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.

Literacy in Human Development

Abstract: Part 1 Literacy processes - access to a symbolic system: the development of writing in the child, Alexander Luria parallels between the perspectives of Alexander Luria and Emilia Ferreiro, Maria Thereza Fraga Rocco educational tendencies in the beginning of reading and writing instruction, Berta P. De Braslavsky. Part 2 Learning and meaning in childhood: approaching knowledge and meaning elaboration in the classroom - some theoretical and methodological issues, Ana Luiza B. Smolka why there might be several ways to read storybooks to preschoolers in Aotearoa (New Zealand) - models of tutoring and socio-cultural diversity in how families read books to preschoolers, Stuart McNaughton literacy and language processes - orthographic and structural effects, Pratihibna Karanth. Part 3 Literacy and activity contexts in adulthood: illiterate adults in literate societies - interactions with a social world, Ann Hagell and Jonathan Tudge schooling, literacy and social change - elements for a critical approach to the study of literacy, Angela B. Kleiman conceptual organization and schooling, Marta Kohl de Oliveira learning to write letters - semiotic mediation in literacy acquisition in adulthood, Simone Goncalves de Lima and Maria Helena Favero.

From describing to reconstructing life trajectories: How the TEA (Trajectory Equifinality Approach) Explicates Context-Dependent Human Phenomena

Abstract: Culture is a difficult term to define. It is similar to any other meta-level notion. We easily use them—but the very moment we are asked to clarify their meaning we are in trouble. We may end up giving very general explanations. Thus, Klempe (2013) started his lecture on cultural psychology in Aalborg with the most basic understanding that culture is about everything human beings are experiencing. But how do we experience everything? What is the value of bringing the notion of culture as a general scientific term back to psychology?

Ambivalence under scrutiny: Returning to the future

Abstract: This Special Issue on the study of ambivalent processes in psychology integrates issues from contemporary evolutionary, cognitive, and cultural psychology with new directions of formal models that are available in qualitative mathematics. Tribute is paid to the pioneer of the study of ambivalence—Else Frenkel-Brunswik. Her work antedates most of our contemporary efforts in this field. Becoming free from the limits of its obsession with numbers in lieu of “measurement”, psychology at our time faces the challenge of investigation of dynamic psychological complexity. Contemporary mathematics—which is qualitative in its nature—provides new opportunities for psychology. New mathematical models—based on topology (Morse functions) and from intuitionistic formal logic (theory of locales)—are shown to provide promising new directions for future research on ambivalence. The emphasis on mathematical tools as enablement devices for psychological theorizing leads psychology to the need to create new kinds of g...

Intransitivity cycles and their transformations: How dynamically adapting systems function

Abstract: A most interesting area in transitivity / intransitivity relations consists of relations like dominance / subordination, superiority / inferiority, preferences, etc. If A dominates B and B dominates C, must it be so that A dominates C? If A is superior to B, and B is superior to C, must it beso that A is superior to C? What happens if superiority/inferiority (dominance /subordination, etc.) relations form a cycle, an intransitive loop?Human rationality is often assumed to be based on the logical relation of transitivity. Yet, although transitivity fits relationships between physical objects or human decisions about targets that are independent of one another, it fails to fit the phenomena of systemic and developmental organization. Intransitivity has been shown to be present in various kinds of systems, ranging from the brain to society. In cyclical systems transitivity constitutes a special case of intransitivity. In this chapter, we examine different forms of emergence of intransitivity cycles, fixation of transitive parts in these cycles, and the organization of different levels of reflexivity within the systems. We conclude that reflexivity of cognitive processes — rather than transitivity in specific forms of thought — is the defining criterion of rationality.

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.