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.

Comparative Methodology as the Human Condition: Conwy Lloyd Morgan and the Use of Animal Models in Science

Abstract: Conwy Lloyd Morgan's life (1852–1936) was a trajectory of systematic efforts to find answers to basic questions in science. His background is that of a child who was eager to read poetry and the philosophy of Berkeley but who was sent to the Royal School of Mines in London (in 1869) to get a practically useful profession in mining and metallurgy. Morgan imbued a hypothetical chronometer with the power of investigation—the capability to observe the external appearances of other timepieces, as well as that of introspecting about one's internal clockwork. Such a hypothetical chronometer would move from oneself "outwards"—to other similar specimens—while creating an understanding about clocks at large. One's construction of knowledge is strictly based upon experiencing the behavior of others—but understood in terms of one's own introspection. Similarly, psychology has been cross-culturally under-appreciative.

Higher Education: From Intellectual Asylum and Fulfilling of Social Orders to Creating Arenas for Scientific Revolutions

Abstract: This conclusive chapter of the volume summarizes the different perspectives on higher education that are represented in the book. The ambivalences introduced by the “Bologna system” into higher education are outlined, with the suggestion that new alternatives to that politically motivated intervention be considered so as to guarantee the leading role of universities in the preparation of new generations of knowledge makers. A suggestion is made for establishing a privately funded University Without Borders that would raise the international collaboration to new level in the cooperation of scholars, minimizing the possibilities of pilurcal political interference into higher education by any particular country of bloc of countries.

Methodology as Foundation for Discovery

Abstract: In this chapter, the goal of this book is set—how construction of particular methods in the science of psychology is interdependent with general methodology. Seven axioms for psychological science are outlined in the chapter: Axiom 1: All psychological life exists through irreversibility of time. Axiom 2: All human psychological life is mediated by signs. Axiom 3: Signs are constructed, maintained, and demolished as they form dynamic hierarchies. Axiom 4: Signs are constructed by active sign-makers who operate toward goals (intentionality) that are constantly being modified (teleogenesis). Axiom 5: Constructed signs include their contexts (co-genetic logic). Axiom 6: Sign functions constrain the range of possible experiences of the immediate future. Axiom 7: Signs are catalysts.

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.