Title: Ideas to reality, notions to becoming and being : how ideas and notions of adolescence, adolescents and adolescent thinking become empirically demonstrable realities /
Authors: Milner, James Victor.; Harvard University.
Year: 2011
Subjects: Teenagers Education United States.; Adolescence; Developmental psychology.; Applied philosophy.
Abstract: The thesis is ultimately concerned with the teaching and learning of United States adolescents in institutional teaching and learning situations. It is immediately concerned with developing and grounding relevant education theory applicable to such situations. The dissertation brings mid-twentieth century continental French philosophy into conversation with the constituting foundations of contemporary developmental psychological 'ideas' of adolescence, the adolescent and adolescent thinking. It develops theory suggesting one possible explication of how historically presented United States ideas of adolescence, the adolescent and adolescent thinking may become objects of developmental research and related educational practice. The thesis draws heavily from the work of the philosopher Jacques Derrida, the philosopher and historian of ideas Michel Foucault and the psychoanalyst and social thinker Jacques Lacan. It also draws thematic focus from the work of post-colonial cultural theorists Edward Said and Homi Bhabbhi. The analytical lenses provided by this philosophical trio, and thematically piqued by the cultural theorist pair is turns upon the linked work of the genetic epistemologist Jean Piaget and the socio-historical and socio-cultural developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky. The effort is framed by work of the ecological developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner.