Date: Tuesday October 21 at 9am PDT
Guest Speaker: Peter Smagorinsky, Distinguished Research Professor of English Education, University of Georgia at Athens.
Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/98564124237
Meeting ID: 985 6412 4237
Passcode: Vygotsky
Summary: Peter Smagorinsky revisits his 1995 study of how high school students’ understanding of literary characters was enhanced through role play. When Peter conducted this study, translations of Vygotsky writings on imagination, play, and creativity were not widely available. Now, thirty years later, with an expanded understanding of Vygotsky’s theory, the implications of this study become even more salient.
Reading: Smagorinsky, P., & Coppock, J. (1995). The reader, the text, the context: An exploration of a choreographed response to literature. Journal of Reading Behavior, 27, 271-298. https://doi.org/10.1080/108629695095478 [doi.org] Available at http://www.petersmagorinsky.net/About/PDF/JLR/JRB1995.pdf [petersmagorinsky.net]
This is Francine Smolucha (again) following up on topics that came up in Peter’s session.
As Peter’s study demonstrated, choreography can enhance the appreciation of literature and lead to self-actualization. Choreography could be used as an alternative to having student’s write an essay (or it could be used in addition to essay writing). Also there are rich connections that can be made from viewing Peter’s presentation along with Suki John’s presentation of her choreodrama Sh’ma on Jan 10, 2023 Creative Collaborations hosted by Henry Shonerd, featuring Suki John as a Guest Speaker – Cultural Praxis. We could address some of these connections in a future session, perhaps including the topic of (role) play therapy.
Peter mentioned that he found Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences helpful as
a rationale for using choreography to understand literature. But he also alluded to Gardner’s theory as having fallen into disrepute. The reason Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences lacks scientific validity is that Gardner proposed it as an argument against the existence of a general intelligence factor (specifically the g factor underlying IQ Tests). But in the 1930’s, Thurstone’s research on seven Primary Mental Abilities had ended up supporting a general intelligence factor underlying language, math, and visual-spatial thinking. It is my understanding that visual spatial thinking has a higher positive correlation with IQ than verbal ability does. Research also demonstrated a positive correlation between math and musical ability. This does not mean that exceptions don’t exist, but it does disprove the claim that visual-spatial intelligence and musical intelligence have no correlation with IQ. Also while the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence of choreography is useful for understanding literary characters and oneself, dancing the Periodic Table of the Elements would be of questionable value in a chemistry class. Our young colleagues, and colleagues from other countries, might not have even heard of Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences. But in the 1980’s it was the latest thing.
Peter’s experience living through a major paradigm change in educational psychology, might seem remarkable to our younger colleagues who entered the field when Vygotsky’s theory was recognized as a major theory. In our group we have several generations of scholars from different countries. It might be interesting to have a session on paradigmatic changes
in psychology in the last 100 years.
In the USA, Mike Cole’s memoirs tell how he entered psychology when American Behaviorism (S-R) dominated the field.
My first psychology course was in 1971 and we were told there were “Three Forces” in psychology Behaviorism, Psychoanalysis, and Humanistic Psychology”. My first child development course taught by a Behaviorist spent the entire semester on operant conditioning, nothing else. Piaget was all the rage when he gave a guest lecture at the University of Illinois in Chicago in 1973. It was like Beatlemania. Information processing theory and cognitive science emerged in the early 80:s . Mike Cole and his colleagues formally introduced Cultural Psychology at the SRCD conference in 1989 in Kansas City. Vygotsky doesn’t enter the textbooks until the 1990’s, and a lot of books about his theory start being published.
But no theoretical continuity. Students were just expected to adopt whatever current theory their professor(s) were advancing. American psychology abandoned theory, for the most part, and has become eclectic. Depending on your clientel you pick and choose methods,
therapies, interventions, based on practicality.
Peter mentioned Tom Trabasso was one of his advisors. When Tom was the chairman of the Educational Psychology Department at the University of Chicago, he told me that ‘You don’t think like an American psychologist, you think like a European.”
Learned to think like that from searching in bookstores and libraries, and reading books by neo-Freudians, Heinz Werner, Klaus Reigel, and translating Vygotsky.
But having read TS Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1973, gave me the bigger picture and that made all the difference.