11 - Changing Situations and Motives

Summary

This chapter explores some of the personal motivational implications of the process of moving from one situation to another. In the cultural-historical phase of Vygotsky’s writing, he strove to understand the development of psychological functioning in relation to the situation in which that development was taking place. This view is the point of departure for a consideration of the transformations which take place when a person moves from one institutional situation to another. I will discuss the ways in which institutions re-contextualise societal motives and thus mediate an individual’s engagement with the social world. When viewed from this perspective, transitions between institutions may require engagement with new re-contextualisations of societal motives.

Alongside this emphasis on moving from one institutional setting to another, that may be thought of a movement in space, there is also the perspective of movement through time. On the one hand, institutions themselves change over time, and thus principles of re-contextualisation will also change over time. This may be viewed from a macro or micro perspective. At the macro level, changes over time, such as the change of headteacher of a school, will lead to changes in institutional form. At the micro level, as patterns of interaction within institutions change so will the ways in which societal motives come to inhabit the institution. As individuals change their forms of social relation over time so they also bring about changes in which the institution stands between society and the individual. This developmental perspective over time will be discussed alongside the implications of movement through. It is, of course recognised, that the forms of movement co-occur.