Constructing a Community of Thought

This book validates the prolific contribution of Dr. Vera John-Steiner to the social sciences and extends her scholarship, teaching, and mentoring to a new generation of thinkers. Compiled as a companion volume to her Selected Works, the text highlights this scholar’s gifts to psychology, education, linguistics, and the arts through a collection of letters composed by students, colleagues, and others.

Robert Lake, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading at Georgia Southern University where he teaches courses in multicultural education from local and global perspectives. His expertise in music and English as a Second Language informs his research into creativity, critical educational perspectives, and the imaginative curriculum. A frequent presenter at international conferences, he is the author of several books including (Peter Lang, 2011). M. Cathrene Connery, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Education at Ithaca College. A bilingual educator, researcher, and advocate, she has drawn on her visual arts education as a painter to inform her research and professional activities in language, literacy, and sociocultural studies. She has utilized Vygotskian theory to articulate ethnographic accounts in (Peter Lang, 2011) and as an editor and contributor to (Peter Lang, 2010).

Contents: M. Cathrene Connery: Building Bridges: The Contribution of Dr. Vera John-Steiner’s Work – Robert Lake/M. Cathrene Connery: Constructing a Community of Thought: Access through Epistolary Understanding – Peter Smagorinsky: The Bold and Courageous Path of Vera John-Steiner – Edward De Santis: Living Memory – Constance R. Sutton: My Life-Long Dialogue with Vera John-Steiner – Suki John: Veronka, My Czardas Dancing, Creative Thinking Mother – Reuben Hersh: My Favorite Collaborator – Anne Wiltshire: From Your House to My House – Bernard Spolsky: Above and Beyond Box Consciousness – Michael Cole: Memories of a Long Conversation – Csaba Pléh/Ottilia Boross: Networks in Life and in Science – Susan Ervin-Tripp: The Remarkable Power of Bisociation – Laura E. Berk: Young Children’s Sociodramatic Play: Wellspring of Collaboration and Learning – Artin Göncü: Discovering Self in Play – Steven G. McCafferty: Vera Was a Vygotskian before She Knew Who Vygotsky Was – Maryhelen Snyder: Vera: Tribute and Tributary – Linda Finlay: Revisiting an Interactive Approach to Advancing Literacy – Nan Elsasser: Working Classroom: An Intergenerational Arts Community – Henry Shonerd: Resonance – David Kellogg: Water and Wine: Painting as the Emergence of Word Meanings from Images – Teresa Meehan: Applying a Functional Systems Approach to the Study of Language Development – R. Keith Sawyer: Vera John-Steiner’s Influence on Creativity Research – David Henry Feldman: Who Knew? Being Part of a Thought Community on Creativity: An Essay in Honor of Vera John-Steiner – Patricia A. St. John: Dignified Interdependence – Kimberly Cotter-Lemus: Cognitive Pluralism and Creative Collaboration – Shirley Brice Heath: Reverberations – Sabra Sowell-Lovejoy: The Influence of Vera John-Steiner’s Work on Sabra Sowell-Lovejoy: Artist and Educator – Robert Lake: Bridges are Made for Movement – Seana Moran: Tapestry: Interwoven Minds, Emerging Meanings – Nancy J. Uscher: Vera John-Steiner on Creativity and Collaboration: A Scholar Ahead of Her Time – Eleni Bastéa: And Perhaps Our Research Leads Us Back to a World We Lost – Robin Oppenheimer: Creative Collaboration as Revolutionary and Transformative – Anna Stetsenko: Creativity in All of Us: A Dialogue with Vera John-Steiner – Andy Blunden: Collaboration Is at the Heart of the Human Condition – Patricia A. Richard-Amato: My Awakening – Le Ann Putney/Joan Wink: From Vygotsky to Vera to All of Us: The Mentoring Magnifies – Ronald Gallimore: A Researcher’s Grail: A Search for an Alternative to Conventional Teacher–Student Discourse – Laura Rychly: Dr. Vera John-Steiner as a Key: Unlocking a Theory of Receptive Discourse – Robert Danberg: The Constellation, Maker – Courtney Angermeier: You Will Meet Vera – Christopher C. Shank: Vera John-Steiner: Mentor and Collaborator – Susan K. Methany: Creativity and Collaboration: A Student’s Salvation? – Sara Otto-Diniz: Creative Collaboration in the Art Museum – Rod Parker-Rees: Collaborative Recreation – Judah Ronch: Coming into Being: Creative Collaboration as a Life-Long Gift – Carolyn Panofsky: The Schools Have Failed the Poor – Annalisa Aguilar: My Noble Quest – Kathryn (Kate) J. Miller: Grateful Recollections from Your Zone of Proximal Development – Holbrook Mahn: Vera and the Gift of Confidence – Mervi Hasu: Vera: My Inspiration for Discovering the ‘Invisibilities’ in the Activity-Theoretical Studies of Innovation – Linney Wix: Finding Myself in Vera and Finding Vera in Me – Sara Abercrombie: Creative Transformation