Socialcultural Theories of Development and Education Pt. 2

Chapter 6:

 Socialcultural Theories of Development and Education Pt.2

Elijah Coates

Fed 321 Human Growth and Development 

Problem-Based Learning

Problem based learning is another active and collaborative approach to instruction that requires appropriate scaffolding by a facilitator to maximize its effectiveness.

Problem-Based Learning cont.

In problem based learning, teachers present students with ill-structured real-world problems, problems without a single, clear-cut solution.The best types of problems suited to this approach include those requiring diagnosis, design, and decision making.

The Challenges of Scaffolding and Teaching as Apprenticeship 

As appealing as Vygotskian-inspired constructivist teaching is, implementing such teaching presents real challenges. For example teachers should be real scientist, mathematicians, and readers rather than just talking about science, math, and reading. And even for the master teachers, they still require the upmost motivation to teach using the Vygotskian model.

Knowing of Individual Students

To provide appropriate scaffolding, a teacher must know what the student already knows, what their misconceptions are, and what's in their current zone of proximal development. That is, the teacher must know what competencies are developing and which ones are beyond the students current level of functioning.

Communication Challenges in Generating Prompts

Providing hints to students about the academic problems they are experiencing requires great facility in generating hints and comments that provide enough assistance so that the student can make progress in solving academic problems without becoming overly directive. such prompts invite students to make the inferences a mature thinker would make, and they encourage students to construct understanding of the task.

Knowledge of the Curriculum

Teachers must know the curriculum well especially the portions troublesome to students. It is easy to underestimate how demanding this is to know the strategies to solve simple problems in subjects. You must also know the student's potential misconceptions and observable behavior.

Maintaining a Positive Tone

Good scaffolders are always positive and patient when they provide prompting and hinting. sometimes this takes a great deal of patience , especially since scaffolding teachers provide implicit messages to students who do not "have it".  and this makes it hard for some adults to be unambiguously positive with students.

Diverse Causes of Academic Difficulties

A child may have have academic difficulties for number of reasons. how scaffolded instruction should occur and how much of it is neccessary depend in part on the reason for underachievement. for some children the problem lie in the home environment.

John Ogbu's macroethogtsphic analysis

Autonomous Minorities

This group is made up of people from ethnic, and religious background i.e. Jews and Mormons. These are the minorities that although they experience some discrimination, their relationship with the dominant culture is not one of perceived inferiority.  Furthermore they are not economically subordinate to the majority culture and, on average, benefit from obtaining educational credentials at the same socioeconomic levels as the majority culture.

Immigrant Minorities

These are Voluntary minorities, who have decided to move their host society. They view the dominant culture as a barrier to overcome so they typically tolerate discrimination. They anticipate upward social and economic movement across generations and view education as the path to that mobility. 

Caste Minorities

Involuntary minorities, such as African Americans who are viewed as inferior to the dominant culture. These involuntary minorities see the dominant culture as oppressors, and often dislike and oppose the majority culture.