Half-formed thoughts on Vygotsky
- Piaget had the idea that cognitive maturation is helped along by disagreements with age peers. This is the notion that children are constantly forced to readjust their lines of thinking or accept challenges to their ideas from their equals. This helps them to reflect on the perspectives of other people and become less egocentric. Challenges to their ideas from adults (or, by extension older children) would be less likely to promote cognitive development directly as children may just accept the viewpoint of the more authoritative partner without subjecting it to criticism. This would be an argument in favour of using external early childhood education, and ensuring access to multiple age peers (that is, for a 3-4 year old, lots of other 3 and 4 year olds).
Vygotsky seemed to view things a bit differently - that collaborative dialogue with more competent people thrust the child forward developmentally. Thus children benefit from working alongside adults and expert peers, or older children. Conflict is less important than how the relationship works (eg mutually respectful or not). Children then work within their zone of proximal development - that is, they do stuff with these experts that they can't do themselves, but which are not so challenging that the expert has to take over. This is neither an argument for nor against professional early childhood education - but it does give clues on how adults can help children (scaffolding) and gives a clear role for older children (or expert peers). These experts could be found in a home environment, or an early childhood centre. Age mixing would be particular beneficial from this perspective for the younger children. (Leaving aside for the moment the benefits to the expert peer).
- Now various Vygotsky-inspired researchers have found out that there are certain scaffolding techniques that are more useful than others in promoting cognitive development. An example is the use of open-ended questions and greater use of abstraction in questioning techniques, rather than focusing on the here and now. (For example, the difference between "what colour is the truck?" and "I wonder how we could transport that big rock up the hill"). Researchers have also found that adults who are trained in scaffolding techniques use them more effectively, and with better results. I remember being told during a Playcentre course that, nevertheless, adults are actually quite good at scaffolding without being taught, but I can't remember if this had a reference behind it or not. One researcher found that children did better on a task when they were scaffolded by a friendly (but well-trained) stranger than with their (untrained but much loved and familiar) parent. So this may indicate that there are benefits with having professionals in your young children's lives, so long as they are trained in these kind of techniques. Or, as a parent, you could just read up and train yourself, secure in the knowledge that you know how to do a lot of this stuff anyway - it's a matter of refinement and application. Or you could join Playcentre and train alongside others.
- So, keeping the Vygostkyian hat on, all this scaffolding stuff is seen through whatever cultural lens applies. Western children are usually the ones being researched on, usually in structured and child-centred environments. In some non-Western cultures, children "take greater responsibility for their learning through observation and participation in adult (rather than child-oriented) activities....[parents] rely more on demonstration, unobtrusive directing and monitoring. Furthermore, they do not praise their children's performance...) (This from Laura Berk and Adam Winsler, (1995) Scaffolding Children's Learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education, Washington: National Association for the Education of Young Children, summarising the work of other researchers). So when I read that, I thought of the contrasts between a quality education system (child-centred, but inevitably structured to some extent) vs a "life is learning" home education system, which is more adult or family-centred. Neither necessarily better, just different (bearing in mind that the child in the education system still learns through life - after all, they do come home at the end of the session/school day, but that their learning is in two clearly defined realms).
That's all for the moment.
Vygotsky seemed to view things a bit differently - that collaborative dialogue with more competent people thrust the child forward developmentally. Thus children benefit from working alongside adults and expert peers, or older children. Conflict is less important than how the relationship works (eg mutually respectful or not). Children then work within their zone of proximal development - that is, they do stuff with these experts that they can't do themselves, but which are not so challenging that the expert has to take over. This is neither an argument for nor against professional early childhood education - but it does give clues on how adults can help children (scaffolding) and gives a clear role for older children (or expert peers). These experts could be found in a home environment, or an early childhood centre. Age mixing would be particular beneficial from this perspective for the younger children. (Leaving aside for the moment the benefits to the expert peer).
- Now various Vygotsky-inspired researchers have found out that there are certain scaffolding techniques that are more useful than others in promoting cognitive development. An example is the use of open-ended questions and greater use of abstraction in questioning techniques, rather than focusing on the here and now. (For example, the difference between "what colour is the truck?" and "I wonder how we could transport that big rock up the hill"). Researchers have also found that adults who are trained in scaffolding techniques use them more effectively, and with better results. I remember being told during a Playcentre course that, nevertheless, adults are actually quite good at scaffolding without being taught, but I can't remember if this had a reference behind it or not. One researcher found that children did better on a task when they were scaffolded by a friendly (but well-trained) stranger than with their (untrained but much loved and familiar) parent. So this may indicate that there are benefits with having professionals in your young children's lives, so long as they are trained in these kind of techniques. Or, as a parent, you could just read up and train yourself, secure in the knowledge that you know how to do a lot of this stuff anyway - it's a matter of refinement and application. Or you could join Playcentre and train alongside others.
- So, keeping the Vygostkyian hat on, all this scaffolding stuff is seen through whatever cultural lens applies. Western children are usually the ones being researched on, usually in structured and child-centred environments. In some non-Western cultures, children "take greater responsibility for their learning through observation and participation in adult (rather than child-oriented) activities....[parents] rely more on demonstration, unobtrusive directing and monitoring. Furthermore, they do not praise their children's performance...) (This from Laura Berk and Adam Winsler, (1995) Scaffolding Children's Learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education, Washington: National Association for the Education of Young Children, summarising the work of other researchers). So when I read that, I thought of the contrasts between a quality education system (child-centred, but inevitably structured to some extent) vs a "life is learning" home education system, which is more adult or family-centred. Neither necessarily better, just different (bearing in mind that the child in the education system still learns through life - after all, they do come home at the end of the session/school day, but that their learning is in two clearly defined realms).
That's all for the moment.
Labels: education
posted by Mary at 7:58 pm
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