Bodrova, Elena
Tools of the mind : the Vygotskian approach to early childhood education / Elena Bodrova, Deborah J. Leong. -- 1st ed.
1. early childhood education--philosophy.
2. child development.
3. constructivism (education).
4. learning, psychology of.
5. play.
6. early childhood education--activity programs.
7. vygotskii, L. S. (Lev Semenovich), 1896-1934.
1996
(Bodrova, Elena, Tools of the mind : the Vygotskian approach to early childhood education / Elena Bodrova, Deborah J. Leong. -- 1st ed., 1. early childhood education--philosophy., 2. child development., 3. constructivism (education)., 4. learning, psychology of., 5. play., 6. early childhood education--activity programs., 7. vygotskii, L. S. (Lev Semenovich), 1896-1934., 1996, )
Elena Bodrova, Deborah J. Leong, Tools of the mind, 1996 [ ]
Photo credits: All photos by Ginni Kinder
this book is lovingly dedicated to our families:
Dmitri and Andrei Semenov
Robert and Jeremy Leitz
p.v
Mental tools are ideas that we learn from others, modify, and then pass on.
p.vi
One of the most exciting things we have found in our work with teachers is that the Vygostskian approach works in all of the classrooms we have described. Many of the concerns addressed in this book go beyond socioeconomic class or classroom philosophy. Vygotsky helps us examine our roles as the adults in the classrooms in a different way, providing many more alternatives for action. He helps us see ourselves as partners with children in the great journey to learn, rather than as task masters or followers. Our work with teachers and children in these various classrooms has been a liberating, exhilarating, and exciting endeavor, reminding many of us of why we became teachers in the first place!
p.3
These mental tools help us to attend, remember, and think better. For example, mental tools, such as memory strategies, enable us to double and triple the amount of information we recall. Mental tools, however, do more than extend our natural abilities. Vygotsky believed they actually change the very way we attend, remember, and think.
p.3
As children grow and develop, they become active tool users and tool makers; they become crafters. Eventually, they will be able to use mental tools appropriately and invent new tools when necessary (Paris & Winograd, 1990).
p.4
Young children are able to think, attend, and remember. The problem is that their thinking, attention, and memory are very reactive; the object or activity must hold their attention. Think about how children learn so many things by watching television, especially commercials. Very simply, television exploits reactive thinking, memory and attention. Television is loud, has lots of movement, changes scenes every few seconds, and is colorful. This format is used to teach basic skills in programs like Sesame Street, but many teachers complain that the fast-paced sensory bombardment tends to make it difficult to teach some children in other ways. In fact, many early childhood teachers complain that they have to “sing, dance, or act like Big Bird” in order to teach. Without the acquisition of mental tools, this attention grabbing approach would be the only way for children to acquire information, because children could not direct and focus their attention, memory, and problem-solving skills on their own.
p.7
Vasili Davydov (1991)
Vatali Rubtsov (1991)
p.8
The basic principles underlying the Vygotskian framework can be summarized as follows:
1. Children construct knowledge.
2. Development cannot be separated from its social context.
3. Learning can lead development.
4. Language plays a central role in mental development.
pp.8-9
For Vygotsky, cognitive construction is always socially mediated [italic]; it is influenced by present and past social interactions. The things a teacher points out to her student will influence what that student “constructs”. If one teacher points out that the blocks are distinct sizes, that student will construct a different concept than the student whose teacher points out the blocks' color. The teacher's ideas mediate or influence what and how the child will learn.
p.9
<skip first sentence> Trudy must touch, physically compare, arrange and re-arrange the blocks before she acquires the concept of “big and little” and incorporates it into her own cognitive repertoire. Without manipulation and hand-on experience, Trudy will not construct her own understanding. If she has only her teacher's ideas and words, chances are that Trudy will not be able to apply the concept to slightly different materials or use it when the teacher is not present. On the other hand, without her teacher the child's learning is not the same. Through social interaction Trudy learns which characteristics are most important, what to notice and act upon. The teacher has a direct influence on Trudy's learning through shared activity.
p.10
Russian researchers found that children raised in orphanages did not have the same level of planning and self-regulatory skills as children raised in families (Sloutsky, 1991). American researchers found that schools, one of many social structures outside of the family, directly impact the cognitive processes presumed to underpin IQ (Ceci, 1991).
p.10
Asian children who used an abacus had different concepts of number than children who did not (D'Ailly, 1992).
p.10
Luria (1979) found that illiterate adults from a herding community in central Asia used situationally based categories, and thus placed hammer, saw, log, and hatchet in the same category because they are all needed for work. Adults with varying amounts of school experience grouped the objects into two categories, tools (hammer, saw, and hatchet) and objects to be worked on (log).
p.10
The idea that culture influences cognition is crucial because the child's entire social world shapes not just what he knows but how he thinks. The kind of logic we use and the methods we use to solve problems are influenced by our cultural experience. Unlike many Western theorists, Vygotsky did not believe that there are many logical processes that are universal or culture-free. A child does not just become a thinker and a problem solver; she becomes a special kind of thinker, rememberer, listener, and communicator, which is a reflection of the social context.
p.10
Social context is a historical concept. For Vygotsky, the human mind is the product of both human history or phylogeny, and a person's individual history, or ontogeny. The modern human mind has evolved with the history of the human species. Each individual's mind is also a product of unique personal experiences.
pp.10-11
Thus the cultural history of our ancestors influences not just our knowledge but our very thought processes.
p.12
..., he also believed that learning hastens and even causes development.
p.12
The learning of big and little will hasten the development of categorical thinking.
p.13
Experienced teachers know that children quickly become bored when you teach a skill they already can do.
p.13
Language allows the child to imagine, manipulate, create new ideas, and share those ideas with others. Thus language has two roles; it is instrumental in the development of cognition and is also itself part of cognitive processing.
p.17
An external manifestation of a mental tool is the use of a string around your finger to help you remember to buy apples at the grocery store. The internalized mental tool would be mentally associating apples with the grocery store.
p.18
Humans use mental tools to help gain control over this behavior; they might leave a pile of stones to mark the way, make a scratch on a tree, or compose a song about the landmarks along the way.
p.18
Instead of hitting another person when angry, they learn ways of thinking, or strategies, to control their feeling. “Counting to ten” and “thinking of something else” are tools to subdue anger.
pp.18-19
The teacher realizes that Nadia does not possess the tools that will help her to concentrate on purpose. So she sits Nadia in the front of the meeting where she can put her hand on her shoulder, and she gestures to the book and says “Nadia, listen”. At this point, attention still exists in a shared state, between Nadia and the teacher. After a number of group meetings, Nadia begins to concentrate on her own. Now attention is individual; Nadia is able to do it by herself.
p.19
Language is a primary mental tool because it facilitates the acquisition of other tools and is used for many mental functions.
p.32
Whether children remember only the last thing they heard (recency effect) or the first and the last things they heard (primary and recency effects) depends on the culture they belong to (Valsiner, 1988).
p.35
The zone of proximal development [italic], or ZPD, one of the most well known of all Vygotsky's concepts, is a way of conceptualizing the relationship between learning and development. Vygotsky chose the word zone [italic] because he conceived development not as a point on a scale, but as a continuum of behaviors or degrees of maturation. By describing the zone as proximal (next to, close to), he meant that the zone is limited by those behaviors that will develop in the near [italic] future. Proximal [italic] refers not to all possible behaviors that will eventually emerge, but to those closest to emergence at any given time.
p.35
independent performance
assisted performance
p.35
If there is a prompt by an adult, for instance, if the teacher reminds Frank that “an n has one hump”, then we say that the child has not developed or doesn't know the information yet. Vygotsky maintains that the level of independent performance is an important index of development, but he argues that it is not sufficient to completely describe development.
p.35
This interaction may involve giving hints and clues, rephrasing questions, asking the child to restate what has been said, asking the child what he understands, demonstrating the task or a portion of it, and so on. The interaction can also take the form of indirect help, such as setting up the environment to facilitate practicing a specific set of skills. For example, a teacher might provide labeled sorting trays to encourage classification.
p.37
With each shift, the child becomes capable of learning more and more complex concepts and skills.
p.37
Then, as the child tackles more difficult tasks, a new level of assisted performance emerges.
pp.37-38
This cycle is repeated over and over again, as the child climbs his way to complete acquisition of a body of knowledge, skill, strategy, discipline, or behavior.
p.38
p.39
In the above example, Teresa and Linda, no matter what support the teacher gave that day, could not be taught to do a handstand on the beam.
When a skill is outside of the ZPD, children generally ignore, fail to use, or incorrectly use that skill.
p.39
The term learning/teaching is currently used as a translation of the Russian word obuchenyie. Obuchenyie describes both a child's learning and the teacher's teaching of knowledge and skills. It includes the contribution of both the learner and the teacher and implies that both are active in this process. In contrast, in Western conceptions of education, learning tends to describe only what the pupil [student] does, while words like teaching, training, and educating describe primarily the teacher's role. Thus the term learning/teaching more accurately represents Vygotsky's meaning than either the words learning or teaching alone.
pp.42-43
Reduce or simplify the number of steps required to solve the problem so the child can manage them, maintain the child's interest in pursuing the goal, pointing out the critical features that show the difference between the child's performance and the ideal performance, control frustration, and demonstrate the idealized version of what the child is doing. (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976, p. 60)
p.42
Scaffolding
Wood, Bruner, & Ross (1976)
At the level of maximum scaffolding, the teacher counts out loud with the child, holding the child's finger as she points to each object. At this point, the teacher has most of the responsibility for counting, while the child follows his action. The teacher then gradually begins to withdraw support, just as the scaffolding of a building is taken away as the walls are capable of standing alone. The next time the child counts, the teacher does not say the numbers but still helps her point. Then the teacher may stop pointing at the objects, allowing the child to both point and count on her own.
p.42
Wood, Bruner, & Ross (1976) suggest that what the expert does when providing scaffolding may vary. Sometimes the adult might direct attention to an aspect that was forgotten; at other times the adult may actually model the correct manner of doing something.
p.43
Bruner studied scaffolding primarily in the area of language acquisition. He points out that when young children are learning language, parents present the child with mature speech. Not all sentences are reduced to baby talk. However, parents vary the amount of contextual support they give. They restate, repeat the important words that have meaning, use gestures, and respond to the child's utterances by focusing on the meaning of the child's utterances and not the grammatical form. Adults maintain a dialogue with the child as if the child is another adult who understands everything. Parents act as if the child can understand, thus responding to the ZPD and not to the child's actual level of speech production. This is what Garvey called talking with “the future child” (Garvey, 1986, p. 331). Say that a child points to a tiger at the zoo and says, “Rrrr,” and the parent responds by saying, “Yes, that's a tiger. See her babies? She has three babies.” The parent responds as if the child has produced the sentence “Look at the tiger.” After repeated exposure to more mature language forms within the ZPD, children begin to acquire grammar. Bruner gave this support a specific name, the Language Acquisition Support System, or LASS.
p.44
Cazden (1981) terms “performance comes before competence”
p.44
Children do not need full knowledge or full understanding of the task before we teach it to them. Competence and understanding are acquired after the task has been performed a number of times.
p.45
Four Stages of the ZPD
Tharp and Gallimore (1988) directed the Kamehameha Elementary Education Program (KEEP) in Hawaii and worked with elementary aged children. They have proposed a four-stage description of the ZPD that goes beyond the definition commonly used by most researchers in the Vygotskian framework. The most distinctive aspect of their approach is the concept of performance in the ZPD as a circular, recursive process, rather than a linear one, with the following stages:
Stage 1. Performance is assisted by more capable others.
Stage 2. Performance is assisted by self.
Stage 3. Performance is developed, automatized, and “fossilized”.
Stage 4. De-automatization of performance leads to recursion back through the ZPD. (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988, p. 35)
p.45
At this stage the most helpful types of interactions are modeling, contingent management (setting a pattern of rewards), feeding back (letting children know how close their behavior is to the target), instructing (giving direct instructions about strategies), questioning (asking leading questions), and cognitive structuring (providing explanatory and belief structures that organize and give meaning).
p.52
..., 6-month-old Lisa gestures toward her teddy bear, and her sister says, “Oh, you want your bear. I'll get it for you.” For infants, objects become interesting through the mediation of others. By modeling how to interact with objects and interacting with the child over the object, we provide the assistance which enables the child to acquire object manipulation. Object manipulation exists in a shared experience first, as do all other mental processes, and it is an outcome of the child's emotional dialogue with her caregiver.
p.52
Shared activity becomes a vital part of the infant's life.
p.52
Vygotsky believed that during infancy all mental functions are shared, and only at the end of infancy do some of these processes become appropriated by the child. In the views of many Western psychologists, including Piaget, the end of infancy is when the “separation of self” occurs (Paiget, 1936/1952; Erikson, 1950).
p.52
Attachment is a two-way emotional relationship, involving the active participation of both child and caregiver, and is the blueprint for future relationships the child will develop.
p.52
The lack of attachment also deprives the child of cognitive interactions that are necessary for mental life. Because the actual content of interactions determines the quality of shared experience, if there is not attachment, the child is deprived of important cognitive experiences. This deprivation, in turn, will influence the acquisition of mental function. Without attachment the child cannot engage in shared activities.
p.53
Babies, he felt, ... discover properties through ... exploration (Ginsberg & Opper, 1988). Vygotsky argues that while children's manipulations are limited by their motor capabilities, the way to interact with objects is first demonstrated by others. Some evidence for the Vygotskian perspective is found in the fact that children who had been severely deprived of emotional contacts did not engage in much object manipulation even though the objects were accessible to them in the crib (Lisina 1974; Spitz, 1946).
p.53
However, because these emotionally deprived children also show almost a complete absence of sensorimotor manipulation, there must be a link between interacting with people and the development of exploratory behavior.
p.53
One of the relationships that toddlers discover is that one object can be used as a tool to do something to another object.
p.54
Their words are associated with certain actions but do not form the basis of thinking. Vygotsky believed that the child associates “spoon” with eating, but does not think using the word spoon, as in thinking about needing a spoon to feed the baby. Words are integrated into thinking, but the child still depends on physical manipulations of objects to support problem solving. When the child can think primarily in words, then language and thinking have merged.
p.54
Toddlers are capable of generalizing their actions from object to object, unlike infants. They discover that some objects can be used as tools or instruments. Elkonin (1969) called this instrumental activity. Through the use of intruments, toddlers begin to explore the hidden attributes of objects and to separate objects from actions. These activities prepare toddlers for the transition to symbolic functioning and make it possible for the development of play in preschool.
p.59
Vygotsky argues that many cultures change their expectation for 6- to 7-year-old children, who are considered ready to start formal instruction.
p.59
Formal instruction has specific characteristics that cause the mind to be shaped in a specific way.
p.60
In preliterate societies, children are taught skills basic for survival, such as how to raise crops or hunt.
p.63
It is during this time that the teacher has access to the skill and can guide development of the skill by modifying external support for it. Once the skill is internalized, it becomes automatized and folded, which means that it is not easily accessible to correction.
p.63
When automatized, the entire behavior is automatically activated, so the teacher cannot stop it at the right moment to correct a missing or defective part. For example, consider an adult who turns left when exiting a parking lot to go home but really needs to turn right to go to the store. The left-turn habit is so strong that the entire behavior cannot be broken into parts. The driver may not even notice that he has made a wrong turn until he is on his way home instead of heading to the store.
p.63
Automatization explains why it is difficult to correct some things we have learned initially incorrectly but cannot seem to correct even though we know we are wrong.
p.63
In all these cases, we recognize the mistake after we have repeated it and wish we could have stopped ourselves beforehand.
The traditional way of correcting this kind of mistake is to point out the error after it has been committed. As most teachers can tell you, pointing out the error afterward has very little effect on error production the next time.
p.64
Thus the teacher anticipates the elements that will be confusing.
p.64
Gal'perin points out that teachers should not leave the discovery of the essential elements to the children. He did not believe that trial-and-error learning was beneficial in the school context. In school, learning by trial and error leads to repeated errors and is very frustrating because the child cannot guess what the teacher is getting at.
p.64
Once the teacher has explained all of the necessary elements, he has to monitor the process of acquisition, provide various kind of assistance, such as shared experiences and external mediators, and encourage the use of private speech. The teacher must make sure that the child's understand reflects all the essential components and that the child can apply the knowledge or skill to new problems without distorting the information.
p.64
When repeated errors appear, according to Gal'perin, it is necessary to go back and see what caused the misunderstanding.
p.64
Once the cause is found, the teacher must compensate for the missing experience or help the child relearn the information. For example, the child may be missing a rule that will help him clear up the misunderstanding. In some cases, the child will need more practice with the missing rule being emphasized or even visually highlighted, say, with a different colored pen.
p.64
He suggests that some external mediator be devised to signal the specific error.
p.65
When the child reaches these letters in the text, the teacher encourages him to stop and notice that it is different. Having the child “stop” blocks the initiation of the repeated error. For a while, the child will need the external mediator, but if he practices enough times correctly, the new, corrected skill will become automatized, replacing the incorrect one. It is important that the child stop before [italic] the error; correcting afterwards will not help.
p.65
Generally speaking, the idea of correcting repeated errors can also be applied to areas other than academics.
p.75
In 1st and 2nd grade, teachers typically give many directions to children orally without mediational support to help them remember what to do. Ms. Margolis expects her children to remember that there are three centers that they must visit during center learning time. Many of the children have no trouble remembering, but Ida, Joseph, and Dionnia never get past the first center. No matter what Ms. Margolis does, these three children go through parts of the first center and then become wanderers around the room. Ms. Margolis decides to give them an external mediator in the form of a ticket with the number 1, 2, and 3 written on it. After she sends the other children to the centers, she sits down with her wandering threesome and has them write down in their own way something that will remind them of the centers they are supposed to go to. Ida scribbles after each number, Joseph writes letters, and Dionnia draws a picture. Ms. Margolis pins the notes to their clothes with a clothespin. “When you have finished at the center,” she tells them, “check it off on your ticket. Then the ticket will help you remember where to go next.” By the end of the first week, only Ida and Dionnia need to use the tickets. By the end of the third week, all three children have begun to remember the routine.
As with perception and attention, Vygotskians propose using external mediators to provide scaffolding for the development of deliberate memory.
p.76
External mediators are also advantageous because they can be used in situations when the teacher is not present. They remind the child before it is too late. So much of the time, we remind children after the fact about what they should have remembered because we are not present to remind them beforehand.
p.96
Thus, Eskimos people have many words for snow, Guatemalan Indians who are weavers have many words for textures of yarn, and Asian cultures have many words to define familial relationships and kinships. Language reflects the importance of certain elements of the physical and social environment.
p.96
Language allows the acquisition of new information: content, skills, strategies, and processes. While not all learning involve language, complex ideas and processes can only be appropriated with the help of language. The idea of number is only internalized with the help of language. Through language, strategies for solving conflicts are also taught.
p.96
Since language is a universal cultural tool, delays in its development have severe consequences.
p.96
language as social
Interpreting language as social is a view that is different from that of Piaget (1923/1926), who believed that speech reflects the child's present level of mental processing and is based on the child's schemas and internal representations.
schema an outline, diagram, scheme, plan, or preliminary draft
scheme a) a carefully arranged and systematic program of action for attaining some object or end
b) a secret or underhanded plan; plot
c) a visionary plan or project
3. an outline or diagram showing different parts or elements of an object or system
p.96
Public speech, the term used for language directed at others, has a social, communicative function.
p.96
Private speech describes self-directed speech that is audible but not intended for others. This type of speech has a self-regulatory function.
p.98
Private Speech
Private speech is audible but directed to the self rather than to other people. It contains information as well as self-regulatory comments. It is the kind of thing that grown-ups do when faced with a difficult multistep task.
p.97
Vygotsky believed that there is a time in infancy and toddlerhood when thinking proceeds without language and language is used only for communication. Other psychologists, such as Piaget (1923/1926, 1952) and Bruner (1968), seem to concur that children go through a stage in which language is not essential to thinking or problem solving. Children solve problems with sensorimotor actions or by manipulating images rather than concepts or words. Language at this stage communicates wants and needs to others.
p.97
Then, between 2 to 3 years of age thinking and speech merge. From this point on, so Vygotsky believed, neither speech nor thinking would ever be the same.
p.97
Speech is then employed for purpose other than communication.
pp.97-98
After studying children using speech to solve problems, Vygotsky and Luria (1984/1994) drew this conclusion:
1. A child's speech is an inalienable and internally necessary part of the operation [of problem solving], its role being important as that of action in the attaining of a goal. The experimenter's impression is that the child not only speaks about what he is doing, but that for him speech and action are in this case one and the same complex psychological function [italic] directed toward the solution of the given problem.
2. The more complex the action demanded by the situation and the less directed its solution, the greater the importance played by speech in the operation as a whole. Sometimes speech becomes of such vital importance that without it the child proves to be positively unable to accomplish the given task. (p. 109)
To put this into simpler language, children become capable of thinking as they talk. The child can think aloud.
p.98
Have you ever found yourself understanding your own thinking better when you talk it out with someone else? We may even say, “Can I talk to you about this so I can clarify what I think?”
p.98
Thinking while talking makes shared activity doubly powerful. When children talk to each other as they work, their language supports learning, but the verbal interaction also helps each child to think while talking.
p.98
Private speech is audible but directed to the self rather than to other people. It contains information as well as self-regulatory comments. It is the kind of thing that grown-ups do when faced with a difficult multistep task.
p.98
Private speech is often abbreviated and condensed, unlike public speech, which communicates with others. Private speech sounds egocentric, as if the child doesn't care if she is understood by anyone else. Vygotsky points out that this egocentrism is not a deficiency of speech but an indicator of another function of speech at this age. It is not necessary for private speech to be completely explicit since it must only be intelligible to the child. The child has an intuitive sense of internal audience.
p.99
In a series of experiments, Luria found that general directions, such as “Squeeze two times”, did not have an effect on the behavior of young children 3 to 3 1/2 years of age. Children would squeeze any number of times. However, when children were taught to say “Squeeze, squeeze” and this private speech was directly paired with action, the private speech helped the children to control their behavior.
p.99
Here is another example. Mr. Smith raises his hand and say, “When I lower my hand, you jump.” All of the preschool children start jumping up and down even before he gets his hand ready. The result is different, however, when Mr. Smith says, “Let's say, all together, ‘One, two, three, jump,’ and we'll jump on ‘jump’.” The class says the four words together, and they all jump only on the word “jump”. Repeating the words rhythmically helps children to inhibit jumping at the wrong time.
pp.99-100
p.100
Inner Speech and Verbal Thinking
Once speech separates into two distinct strands, private speech goes “underground” and becomes inner speech and then verbal thinking. The concepts of inner speech and verbal thinking describe different internal mental processes.
p.100
For instance, when preparing for an important telephone call, you might mentally rehearse what you will say.
p.100
Inner speech contains all of the things you might actually say, but it is an abbreviated version of the conversation. Inner speech in adults is similar to the private speech of preschoolers, because it is distilled, nongrammatical, and logical primarily to oneself.
p.100
Verbal thinking is more distilled than inner speech and is described by Vygotsky as folded. When thinking is folded, you can think of several things simultaneously and you may not be conscious of all that you are thinking. Although you may be aware of the final product, it takes a concerted mental effort to “unfold” or draw the ideas back into consciousness.
p.100
When children are having trouble understanding something, it is particularly helpful to induce the reexamination of verbal thinking by having them explain things to others. Induced public speech helps the child think while talking, drawing out the folded ideas into a sequence.
p.101
As long as the child uses a word in familiar contexts while communicating with familiar adults, her understanding is sufficient to maintain conversation. Only when children try to apply meaning to different contexts and with different people does the difference between the child's meaning and the adult's become visible. Five-year-old Tamara uses the word aunt [italic] to describe all of her aunts correctly. However, she becomes confused when she meets a relative who is her niece and is actually older than she is. When her niece calls her “Auntie Tamara”, she bursts into tears, saying, “I'm not an aunt, I'm a little girl.”
p.101
Even when everyday concepts are learned later in life, the developmental path is the same. Meanings are constructed in context and then through many experiences are gradually restructured until they are similar to conventional cultural meanings. An everyday concept involves adding to and refining its meaning through daily experience. We do not place everyday concepts in an abstract system or define them formally.
p.101
Learning is different when it comes to scientific concepts. Scientific concepts are not presented one at a time but as a whole system because the meanings are interdependent and cannot be acquired in isolation. For example, every science has its own basic assumptions and language.
p.102
We usually teach science concepts in this integrated fashion when children are in junior high and high school, although several Russian researchers advocate the introduction of some scientific concepts in early primary grades and even in kindergarten (Davydov, 1991; Rubstov, 1991).
p.102
Scientific concepts, Vygotsky says, “grow down” into existing everyday concepts, and everyday concepts “grow up” into scientific concepts (Karpov & Bradford, 1995). Once a children learn scientific concepts, their everyday concepts are restructured. If a child lacks background knowledge or if his everyday concepts do not match conventional meanings, then the child has trouble acquiring scientific concepts.
p.102
Furthermore, learning scientific concepts causes children to become more systematic in their use of everyday concepts.
p.103
Written speech also forces you to unfold inner speech, but unlike the spoken word, writing allows you to literally look at your thoughts.
p.103
When we write, our thoughts are recorded and can be revisited and reflected upon. Gaps in understanding become more apparent when you reread your thoughts.
p.103
After writing, our ideas are more explicit and elaborate than they were before. We see the flaws in our ideas more clearly and more objectively.
p.103
Thus, for Vygotskians, writing improves thinking in a way that talking cannot.
p.103
By revisiting our thoughts on paper with others and by ourselves, we come to a deeper understanding of those thoughts.
p.103
In oral speech, tone of voice, gesture, and common context can fill in the gaps. When someone doesn't understand something, we keep adding information until get it. In written speech, only what is on paper communicates, so one's words must be chosen more deliberately. Thus, you are much more likely to play with different ways of saying the same thing when communicating on paper than when you are talking to someone.
p.104
Three-year-olds used their scribbles to help them remember something or to label an object. These scribbles contained no real letters, nor were they understood by anyone but the child. Luria found that the children, nevertheless, gave these scribbles meaning and could remember the meaning several days later. Children thus begin to master the purpose of written speech long before they actually learn to write.
pp.105-107
Using language in the classroom
1. Make your actions and the children's actions verbally explicit.
2. Model your thinking and the strategies you are using aloud.
3. When introducing a new concept, be sure to tie it to actions.
4. Use thinking while talking to check children's understanding of concepts and strategies.
5. Use different context and different tasks as you check whether or not children understand a concept or strategy.
6. Encourage the use of private speech.
7. Use mediators to facilitate private speech.
8. Encourage “thinking while talking”.
9. Encourage children to write to communicate even if it is scribbling.
10. Encourage the use of written speech in a variety of contexts.
11. Revisit the children's writing and reprocess their ideas.
12. Incorporate writing into play.
p.110
To promote learning, teachers must create different types of assistance and consequently different types of shared activity.
p.110
The social context includes many kinds of interactions between more and less knowledgeable participants, participants will equal knowledge, and even imaginary participants (Newman, Griffin, & Cole, 1989; Saloman, 1993). Each type of shared activity supports a different facet of development.
p.110
No learning occurs if the learner is not active. All participants, whether they are equal or unequal in knowledge, must be mentally engaged, or the activity will not be shared.
Finally, there must be a medium of sharing.
p.110
Language and interaction create the shared experience.
p.111
To communicate with another person you have to be clear and explicit. You have to turn your idea into words and talk until you believe the other person understand you. You are forced to look at different aspects of an idea or task and to take another person's perspective. As a result, more and more sides or characteristics of an object or idea are exposed.
p.111
Children learn to regulate the behavior of other people before they are capable of regulating themselves.
p.111
This tattletaling is a symptom of the desire to regulate others. The tattleteller usually does not apply the rule to himself, but will be the first one to shout when someone else does wrong. The child wants to reaffirm the rule.
p.112
Many of the things that children learn are rule-based, not only social interaction, classroom behavior, and play.
p.112
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to edit another person's work? The typos and flaws in thinking are obvious. When you read your own writing, problems and mistakes are much harder to catch.
p.115
Exploring and manipulating objects are not sufficient for the emergence of logical thought; children have to be taught these relationships.
p.115
The teacher must keep in mind that children must participate in the dialogue for it to teach them anything because they must construct their own meaning (see Chapter 1).
p.115
For Vygotskians, it is not enough just to reach the right answer; the child must use the tools that are most relevant to finding the answer. For example, it is more important for the child to be able to describe the pattern in a series of objects than to predict the next object. Knowing only which object comes next does not tell the teacher whether or how the child understands the pattern.
p.116
1. Help the child distinguish between essential and nonessential properties. For example, when showing children objects of different shapes, the teacher should demonstrate that color and size are irrelevant. She would ask the child, “If we paint this object red, is it still a circle?” “If we paint the circle blue, is it now a triangle?” “What if we make it bigger? Is it still a circle?”
pp.116-117
1. Help the child distinguish between essential and nonessential properties.
2. Help the child make connections with the larger system of concepts.
3. Look for clues about the child's thinking process.
4. Decide how much support should be given.
5. Generate a number of possible ways of handing over the responsibility for learning to the child.
6. Plan the size of the groups you will work with so that the educational dialogue is meaningful and effective.
p.117
5. Generate a number of possible ways of handing over the responsibility for learning to the child. Have in mind a number of ways that you will provide scaffolding and then withdraw support in a gradual way. Keep track of the child's reaction to your hints and clues, as well as the way the child responds as you withdraw support. These will give you clues as to what works.
p.119
5. Acting as the expert or the novice.
... The tutor needs extensive training about how to help another person to learn. The young expert is likely to tell the answer rather than model strategies, which is not helpful for the novice. Show the expert exactly how to act: what to do if the answer is partly correct or wrong, and how to praise and encourage the other child. If the child never gets the chance to be an expert, then this kind of pairing can be very discouraging. Make sure that every child gets a chance to be the expert.
pp.118-120
Vygotskians describe the following peer interactions as the most beneficial for development.
1. Cooperating to successfully complete a task.
2. Assuming assigned roles.
3. Acting as sounding board for a peer.
4. Acting for an imaginary person.
5. Acting as the expert or the novice.
6. Playing.
7. Creating cognitive conflict.
p.127
In the nonplay, or real-life, situation in a grocery store, Louis wants candy, but his mother won't give it to him so he cries. He cannot control his behavior. He reacts automatically to wanting candy and even says, “I can't stop crying”. While playing, Louis can [italic] control his behavior, because he controls the imaginary situation of the family. He can pretend to go to the grocery store and not cry. He can pretend to cry and then make himself stop. Play allows him to act at a higher level than he can when he is in the actual situation.
p.127
In a classroom example, Jessica, a 5 year old, has trouble sitting at group circle time. She leans on other children and talks to her neighbor. In spite of the teacher's verbal cues and support, she cannot sit for more than 3 minutes. In contrast, when she is playing school with several of her friends, she can sit during the pretend group circle time. Pretending to be a good student, she can concentrate and act interested for 10 minutes. Thus, play provides the roles, rules, and scenario that enable her to focus and attend at a higher level than she performs without this scaffolding.
p.127
If a child has no experience in play, we expect that both cognitive and social-emotional development will suffer. This idea was refined by Vygotsky's students Leont'ev (1977/1978) and Elkonin (1971/1977) into the idea of play as a leading activity (see Chapter 5 and 6). They state that play is the most important activity for development for children age 3 to 6. Leont'ev and Elkonin believed that for this age group play has a unique role and cannot be replaced by any other activity, even though children benefit from a variety of experiences during this period. Their research on play as a leading activity will be discussed later in this chapter.
p.127
By the “focus of a magnifying glass” Vygotsky meant that new development accomplishments become apparent in play far earlier than they do in other activities, especially learning activities.
p.127
Thus, at age 4 academic-type activities, such as recognizing letters, are not as good as play at predicting later abilities to learn. In a 4-year-old's play we can observe the abilities of attention, symbolizing, and problem solving at a higher level. We are actually watching the child of tomorrow.
p.127
Separating Thought from Actions and Objects
In play, children act in accordance with internal ideas rather than external reality:
The child sees one thing, but acts differently in relation to what he sees. Thus a condition is reached in which the child begins to act independently of what he sees. (Vygotsky, 1933/1978, p. 97)
Because play requires the substitution of one object for another, the child begins to separate the meaning or idea of the object from the object itself (Berk, 1994). When the child uses a block as a boat, the idea of “boatness” becomes separated from the actual boat. If the block is made to act like a boat, then it can stand for that boat. As preschoolers grow, their ability to make these substitutions become more flexible. Eventually objects can be symbolized by a simple gesture or by saying “Let's pretend....”
pp.128-130
The Developmental Path of Play
Elkonin (1969, 1971, 1977, 1978)
p.128
This separation of the meaning from the object is preparation for the development of abstract ideas and abstract thinking (Berk, 1994). In abstract thinking we evaluate, manipulate, and monitor thoughts and ideas without reference to the real world. This act of separating object and idea is also preparation for the transition to writing, where the word looks nothing like the object it stands for. Finally, behavior is no longer driven by the object; it is not longer reactive. Objects can be used as tools to understand other ideas. Instead of using the block as a block, the child can use it to solve problems, as in using them as math manipulatives.
p.128
In play children cannot act any way they please; they must act in a way that conforms to the play scenario. Louis, who is 2 1/2, is playing family and cries like the baby. The role of baby implies that he must pretend to cry and stop when the father comforts him. His behavior is initiated by the play situation and is not a reaction to being hurt. This act (of crying) requires the same deliberateness used in higher mental functions. Thus play provide the context in which Louis can practice deliberate behavior; it shows that he can master his behavior. Play requires significantly more control and deliberateness than other contexts.
p.129
Like Piaget, Elkonin defined symbolic function [italic] as using an object to represent something else. To qualify as play, exploration of objects must include symbolic representation. When a child squeezes, drop, and bangs an object on the table, this is object manipulation, not play. Only when the child uses the object as a duck and makes it swim on the table and peck bread crumbs would the actions become play.
p.129
In socially oriented play, roles are negotiated and enacted for an extended period of time. The child becomes the character she is playing. This kind of play is typical for children between the ages of 4 and 6, but continues in some forms through elementary school.
p.129
In the Vygotskian paradigm, socially oriented play does not have to occur with other children. The child can engage in what is called director's play [italic], when children play with pretend playmates or direct and act out a scene with toys.
p.129
As children get older, they develop more explicit rules for their socially oriented play. Six-year-old Frank says, “This one will be the bad guy, and bad guys always try to capture the good guy.” Mary replies, “OK, but he won't be able to because good guys are faster and their planes are better, so they'll get away.”
pp.129-130
The older the child, the more time is spent in negotiating roles and actions (rules) and the less time is spent on acting on the script (imaginary situation). In fact, 6 year olds often spend several minutes discussing a scenario and only a few seconds acting out the situation.
p.130
Games are distinguished from imaginary play by the fact that the imaginary situation is hidden and the rules are explicit and detailed:
For example, playing chess creates an imaginary situation. Why? Because the knight, king, queen, and so forth can only move in a specified way; because covering and taking pieces are purely chess concepts. Although in the chess game there is no direct substitute for real-life relationships, it is a kind of imaginary situation nevertheless. (Vygotsky, 1933/1978, p. 95)
p.130
Soccer is an imaginary situation, since in reality all of the players could use their hands to move the ball. However, all of the players agree that they will not use their hands. This situation is similar to children spelling out what they can or cannot do during dramatic play.
p.130
In socially oriented play, the roles are explicit and the rules are not. Children discuss the roles and what is expected, but breaking the rules does not disrupt social play. A child can do something out of the agreed-upon sequence, but this will not upset the play.
p.130
In contrast, games have explicit rules; if the rules are broken, then the game cannot continue.
pp.128-130
The Developmental Path of Play
Elkonin (1969, 1971, 1977, 1978)
p.131
Children play for different reasons than they interact with adults.
p.131
Only by stepping back and watching the child interact with peers can the teacher see the child's potential in a different social context. This other social context may show a side of the child the teacher would never otherwise know.
p.132
Sensitive teachers who provide appropriate scaffolding have a positive impact on the level of play in their classroom (Berk, 1994; Smilansky & Shefatya, 1990).
1. Make sure children have sufficient time for play.
2. Help children plan their play.
3. Monitor the progress of play.
4. Choose appropriate props and toys.
5. Provide themes that can be extended from one day to the next.
6. Coach individuals who need help.
7. Suggest or model how themes can be woven together.
8. Model appropriate ways to solve disputes.
p.132
Teachers should make sure there is enough time allotted during the day, at least 30-40 minutes, for uninterrupted play.
p.132
Time should be allotted for play outside of recess, or recess time should be extended so that play can develop.
p.133
Remember that sticking to the plan is not a goal in itself. It is just a means of helping children see continuity in their actions.
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