Humble pie doesn't taste great. That is what I am learning, not only today, but since I've started my PhD program. It's been a bit of a hard transition going from working in an academic position to being a student again.
I also sat through a webinar all about CIHR doctoral awards this morning, much of which I was already familiar with. However, I did learn about a few prizes and awards that may be options, and I also learned some handy tips for completing the application.
And I had my first doctoral level class tonight. For those of you familiar with university systems, that's a class that starts with a 6. I learned all about the life of Vygotsky and the mystery of his manuscript and later translations. We read a sample of 2 translations of the same passage tonight, and it was hard to believe that it was supposed to be from the same book. The mystery involves the Russian revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks, the death of Vygostky and his works later being banned, a communist regime until 1989...and so the story goes. Very interesting. And now no one really knows what Vygotsky really said, though countless scholars in many disciplines from education to psychology cite him as inspiration for a number of popular theories. And I also learned it's handy to have a Russian supervisor who can check Russian texts to compare translations.
2 comments:
Most people in my field are quite a fan of his theories of child development, myself included--but maybe what we think he said is totally not what he said at all. ...Yikes...
Yeah, it's just been in the past few years that some of the controversy is coming to light. I'll keep you posted as we dig into his works a bit more.
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