Vygotsky

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Vygotsky
Private speech self-talk that guides thinking
and action. Language is not only important in
our social interactions, but it helps us to
accomplish tasks. This is why most people talk
to themselves.
Social Interactions
Language
Cognitive Development
Cultural Context
Sociocultural theory of development emphasizes
the crucial influence that social interactions
and language, embedded within a cultural context,
have on cognitive development. Remember the
word sociocultural has two words in it
social and cultural. These are the important
influences on development that Vygotsky
identified.
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Co-construction of cognition

• Higher mental processes are co-constructed during
  shared activities between the child and another
  person.
• This means that a child and an older person
  (another child, a teacher, a parent) work
  together to solve a problem. During the process,
  they often talk and negotiate the solution.

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Co-construction of cognition
This child is learning to walk with the help of a
parent. The parent holds both hands so the child
doesnt have to focus on both balance and moving
her feet.
Soon, this child will be able to walk and run by
herself.
As you might imagine, it takes a lot of brain
power to walk. Children develop this skill with
the help of other people. This is what Vygotsky
is talking about with the idea of the
co-construction of cognition.
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Co-construction of cognition
What are you writing?
Im writing a letter
Fathers knowledge of letters Structure (date,
salutation, body, etc.) Purpose (friendly,
formal, etc.) Conventional spelling and grammar
Childs knowledge of letters Mom and dad write
and receive letters.
In a conversation like this, the child can draw
on the fathers experience to help her to
construct her letter. The father can ask
questions to make sure he is helping his daughter
reach the goals she has set for herself. She
may not be able to write the letter on her own,
but through talking with her dad, she will be
able to construct something satisfactory. At the
same time, she is learning so she will be more
able to write a letter by herself the next time.
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Cultural tools

• Higher order thinking is mediated through
  material tools and language

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Mediation
We speak language but are spoken by it.
This means that while we use language, the
language we use limits our thoughts. If a
language is not able to express a concept, we are
not able to think that concept.
Users of Roman numerals had no concept of zero
and were not able to think about or do
mathematics we use in everyday life
(multiplication and division of large
numbers). English, which includes aspects of
German, French, and Greek, is a rich language
that can express many conceptsyet Greek has more
ways of defining types of love than English.
Jacques Lacan (French psychoanalyst)
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Language and Cultural Diversity

• Every culture has the words it needs for its
  lifestyle.
• But many words cannot be translated into other
  cultures, because they do not have corresponding
  words for these functions.

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Language and cultural diversity
Western cultures organize color by the spectrum.
We have many different names for colors (think
avocado, puce, burnt sienna, and remember the 64
crayolas). But other cultures dont organize
colors in this way. They may think of two broad
categories (warm and cold colors) or they may
organize colors in relation to texture.
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Language and cultural diversity
People who make their living on ice need lots of
words to describe types of ice (various forms of
safe and unsafe ice). These concepts are foreign
to anyone who has lived in Florida all his or her
life. Floridians dont have the language
available to think about ice.
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Language and Private Speech
Lets see I need to click on this link and then
type in the name of the file I want
Private speech Childrens self-talk, which
guides their thinking and actions. Eventually,
these verbalizations are internalized as silent
inner speech.
You are not crazy if you talk to yourself.
According to Vygotsky, this is an important way
we learn.
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Vygotsky vs. Piaget on private speech

• Piaget called childrens talking to themselves
  egocentric speech. It is evidence of their
  immaturity (inability to see anothers
  perspective).
• Vygotsky sees private speech as a way of children
  learning to regulate themselves. They are
  controlled initially by parents speech (NO!!)
  and then they use that tactic to control
  themselves.
• Eventually, the speech becomes silent inner
  speech, mostly, although adults still talk to
  themselves when they are trying to solve a
  problem.

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Private speech in the classroom
S is like a sssssssnake.
I gotta go down, then up, then down. There. N.
Not only should you allow private speech in the
classroom, but you can also model the type of
private speech that is helpful for doing a task.
This is called a think aloud. As a teacher,
you demonstrate to students not only how to do
something but the things you say to yourself as
you are doing it.
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Zone of Proximal Development
A range of tasks that an individual cannot yet do
alone but can accomplish when assisted by a more
skilled partner.
Zone of Proximal Development What I can do with
the help of someone else. THE LEARNING SPACE
The Known What I can do by myself
The Unknown What I cannot do at all
WHEN YOU TEACHyou will want to use activities
that are in students ZPD. Activities in the
area of the known are too easy and those in the
area of the unknown are too hard.
How to remember the words A zone is an area.
Proximal describes something that is next to
something.
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The role of learning and development

• Piaget development is the active construction
  of knowledge and learning is the passive
  formation of associations.
• Vygotsky learning is an active process that
  does not have to wait for readiness. Learning
  is a tool in developmentit drives development.

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What???
Piaget
Development
Learning
Piaget development precedes learning.
Development is creating the schemes through
adaptation and accommodation while learning is
creating the associations within the schemes..
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What???, continued
Vygotsky
Social
Individual
Vygotsky believed that development begins at the
social level and moves towards individual
internalization. Egocentric speech is seen as a
transition between the child's learning language
in a social communicative context, and attempting
to internalize it as "private" or "inner speech"
(i.e., thoughts). For Vygotsky, learning precedes
development.
http//www.gse.buffalo.edu/fas/shuell/CEP564/Lectu
res/CogDev.htm
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What???, continued
They both agree development is driven by
cognitive conflictthe inability to do something
by oneself.
http//www.gse.buffalo.edu/fas/shuell/CEP564/Lectu
res/CogDev.htm
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Limitations of Vygotskys theory

• Maybe he went too far with the socio-cultural
  part of his theory
• Maybe people are hardwired for much of what we
  learn early onthat we are not always just
  learning from peers, teachers, or parents.
• Vygotsky never got to explore the details of his
  theory and much of the research of his students
  was repressed by the regime in Soviet Russia.

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Implications for teachers Piaget

• We need to understand and build on student
  thinking.
• Students need opportunities to construct their
  knowledgeto try things out for themselves.
• Play is childrens work (Montessori). Play
  helps children to develop their cognitive
  abilities.

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Implications for teachers Vygotsky

• Adults and peers are critical to the learning
  process through scaffolding (support for learning
  and problem solving. The support could be clues,
  reminders, encouragement, breaking the problem
  down into steps, proiding and example, or
  anything else that allows the student to grow in
  independence as a learner).
• Assisted learning providing strategic help in
  the initial stages of learning, gradually
  diminishing as students gain independence.
• Teaching in the Zonenot too hard, not too easy,
  but JUST RIGHT.

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Scaffolding
Assistance that allows students to complete tasks
they cannot complete independently.
Teacher
Activity Level For a Task
Child
Time
As a child develops skills and confidence, he or
she takes over the activity. The teacher does
less and less.
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Examples of scaffolds

• Modelingstudents watch teacher do a task
• Think-aloudsteacher models helpful thinking and
  strategies while accomplishing a task (e.g., what
  to think while trying to read an unfamiliar word)
• Adaptinguse simplified version of something
• Instructional materialsmanipulatives help
  students to learn math
• Prompts and cues i before e except after c or
  other ways of remembering information and
  processes.

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Examples of scaffolds

• Math manipulatives, graphing calculators
• Music simplified notation, ta and ti ti,
  teacher bows violin while student notes
  fingerboard
• Reading repetitive language books (child
  memorizes repeated phrase and can read it)
  these reading guides are scaffolds for
  understanding and applying difficult concepts in
  educational psychology
• Writing teacher helps student to form alphabet
  letters teacher provides forms for poems until
  students feel more confident about developing
  their own poetic forms
• Science lab book guides students as they learn
  to write up experiments in scientific form

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Funds of Knowledge

• There used to be an egocentrism about American
  schools if a student came from the dominant
  culture he or she was all right. But if a
  student came from a non-dominant culture, he or
  she had deficits that had to be made up. These
  might be deficits of knowledge (e.g., coming from
  a family that didnt read meant learning how to
  use a book on the first day of school) or
  deficits in language (speaking a non-standard
  dialect) or deficits in behavior that derives
  from cultural experiences.

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Funds of Knowledge

• People treat people with perceived deficits
  differently from the way they treat people they
  perceive of as normal. People with deficits
  are thought of as people with problems, people
  who need to change something fundamental about
  themselves, people who are somehow less than
  the normal people.

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Funds of knowledge

• Yet all children who come to school are blessed
  with funds of knowledgeknowledge that families
  and community members have in many areas of work,
  home, and religious life that can be a basis for
  teaching.

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For example

• Children from non-dominant cultures may have a
  language (a variant of English or a foreign
  language) with a rich history and poetry. For
  example, Appalachian English is not bad
  Englishits a form of Elizabethan English (the
  language of Shakespeare) that survived in the
  hills.

Heritage language the language spoken in a
students home or by older members of the family.
Students who Americanize or who strive to
become part of the dominant culture can lose
their heritage language and therefore their
family history and culture.
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Appalachian Dialect

• Features of Elizabethan English (the language
  used around Shakespeares time) I reckon for I
  think. Ary for any.
• Drop unaccented first syllables, add r to final
  syllables that end in o. Tobacco becomes
  backer, tomato becomes mater, potato
  becomes tater. This is why some of those
  phonics worksheets dont work for children from
  Appalachia (tomato begins with an m sound,
  not a t sound. If you want a t sound, try
  tater).
• Words ending in a are pronounced to end in y.
  Martha is pronounced Marthy.
• If a first syllable is typically unaccented but
  necessary, it becomes accented Ja- PAN becomes
  JA-pan, umBRELLa becomes UMbrella, hoTEL become
  HOtel, poLICE becomes POlice.
• I dont care to means Id like to, NOT Id
  rather not.

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Advantages to Appalachian dialect

• Rabbit in a log in Appalachian dialect
• Theres a rabbit in a log and I aint got no dog

• Rabbit in a log in school English
• Theres a rabbit in a log and I dont have any
  dog.

Artistically speaking, Appalachian dialect is
perfectly appropriate for important Appalachian
art forms such as songs and story telling as well
as for cultural events such as family
interactions. Students should celebrate their
dialectical backgrounds, learn how to translate
home dialect into school dialect, and learn how
to operate competently in both dialects. It is
helpful to bring in examples of home dialects and
to translate between dialects. It is also a good
idea to talk about when certain dialects are
appropriate.
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For example, continued

• Children from non-dominant families may know
  important survival skills. If their parents are
  in the construction business, they may know a lot
  about tools and construction. If they dont have
  a lot of money, they may know a lot about how to
  substitute one thing for another when something
  has broken down. If their parents arent able to
  read, they may know a lot about how to get
  necessary information without reading.

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Funds of Knowledge

• The point of this idea is to start with students
  strengths and to bring the rest of their lives
  into the classroom as a means of engaging them in
  classroom learning.
• This means talking with students and their
  families and learning about what their lives are
  like. It means looking for their strengths
  rather than seeing them as a collection of
  weaknesses.

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Vocabulary
Accommodation
Concrete operational stage
Adaptation
Conservation
Preoperational stage
Social development
Neo-Piagetian theories
Funds of knowledge
Private speech
Social experience
Neurons
Compensation
Adolescent egocentrism
Heritage language
Assimilation
Holophrases
Object permanence
Reversability
Sociocultural theory of development
Cultural tools
Organization
Scaffolding
Synapses
Decentering
Identity
Assisted learning
Centration
Development
Over-generalization
Schemes
Lateralization
Syntax

Classification
Maturation
Systematic reasoning
Personal development
Disequilibrium
Semiotic function
Egocentrism
Sensori-motor stage
Transformation
Physical development
Co-constructed process
Metalinguistic awareness
Equilibrium
Seriation
Under- generalization
Cognitive development
Myelination
Plasticity
Formal operational stage
Nativist theory
Shared understanding
Zone of proximal development
Collective monologue
Pragmatics