Dialogic Education and Technology: Expanding the Space of Learning

ion. The second coordinate will represent the object reference of the concept. (Vygotsky, 1986 p199) Many of those who quote Vygotsky as if he was a dialogic thinker compatible with Bakhtin are most influenced by the edited collection of translations of his work which appeared in 1978 under the title: Mind in Society. This collection is suspect as a representation of Vygotsky. The editors of this collection themselves point out in the preface that: In putting separate essays together we have taken significant liberties. The reader will encounter here not a literal translation of Vygotsky but rather our edited version from which we have omitted material that seemed redundant and to which we have added material that seemed to make his points clearer. (Cole et al, 1978, preface, p x) Jim Wertsch acknowledges the possibility of a monological reading of Vygotsky in one article where he refers to Vygotsky as ‘an enlightenment rationalist’ (Wertsch, 1996). However, Wertsch claims, there is ambivalence in Vygotsky’s texts and the implication of his theory of signs as psychological tools often led him beyond a simple one-way street view of development. One theme running through Vygotsky’s work is dialectical method and his use of dialectical thinking might also explain this apparent ambivalence. A key feature of dialectic in Hegel and Marx is that it attempts to integrate real dialogues and struggles into a logical story of development leading to unity either in the ‘Absolute Notion’ of Hegel or the rational society under global communism of Marx. It is possible that Vygotsky engaged more with Hegel than with Marx (Van der Veer and Valsiner, 1991)