Reading :: Vygotsky and Literacy Research

Vygotsky and Literacy Research
By Peter Smagorinsky

Here, Peter Smagorinsky thinks through the question of literacy, applying Vygotsky's understanding of human development as culturally mediated. It's a solid book. But before we get into it, I do want to highlight a gripe, one that is not really about Smagorinsky per se.

Early on, Smagorinsky highlights the problems of interpreting Vygotsky when one does not speak Russian. Like me, Smagorinsky only speaks English, and he is very aware of the limitations. In fact, he ramps these up a bit, noting that Michael Cole, "who has spoken Russian for many decades, who lived in the Soviet Union during his internship with A.R. Luria, who..." -- and I'll spare you the lengthy list of qualifications -- that Michael Cole now insists on coauthoring papers with a native Russian speaker so he can better understand the "relevant context" of Vygotsky's words. 

To which I say: put down the hair shirt. I mean, Cole has now spoken Russian for longer than Vygotsky did. (Vygotsky died at 38.) Additionally, Cole certainly is more fluent in English than Vygotsky or Luria were, but this did not stop Vygotsky or Luria from reading, quoting, or criticizing scholars writing in English (and French, and German). Vygotsky never considered finding a native English writing partner to help him understand the writings of American behaviorists. Beyond that, Luria even taught himself  basic Uzbek before his Uzbek expedition — and he used Russian translators to conduct his studies there. 

Yes, I can certainly understand wanting to be careful about the cultural-historical context in archival studies. But I am also highly skeptical of gatekeeping tendencies in CHAT circles, tendencies that seem at odds with the scholarly standards of the Vygotsky Circle itself. After all, the Vygotsky Circle's texts are inevitably going to be taken up and transformed as they are applied to different sociocultural milieu -- or as Smagorinsky might put it, "reading is a constructive act done in conjunction with mediating texts and the social-cultural-historical context in which reading takes place" (p.127). 

Rant over, and back to the book. 

After the introduction, Smagorinsky provides a solid chapter (Chapter 2) discussing key Vygotskian terms and constructs. In Chapter 3, he discusses methodology and data from a Vygotskian perspective (and along the way, criticizes Luria's Uzbek expedition as culturally imperialist, p.70). Chapter 4 examines the culture of school and how it shapes literacy, while Chapter 5 discusses background for current literacy studies. 

Chapter 6 then examines reading as a culturally mediated and mediating practice. He reviews terms such as sign, text, intertext, and intercontext here, making the point that reading involves composing (p.127). He also defines text and culture. Chapter 7 reviews writing as tool and sign, Chapter 8 discusses nonverbal tool and sign systems, and Chapter 9 discusses thinking, speech, and verbal data. (Smagorinsky illustrates these later chapters with studies of high school classrooms.) The final chapter, Chapter 10, is a revision of Smagorinsky's superlative paper on the methods section as epicenter of social science research reports.

If you're interested in learning a lot about Vygotsky's terms and concepts from someone who has thought about them deeply, this is the book for you. Smagorinsky is a methodical thinker with an encyclopedic knowledge of Vygotskian thought, and this book is well worth reviewing for that fact alone.