focus groups dealing with the following thematics:

  • Scaffolding, mediation and ZPD
  • The concept of culture in social anthropology and cultural historical theory
  • Development, learning and play
  • Concept and methodology
  • Object, tools and artifacts
  • Stages of development

There were lovely debates in all the discussion groups, raising interesting questions and doubts. The general feeling was that such discussions are perfect occasions to move forward and improve our mutual understanding. We thank the chairs for keeping a good discipline and encouraging the debates.

A lot of thanks to Constance de Saint-Laurent and Adriane Cenci for their great work chairing the day!

Before dinner we had a wonderful chance to sit down under the trees and discuss some important issues and sentiments of the day. There is a general understanding that we are getting closer everyday but at the same time a lot of us felt the need to raise the question of the hierarchy and gender inequalities in the group.

This is an on-going discussion and we would like to thank the organizers and everybody in the group for being open to such difficult discussions.