Author: loisholzman

19 Aug Reviews for Vygotsky at Work and Play

Posted at 20:08h in Activity Theory, Community Organizing, Culture, Education, Language, Learning Environments, Outside of School, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Reviews, Social Therapeutics, Vygotsky 0 Comments

August 19, 2009 Popular books, especially if they relate to current events, get reviewed as soon as they are published—and sometimes before. Not so academic books. Alas, it's typically a year before a review appears in print. So I was pleasantly surprised today to find an email in my inbox from...

11 Aug Don’t Let A Favorite Business Close

Posted at 19:04h in Community Organizing 5 Comments

August 11, 2009 Over lunch with my friend Melea Seward I told her that a favorite restaurant in my neighborhood had closed and said that if the owners had let people know there would almost certainly have been a community effort to keep it in business. We talked about the gap...

09 Aug Sonia Sotomayor and the All Stars

Posted at 15:21h in Education, Learning Environments, Outside of School, Youth Development 0 Comments

About 100 young people watched the swearing in of Sonia Sotomayor as Supreme Court judge at the All Stars Project's headquarters on 42 St. Sotomayor is a friend of the All Stars and has "mentored" young people in one of its programs, the Development School for Youth. Lots of press...

20 Jul Could Developmental After School Eliminate the Need for Remediation?

Posted at 23:18h in Activity Theory, Culture, Education, Learning Environments, Outside of School 0 Comments

In the extreme, schooling transforms not knowing into a deficit; creative imitation into individualized accomplishments, rote learning and testing; and completion into correction and competition. This is the current situation. This is what schools do and don’t do. I...

10 Jun Lovers of Learning in Taiwan

Posted at 01:35h in Culture, Education, Politics 5 Comments

Here's some photos from my trip to Taiwan last month as a guest of Lin-Ching Hsia, professor of psychology at Fu-Jen University in Taipei and a passionate and successful community organizer. (Lin was a Fulbright Scholar with the East Side Institute some years ago.) I visited and spoke with activists, scholars...

12 Apr The International Class 2009-2010—A Global Learning Community

Posted at 03:22h in Activity Theory, Culture, Education, Performance Movement, Postmodern Marxism, Psychology, Training/Classes 1 Comment

April 10, 2009 "It is not only a Vygotskian atmosphere where professionals share different backgrounds, but a zone where you may improve your human skills and to help others to perform a better world." --Ignacio Dalton, educational researcher, Buenos Aires Argentina "The class has been such a wonderful support system, helping...

09 Apr Thought is not expressed but completed in the word

Posted at 03:07h in Activity Theory, Language, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Social Therapeutics, Vygotsky 2 Comments

April 7, 2009 I've been making a series of presentations in recent months around New York City and I've thoroughly enjoyed speaking with diverse audiences of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and staffs at universities, conferences and human service organizations. The topics of my talks have varied—"Play is the Thing," "Learning in...

18 Mar Now There’s a Blog of Proximal Development

Posted at 22:54h in Activity Theory, Culture, Education, Vygotsky 1 Comment

March 18, 2009 Is anyone else aware of Konrad Glogowski's blog— which I found today as a news item in the daily ASCD SmartBrief that comes in my inbox everyday? I'm glad I found it — it's intelligent and conversational. There's an extensive and thoughtful piece on Teachers Without Borders work in...

15 Feb Vygotsky — The Biggest Loser?

Posted at 03:05h in Vygotsky 5 Comments

February 15, 2009 This might be a first — invoking the Zone of Proximal Development to sell a health club! I was doing a "Vygotsky" search on UTube and the first one to come up was an ad for getting fit, not on your own but with others - Shedfast on...

15 Feb New Vygotsky Documentary Features Cole, Kravtsova, Vygodskaya, Wertsch (and Holzman)

Posted at 01:22h in Activity Theory, Culture, Politics, Psychology, Vygotsky 5 Comments

February 15, 2009 I am happy to report that a new documentary film, Lev Vygotsky: One Man's Legacy through his Life and Theory, is being released this month. The filmmaker is Valerie Lowe who, in addition to making films, is an adult educator, corporate consultant and staff trainer in British Columbia — and...