Jaan Valsiner

Bio: Jaan Valsiner is an academic researcher from Aalborg University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Cultural psychology & Dialogical self. The author has an hindex of 55, co-authored 384 publications receiving 12659 citations. Previous affiliations of Jaan Valsiner include University of Luxembourg & University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Open intransitivity cycles in development and education: Pathways to synthesis

Abstract: Development as an open-systemic phenomenon involves feed-forward processes that guide the organism to face always uncertain future states of its relations with the environment. This creates a major conceptual problem for science — and a practical one for education — its theoretical terms need to captureboth the certain and uncertain aspects of the developing system. Psychological theory has failed to model developmental processes since it has been built on static ontology of being, rather than on the epistemology of becoming. This contrast is accentuated by the use of transitivity relations in psychological models which are axiomatically closed to the open-endedness of the future in conjunction with the uniqueness of the past-to-present trajectory. Flexibility of developing systems is guaranteed by intransitivity cycles that set up conditions for their own rupture. Development as multi-level interdependent process requires breaking of intransitivity cycles and is organized as an autocatalytic process. Novelty is the key feature in all developing systems, and our formal models in psychology need to open the process of emergence for empirical and theoretical inquiry. Implications of such theoretical reconstruction for educational practices will be discussed — demonstrating that (a) education is necessarily open-ended and constructive process, and (b) outcomes of educational efforts cannot be predicted — while setting the direction towards educational goals is the key to any outcomes.

Culture and Human Development: A co-constructionist perspective

Abstract: Theoretical views on social nature of human development have habitually accepted a limited perspective (that of unidirectional model) on culture transmission as their core. Simultaneously, the rest of psychology has attempted to eliminate cultural organization from its theoretical core, reducing it to the use of culture as an index variable. In contemporary developmental theorizing one can find a constructive return to the theoretical heritages of a number of sociogenetic (Baldwin, Vygotsky) and constructionist (Piaget, Stern) authors. At the same time, new traditions of cultural psychology can be detected on the mindscape of psychology. Connections of the co-constructionist theorizing with both developmental ideas of the past, and cultural psychologies of the present are charted out. Co-constructionist theory constitutes a radical synthesis of the sociogenetic and constructionist perspectives, as it conceptualizes the open-systemic nature of human development.

Towards cultural psychology of affective processes: Semiotic regulation of dynamic fields

Abstract: The newly emerging interdisciplinary area of cultural psychology has largely addressed issues of conduct and cognition. A semiotic perspective is assumed here to investigate phenomena of affective ...

Three Years Later: Culture in Psychology—Between Social Positioning and Producing New Knowledge:

Abstract: Since the previous editorial analysis (Valsiner, 2001) the journal has continued as an intellectually exciting forum for international and creative scholarship. For further development of the field...

Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. The emergence of learning activity as a historical form of human learning 3. The zone of proximal development as the basic category of expansive research 4. The instruments of expansion 5. Toward an expansive methodology 6. Epilogue.

Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge (University Press) 1964.

Abstract: Part I. Experimental Studies: 2. Experiment in psychology 3. Experiments on perceiving III Experiments on imaging 4-8. Experiments on remembering: (a) The method of description (b) The method of repeated reproduction (c) The method of picture writing (d) The method of serial reproduction (e) The method of serial reproduction picture material 9. Perceiving, recognizing, remembering 10. A theory of remembering 11. Images and their functions 12. Meaning Part II. Remembering as a Study in Social Psychology: 13. Social psychology 14. Social psychology and the matter of recall 15. Social psychology and the manner of recall 16. Conventionalism 17. The notion of a collective unconscious 18. The basis of social recall 19. A summary and some conclusions.

Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again

Abstract: From the Publisher: The old opposition of matter versus mind stubbornly persists in the way we study mind and brain. In treating cognition as problem solving, Andy Clark suggests, we may often abstract too far from the very body and world in which our brains evolved to guide us. Whereas the mental has been treated as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world, Clark forcefully attests that a key to understanding brains is to see them as controllers of embodied activity. From this paradigm shift he advances the construction of a cognitive science of the embodied mind.