Résultat de la recherche
Fragmentation or differentiation: Questioning the crisis in psychology
There is a recurrent discourse about the fragmentation of psychology and its crises as a science, which often leads to a disenchanted view about its future. To this discourse we oppose a developmental one, in which crises can be occasions for development, and in which development might imply differentiation. We first review why psychology can be said to be in crisis. We then situate the crisis in the pragmatics of doing psychology. Crises occur when psychologists have problems either working with other psychologists or with communities. We argue that collaborative research is a way to overcome these crises. Specifically we suggest three specific scientific activities that can lead to the development of psychology: collaborative research methods, the identification of nodal concepts that enable the bringing together of different approaches and disciplines, and the creation and maintenance of institutional spaces that enable creative, collaborative work.
Editorial introduction
This special issue examines collaborative research from a methodological point of view. It considers the implications of the social processes of collaboration for the construction of scientific knowledge, in the interest, not of problematising the scientific process, but of drawing the process of collaboration into our methodological purview. Methodological scholarship has primarily been concerned with refining methodological techniques, such as questionnaires, interviews and experiments, without regard for the social conditions of knowledge construction—such as whether the research is individual or collaborative, the nature of the collaboration, or within which kind of social institution the research is carried out. We propose that the social practices through which research is conducted, the composition of the research team, the organisation of the team, and the social dynamics within the team should all be considered part of the methodology of scientific research.
Collaborative research, knowledge and emergence
We use the notion of emergence to consider the sorts of knowledge that can be produced in a collaborative research project. The notion invites us to see collaborative work as a developmental dynamic system in which various changes constantly occur. Among these we examine two sorts of knowledge that can be produced: scientific knowledge, and collaborative knowledge. We argue that collaborative knowledge can enable researchers to reflectively monitor their collaborative project, so as to encourage its most productive changes. On the basis of examples taken from this special issue, we highlight four modes of producing collaborative knowledge and discuss the possible uses of such knowledge.
Using Social Knowledge: A Case Study of a Diarist's Meaning Making During World War II
A cultural psychological reflection on collaborative research (Conference Essay)
This essay reports on discussions that took place at a workshop on collaborative research in European cultural psychology. The production of knowledge in social interaction is, for sociocultural psychologists, something that is observed and theorised as it is undertaken by research participants. Researchers less frequently reflect on the social relations through which their own scientific knowledge is produced. The workshop focused on five empirical collaborative research projects and aimed to explore the intellectual significance of the social relations of collaboration. In the course of the workshop, we developed a cultural psychological conceptualisation of collaboration as an institutionally situated interaction between divergent perspectives with a (partially) shared goal. This perspective leads us to consider the value of divergent perspectives in instigating reflexivity and novelty. We present here a framework of dimensions for describing different forms of scientific collaboration which may be useful for researchers planning future collaborations.
People in transitions in worlds in transition: Becoming a woman during WWII
The metaphor of the triangle in theories of human development
Developmental psychologists have a long history of using triangle metaphors to conceptualise the social constitution of psychological development. In this paper, we present a genealogy of triadic theories, to clarify their origins, distinctions between them, and to identify key themes for theoretical development. The analysis identifies three core triangle models in the developmental literature. Each theory relies on some combination of the terms subject, object, other and sign, and they can be distinguished by the core psychological dynamic which they entail. We distinguish an emotional triangle rooted in psycho-analysis, a mediational triangle rooted in the work of Vygotsky, and a sociocognitive triangle originating with Piaget. Despite their differences, the analysis reveals a common theme of the transformation from external mediation to internal mediation. Contemporary research and possible future directions are discussed in the light of the theoretical distinctions that our genealogy has revealed.
Conflicting community commitments: A dialogical analysis of a British woman's World War II diaries
Recent developments of the concept of “sense of community” have highlighted the multiplicity of people's senses of community. In this article, the authors introduce the theory of the dialogical self as a means of theorizing the conflicts that can arise between a person's commitments to multiple communities. They ask the question, “When faced with conflicting community commitments, how does a person decide where his or her allegiances lie?” The contribution of the theory of the dialogical self is illustrated through an idiographic analysis of diaries kept by one British woman living through World War II. Conflicting commitments to her home community and to the national community's war effort provoke troubling dilemmas and efforts to resolve them through internal dialogues. Contributions to theory, research, and practice are discussed.