Reimagining Japanese Education: Borders,Transfers, Circulations and the Comparative. Edited by D.B. Willis and J. Rappleye

ABSTRACT

Vygotsky considered vraschivaniya, or ‘ingrowing’, an indispensable stage in the ‘internalization’ of meaning and described three different ways this could happen. But were these different ways options or substages? By logico-semantic analysis of Vygotsky’s notebooks and published texts, and by recontextualizing them historically, I show that what started as three options became substages. By exemplifying some vraschivaniya with data from Korean school children, I show that what starts as dialogue shared only with the family through joint activity becomes, in the classroom, generalization that can be shared with a whole culture through narrative.