Cultural foundations of a mathematician's thinking: a Psychobiographical exploration of Zoltán Paul Dienes and his cognitive development.

This psychobiographical study utilises Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural theory to explore the impact of diverse cultural experiences on the intellectual growth of Zoltán Paul Dienes, a prominent mathematician and theorist of mathematical education. Vygotsky's sociocultural theory is particularly relevant for understanding the impact of culture on intellectual development. According to Vygotsky, cognitive development is shaped by social and cultural interactions, and the tools and practices of a given culture. The study employs a taxonomy of cognitive tools to categorise the influences young Dienes encountered in Hungary, Austria, France, United Kingdom and elsewhere. By examining the presence and frequency of these tools in his formative years, the research sheds light on the origins of Dienes's principles in mathematical education. The research enriches psychobiography by integrating sociocultural theory, providing valuable insights into the relationship between culture, cognitive tools, and intellectual growth in knowledgeable individuals. Ultimately, this study contributes to a better comprehension of the origins and principles behind Dienes's theory of mathematical education.

Exploring medical students' perceptions of empathy after cinemeducation based on Vygotsky's theory.

BACKGROUND: Medical students' empathy toward patients with Alzheimer's is rarely found in formal medical curricula. Based on Vygotsky's theory, watching films and reflection can be considered as effective methods to improve empathy. The present study aimed to explore medical students' perceptions of empathy toward patients with Alzheimer after participating in an educational program by using interactive video based on Vygotsky's theory. METHODS: This qualitative study was conducted at Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2022. The population included all 40 medical students. Firstly, the Still Alice movie which is about the feelings of a professor who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease was shown to the students. Secondly, the students reflected on their experiences of watching the movie. Thirdly, a session was held for group discussion on the subject of the movie, the patient's feelings, the doctor's attitude, the social environment surrounding the patient shown in the movie, and the necessity of empathy toward patients with Alzheimer's disease. The reflection papers were analyzed using the conventional qualitative content analysis method. RESULTS: After analyzing 216 codes from 38 reflection papers, four categories, including communication with a patient with Alzheimer's, understanding the patient with Alzheimer's as a whole, medical science development, and the student's individual ideology, were extracted. CONCLUSION: Reflection and group discussion after watching movie by providing opportunities for social interaction about personal interpretations will lead to active role in enhancing empathy. Based on the perceptions of the medical students, they gained a perspective to consider the patient as a whole and pay attention to establishing a proper relationship with the patient.

Construct validity of the Surgical Autonomy Program for the training of neurosurgical residents.

OBJECTIVE: There is no standard way in which physicians teach or evaluate surgical residents intraoperatively, and residents are proving to not be fully competent at core surgical procedures upon graduating. The Surgical Autonomy Program (SAP) is a novel educational model that combines a modified version of the Zwisch scale with Vygotsky's social learning theory. The objective of this study was to establish preliminary validity evidence that SAP is a reliable measure of autonomy and a useful tool for tracking competency over time. METHODS: The SAP breaks each surgical case into 4 parts, or zones of proximal development (ZPDs). Residents are evaluated on a 4-tier autonomy scale (TAGS scale) for each ZPD in every surgical case. Attendings were provided with a teaching session about SAP and identified appropriate ZPDs for surgical cases under their area of expertise. All neurosurgery residents at Duke University Hospital from July 2017 to July 2021 participated in this study. Chi-square tests and ordinal logistic regression were used for the analyses. RESULTS: Between 2017 and 2021, there were 4885 cases logged by 27 residents. There were 30 attendings who evaluated residents using SAP. Faculty completed evaluations on 91% of cases. The ZPD of focus directly correlated with year of residency (postgraduate year) (χ2 = 1221.1, df = 15, p < 0.001). The autonomy level increased with year of residency (χ2 = 3553.5, df = 15, p < 0.001). An ordinal regression analysis showed that for every year increase in postgraduate year, the odds of operating at a higher level of independence was 2.16 times greater (95% CI 2.11-2.21, p < 0.001). The odds of residents performing with greater autonomy was lowest for the most complex portion of the case (ZPD3) (OR 0.18, 95% CI 0.17-0.20, p < 0.001). Residents have less autonomy with increased case complexity (χ2 = 160.28, df = 6, p < 0.001). Compared with average cases, residents were more likely to operate with greater autonomy on easy cases (OR 1.44, 95% CI 1.29-1.61, p < 0.001) and less likely to do so on difficult cases (OR 0.72, 95% CI 0.67-0.77, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates preliminary evidence supporting the construct validity of the SAP. This tool successfully tracks resident autonomy and progress over time. The authors' smartphone application was widely used among surgical faculty and residents, supporting integration into the perioperative workflow. Wide implementation of SAP across multiple surgical centers will aid in the movement toward a competency-based residency education system.

Technics and signs: anthropogenesis in Vygotsky, Leroi-Gourhan, and Stiegler.

This paper reconstructs L.S. Vygotsky's account of anthropogenesis with respect to the work of anthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan and late philosopher Bernard Stiegler, situating Vygotsky as a forerunner to recent theories that posit cultural scaffolding and niche construction as the main drivers of human cognitive evolution. One might think there is an immediate affinity between Vygotsky and the techno-centric accounts of Leroi-Gourhan and Stiegler. Following Leroi-Gourhan, Stiegler argues that "technics" is the main driver in the anthropogenic development of "reflective consciousness." Vygotsky likewise claims that "psychological tools" are responsible for the development of uniquely human forms of consciousness. However, closer inspection reveals deep disparities between Vygotsky and the French thinkers. In Stiegler's philosophical redeployment of Leroi-Gourhan's anthropology, "reflective" cognition is the product of a prehistorical rupture in which some threshold of technical-cortical complexification is breached. For Vygotsky, on the other hand, the inverse scenario obtains. Technical development initially proceeds in tandem with the complexification of biologically based signaling behavior until the introduction of signs, which then radically restructure the cognitive apparatus. Due to inconsistencies regarding the equivalency of the technical and semiotic in Stiegler and Leroi-Gourhan, I advance a Vygotskian account where anthropogenesis is the result of semiotic rather than technical intervention. This aims to establish Vygotsky's "Cultural Historical" approach, and the Marxian-dialectical tradition from which he draws, as not only presaging recent naturalistic accounts of development, but offering a relevant theoretical program that may continue to inspire contemporary enculturated accounts of anthropogenesis.

The final chapter of Vygotsky's Thinking and Speech: A reader's guide.

The seventh and last chapter of Vygotsky's Thinking and Speech (1934) is generally considered as his final word in psychology. It is a long chapter with a complex argumentative structure in which Vygotsky gives his view on the relationship between thinking and speech. Vygotsky's biographers have stated that the chapter was dictated in the final months of Vygotsky's life when his health was rapidly deteriorating. Although the chapter is famous, its structure has never been analyzed in any detail. In the present article we reveal its rhetorical structure and show how Vygotsky drew on many hitherto unrevealed sources to convince the reader of his viewpoint.

Not by bread alone: Lev Vygotsky's Jewish writings.

On the basis of both published and unpublished manuscripts written from 1914 to 1917, this article gives an overview of Lev Vygotsky's early ideas. It turns out that Vygotsky was very much involved in issues of Jewish culture and politics. Rather surprisingly, the young Vygotsky rejected all contemporary ideas to save the Jewish people from discrimination and persecution by creating an autonomous state in Palestine or elsewhere. Instead, until well into 1917, Vygotsky proposed the rather traditional option of strengthening the spiritual roots of the Jews by returning to the religious writings. Socialism was rejected, because it merely envisioned the compulsory redistribution of material goods and 'man lives not by bread alone'. It was only after the October Revolution that Vygotsky switched from arguments in favour of the religious faith in the Kingship of God to the communist belief in a Radiant Future.

Beyond Autism: Introducing the Dialectical Misattunement Hypothesis and a Bayesian Account of Intersubjectivity.

Drawing on sociocultural theories and Bayesian accounts of brain function, in this article we construe psychiatric conditions as disorders of social interaction to fully account for their complexity and dynamicity across levels of description and temporal scales. After an introduction of the theoretical underpinnings of our integrative approach, we take autism spectrum conditions (ASC) as a paradigm example and discuss how neurocognitive hypotheses can be translated into a Bayesian formulation, i.e., in terms of predictive processing and active inference. We then argue that consideration of individuals (even within a Bayesian framework) will not be enough for a comprehensive understanding of psychiatric conditions and consequently put forward the dialectical misattunement hypothesis, which views psychopathology not merely as disordered function within single brains but also as a dynamic interpersonal mismatch that encompasses various levels of description. Moving from a mere comparison of groups, i.e., "healthy" persons versus "patients," to a fine-grained analysis of social interactions within dyads and groups of individuals will open new avenues and may allow to avoid an overly neurocentric scope in psychiatric research as well as help to reduce social exclusion.

Idealism, materialism, and Vygotsky's cultural historical theory.

Vygotsky straddled the period of the Russian Revolution and found himself facing the Marxist materialist ideology of the Soviet Union with the need for a new method of psychology. Ironically, the Soviet Union's need for a Marxist based method of psychology coincided with Vygotsky's prior research on methods of interpretation which were inspired by Hegel and primarily based on the role of consciousness and culture. As a result of Vygotsky's pre-revolutionary work and inspiration from Hegel clashing with the post-revolutionary need for a new methodology for psychology, Vygotsky developed his Cultural Historical Theory. In presenting his new theory, Vygotsky attempted to resolve a fundamental ideological conflict between idealism and materialism. Furthermore, Vygotsky worked to create an effective new research method by drawing inspiration from Gestalt psychology, Hegel, Marx, and Engels. The result of Vygotsky's efforts was a theory based on psychology of consciousness and mind rather than a biology-based psychology focused entirely on analysis of stimuli and responses. In analyzing Vygotsky's theory, it is useful to draw inspiration from Vygotsky's criticism of pure empiricism, and to be inspired by Vygotsky's demonstration on how deeply rooted differences between societies may be bridged by finding unexpected commonalities within opposing ideologies.

SEEING IS NOT UNDERSTANDING: Vygotsky, Halliday and Metaphor in Forming and Forgetting Middle School Science Concepts.

When teachers explain science concepts-for example, the solar wind, or plasma waves-some methods seem to be quick-acting and others long-lasting. Still others pose as many problems as they seem to solve. How, for example, does a parent explain how there can be solar wind without any air in space? How does a teacher explain how there can be plasma waves without any water? Locating metaphor between thinking and speech rather than within one or the other, we work out a single scheme to analyze two conversations with adult Koreans. These suggest that a text studied some ten years ago in middle school science class, replete with striking visual images, has left little more than everyday concepts. Instead of trying to use the striking visual images to refill gaps in the memory, however, the questions asked by a skilled science teacher suggest ways in which thinking could be freed from the middle school dogma of only three matter phases (solid, liquid, gas). To understand a metaphor like "solar wind", we need to replace fixed matters of fact with some more elusive facts of matter.

Consciousness and education: contributions by Piaget, Vygotsky and Steiner.

The objective of this study is to gain an understanding of the development of consciousness and its relationship with education based on different theoretical models-namely those by Piaget, Vygotsky and Steiner. All three of them focus on different subcomponents of the educational process and there is hence a need for integrative discussion. Piaget and Vygotsky are fundamental references in the understanding of developmental and learning processes. Steiner was a pioneer in proposing a pedagogy that progresses by integrating feeling and wanting alongside thinking in the educational process. Their theories have important similarities but also differences and these will be essential for broadening the understanding of the construction of consciousness and its relationships with education.

The idea of society: the Spoken World Theory and the ontological conceptualization of society.

This article presents a new conceptualization of society with the ambition to sharpen thinking about social reality and to better understand how society relates to personhood. This exercise is framed in an attempt to develop the Spoken World Theory, inspired by the thinking of Rom Harré. It involves a radical rethink of the social ontology and is to be seen as an alternative to the traditional conceptualization of society as a social structure that is opposed to individual agency. The proposed alternative is based upon the disentanglement of four aspects of society along the Vygotskian public/private and individual/collective axes. As such, society can be said to manifest itself in four realms: (i) the world as we hear it: a worldwide and history-long ongoing web of conversations; (ii) the world as we see it: a set of materialized social artifacts, including a set of institutional facts; (iii) the world as we imagine it: individual umwelts or worldviews for each person based on appropriated knowledge and moral frameworks; and (iv) the world as we shape it: persons have the power to formulate intentions that they can bring to the conversational space or the space of artifacts. A major consequence of this conceptualization is that it no longer puts society outside human beings, nor that personality is only to be located inside persons. The proposed ontological framework allows us to speak in much clearer terms about how persons and society are entangled with each other in the sense that without the personhood of people, there can be no society, and that without society, people cannot have personhood. Both personhood and society are to be seen as two intertwined mechanisms that allow the individuals of the human species to complement the genetic basis of survival with a system of cultural resources that can be used for coping with everyday life. The article ends with a discussion of the practical implications of social theorizing.

Vygotsky's Legacy Questioned: A Review of his "Analysts" and a Challenge to his "Emulators".

This article first proposes a literature review on the questioning of Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934)'s legacy. Four main points of disagreement are distinguished: (1) the authenticity issues of Vygotsky's published work; (2) the unreflective use of concepts and ideas attributed to the Russian psychologist; (3) the story telling of a mythical Vygotsky-Leontiev-Luria school; and (4) the assimilation of his works with major currents of North American developmental psychology. The underlying divergence on what constitutes Vygotsky's core theory is then highlighted, namely the role of meaning in mental development. Finally, a study of the dissemination of his conceptions within the scientific community is proposed, based on the reconstitution of two networks of authors: Vygotsky's "analysts" and "emulators". This study demonstrates that the revision of Vygotsky's legacy may be understood by the very play of scientific production processes. Major Vygotskian scholars have emulated his ideas within mainstream but possibly incompatible intellectual frameworks.

CoViD-19 effects on social-emotional development: Putative underlying mechanisms.

Early childhood is the timely and critical period in the growth of the human being when the trajectory of children's holistic development is traced, and the foundation for their future as well-established and productive adults is set. The CoViD-19 pandemic produced profound changes in everyday life almost everywhere in the world. The personal, social and societal restrictions imposed during the CoViD-19 pandemic unquestionably blunted early childhood development by depriving young children from normal and healthy attachments through secure relationships with parents, teachers and peers. Furthermore, the public health measures enacted to counter the spread of the pandemic (e.g., mandatory masking, lockdown) contributed to a lack of social interactions essential for childhood development, and provoked perceptions of psycho-emotional stress (e.g., objective fear of the masked interlocutor, perceived fear of abandonment) in the children, which may have hampered critical periods of development. Based on theoretical foundation and our observations in the field, we propose that early intervention support may have a significant impact on the development of children victims of the effect of the CoViD-19 pandemic.

Free Association and Inner Speech-On the Internal Form of Words.

This comment paper reviews Fossa (2022) from the perspective of the semiotics of inner speech. The syntactic and semantic features of inner speech described in Vygotsky, Thinking and Speech, Chap. 7, are, on the one hand, a source of creativity through the affective dimension of inner spech and, on the other hand, a therapeutic function of psychoanalysis and other forms of psychotherapy. The function of inner speech in the pre-reflective dimension is the focus of Fossa's edited volume. In order to reinforce this argument, the present paper takes as its cue the internal forms of words discussed by Potebnya and examines them. The internal form of words has certain primordial features and evokes a figure (образ; picture). Internal forms have figurative properties. Through this context-independent figuration (phonological, visual image, experiential sense of meaning), semantics causes a unit with other words in a loose semantic linkage. As they are not bound by the external form of segmented speech, they bring about a sense of reification, as if the internal form repeats itself in the proximity of semantic sense, even if the manifested expressive content is different. The internal form of words, in which the form conveys meaning as it is, reveals the semiotic character of dreams and free association, which psychoanalysis uses as clinical material. Many psychotherapies actively use pre-linguistic mediating effects, because surrendering to the internal forms that are repeated in inner speech allows the subject to return to a pre-reflective dimension from which a new subject can be recovered. From the above, this paper has shown that in the boundary zone of the transition from inner speech to outer speech situations, exposure to alterity, to intimate unknown, is involved in the constitution of the subject.

Vygotsky's, Leontiev's and Engeström's Cultural-Historical (Activity) Theories: Overview, Clarifications and Implications.

At the social turn in education, Vygotsky's cultural-historical/sociocultural theory (VST) has become particularly influential. There are other cultural-historical traditions associated with VST, including Leontiev's and Engeström's versions of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). These approaches are frequently conflated, resulting in confusion that can be consequential in interpreting educational research findings. Unravelling these frameworks is thus an important and urgent task. In addressing this gap, the paper first provides an overview of the origins and fundamental tenets of these cultural-historical perspectives, followed by a critical evaluation of and comparison among them. Implications for utilising these cultural-historical traditions are discussed.

Vygotsky's Emotions: Desire/Passion in Spinoza, Proposal/Proposition in Halliday, and Teaching Sexual Consent to Children in Korea.

Some problems, unraveled, seem to resolve each other. The Soviet integrative psychologist Vygotsky bequeathed to us an unfinished paper on the emotions. But was it about the teachings of Spinoza, was it concerned with contemporaneous theories, or did Vygotsky have a teaching/theory of his own? Vygotsky called his approach "Spinozian but not Spinozist" in his notes, but in his actual writings this appears as a distinction without a difference. What did he mean by it? In many places, Vygotsky appears to be retracing his steps rather than proceeding to a conclusion, yet he was already considering a title and a dedicatee. Was it really finishable? This paper argues that Vygotsky intended to use the teachings of Spinoza to critique his colleagues and associates; that he turned the critique back on "Spinozism" itself, and that the theory he intended to construct would be properly called "Spinozian". In the end, however, only practice can resolve the Spinozist teaching on emotions into the kind of working Spinozian theory Vygotsky had in mind; only real data will help us tie up the last loose threads. To this end, a linguistic approach to the problem of how the concept of sexual consent develops in Korean children is proposed.

Advancing clinical facilitator capability to support graduate nurses: Outputs from social learning processes embedded in action research cycles.

AIM: This study in the first instance, seeks to identify encounters that commonly occur between graduates, facilitators and others; and second, to explicate skills and behaviours needed by facilitators to effectively guide graduates to perform at expected standards. BACKGROUND: In Australia, nursing graduates are expected to assimilate quickly and adapt to workplace practices within short timeframes. Clinical facilitators are provided to support transition to the workplace. However, providing support is only understood in broad terms. DESIGN: Two consecutive action research cycles informed by extended Vygotskian learning concepts guided the study. The first cycle recorded and categorised critical encounters with graduates which were subsequently subjected to a thematic analysis to identify common circumstances where clinical facilitators are required to provide support to graduates. The second cycle articulated behaviours useful to clinical faciltators to foster graduate nurse learning, for optimal management of challenges experienced in routine daily practice. METHOD: Registered nurses involved in graduate clinical facilitation at a large (780 bed adult facility) and a medium (448 bed adult, paediatric, maternity) acute hospital participated in the study. This graduate facilitation team through situated learning and a series of joint activity designed an EXCEL spreadsheet on which they recorded their observations and experiences with faciltating graduates transition to practice. RESULTS: From 1615 reported challenging interactions in the first cycle, saturation of emerging themes was reached with a random subset of 142. Six common areas of intensive needs for graduates were recorded, namely, resilience, technical support, emergent need, time management, advocate for graduate and catastrophe. The second cycle articulated processes for managing identified need areas in the form of flow charts. In practice, the flow charts provide a means for 'scaffolding' supervision and suggest conversations useful to facilitators to successfully support graduate nurses. CONCLUSION: This research has successfully explicated a largely 'undefined' area of nursing work, that is, making the invisible work of clinical facilitators 'visible' through the construction of flow charts. Specifically, advances have been made in articulating contextual, constructive support that nurses who facilitate the assimilation of graduates need to bring to interactions with graduates.

A Bibliometric Analysis of Scientific Publications on Cultural-Historical Psychology from 2010 to 2020: Dynamics, Geography, and Key Ideas.

Background: This paper presents the results of a study into the breadth, dynamics, and diversity of the interdisciplinary branch of cultural-historical psychology. The scatter of thematic areas within the cultural-historical approach indicates the urgent need to continue a systematic and holistic analysis of research related to cultural-historical topics in the context of its various directions and research groups. Design: A bibliometric analysis of scientific publications indexed by the Web of Science CC was carried out for the 2010-2020 period . Our previous bibliographic study (Rubtsov et al., 2019) revealed that the number of publications on cultural-historical psychology and citations of them, has recently increased, although unevenly. Results: According to our results, the number of publications on cultural-historical psychology is growing unevenly; publications from Russia and the United States made up almost equal shares of the sample, and third place was taken by England, followed by Finland and Sweden. The top 10 journals fell into two subject areas: Psychology and Education and Educational Research. With regard to the geographical location of the publishing houses of the top 10 journals, the highest number was taken by England and Russia. The dominant areas of research were teacher education, university education, and learning activity. Conclusion: The most frequently used terms were Vygotsky, activity approach, CHAT, CHP, ZPD, and learning activity.

"We Are Not Truly Friendly Faces": Primary Health Care Doctors' Reflections on Sexual History Taking in North West Province.

INTRODUCTION: Doctors experience barriers in consultations that compromise engaging with patients on sensitive topics and impede history taking for sexual dysfunction. AIM: The aim of the study was to identify barriers to and facilitators of sexual history taking that primary care doctors experience during consultations involving patients with chronic illnesses. METHODS: This qualitative study formed part of a grounded theory study and represents individual interviews with 20 primary care doctors working in the rural North West Province, South Africa. The doctors were interviewed on the barriers and facilitators of sexual history taking they experienced during 151 recorded consultations with patients at risk of sexual dysfunction. Interviews were transcribed and line-by-line verbatim coding was done. A thematic analysis was performed using MaxQDA 2018 software for qualitative research. The study complied with COREQ requirements. OUTCOME: Doctors' reflections on sexual history taking. RESULTS: Three themes identifying barriers to sexual history taking emerged, namely personal and health system limitations, presuppositions and assumptions, and socio-cultural barriers. The fourth theme that emerged was the patient-doctor relationship as a facilitator of sexual history taking. Doctors experienced personal limitations such as a lack of training and not thinking about taking a history for sexual dysfunction. Consultations were compromised by too many competing priorities and socio-cultural differences between doctors and patients. The doctors believed that the patients had to take the responsibility to initiate the discussion on sexual challenges. Competencies mentioned that could improve the patient-doctor relationship to promote sexual history taking, include rapport building and cultural sensitivity. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Doctors do not provide holistic patient care at primary health care settings if they do not screen for sexual dysfunction. STRENGTH AND LIMITATIONS: The strength in this study is that recall bias was limited as interviews took place in a real-world setting, which was the context of clinical care. As this is a qualitative study, results will apply to primary care in rural settings in South Africa. CONCLUSION: Doctors need a socio-cognitive paradigm shift in terms of knowledge and awareness of sexual dysfunction in patients with chronic illness. Pretorius D, Mlambo MG, Couper ID. "We Are Not Truly Friendly Faces": Primary Health Care Doctors' Reflections on Sexual History Taking in North West Province. Sex Med 2022;10:100565.

Artificial Intelligence Inheriting the Historical Crisis in Psychology: An Epistemological and Methodological Investigation of Challenges and Alternatives.

By following the arguments developed by Vygotsky and employing the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) in addition to dialectical logic, this paper attempts to investigate the interaction between psychology and artificial intelligence (AI) to confront the epistemological and methodological challenges encountered in AI research. The paper proposes that AI is facing an epistemological and methodological crisis inherited from psychology based on dualist ontology. The roots of this crisis lie in the duality between rationalism and objectivism or in the mind-body rupture that has governed the production of scientific thought and the proliferation of approaches. In addition, by highlighting the sociohistorical conditions of AI, this paper investigates the historical characteristics of the shift of the crisis from psychology to AI. Additionally, we examine the epistemological and methodological roots of the main challenges encountered in AI research by noting that empiricism is the dominant tendency in the field. Empiricism gives rise to methodological and practical challenges, including challenges related to the emergence of meaning, abstraction, generalization, the emergence of symbols, concept formation, functional reflection of reality, and the emergence of higher psychological functions. Furthermore, through discussing attempts to formalize dialectical logic, the paper, based on contradiction formation, proposes a qualitative epistemological, methodological, and formal alternative by using a preliminary algorithmic model that grasps the formation of meaning as an essential ability for the qualitative reflection of reality and the emergence of other mental functions.