Showing papers by "Jaan Valsiner published in 2016"

Beyond the “Variables”: Developing Metalanguage for Psychology

Abstract: Over the twentieth century, psychology has adopted the scheme of causal thinking that involves the S → R (stimulus → response) basic structure. It brings into the thinking of psychologists the axiomatic acceptance of linear causality (“S causes R”) without a focus on elaboration of how the supposed process of causing actually operates. In the experimental and quasi-experimental practices of research, that scheme has become contextualized as the practice of specifying “independent” (manipulable) and “dependent” (outcome) factors called “variables,” creating the illusion of the researcher’s control over the processes under investigation in a context of an experiment (or its derivatives, such as questionnaires or interviews). This is unrealistic in the case of human psychological processes that are of the character of open systems characterized not by “effects” but by exchange relations with the environment (exemplified by Dewey in his replacement the “reflex arc” by the “reflex circle”) which operate on the basis of cyclical (catalyzed) rather than linear causality. The result is a situation—well captured by Ludwig Wittgenstein—that in psychology the problems and methods pass each other by. We trace the history of the terminology of “independent” variable as it became used in psychology, discuss the philosophical underpinnings of the notion of “variable” in a universe of dynamically structured and normatively guided psychological phenomena, and suggest that the notion of “variables” be abandoned and replaced by other concepts that would capture the qualitative nature of the human phenomena more adequately.

When disruptive behavior meets outcome-based education

Abstract: Disruptive behavior is a major concern for most educational systems. Schools often respond to disruptive students with exclusionary and punitive approaches that have limited effect or value. Moreover, recent neoliberal trends with increased focus on student learning outcome change the attitudes towards disruptive student behavior and also narrow down and homogenize the range of what is considered as “acceptable student behavior”. In this article we discuss the interrelationship between an outcome-based, neoliberal school approach and notions of disruptive behavior. We claim that the outcome-based and neoliberal approach to education basically promotes an un-educational way of thinking about education that also has a huge influence on perceptions of and tolerance towards all kinds of disruptions in schools - whether they come from students, parents, teachers or researchers.

Making of the future : the trajectory equifinality approach in cultural psychology

Abstract: Making of the Future is the first English?language coverage of the new methodological perspective in cultural psychology-TEA (Trajectory Equifinality Approach) that was established in 2004 as a collaboration of Japanese and American cultural psychologists. In the decade that follows it has become a guiding approach for cultural psychology all over the World. Its central feature is the reliance on irreversible time as the basis for understanding of cultural phenomena and the consideration of real and imaginary options in human life course as relevant for the construction of personal futures. The book is expected to be of interest in researchers and practitioners in education, developmental and social psychology, developmental sociology and history. It has extensions for research methodology in the focus on different sampling strategies.

The Nomothetic Function of the Idiographic Approach: Looking

Abstract: Three innovations are necessary in psychology if it were to become person-oriented: (1) looking for the universal in the particulars, (2) accepting the irreversibility of developmental life events, and (3) conceptualizing transformation of complexity in terms of qualitative structures of dynamic hierarchical order. Psychology can only be a science if it resolves its ideological opposition to conceptualizing the work of general developmental principles in each and every particular instance of human experience. Wilhelm Windelband's introduction of the concepts of nomothetic and idiographic perspectives in science in the 1890s has been misinterpreted in psychology by treating these as if they were irreconcilable opposites, while the original intention was to show how generalizations can be possible precisely on the basis of single specimens. Each experience—given the irreversibility of time—is necessarily unique (with maximum frequency of occurrence 1). Considering similarity of the new with what had occurred before leads to looking at qualitative transformation of psychological phenomena—hence allowing a focus on development. Person-Oriented developmental psychology has the chance to study the emergence and disappearance of Gestalts of various levels of organization- as was suggested by Christian von Ehrenfels hundred years ago- through considering the temporal unification of the real (what has already emerged) and the imaginary (what might emerge-leading the possible emergence). This requires a radical change in the formal languages used in developmental science. An extension of the use of number system from real to complex numbers is suggested, with a focus on the dynamics of vector movements in the plane of the complex number.

A semiotic approach to creativity: Resources for re-contextualization

Abstract: Creativity is the process of emergence of an alternative trajectory of human conduct, unfolding within irreversible time, mediated by signs. The theory of semiotic dynamics of human conduct situates the moment of emergence of novelty in the creation of sign hierarchies that either guide the person into previously known trajectory of feeling, thinking, and acting, or into a new trajectory not experienced before. This emergence is initiated by the person who strives in some direction, and utilizes signs as regulators and catalysts for bringing about innovative moments in one’s experience. Semiotic catalysis at the bifurcation point of the trajectories sets up the uncertainty of emergence of the new on the basis of past experience. Catalytic signs are field-like in their nature and occur in sign complexes that make possible the direction of affective meanings into variable pathways. Such sign fields can be observed to be encoded into symbolic resources—iconic images or re-narrated myth stories of memorable scenes that are set up to be maintained over generations and guide renewal of meaningful understandings of the world.