dismantling autonomous model of child development --socially constructed dimension shows up interaction
not based on mastery, but what they can do with minimal amount of assistance - range
scaffolding - moments of minimal but essential intervention
79
critique of developmental ed
"In experimental investigations of the development of thinking in
school children, it has been assumed that processes such as deduction
and understanding, evolution of notions about the world, interpretation
of physical causality, and mastery of logical forms of thought and abstract
logic all occur by themselves,"
80
critiques "clinical observations"
critiques Binet and premature instruction
"Because this approach is based on the premise that learning trails
behind development, that development always outruns learning, it
precludes the notion that learning may play a role in the course of the
development or maturation of those functions activated in the course of
learning."
HOWEVER...
"The second major theoretical position is that learning is development.
This identity is the essence of a group of theories that are quite
diverse in origin.
One such theory is based on the concept of reflex, an essentially
old notion that has been extensively revived recently. Whether reading,
writing, or arithmetic is being considered, development is viewed as the
mastery of conditioned reflexes; that is, the process of learning is completely
and inseparably blended with the process of development. This
notion was elaborated by Iames, who reduced the learning process to
habit formation and identied the learning process with development."
James
81
James: "cannot be better described than by calling it the organization
of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior.” Development
itself is reduced primarily to the accumulation of all possible
responses. Any acquired response is considered either a more complex
form of or a substitute for the innate response."
The theories come from different assumptions (temporal)
Combine the viewpoints!
" The third theoretical position on the relation between learning and
development attempts to overcome the extremes of the other two by
simply combining them. A clear example of this approach is Koflka’s
theory, in which development is based on two inherently different but
related processes, each of which inuences the other.“ On the one hand
is maturation, which depends directly on the development of the nervous
system; on the other hand is learning, which itself is also a developmental
process.
What is new...
Three aspects of this theory are new.
1. First, as we already noted, is
the combination of two seemingly opposite viewpoints, each of which
has been encountered separately in the history of science. The very fact
that these two viewpoints can be combined into one theory indicates
that they are not opposing and mutually exclusive but have something
essential in common.
2.Also new is the idea that the two processes that
make up development are mutually dependent and interactive. Of
course, the nature of the interaction is left virtually unexplored in
Koka’s work, which is limited solely to very general remarks regarding
the relation between these two processes. It is clear that for Koffka the
process of maturation prepares and makes possible a specic process of
learning. The learning process then stimulates and pushes forward the
maturation process.
3.The third and most important new aspect of this
theory is the expanded role it ascribes to leaming in child development.
This emphasis leads us directly to an old pedagogical problem, that of
formal discipline and the problem of transfer.
82
pedagogy
classics - necessary for mental development - questioned
Thorndike - adults- lines and transfer issues
" According to Thorndike, theoreticians in psychology and education
believe that every particular response acquisition directly enhances
overall ability in equal measure.‘ Teachers believed and acted on the
basis of the theory that the mind is a complex of abilities—powers of
observation, attention, memory, thinking, and so forth-—and that any
improvement in any specic ability results in a general improvement in
all abilities. According to this theory, if the student increased the attention
he paid to Latin grammar, he would increase his abilities to focus
attention on any task." (critique)
Thorndike himself did not believe in this
83
" This research shows that the mind is not a complex network of
general capabilities such as observation, attention, memory, judgment,
and so forth, but a set of specic capabilities, each of which is, to some
extent, independent of the others and is developed independently.
Leaming is more than the acquisition of the ability to think; it is the
acquisition of many specialized abilities for thinking about a variety of
things."
"This leads to the conclusion that because
each activity depends on the material with which it operates, the
development of consciousness is the development of a set of particular,
independent capabilities or of a set of particular habits. Improvement
of one function of consciousness or one aspect of its activity can affect
the development of another only to the extent that there are elements
common to both functions or activities."
"Developmental theorists such as Koffka and the Gestalt School—who
hold to the third theoretical position outlined earlier-—oppose Thomdike’s
point of view. They assert that the inuence of learning is never
specic. From their study of structural principles, they argue that the
leaming process can never be reduced simply to the formation of skills
but embodies an intellectual order that makes it possible to transfer
general principles discovered in solving one task to a variety of other
tasks. From this point of view, the child, while learning a particular
operation, acquires the ability to create structures of a certain type,
regardless of the diverse materials with which she is working and regardless
of the particular elements involved."
"Thus, Koka does not conceive
of learning as limited to a process of habit and skill acquisition. The
relationship he posits between learning and development is not that of
an identity but of a more complex relationship. According to Thorndike,
leaming and development coincide at all points, but for Koka, development
is always a larger set than learning.
Schematically, the relationship
between the two processes could be depicted by two concentric circles,
the smaller symbolizing the learning process and the larger the developmental
process evoked by leaming."
zone of proximal development
85
"On the other hand, if we offer leading questions or show how the problem
is to be solved and the child then solves it, or if the teacher initiates
the solution and the child completes it or solves it in collaboration with
other chdren—in short, if the child barely misses an independent
solution of the problem—the solution is not regarded as indicative of his
mental development. This “truth” was familiar and reinforced by common
sense. Over a decade even the profoundest thinkers never questioned
the assumption; they never entertained the notion that what
children can do with the assistance of others might be in some sense
even more indicative of their mental development than what they can
do alone.
86
"When it was rst shown that the capability of children with equal
levels of mental development to learn under a teacher's guidance
varied to a high degree, it became apparent that those children were not
mentally the same age and that the subsequent course of their learning
would obviously be different. This difference between twelve and eight,
or between nine and eight, is what we call the zone of proximal development.
It is the distance between the actual developmental level as determined
by independent problem solving and the level of potential
development as determined through problem solving under adult
guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.
development that CAN Occur (potential)
87
"By using this method we can take account of not
only the cycles and maturation processes that have already been completed
but also those processes that are currently in a state of formation,
that are just beginning to mature and develop. Thus, the zone of proximal
development permits us to delineate the child’s immediate future and his
dynamic developmental state, allowing not only for what already has
been achieved developmentally but also for what is in the course of
maturing.
McCarthy - children functioning as a group
88
move beyond independent concepts of development
"But recently psychologists have shown that a
person can imitate only that which is within her developmental level.
For example, if a child is having diiculty with a problem in arithmetic
and the teacher solves it on the blackboard, the child may grasp the
solution in an instant. But if the teacher were to solve a problem in
higher mathematics, the child would not be able to understand the
solution no matter how many times she imitated it."
Kohler - animals - zone of proximal development
" For this reason animals are incapable of leaming in the
human sense of the term; human learning presupposes a specic social
nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of
those around them."
imitiation - children
89
diagnostic tests
" Formerly, it was believed that by using tests, we determine the
mental development level with which education should reckon and
whose limits it ‘should not exceed. This procedure oriented learning
toward yesterday's development, toward developmental stages already
completed. The error of this view was discovered earlier in practice
than in theory. It is demonstrated most clearly in the teaching of
mentally retarded children. Studies have established that mentally
retarded children are not very capable of abstract thinking. From this
the pedagogy of the special school drew the seemingly correct conclusion
that all teaching of such children should be based on the
use of concrete, look-and-do methods. And yet a considerable amount
of experience with this method resulted in profound disillusionment.
It tumed out that a teaching system based solely on concreteness—-
one that eliminated from teaching everything associated with abstract
thinking—not only failed to help retarded children overcome their
innate handicaps but also reinforced their handicaps by accustoming
children exclusively to concrete thinking and thus suppressing the
rudiments of any abstract thought that such children still have. Precisely
because retarded children, when left to themselves, will never
achieve well-elaborated forms of abstract thought, the school should
make every effort to push them in that direction and to develop in
them what is intrinsically lacking in their own development."
" Similarly, in normal children, learning which is oriented toward developmental
levels that have already been reached is ineffective from
the viewpoint of a child’s overall development. It does not aim for
a new stage of the developmental process but rather lags behind this
process. Thus, the notion of a zone of proximal development enables us
to propound a new formula, namely that the only “good leaming” is
that which is in advance of development."
" These individual examplesillustrate a general developmental law
for the higher mental functions that we feel can be applied in its entirety
to children’s learning processes. We propose that an essential
feature of leaming is that it creates the zone of proximal development;
that is, learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes
that are able to operate only when the child is interacting with people
in his environment and in cooperation with his peers. Once these processes
are internalized, they become part of the child’s independent
developmental achievement."
"To summarize, the most essential feature of our hypothesis is the
notion that developmental processes do not coincide with learning
processes. Rather, the developmental process lags behind the leaming
process; this sequence then results in zones of proximal development.
Our analysis alters the traditional view that at the moment a child
assimilates the meaning of a word, or masters an operation such as
addition or written language, her developmental processes are basically
completed. In fact, they have only just begun at that moment. The
major consequence of analyzing the educational process in this manner
is to show that the initial mastery of, for example, the four arithmetic
operations provides the basis for the subsequent development of a
variety of highly complex intemal processes in children’s thinking.
89
" An aim of the
psychological analysis of development is to describe the internal relations
of the intellectual processes awakened by school learning. In this
respect, such analysis will be directed inward and is analogous to the
use of x-rays. If successful, it should reveal to the teacher how developmental
processes stimulated by the course of school leaming are carried
through inside the head of each individual child. The revelation of this
intemal, subterranean developmental network of school subjects is a task
of primary importance for psychological and educational analysis.
90
"In actuality, there are highly complex
dynamic relations between developmental and learning processes that
cannot be encompassed by an unchanging hypothetical formulation.
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