Feiyan Chen
Monash University, Australia
Research supervisor: Dr Marilyn Fleer
How to make the cultural-historical theory and empirical data communicate with each other, or how to make them work together? It is a question about the role of the research in linking theory and practice together to better illustrate the process of development. In my understanding, the cultural-historical theory helps us interpret the process of development or what’s behind the outcome rather than focusing on the result. For example, when parents and children go shopping. The child wants to buy chips but the parent does not want him to buy because it is junk food. How can the parent create a social situation to foster the child’s development of intellect and affect? How can this process be informed by the theory?
What is the dialectical relationship between the two aspects of perezhivanie that are intellect and affect? I am wondering if there is a dialectical relationship between intellect and affect. Conscious awareness (within the domain of intellect) seems a very important term keeps appearing in Vygotsky’s writing on concept formation. How is this related to emotions? How is this related to the cultural development of emotions in young children?
The above stated are some issues I would like to figure out recently. It will be good to deal with them in the Summer University because scholars and PhD students from different cultural backgrounds in the Summer University may have distinctive cultural structured views to these questions. It is interesting to look at the diversity of views on these issues.