The Dynamic Aspects in Children’s Learning and Development

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139049474.003

1 - The Dynamic Aspects in Children’s Learning and Development

from Part One - Motives, Emotions and Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2011

Edited by

Anne Edwards and

Mariane Hedegaard: Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
Anne Edwards: Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Marilyn Fleer: Affiliation:
Monash University, Victoria

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Summary

Over the years I have pondered about the relation between Jerome Bruner’s study of infants’ intentional orientation to the world and Marx Wartofsky’s philosophical conceptions of human’s dynamic relation to objects, and how to relate this to A. N. Leontiev’s activity theory. Bruner (1972) and his co-workers studied experimentally how infants from one month to seven months of age transform intention-oriented movements into the intentional act of reaching for objects. From this research Bruner proposed that what characterizes humans is that we are born with ‘pre-adaptive structures that make a possible comparison of what is intended in an activity and what is accomplished’ (Bruner 1972, p. 34). Wartofsky in his theory questioned the notion that human perception is ‘natural’ and argued that human perception is an activity that is mediated by artifacts such as tools and language. These mediating artifacts, Wartofsky argued, have to be seen as objectifications of human needs and intentions ‘already invested with cognitive and affective content’ (Wartofsky, 1979, pp. 205–206).

What is special in Bruner’s and Wartofsky’s conceptions of the dynamic between persons and the world is that they do not conceptualize the dynamic of children’s relation to the world starting with the child’s primary needs. Rather, it is a characteristic in humans’ general relation to the world, that can be seen as demands from the world onto the person. The aim in this chapter is to integrate this conception of how demands of being in the world can be related to the cultural-historical approach of children’s development and Leontiev’s theory of motives.

Type: Chapter
Information: Motives in Children's Development
Cultural-Historical Approaches
, pp. 9 - 27

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139049474.003 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

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1 - The Dynamic Aspects in Children’s Learning and Development

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