Overall, this conversation seems to fit really nicely with the idea that abstraction isn’t a single state or skill (i.e. these people do or don’t/can or can’t abstract) but rather that the process of abstracting is one with many rungs. So, for example, looking at a picture of a log and seeing it as representing a wooden log is an abstraction. Grouping axes, hammers, and saws together as tools, or objects made of metal, and excluding a log from that group, is another abstraction. It seems important to think about which abstractions are culturally meaningful and valued, especially when the non-valued abstractions are also powerful in the world (e.g. the coordinate plane, algebra, etc.) and to think about abstractions and culturally determined rather than fixed, which Luria helps us see. Rejecting Luria’s results as racist or biased seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water. On the other hand it’s important to question whether the people in the studies were unable to engage in a certain sophisticated cognitive skill, or whether they didn’t value that skill, or didn’t value that particular application of that skill. (Another interesting source is the “What the Research Shows” section of this book: https://www.oralitystrategies.org/files/1/772/The%20Non-Literate%20Min.pdf)

Luria, A. R. (1976). Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations.

In part of it he interviews farmers in early 20th century Russia that have a pre-scientific mindset — essentially, they lack abstraction.

Q: What do a fish and a crow have in common?
A: A fish — it lives in water. A crow flies. If the fish just lies on top of the water, the crow could peck at it. A crow can eat a fish but a fish can’t eat a crow.
Q: Could you use one word for them both?
A: If you call them “animals,” that wouldn’t be right. A fish isn’t an animal and a crow isn’t either. A crow can eat a fish but a fish can’t eat a bird. A person can eat a fish but not a crow.

Looking forward to reading more of your works as you move forward.

Arnon
p.s.
I did read the entire piece.

She said I overstepped the literature with this line:

Without being conscious of and explicit about her own proficiency with abstraction, a teacher may undermine her students’ nascent powers of abstraction.

What I said might be true. It might not. Either way, that line doesn’t follow from the citation preceding it.

She didn’t have any of the problems some of you mentioned here re structure or a disjointed city-by-city tour of the literature. It’s never been clearly to me who actually read the piece, though, and who’s just echoing Amanda Jansen’s first comment. In any case, conflicting feedback has been a consistent feature of my graduate education.

I am still super impressed that you’re making your work public like this.

In general, I see a lit review as a product of a process of synthesis of the various sources and existing research through which you are learning (vs. just presenting) more about the topic you are reviewing. One of the challenging tasks when doing a lit review is to come up with relevant themes (to use Amanda’s word) that can shed more light on the topic beyond just summarizing what has been said by other people. If at the end of your review, you have not generated new insights, then it means you have missed the analysis portion of the review.

One way of looking at a lit review is to think of it as a research project in which the different studies from the past are your data and you are now trying to make sense of these data. This also means that you should have a question that guides your review (not as rigid as a “research question” but you can think about it as an “inquiry question”) and the sole purpose of the lit review then becomes to answer that question using whatever is out there. When such a question exists, it is also much easier to show the gaps in the literature and raise important issues that need to be examined.

I hope this is helpful,
Arnon