Abstract
How we think about phenomena of interest is a function of the cultural and historical position of the field in which the phenomenon of interest appears—in science education phenomena of interest include learning concepts, teaching concepts, teacher and student identities, and motivation. Take the following excerpt from an interview between a graduate student of science education, interested in conceptions and discourses about natural phenomena, and another student at her university. The two have come together, as part of a largely tacit social contract, to produce an interview that has as its content the way in which the interviewee (Mary) thinks about diurnal and seasonal changes. The interviewer utters what Mary clearly hears as a question, but the specific nature, as indicated in her own turn, is not clear to her (turn 02). The question concerns the specific position of the sun in the sky at the moment of the interview. Mary offers a possible hearing of the question, which we might gloss as, “So you are asking me ‘Why is the sun in the sky?’”; the interviewer affirms this hearing (turn 03). After a brief pause, Mary offers an answer, where the position in the sky is explained by the facts that it is daytime and that the sun is moving.
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Vološinov (1976) references an article by Vygotsky. But I am not aware of any other points of contact between the Bakhtin group and the psychologist. But there are several texts in which Vygotsky articulates his Marxist position; and it is in this that he has a lot in common with Vološinov, who apparently introduced Marxist thinking and theory into the Bakhtin group.
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In dialectical theories, moments are identifiable structures within some phenomenon that cannot exist on their own (Roth and Lee 2007). They are a function of other moments and of the whole. Moments therefore are different from elements, which are parts that can be used as they are to build the whole. Moments do not exist apart from the whole.
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Roth, WM. (2010). ReUniting Sociological and Psychological Perspectives in/for Science Education An Introduction. In: Roth, WM. (eds) Re/Structuring Science Education. Cultural Studies of Science Education, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3996-5_1
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