The child and culture: the dialectics and drama of development
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Abstract
Background. The discussion focuses on the interiorization fr om the perspective of the interaction between a child and culture. The relevance of addressing the problem of interiorization is determined by the need to overcome the simplified understanding of this process, both in educational practice and in developmental psychology. Assessing interiorization as a key concept in L.S. Vygotsky’s cultural-historical psychology as a dialectical process makes it possible to see the contradictions in the interaction between the child and culture.
Objective. The discursive component of the text concerns the drama of child development, in which culture poses risks to agency. The aim of the discussion is to identify the resources of the child-culture interaction that create conditions for the development of agency.
Results. The theoretical provisions of the cultural-historical concept regarding interiorization as a process underlying the interaction between a child and culture are considered. The limitations and risks caused by the simplification of the interiorization process as a transfer from the external (cultural) to the internal (mental) are revealed. The dialectics in the process of interiorization lies in the opposition of the positions of the object and the subject, which can potentially be formed in the interaction between the child and culture. The drama in this interaction arises in a situation wh ere culture is presented not as an imperative, but as an initiation, since in this case the child becomes a subject who exercises their freedom and choice.
Conclusions. During the discussion, interiorization is presented as a complex process of appropriating culture and generating meanings, in which the necessary condition for maintaining the child’s position as a subject is the expression of their will and the possibility of making a choice.
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