An intentional class design model to engage first year students with threshold concepts using the academic discourse theories of Vygotsky and Laurillard

In the context of the first-year university classroom, this paper develops Vygotsky’s claim that ‘the relations between the higher mental functions were at one time real relations between people’. By taking the main horizontal and hierarchical levels of classroom discourse and dialogue (student-student, student-teacher, teacher-teacher) and marrying these with the possibilities opened up by Laurillard’s conversational framework, we argue that the learning challenge of a ‘troublesome’ threshold concept might be met by a carefully designed sequence of teaching events and experiences for first year students, and we provide a number of strategies that exploit each level of these ‘hierarchies of discourse’. We suggest that an analytical approach to classroom design that embodies these levels of discourse in sequenced dialogic methods could be used by teachers as a strategy to interrogate and adjust teaching-in-practice especially in the first year of university study.

Revista de Psicología, 2008, Vol. 4 N°8 (número completo)

Problemas Teórico-Científicos y Metodológicos de la Investigación Clínico-Psicoanalítica. Segunda Parte / Helmut Thomä ; Horst Kächele -- Los aportes de Lev S. Vygotsky a la investigación educativa / Wanda Rodríguez Arocho -- La noción de cambio en la ZDP / Ricardo Esteban Maquieira -- Bienestar, orientación temporal y estrategias de control en personas mayores: un estudio exploratorio / Juan Francisco Díaz Morales ; Mario Toboso Martín ; Celeste Dávila León ; Cristina Escribano Barreno ; Pedro Delgado Prieto -- Inserción laboral y condiciones psicológicas: un estudio en sectores urbanos de la Argentina / María Elena Brenlla ; Agustín Salvia ; María Belén Despierre -- El Child Behaviour Checklist: su estandarización en población urbana argentina / Virginia Corina Samaniego -- Resenciones bibliográficas

History of several mistakes: on differences between Lev Gumilev and Eurasians

This article challenges prevalent views about Gumilev’s relation to classic Eurasianism. On the basis of previously unavailable correspondence and interviews, it is argued that Lev Gumilev had substantial degree of affinity with the original Eurasian movement understood as a scholarly tradition. This was manifested both in his personal contacts with some of its key members, and in his scholarly work on the nomad history, which remained Eurasian in its spirit. However, the most significant departure from Eurasianism, under-appreciated by most scholars, was his theory of ethnogenesis, which attempted to establish a new naturalistic paradigm for study of history.