A Cultural-Historical Approach to Education

My perspective on development and education is based largely on what Cole (1996) refers to as “Cultural Historical Activity Theory” (CHAT). An essential premise of this approach is to view development as inseparable from the contexts in which it occurs (Gauvain, 2001). In this section, a CHAT perspective is discussed and extended with work that examines additional aspects of social relations. Note that terms used to facilitate the discussion serve as markers, linking fluid processes between people and artifacts. Diverse concepts are engaged to reveal often neglected elements of social relations.

A CHAT perspective on education is based in the work of Lev Vygotsky (Cole, 1996; Valsiner, 1997), and the following excerpt introduces central concepts:

An essential feature of learning is that it creates the zone of proximal development; that is, learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when the child is interacting with people in his [or her] environment and in cooperation with his [or her] peers. Once the processes are internalized, they become part of the child’s independent developmental achievement. From this point of view, learning is not development; however, properly organized learning results in mental development and sets in motion a variety of developmental processes that would be impossible apart from learning. Thus, learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human psychological functions. (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 90).

The idea that “learning leads development” (Holzman, 1997) is central to CHAT, and the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is a major device used to explain school activity. It offers a basic paradigm for the role of instructors and instruction.

The ZPD, however, is not the focus of this project: The instruction-related interactions between teachers and students--theoretically where the ZPD would be located—is not studied ². Internalization, despite problems with the term (Packer, 1993), is used to indicate the process by which learning can bring about development. Genuine internalization is recognized as having taken place when a student comes to “own” the new material (concepts, theories, technologies, etc). Chaiklin (2003) raises concerns about what Vygotsky intended by the term development, but it is here recognized as having occurred when mediated activity (Wertsch, 1985) begins to be initiated by the person in question and used with personal intent. Development is understood as becoming visible when a tool (such as a video camera but elsewhere discussed in terms of a child’s use of language) is used to structure an activity in a way that is new to that individual.

The process of internalization and subsequent externalization is an essentially social process. It always retains some elements of the contexts in which activity has been experienced and relates to the contexts in which it later emerges. Though not obviously related, an irregularity in the connection between learning and development is recognized: “Development in children never follows school learning the way a shadow follows the object that casts it. In actuality, there are highly complex dynamic relations between developmental and learning processes that cannot be encompassed by an unchanging hypothetical formulation” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 91). The problem of explaining the dynamics of these relations has not been resolved. Though not always recognized, the quality of social relations—the nature of relations between a student and school—are necessarily a part of the dynamics of internalization.

Note that the notion of individuality—of what it means to be an individual student—differs from common uses: “The boundary between individual (i.e., intramental) and group (i.e., intermental) mental processes is often more difficult to maintain than we tend to assume in the discourse of Western psychology” (Wertsch, Tulviste, & Hagstrom, 1993, p. 340). There is a constant dialogue between individuals and contexts that is maintained during internalization. Individuals, therefore, cannot meaningfully be studied apart from the social and material contexts in which they act. Nevertheless, individuals have unique positions and bring unique histories to a shared context. Everyday uses of language as well as some theoretical positions tend to emphasize the uniqueness and lose the social embeddedness of student activity. This dissertation attempts to maintain a tension between individual positions and social contexts.

My purpose is to use this theoretical tension to illuminate actual, frequently sub-textual, tensions in classroom activity. Litowitz argues that there are:

two elements missing from discussions of the zone of proximal development and the learning theory based on internalization: identification and resistance. What motivates the children to master tasks is not the mastery itself but the desire to be the adult and/or to be the one the adult wants her or him to be. (1997, p. 475)

Viewing motivation as engaged participation in knowledge practices places the burden for motivating engagement on those practices rather than on the environment (in a mechanistic, behaviorist view) or on individuals (as in a contextualist, rationalist view). In other words, if the “community” in a classroom does not value participation in knowledge practices associated with the intended curriculum, it will be difficult for any individual to participate in those practices (2003, p. 411).

The environment and the individual are thus relevant in how students participate in ongoing activities.

Valsiner (1997) extends the notion of ZPDs to include the context as an active part of development. His two zones exemplifly the similarity between real and metaphorical spaces. The “zones of free movement” (ZFM) and “zones of promoted action” (ZPA) describe the two ways in which learning activity involves more than teacher-student interactions. The ZFM embodies the constraints and resulting affordances within the context: Movement within the zone is without restriction, but movement is bounded by both the sharp and “fuzzy” borders that contain it. “The ZFM structures (a) the child’s access to different areas in the environment, (b) the availability of different objects within an accessible area, and (c) the child’s ways of acting with the available objects in the accessible area” (p. 188). Within this zone, activity is free, but movement outside it—whether it is a physical area or a bounded activity—is not permitted. Class requirements and assignments create ZFMs by defining acceptable activity. The area within ZFMs is the space students have to initiate, choose, and explore. The constraints on student freedom determine how much space is available.

The ZPA, on the other hand, focuses on how particular activity is promoted along certain lines and is indicated by people’s expectations. Activity is promoted through discussion, in the tools made available to students, and by example. An assignment to read a particular passage from the textbook is understood as creating a ZFM, but a ZPA is contained in the text’s content. For example, particular uses of a video camera are promoted by the textbook’s position on proper usage, in the features built into the camera, and with the accessories available for use. Most often, Valsiner argues, the zones occur together—some activity being prevented while other activity is encouraged. According to Valsiner, education is necessarily about preventing students from participating in some forms of activity and has increasingly become about promoting “goal-directed” behavior (p. 195). ZPAs limit movement within the available space but only to the extent that students are unaware of other options.

Each zone has a place in education, influencing activity in unique ways: The ZFM defines what affordances are available while the ZPA describes which affordances are illuminated by demonstration, speech, or other action. An underlying question concerns whether there are developmental consequences of using one of these zones more than the other; it is a question about what consequences may result from differences in the available space. This dissertation studies the contexts of three high school video programs in terms of how they constrain (ZFM) and promote (ZPA) activities. The space in student-school relationships is thus found by defining what is promoted and forbidden. Students, however, bring unique histories to the relationship that engage dynamically with the school’s context so that these influences are non-determinate.

The peculiarities of student-school relationships can be expected to be stronger and more influential for adolescents than for children. “Students who have worked in school for 5, 8, or 10 years have very well grounded beliefs about what people do in school” (Lee, 2003, p. 47). High school students have a substantial history with school, and they will soon have a significant change in societal status; they will soon be (some legally are) adults. Adolescent students are “engaged in the process of forging individual identities” and can easily come to resent the constraints imposed by school (Schofield & Davidson. 2003, p. 76). Therefore, the constraints that are apparently a necessity of educational pursuits may at times be an obstacle. Even when an activity is consistent with a student’s identity, the compliance required to participate correctly may lead to resistance.

Thus the role of power, which is asserted most directly in constraint, deserves further attention:

Vygotsky. . . . focus[ed] too exclusively upon the facilitation of skills and abilities that took place in the ZOPED [or ZPD]. He often omitted its negative aspect-both the censuring and “extinction” of behaviors irrelevant to the learning task and the shaping and inculcation of only those skills and actions “fit” for the social position the neophyte was accorded. . . . We miss the elements of power, status, stratification, and ownership . . . (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998, p. 176)

Power in education is an important part of understanding activity in high school and its meaning for students.

Power is expressed in rules, aims, and agendas that do not necessarily include the perspectives of its students. These are at times in explicit opposition to the students’ ways of thinking. This set of contrasting perspectives is explicit in Hodge and Kress’s “ideological complexes,” defined as:

a functionally related set of contradictory versions of the world, coercively imposed by one social group on another on behalf of its own distinctive interests or subversively offered by another social group in attempts at resistance in its own interests. . . . It is the actual opposition of interests which creates the necessity for contradiction within the complex. . . . Ideological complexes are constructed in order to constrain [and promote] behavior by structuring the versions of reality on which social action is based (1988, p. 3).

The school’s ideologies are (ordinarily) the dominant ones, and students are put in a position to accept or resist them.

Discussed in this way, student-school relationships seem necessarily oppositional; there is an aspect of colonization that is exaggerated when the students have a minority status. But the more antagonistic aspects are not the only ones. After all, teachers, as well as parents, tend to have some noble reasons for establishing ZFMs and ZPAs. Diamondstone (2002) “refer[s] to resistance . . . as a misreading of dominant discourse, arising from sociocultural perspectives and purposes that have been marginalized. . . . [And resistance] must be recognized as . . . resourceful ” (p. 3).

Resistance in these terms is about an inability as much as an unwillingness to adopt official ideologies, and it is only through the little, daily acts of resistance that an awareness of differing perspectives becomes possible. Diamondstone continues, “Negation affords an opportunity to learn, to do otherwise; it opens a gap in the world as is, a space for a subject to perform, to do something, to speak” (2002, p. 7). Similarly Butler (1997) argues that consciousness comes about only through a resistance to the universal subjugation of children. Litowitz also stresses the necessity of resistance: “The desire to move beyond participation to responsibility is in itself an act of resistance, a resistance to being dependent and controlled by another” (1997, p. 482).

To some degree, then, all engaged participation by students can be considered resistant. By choosing to act (or not to act), a student renders the teacher less necessary. De Certeau’s (1984) distinction between strategies and tactics are fundamental for this research because of the spotlight it places on resistance and the role of power in everyday activity. Accordingly, a strategy is activity from a position of power, and it is associated with the designation and ownership of places. Power arises in defining what is appropriate behavior within a particular place, a term which is used in this dissertation to distinguish a location that has semiotic value. A place is “borrowed” when one aligns oneself with the activity structure of the place. A tactic, on the other hand, is activity from a position of weakness and is associated with time in that a tactic must take advantage of moments in time to either use the structure to achieve alternate ends or to subvert the meaning of a context entirely. Note that de Certeau argued that “consumers” are increasingly left only with tactics because “the system in which they move about is too vast to be able to fix them in one place, but too constraining for them ever to be able to escape from it” (p. 40). Therefore, teachers as well as students lack significant power and are only able to act strategically when they embody the institution that is the true power in education.

In line with de Certeau, activity is assumed to serve individual purposes even when it serves institutional ones. De Certeau’s division of acts into strategies and tactics opens the door for viewing cooperation as similar to resistance. As Diamondstone described one event, a student “asserted her own agenda but concealed her resistance behind a cooperative façade” (2002, p. 14). Though usually not so apparent, playing along can enable students to realize their own agendas, and these agendas may have nothing to do with the task students are engaged with. Knowing what motivates a student in any given moment is impossible, probably even for that student, but the occurrence of an action nevertheless affects the actor’s position within that context: It can be “read” as benefiting the actor.

The choices students make in how to participate, therefore, are central to this project but should not be understood as a return to traditional individualism (Stetsenko & Arievitch, 2004). The agency represented in such a choice is rarely calculated or made in isolation; it is a product of the context, particularly when it is tactical. As Diamondstone describes it,

The idea that individuals act in their own interests through operations half out of awareness implies a view of agency that is embedded in cultural settings, realized not in deliberative acts but in the fleeting response to unpredictable conditions of the moment (2002, p. 10).

As she describes it, a choice is an assertion of agency that “is embedded in collective activity, embodied in a collective subject” (Diamondstone, 2002, p. 5).

The difference between tactics that are resistant and those that are cooperative is, however, significant; the significance is illuminated by the addition of a second dimension. Hodge and Kress (1988) proposed that relationships are routinely defined along two dimensions: power and solidarity. “Solidarity is an effect of power just as power is an effect of solidarity” (p. 39). To be in a position of power, one needs the cooperation of the less powerful to maintain and further the dominant ideologies. There must be some alignment—some shared sense of purpose, some positive affiliation—for leaders to lead. On the other hand, when conflict arises, regardless of the relative power, there is a distinct lack of solidarity. Solidarity defines group membership regardless of the status within the group and therefore reflects identity.

The criteria for investigating student-school relationships thus arise from both power and solidarity. Schools, being in the position of power, always act strategically through their various representatives, but they can communicate high and low levels of solidarity. At the extremes, schools can only constrain students when solidarity is low, but as solidarity increases, promotion increasingly becomes possible. Students, on the other hand, can be in both positions of power or weakness, though power is never truly owned. Students can thus act in more or less strategic ways, keeping in mind that at their most strategic their acts maintain some tactical qualities. Students can constrain and promote activity when they act strategically. More often, though, student activity is clearly tactical in nature. As such, cooperation represents the highest levels of solidarity, while resistance communicates the least solidarity. These criteria facilitate comparisons between schools and across the different levels of activity that are studied.

When considering power and solidarity, the process of internalization needs to be reconsidered: The possibility of learning and whether or not learning promotes development are influenced by the nature of social relations; the questions concern how and to what extent. General problems with the concept of internalization have already resulted in a number of interpretations and substitute terms, frequently to avoid the loss of the dialogic nature of the process, but Smith (1996) distinguished two basic approaches: “transmission models,” in which the material that is internalized resembles the original, and “transformation models,” in which the resemblance can be minimal. Transformation models explicitly recognize the potential of a problematic relationship between teachers and students. The introduction of power and solidarity to the discussion raises the possibility that the process of internalization may vary according to the relations the student has with the teacher and the material being learned. When problems do not entirely prevent engagement, it may be found that the processes of learning and development vary as some students obligingly adopt the values as well as the concepts a teacher presents and other students resist at every opportunity. Perhaps acknowledging the difference and valuing both routes would lead to greater success in promoting more development, but thus far little is known about the consequences.

Within high school video production, there is, however, a more basic question: What is development in video production? Recognizing some sort of progress that can be conceived as development is particularly difficult when programs approach the subject in radically different ways. An exploration of development in video production is therefore rooted in the comparison of “video communication” with speech. Bakhtin (1986) described speech acts as being fundamentally constrained by the available speech genres, and thus development is equated with the use of genres:

The better our command of [speech] genres, the more freely we employ them, the more fully and clearly we reveal our own individuality in them (where this is possible and necessary), the more flexibly and precisely we reflect the unrepeatable situation of communication-in a word, the more perfectly we implement our free speech plan. (p. 80)

Video genres are therefore viewed as the fundamental constraint with which students must work, and the most developed communication is that in which a genre is employed to most fully indicate what is intended and, when appropriate, to communicate an idiosyncratic message. Personalization and, even more so, intentionality thus demonstrate a degree of internalization of the means for video communication such that the techniques for recording and editing video truly become tools for achieving ones purposes.

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² Interactions that could be distinguished as creating a ZPD were actually rare during observation.