Concept
Cycles are structures that encompass different dimensions of student development, which are interrelated in complex ways. The main dimensions involved are cognitive, affective, social, practical, and communicative (Germen: Wallon and Merani).
Source: Own elaboration
In education, a cycle corresponds to a period in which a process of internalization of ideas, values, or practices that initially existed only at the social level is achieved. Hence, the concept of a cycle in education differs from the stage used in psychology in two main ways. On the one hand, because of its multidimensional nature; and on the other, because it corresponds to a process of interaction between the individual and the environment, in which the individual internalizes factors that initially existed at the social level.
Each of the cycles corresponds, therefore, to a specific level of development in students. And when we speak of development, we are referring to various dimensions of the human being; among them, we highlight as essential the cognitive, value-based, practical, language, and social dimensions, and not only chronological age as the various educational models prevailing in school practices until the 20th century did. Nor does the concept of development correspond exclusively to the intellectual dimension, as Piaget characterized it.
When speaking of five dimensions, we would necessarily have to consider the complex interrelationships, tensions, and articulations that they collectively allow for. Development—as Wallon amply demonstrated and as explained in the previous chapter—must be understood in a multidimensional, comprehensive, dialectical, and integral manner. The cycle thus allows the teaching team to measure and evaluate the level achieved in each of the aforementioned dimensions. The key words to describe this characteristic are integration and interdependence.
The existence of various dimensions in human development does not mean that each one develops in isolation and independently. Thought, values, praxis, social interactions, and the communicative dimension constantly interact with each other, as has been widely reflected upon and researched by the Cultural-Historical School (Wallon, 1948a, ed. Palacios, 1987; Vygotsky, 1934, 2000 edition; Luria, 1978, 1995 and 1993 editions; Merani, 1965, 1979, and 1960, 1980 edition) and by some contemporary authors (Goleman, 1980 and 1999; Shapiro, 2001).
The various dimensions and their interaction shape the developmental age of a child or young person. One dimension is not subordinate to another but rather establishes relationships with the others, generating relative interdependencies between them. These interdependencies refer us to the concept developed by Morin, among others: complex thinking (Morin, 1984, 1995, and 2000). Complexity is understood as something that is woven together, even if its components are heterogeneous. Complex thinking seeks to describe as a whole that which, while woven, has been disintegrated by dogmatic or overly simplistic thinking. The difficulty of complex thinking is that it must confront the interwoven, but in doing so, it must be aware that this is only partially possible. Paradoxically, it attempts to present as integrated that which has been separated to facilitate its understanding, or due to the limitations inherent in a way of thinking that tends to fragment and simplify, an aspect that has been sadly common in Western culture until now.
From one cycle to another, there are qualitative differences in the elements, relationships, and structures that comprise each of the dimensions and in the ways in which they are articulated, generating an overall structure (Germen: Piaget, Ericson, and Wallon).
One of Piaget's great discoveries concerns his identification that an individual's intellectual development is not continuous and linear, but rather undergoes qualitative changes throughout its process. Piaget considered this to be inherent to the individual's intellectual development, and that one should not speak of stages at the level of perception or personality development (1963: 40). And he was surely mistaken in this, since he only considered the possibility of overall structures at the intellectual level, but invalidated them in other areas.
When we speak of a unified sequence of stages—as heterostructuring models have done—it mistakenly assumes that development occurs slowly, continuously, successively, and linearly, an aspect that was already analyzed with some care in the first chapter, especially when we evaluated the theses of Piaget, Davidov, and Wallon. This view, for the time being, must be abandoned, as it is essential to recognize discontinuities in a person's linguistic, cognitive, affective, physical, or social development. Discontinuities that, as Wallon (1984) demonstrated, involve abrupt leaps, setbacks, and tensions. Discontinuities that allow us to verify the persistence of activities and operations already surpassed or preludes to others that will not appear until later. Discontinuities that allow us to properly configure cycles in education.
The differences between one cycle and the next have a biosocial root, as demonstrated by the Historical-Cultural School, especially Alberto Merani (1965 and 1979). In some cases, biological factors promote these changes, and in others, social and cultural factors significantly modify this origin; they even generate significant differences between the development of one group of children and that of others.
On a physical level, it is clear that puberty generates an accelerated transformation of the body from boy to man and from girl to woman. Hips widen, and breasts, hair, and menstruation appear in women; while in young men, goiter, voice changes, and the first erections and ejaculations occur at this age. This hormonal explosion generates an adult body, albeit one with childlike responsibilities. Thus, a marked physical-social dyssynchrony develops, which will tend to be overcome as physical maturation triggers psychological and social processes in puberty; and as social processes at school and in the family become more in tune with the physical changes and begin to demonstrate a less dependent and vertical relationship with the young man. Even so, the arrival of adolescence will be essentially affected by social factors. This is how young workers and peasants generally transition directly from childhood to adulthood, practically skipping adolescence. As puberty progresses, rural children and marginalized urban youth enter the labor market, begin living with partners, and begin having children very early. National studies show that one in four women before the age of eighteen has been pregnant, and that most of them are from rural or marginalized urban backgrounds (National Survey of Demography and Health; El Tiempo, February 24, 2009).
The crises of adolescence practically disappear for young workers in rural areas and marginalized urban neighborhoods, as poverty excludes them from school early and forces them into the labor market at ages when their development would still have time to consolidate. Their development is truncated. Their adolescence is aborted. Hunger, family needs, and cultural living conditions socially punish them. They become "culturally deprived," as Feuerstein (1994) wisely called them, or "pedagogically retarded," as Merani (1958) called them; but paradoxically, they become young people who simultaneously assume the responsibilities of the adult world in terms of work, home, and children. There is no time for the crises of authority, identity, and sexuality that Carvajal (1993: 47 ff.) spoke of. Most young people in favelas and slums in Latin America are forced into adulthood, contrary to their own development. Society and its dominant economic system, in an act of incalculable injustice, exclude them from university, technological training, and the final years of high school; and send them into the labor market to assume adult responsibilities, even without completing their training.
Something similar can be said regarding the culmination of the sensorimotor period, which is recognized by multiple authors, including Piaget, Vygotsky, Wallon, Luria, and Merani. The development of thought, the symbolic function, and language will create the most important cognitive revolution in human history, precisely the one that will most distance us from other higher mammals. As extensively studied by Piaget (1974 and 1980), the revolution of the symbolic function will forever transform human life by making us independent of action and the limitations imposed by space. Thought frees us from the immediate in time and space. However, contrary to what one might think at first glance, and what countless authors have affirmed, this is not an exclusively natural or individual process, nor is it generated solely by maturation processes. As Merani (1958) demonstrated, we only think because we coexist with other social beings who do so; We only love because we are formed by individuals who love us, and we only speak for the same reason. “The living being is never isolated,” he will say in his text, to vindicate the role of language and thought in the humanization of the human being (Merani, 1979: 53). For his part, Wallon will conclude that separating man from society, as is often done, is “depriving him of the cerebral cortex,” since language requires social interaction as much as aerial species depend on the existence of the atmosphere (Wallon, ed. Palacios, 1987).
As can be seen, we are born and become human thanks to life in community. We are biologically and socially formed beings. Hence, this complex and diverse human nature is also reflected in the characterization of each of the cycles and in the explanation of the factors that influence their development.
At the cognitive level, we go through different cycles depending on the level of generality, complexity, interaction, and integration achieved between the different elements of the system: we use schemas, concepts, and conceptual networks to represent reality; but we also bring into play various intellectual operations and different thought processes in each of them. At the cognitive level, the different cycles arise from qualitative differences in both the tools and the intellectual operations predominantly used in each of them. This implies that the tools of knowledge and the intellectual operations we use in each cycle change.
At the evaluative level, the differences between one cycle and another arise between the values in tension and their scopes. Thus, the same values are not always in conflict, nor are we always covering the same scope. The first cycle revolves around knowledge and interaction with oneself; the second, around knowledge and interaction with others;
The environment appears in the third, and transcendence itself in the fourth. This implies that we move from an essentially personal process in the Exploratory cycle to an interpersonal one in the Conceptual cycle, a social one in the Contextual cycle, and a transcendent or self-species process in the Projective cycle. As can be seen, the evaluative tensions and the areas in which they develop are different in each of the cycles.
The differences at the linguistic level occur in the level of depth and articulation achieved in the discourses produced and in the capacities for their comprehension. The first cycle allows for textual reading and writing; the second should lead to inferential reading, while contextual reading and writing of discourses should be achieved in the third; and critical reading and writing in the fourth and final cycle of basic and secondary education. Words are developed, reconstructed, and reworked, like instruments of knowledge, like intellectual operations, and like evaluative structures.
The above reflections allow us to talk about four cycles in school: Exploratory, Conceptual, Contextual and Projective (Germen: Piaget and Wallon).