Abstract:
Sociocultural theory of mind was conceived by Soviet psychologist, Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (1978, 1981a, 1981b) in the early 1920s. The theory emphasizes the central role of social relationships and culturally constructed artifacts in organizing thinking. It attempts to ‘theorise and provide methodological tools for investigating higher cognitive processes by which social, cultural, and historical factors shape human functioning’ (Daniels, 2001, p. 1). Sociocultural theory is one theory of subjectivity. Arguably its main contribution is to provide a conceptual framework for (re)conceptualizing relations between humans and their sociocultural context. It continues to be widely used in educational research.
In the last two decades communicative globalization has transformed the terrain of theorization, empirical research and educational practice. David Held and his collaborators define globalization as ‘the widening, deepening and speeding up of world wide interconnectedness’ (Held et al., 1999, p. 2). It is vectored by more extensive and intensive cross-border flows of people, communications, knowledge, ideas, government policies, and money (Appadurai, 1996), the global referencing of nation-states and the national education systems that hitherto have framed educational research, and the growing weight of world culture and society. Education is shaped simultaneously in global, national and local dimensions of action (Marginson and Rhoades, 2002). This has implications for ‘context’ in Vygotskian theory. Context is more complex and multiple, more fluid and volatile, and more blurred. This suggests the need to reconsider and perhaps expand on Vygotskian sociocultural theory and its applications in educational research.
This paper considers the implications of globalization for Vygotskian theory, and the potential of Vygotsky and the later sociocultural activity theory for studies of globalization, especially Arjun Appadurai’s (1996) reading of global cultural flows, Rizvi and Lingard (2010) and Marginson (2010a and 2010b) It discusses globalization and its implications for education, Vygotsky and sociocultural theory, and the globalization/Vygotskian interface. The Vygotskian emphasis on mediating artifacts provides an additional pathway for empirical research on globalization. In the context of globalization, educational research in the Vygotskian sociocultural tradition should embrace the multidimensional character of educational action, move beyond national boundaries in examining socio-historical level, and adopt a notion of human subjects with a larger scope for imagining, learning and changing.
In the last two decades communicative globalization has transformed the terrain of theorization, empirical research and educational practice. David Held and his collaborators define globalization as ‘the widening, deepening and speeding up of world wide interconnectedness’ (Held et al., 1999, p. 2). It is vectored by more extensive and intensive cross-border flows of people, communications, knowledge, ideas, government policies, and money (Appadurai, 1996), the global referencing of nation-states and the national education systems that hitherto have framed educational research, and the growing weight of world culture and society. Education is shaped simultaneously in global, national and local dimensions of action (Marginson and Rhoades, 2002). This has implications for ‘context’ in Vygotskian theory. Context is more complex and multiple, more fluid and volatile, and more blurred. This suggests the need to reconsider and perhaps expand on Vygotskian sociocultural theory and its applications in educational research.
This paper considers the implications of globalization for Vygotskian theory, and the potential of Vygotsky and the later sociocultural activity theory for studies of globalization, especially Arjun Appadurai’s (1996) reading of global cultural flows, Rizvi and Lingard (2010) and Marginson (2010a and 2010b) It discusses globalization and its implications for education, Vygotsky and sociocultural theory, and the globalization/Vygotskian interface. The Vygotskian emphasis on mediating artifacts provides an additional pathway for empirical research on globalization. In the context of globalization, educational research in the Vygotskian sociocultural tradition should embrace the multidimensional character of educational action, move beyond national boundaries in examining socio-historical level, and adopt a notion of human subjects with a larger scope for imagining, learning and changing.