chapter 6

• educaton

Sociocultural Theories of Development and Education 

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Approaches to Mind

The main theme of Vygotsky’s theory is that it is impossible to understand development without considering the culture in which development occurs, including the social institutions of a culture, such as its schools. Cultural tools such as language and technology, greatly influence the development of cognitive abilities.

Thoughts and Speech in Adults:

Vygotsky believed that inner speech plays and important role in adult thought.

Inner speech is an internal dialogue that is often abbreviated and fragmentary, with the meaning of complex thoughts captured in very few words.

The relationship between thought and inner speech. Inner speech is thought connected by words.

Thoughts and speech in Children:

In vygotsky’s theory much of the development of thinking is the development of inner speech.

This process goes through 4 stages

Fist stage - 2yrs thought is nonverbal and speech is nonconceptual and has no relations with thought and speech.

Second stage- thought and speech begin to merge with the development of language at age 2yrs.

Third stage- the role of speech in directing thoughts and behavior begins to emerge as children exhibit egocentric speech or private speech that voices what children are thinking or doing a s as a sign of maturation.

Fourth stage- the development of inner speech, the egocentric speech, that was overt becomes covert and abbreviated becoming inner speech.

Vygotsky's Perspective

In Vygotsky’s view, learning begins in the social world. Speech is originally external to children: they speak to address others, not to talk to themselves. Only after establishing speech for others can children initialize it. Thus, children can have monologues with themselves only after they have developed the ability to dialogue with others.

what is inner speech?

how many stages are there in the development of inner speech?

Development of Sophisticated Thought

Adults often assist children in thinking about problems they face. For example, they may help children solve a puzzle or help them figure out how many days there are until there next birthday. What goes on in these interactions is thinking, but thinking involving two heads. After years of participating in these interactions, children internalize they types of actions they once carried out with adults.

Most critically, however, the responsive social world provides assistance on tasks that are within hat Vygotsky called the zone of proximal development. Tasks in the zone of proximal development are those that children cannot accomplish independently but can accomplish with assistance.

The concept of scaffolding is based on the principles of Vygotsky’s theory. Builders use a scaffold to erect a building gradually removing it as the building becomes self supporting. Likewise, adults or older children are helping younger children with a task should gradually remove their prompts and hints

Vygotsky summarized that “ Any function in the child’s cultural development appears twice, or on two plane…. Social relations or relations among people genetically underlie all higher functions and their relationships”.

According to this perspective, cognitive development moves forward largely because the child is in a world that provides aid when the child needs it and can benefit from it.

Two year old's can do somethings for themselves. A responsive social world lets children do things independently. For example, a parent might allow a 2 year old to pick out a shirt especially when the child insists “ I do it”.

Zone of Proximal Development

Scaffolding

Apprenticeship

Educators who agree with Vygotsky believe that excellent instructions involves social interactions between an apprentice student and a more expert adult. 

Barbara Rogoff argued that apprenticeship occurs in many cultures and may be a universal part of human life. She believed it is the principal means for adults to pass on knowledge to children about the intellectual tools valuable in the culture.

During apprenticeship, the master provides bridges from what an apprentice knows to what an apprentice needs to know. The master translates the task into terms the apprentice can understand, and makes demands on the apprentice that the apprentice can meet. As the apprentice learns, the master gradually increases the demands. This is process is called guided participation.

Apprentice:

Observe 

Attend coaching

Practice tasks required

Master:

The master provides hints of 3 sorts

Questions or remarks- which implies that the previous move was incorrect.

Suggestions- often in the form of a question, about a potential direction the student might take with the ;problem.

Hints- often in the form of a question , about a part of a problem ha the student might want to think about.

Realizing that it would be very difficult to assign a tutor to every student who could benefit from it, researchers from the field of cognitive science and artificial intelligence developed intelligent tutoring systems. Intelligent tutoring systems are computer programs that models a learners cognitions in order to provide individualized feedback.

what are the 6 components of cognitive apprenticeship?

1. modeling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection, exploration
2. checking, assisting, meeting, duplication, exploration, evaporation
3. taxation, sanitation, reflection, coding, monitoring, oxidation
4. meeting, marketing, straggling, reflecting, shaping, molding

Research Validating Sociocultural Positions

despite the prominence of Vygotsky's ideas in education in recent decades, much of the instruction that goes into the classrooms is inconsistent with Vygotskian theory. Although consistent with Vygotsky's ideas, adults regularly provide instruction to children that is supporting, providing scaffolding for children in naturalistic settings.

Gelman, Massey, and McManus recognized some limits to adult scaffolding as they studied the types of instruction that parents provide to their children during museum visits.

in summary. while many demonstrations of adult and child apprenticeships exist, parent- child and teacher- child scaffolding are anything but universal.

reciprocal teaching

reciprocal teaching is a form of instruction that is often showcased as illustrating Vygotskian principles.

reciprocal teaching comprehension strategies

summarizing

questioning

clarifying

predicting

during reciprocal teaching, the students experience multiple models of cognitive processing: the teacher models and explains. peers in the groups are constantly modeling reasoning about the text as a part of group participation.

Research evidence supports the benefits of reciprocal teaching. Rosenshine and Meister conducted a meta-analysis of 16 studies comparing reciprocal teaching to other forms of teaching. in general, the effects of reciprocal teaching were greater when explicit teaching occured before participation.

Name the 4 types of reciprocal comprehension strategies?

1. clarifying, demanding juggling, symmetry
2. justifying, predicting, questioning, internalizing
3. summarizing, internationalizing, quantifying, memorizing
4. predicting, questioning, summarizing, clarifying

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.

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.

problem based learning has best been extensively studied within the professional field of nursing education, medical education, and teacher preparation. Typically, this allows students to work in groups to share knowledge, search for information, construct arguments, and negotiate understanding to reach a solution.

challenges of scaffolding and teaching as an apprentice 

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.

knowing the curriculum

in order to provide effective scaffolding, teachers must know the curriculum well, particularly portions of the curriculum that are difficult for the students.

knowledge 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.

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

a variety of biological/neurological deficiencies also can cause learning problems. Some children experience difficulties because of deficits in their cognitive abilities

finally, as helpful as scaffolding may be with  some students, it may not work with all children. in some cases the Zone of proximal development is so narrow that a great amount of tutoring may be necessary for minimal progress.

name the two types of deficiencies that cause deficits in cognitive abilities?

Cultural differences and their implications for classroom practice

Education anthropologists are particularly interested in the implications of cultural differences in education. 

John Ogbu's macroethnographic analysis

john Ogbu set out to understand differences in academic achievement and career trajectories of ethnic and cultural groups of the united states.

in doing this John ogbu proposed a destinction between what he called autonomous minorities, immigrant minorities, and caste-like minorities. 

John Ogbu's macroethogtsphic analysis

Ogbu believed that schools make decisions that result in differential education of caste-like minority children compared to other children, differences in education that undermine their intellectual development.  many student a who are members of the caste- like minorities, including blacks, do succeed in school. the national educational longitudinal study revealed that blacks are more likely to continue their education from 10th grade to post secondary than their hite counterparts.

perhaps the most controversial aspects of ogbu's theoretical perspective , however , is how his contention that blacks themselves also contribute to their lack of success in school. during his survey of Shaker heights high school, ogbu found out that peer groups were racially divided with white students being productive toward academic achievement than black students.

recent research demonstrating that strong ethnic identity related to positive outcome has led theorist to reevaluate ogbu's ideas and, in particular, his description of african american students rejecting academic activities out of resistance to " acting white"

using qualitive methods Clark studied economic disadvantages of high school which were seperated into successful and unsuccessful students.

name the three types of minorities mentioned by John Ogbu?

parents of successful students

high expectations

explicit achievement oriented goals

clearer role boundaries

engaged in teaching children 

using qualitative methods researchers found elements that produce success 

human commitment

capital

policies

ambiance

what are the marked differences in the homes of successful students

1. high expectations, explicit achievement- oriented rules, cognition, clearer role boundaries
2. scaffolding, explicit achievement- oriented rules, cognition, clearer role boundaries
3. high expectations, explicit achievement- oriented rules, clearer role boundaries, engaged in teaching
4. high expectations, explicit achievement- oriented rules, cognition, engaged in teaching

give an example of each of the 4 types of qualitative research methods

micro ethnographic research

in a well known qualitive study of children's lives at home and school, snow, barns, and hemphill followed 3 children from low income homes for 2 years. their research found that home and school infuluences that were intertwined in the childs success in school.

an important question foe micro-ethnographers has been whether minorities receive lower quality instruction because of cultural differences in the communication styles of minority students and their teachers, who often come from majority populations.

cross cultural differences and the teaching of minority students

the anthropological research described in this chapter sensitized educators to the communication and values differences between some minorities and the majority population. this research has led to intense refection about language and communication factors that impact performance on standardized tests, potentially creating bias against minority students.

after conducting analysis, researchers were trying to figure out why african american students dont perform well on standardized test. the conclusion ended in an argument that tests will confirm a negative steriotype that african americs are intellectually inferior to white students. this phenomonon is known as stereotype threat. 

multiple explanations have been offered for why stereotype threat disrupts performance. knowledge of a negative stereotype has led to efferts to negative thoughts and emotions induced by the negative steriotype 

cross cultural insight about the effects of schooling on cognitive development

in an investigation about how the impact of schooling affects children's development. it was concluded that schooling increases general intelligence. this means that a child's IQ could increase because of competencies tapped by IQ tests or or because of generalized improvement on items on IQ tests.