when used by Vygotsky meant any 'academic' concept that is acquired fork formal instructions rather than developed spontaneously by direct experience of phenomena
"Scientific concepts (such as xylem, symbiosis, oxidation, transition metal, photon, magnetic flux density – but Vygotsky's category was broader and would also include gestalt switch, price elasticity of demand, the industrial revolution, distributive justice, the baroque, and so forth) cannot be acquired by familiarity with instances met in everyday life – which may be sufficient for acquiring so-called natural kind concepts such as cat or tree.They therefore need to be taught by being explained through language." (Taber, 2020)
is a concept that a person forms spontanously without mediation by another – so such concepts may be idiosyncratic and infrormal (indeed, they can be implicit)
is talking to one self
Piaget considered private talk in young children to be a sign of their egocentricity, but Vygotsky thought it reflect the adoption of a socially mediated tool, language, that could be used to support individual thinking, e.g., planning
"Talking to ourselves, whether out loud or internally, invites an explanation… Vygotsky suggested that private talk actually had a strong social element, as language had its origins in the need for people to communicate to each other.Vygotsky considered that the child adopted the tools of communication with another as a means to help plan and carry out actions – even when no one else was present. Later such talk would be internalised, but in its origin private talk is social in nature…" (Taber, 2020)
in Vygotsky's theory of development people acquire the cultural tools available in their society through mediation
"Mediation allows what would otherwise not be possible. Others can mediate for us; and we can use tools (in the external world, or intra- mentally) to mediate activities… Teaching is the process by which such mediation of learning is deliberately carried out." (Taber, 2020)
was the name Jean Piaget gave to his research programme in cognitive development
"…Piaget's research programme was one of genetic epistemology (finding the common cognitive development sequence that each individual person would be expected to pass through)…" (Taber, 2020)
a term use to describe studies that investigate development whilst it is occurring by observing at a high enough frequency to follow changes (e.g., in learning) as they occur
Example of use:
"One had to understand … the development of particular psychological processes as they appear in an individual.The latter required microgenetic studies … that intensely investigated an individual during the time when new processes developed." (Taber, 2020)
Commitment is the final stage in Perry's scheme of intellectual and ethical development, when "the individual draws upon their experience to develop their own personal system of commitments….ultimately the person undertakes to affirm personal commitments in a world of contingent knowledge and vlaues…" (Taber, 2020).
Read about developing Intellectual Sophistication and Scientific Thinking
(see also 'multiplist') the middle stages in Perry's scheme of intellectual and ethical development
"In the second part (positions 4-6) there is a deepening appreciation of the problematic nature of laissez-faire relativism….after abandoning certainty a person perceives knowledge and values as relative, contingent, and contextual…" (Taber, 2020)
Absolutism refers to a perspective that assumes the world can be dichotomised in such terms right/wrong and true/false. This is seen as a developmental stage in some (e.g., Perry's; Kuhns) theories of intellectual development.
Read about "Developing Intellectual Sophistication and Scientific Thinking"
(see also 'commitment') the final of four levels in Deanna Kuhn's model of the development of epistemological understanding
"A young person who moves beyond multiplism comes to appreciate that even if there cannot be absolute certainty, it is still possible to critically evaluate ideas and make choices between alternatives … This allows the positing of provisional knowledge that is seen as the best currently available way of making sense of some aspect of [experience] – and evaluating how robust and refined it seems to be." (Taber, 2020)