Time: 12:00 AM (midnight) Pacific Standard Time, Tuesday, December 10, 2024
(We understand this time may be unusual, but it helps us accommodate more of our global community members. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.)
An overview written by Francine Smolucha can be found here.
Guest Speaker: Prof. Nikolay Veraksa
Prof. Nikolay Veraksa is a specialist in preschool education, works at Faculty of Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Federal Scientific Center of Psychological and Multidisciplinary Research. He is Head of UNESCO Chair in Early Childhood Care and Development, Honorary Doctor of the University of Gothenburg. He is a co-author of the most popular educational program in Russia for children in preschool “From Birth to School” as well as a program in English “Key to Learning.” His main interests are development of child thinking and personality.
Dialectical thinking
Specifics of dialectical thinking lies in the nature of the transformations that the subject makes when solving a particular problem. The transformations themselves are considered as related to such properties of the situation that can be expressed through opposite relations. The description of reality with the help of opposite relations does not represent the process of thinking, but the processes of transformation occurring in reality. The patterns according to which they occur, described through dialectical relations, can be represented as dialectical structures. Dialectical structures reflect not only the processes of transformation, but also those possibilities in the direction of which transformations of situations and objects can occur. In fact any object turns out to be immersed into various structures of opposite relations. Dialectical thinking ensures movement in dialectical structures that describe the space of possibilities or possible changes in objects. The success of this process will be determined by the success of the choice of content units as opposites and the ability to see opposites between units and within units at the content level. Dialectical thinking in its elementary forms is already present in preschool children. At the same time, it is also used in scientific research, for example, by J. Piaget and L. Vygotsky
Contact Francine Smolucha at lsmolucha@hotmail.com for the ZOOM link to join the session.
Readings:
Extra readings:
N.Veraksa The History of Dialectics in Russia (P.46-59) / The Routledge international handbook of dialectical thinking / ed. Nick Shannon, Michael F. Mascolo, Anastasia Belolutskya.
N.Veraksa Dialectical thinking and Structural Dialectical Analysis (P.71-82) / The Routledge international handbook of dialectical thinking / ed. Nick Shannon, Michael F. Mascolo, Anastasia Belolutskya.