Bücher von Peter Smagorinsky

L. S. Vygotsky and English in Education and the Language Arts focuses on the hugely significant contributions of L. S. Vygotsky to research, theory, and practice in English and the Language Arts, exploring the relevance of Vygotsky's works for today's teachers and researchers. Drawing on his 30 years of study, Smagorinsky interprets Vygotsky in relation to literacy education, teacher education, special education, and how life outside school has an impact on how people function within them. This insightful and accessible text firstly explores Vygotsky's early life to situate him historically and culturally and goes on to trace his understanding of human psychology as it relates to the social contexts of schools and pupils' lives at home. Vygotsky's pedagogical ideas are then discussed in depth, with specific attention on the role of emotions, the zone of proximal development, expanding textuality beyond writing, and his belief in the primacy of socialization. This book illuminates new areas of understanding, and challenges common perceptions available through limited and selective readings, establishing Vygotsky as a complex developmental psychologist rather than a classroom practitioner.With points for discussion and reflection provided throughout, this text will be invaluable for student teachers, teachers, and academics in the field of English and the Language Arts.

This volume interrogates, considers, and expands on Vygotsky¿s notion of concept development. It reviews Vygotsky¿s account of concept development, and then shifts his discussion from biological examples to more contested social examples. Smagorinsky then examines concepts as cultural constructions, with attention to the cultural nature of concepts, and concepts and societal telos. The author then outlines processes that complement and enrich concept development, including concept development¿s future orientation, the affective dimension of concept development, and creativity¿s role in concept development as a higher mental function. Smagorinsky next takes Vygotsky¿s notion of concept development¿s ¿twisting path¿ and complicates it by questioning the extent to which social concepts have a clear meaning toward which any pathway may lead given their relativistic and ideological nature. This inquiry leads to the proposal of practical concepts that serve as fragmented understandings that generally cohere yet are inherently compromised by attention to contradictory means of mediation in social-cultural-historical contexts.

Peter Smagorinsky and Joel Taxel analyze the ways in which the perennial issue of character education has been articulated in the United States, both historically and in the current character education movement that began in earnest in the 1990s. The goal is to uncover the ideological nature of different conceptions of character education.