Sociogenetic Perspectives on Internalization

WertschWashington University, St. I do not think we will have any final answers to our questions about internalization in the near future, but I do think that this volume will frame the next round of debate in an important and productive way.—James V. The breadth of the work described here illustrates the extraordinary range of possibilities opened up by the sociogenetic approach. Brian Cox and Cynthia Lightfoot have done a highly creditable job in making sure that those who missed the SRCD presentation in 1993(?) now have available a first-rate collection.—British Journal of Developmental PsychologyThe discovery of Vygotsky's work rates amongst the most significant developments in psychology in the second half of the 20th century. The division of the collection

Although the chapters in this book deal with age groups from preschool to adolescence, and topics from mathematics to storytelling and from taking risks to making moral judgments, there is one core question which unifies them all: If the growing competence of a child is truly sociogenetic, if it truly grows out from, is supported by, and is dependent upon the social, where is that competence truly located? Bearing a variety of labels--cultural-historical, co-constructionist, dialectical, contextualist, narrative, hermeneutic, and discursive psychologies--and analytic constructs--scaffolding, proleptic instruction, participation, appropriation, and situated activity--contemporary perspectives are showing clear signs of development and differentiation. This new book illuminates these differences by collecting a select sample of theory and research into one of two major sections. The overarching aim is to identify processes of child-child or child-adult interactions as they emerge over relatively short periods of time. But ever since Lev Vygotsky claimed that every function in a child's activity appears first as a process in the social realm between individuals and moves to a process that ind