Vygotsky and Sociology

Building on earlier publications by Harry Daniels, Vygotsky and Sociology provides readers with an overview of the implications for research of the theoretical work which acknowledges a debt to the writings of L.S. Vygotsky and sociologists whose work echoes his sociogenetic commitments, particularly Basil Bernstein. It provides a variety of views on the ways in which these two, conceptually linked, bodies of work can be brought together in theoretical frameworks which give new possibilities for empirical work. This book has two aims. First, to expand and enrich the Vygotskian theoretical framework; second, to illustrate the utility of such enhanced sociological imaginations and how they may be of value in researching learning in institutions and classrooms. It includes contributions from long-established writers in education, psychology and sociology, as well as relatively recent contributors to the theoretical debates and the body of research to which it has given rise, presenting their own arguments and justifications for forging links between particular theoretical traditions and, in some cases, applying new insights to obdurate empirical questions.

Contents

1. Curriculum and pedagogy in the sociology of education; some lessons from comparing Durkheim and Vygotsky 2. Dialectics, Politics and Contemporary Cultural-historical Research, Exemplified through Marx and Vygotsky 3. Vygotsky and Bernstein 4. Sixth Sense, Second Nature and Other Cultural Ways of Making Sense of our Surroundings: Vygotsky, Bernstein and the Languaged Body 5. The Concept of Semiotic Mediation: Perspectives from Bernstein’s Sociology 6. Negotiating Pedagogic Dilemmas in Non-Traditional Educational Contexts: An Australian Case Study of Teachers’ Work 7. Modalities of authority and the socialisation of the school in contemporary approaches to educational change 8. Semiotic Mediation, Viewed Over Time 9. Boys, skills and class: educational failure or community survival? Insights from Vygotsky and Bernstein 10. ‘Identity’ as a unit of analysis in researching and teaching mathematics 11. Schooling the social classes: Triadic zones of proximal development, communicative capital, and relational distance in the perpetuation of advantage 12. The Pedagogies of Second Language Acquisition: combining cultural historical and sociological traditions