Session focus
This session begins with V. V. Davydov’s account of empirical and theoretical thinking, substantive abstraction, the “cell” and the ascent from the abstract to the concrete. The aim is to establish the classical problem: why subject-matter analysis matters for developmental instruction, and why the organisation of content shapes what learners become able to do.
Seth Chaiklin will then open a related but not identical problem through his work on cultural-historical categories and subject-matter analysis. His analysis of electromagnetism asks how a domain of knowledge can be reconstructed through historically developed human interests, practices and disciplinary concepts.
The central issue is whether subject matter can move toward the concrete without beginning from a single classical germ-cell relation. The session therefore reads Davydov as the classical reference point and Chaiklin’s work as a possible alternative or further development of cultural-historical subject-matter analysis.
Dr. Seth Chaiklin
Seth Chaiklin works in the cultural-historical tradition, with a particular interest in subject-matter analysis, developmental instruction, practice-developing research and theoretical thinking. His work explores how educational content can be analysed so that learners can think with concepts rather than merely acquire ready-made knowledge. His current work on electromagnetism develops cultural-historical categories for understanding how a domain of knowledge becomes meaningful through human practices and disciplinary concepts.
How can subject matter be analysed so that learners can think theoretically with it, rather than merely acquire knowledge about it?
Programme
- Short framing introduction to Davydov and subject-matter analysis
- Focused discussion of selected passages from Chapter 4
- Short break
- 15-minute intervention by Dr. Seth Chaiklin on cultural-historical categories and his analysis of electromagnetism
- 30 minutes of questions and discussion
- Language: English