Abstract
The present article presents an understanding of beliefs as conceptualizing activity from a Vygotskyan dialectical perspective. The proposals I develop here, emerging from a contextual understanding of development, aim to help us reconsider in pedagogical terms the specific relationships between beliefs and actions and the nature of beliefs as dialectical language-mediated consciousness. Understanding beliefs as dialectical conceptualizations calls for rethinking teaching and learning as a developmental activity. It also illuminates a specific research methodology, semiogenesis, which captures the orienting power of beliefs as conceptualizing activity in the classroom. To illustrate a conceptual approach to beliefs as sociocultural tools of the mind, three basic examples of a conceptual task for in-service teachers are discussed.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 359-369 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | System |
Volume | 39 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 1 2011 |
Keywords
- Beliefs
- Concepts
- Dialectics
- Second language learning
- Sociocultural theory
- Teaching
- Vygotsky
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Language and Linguistics
- Education
- Linguistics and Language