Vygotsky and Learning
From CS260SP09
Vygotsky and Learning
Readings
Excerpts from Scaffolding Children's Learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education Laura Berk and Adam Winsler, NAEYC Press.
Discussions
Please post your critiques/commments on the required readings below. To do that, first login by using your user name and password, then click the "edit" tab on the top part of this page (between the "discussion" page and the "history" page), New to wikis? Read the Wiki editing guide. . Hint - Please put a whole line == ~~~~ == (literally) at the beginning of your submitted critique, so the wiki system will index, sign and date your submission automatically.
Simon Tan 06:33, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
I appreciate the careful consideration of culture that pervades all of Vygotsky's theories on development; the allowance for higher-order mental functions to vary due to cultural influences seems to be a stark contrast to Piaget's theories which apply in absolute.
Piaget and Vygotsky also have an interesting disagreement on the use of "private speech". While Vygotsky's view (it is a conversion of social speech for the purpose of communication with the self) makes more sense to me, I do not really understand why it has some of the characteristics it does. For example, it is not really clear why it has to be internalized at all (except that it fits in with Vygotsky's bigger view that development starts socially and becomes internalized). There are people who speak to themselves, out loud, even as adults. Perhaps it is not socially acceptable to do so in this culture, and that is why perceived "private speech" becomes more silent over time. The paper mentions that people begin using "private speech" again when faced with a new and difficult problem, which implies to me that it is something that doesn't have to "fade away". The paper resolves this with Vygotsky's theory, but I am still under the impression that the phenomenon is due to self-repression.
KetrinaYim 20:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
I, too, prefer Vygotsky's views on the purposes of private speech. It's difficult to believe that private speech is nothing more than "ineffective social speech" or "a symptom of cognitive immaturity", especially when children, as well as some adults, use it so frequently when solving difficult problems or dealing with emotional stresses. If private speech did indeed serve little or no purpose, its usage would probably be less predictable.
But then, if private speech still serves some purpose even to the more cognitively developed, why does it possess a negative connotation in society? The notion's evident in the fact that children are often discouraged from talking to themselves, and in the disapproving stares that people will give when they happen to encounter a person thinking aloud. Numerous sources would have us believe that talking to oneself, even when it's driven down to inaudible mumbling, is a sign of mental instability. Therefore, much like Simon, I'm led to believe that the gradual disappearance of private speech in a person seems to be socially-motivated, rather than developmentally-motivated as Vygotsky's theory suggests.
Seth Horrigan 07:24, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
It seems that much of the selection is devoted wholly or tangentially to private speech and we have already discussed scaffolding and the ZPD elsewhere, so it is only natural for me to comment upon the same topic. I would postulate that private speech is never actually reduced or "internalized"; rather, it is incorporated into other mental processes and modified in its expression to fit socially constructed norms. I do not have a wealth of empirical data to support this hypothesis; rather, I have only observations of myself and others. I still find it entirely natural to "talk through" a difficult problem if it is a domain in which I cannot easily construct the answer from previous knowledge. If the environment calls for it, I can do this entirely silently, but it is far reduced in effectiveness and speed by doing so. I would expect that further study would reveal that the same processes for developing skill in a new area.
Even in tasks that I find simple, such as solving for an unknown in an algebraic system, I will talk through the process "in the back of my mind". When trying to solve a particularly tricky algorithmic problem, I will draw what I am thinking and talk about it to myself. This allows me to reinforce major ideas and elucidate major points. This speech is most definitely private; it would be largely unintelligible to anyone listening in, and it is far different from the sort of logical progression of ideas that would be necessary to explain the though process to a colleague. As I often see other engineering and science students engaging in similar activities, I am inclined to suggest that it is not any sign of social maladjustment, but rather the natural process that the human mind finds for "sorting out" the type of complex issues that engineers must often face. This leads me to wonder if literature students do the same when formulating literary theses, or if there is something inherently different between munging literary ideas and solving logical puzzles?
Kenrick Kin 07:38, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
Simon and Ketrina bring up an interesting question - is the internalization of private speech due to self repression/control because of social stigma? Since the first portion of the reading highlights that mental function may vary due to culture differences, perhaps there is an example of a culture where private speech doesn't become as internalized with age. In any case, adults certainly do still engage in private speech. When something shocks us we shout, "Oh s--t!" to no one in particular, or maybe to everyone. Even now we still talk through difficult problems, sometimes at the insistence of an external entity (job interviewer), as if we've lost/repressed the function to do so at our own volition. We mutter under our breath, shout at the TV and scold inanimate objects (our computers), mouth words, berate ourselves, psych ourselves up, and talk in our sleep (maybe). Even though we've internalized private speech, it's still a "crutch" we bring out from time to time. We've only learned to hide it.
The crib speech examples are cute and sound oddly poetic. Someone should use them as lyrics for a folk song. Well, that might be a little weird and creepy, singing about small and big Bob.
Priyanka Reddy 13:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
A couple of people touched on the idea that culture greatly influences a child's mental function, so I thought I would talk about that. I thought this was a really interesting idea. It made me think about how elementary and middle schools initially create a syllabus of everything that a child should be expected to know at the end of each grade, and I assume it's largely based on what they think a child at a particular age is capable of learning. However, reading about the study with the Guatemalan Mayan children made me think, what if all the expected standards are much lower than they could be? This study showed that children are capable of doing better than expected at certain tasks. Instead of using our own tests to test children, it would be really interesting to test them with tests from other cultures. It could give us a lot of insight into what children in other cultures are expected to know at each age, and if that ends up being different, we can learn from those other cultures to help advance learning here.
Brian Tran 16:46, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
I don't know about everyone else, but this article is definitely changing how I raise my kids.
Like Priyanka, I was fascinated by the example with Guatemalan Mayan children. I liked how the article went into detail about how schools in different places of the world select different tasks for children's learning; thus contextualizing children's cognition by culture and institutional practices. In a sense, the way a child developed is dependent on its society. It makes me think about why children from lower income areas generally do worse on standardized exams. The media provides millions of reasons for why this happens, but I am beginning to think that it is because children learn differently (and thus develop differently) at home than middle class students and are thus "thrown into the deep end of the pool" when they enter school that was designed by people that had learned about cognition of children from middle-class families.
I agree with everyone else about the link between private speech repression and stigma. As children, we are taught to "think before you talk." Just like working out a problem, we are to figure out what we want to say before opening our mouths and saying something either offensive or nonsensical. Something I was curious about though is impacts of private speech for bilingual children. I knew only Vietnamese until I was around five years old and I can link my own instances of private speech to my age. For example, statements like "I'm hungry" and "Where's the bathroom?" are played in Vietnamese to myself. However, things from school like "carry the one in addition" or "sound out the word" are played in English. The article discusses the importance of private speech and culture for child development. I wonder how bilingual children develop when dealing with two different thoughts at any time or how they choose which language dominates.
David (Tavi) Nathanson 21:46, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
I was particularly intrigued by the section on "Early Language Environments of Low-Income African American Children." First, it never occurred to me that something as simple as question-asking could have such wide variation across cultures! In the case of these students in Trackton, the differences in question-asking style (between the students' teachers and their families at home) were so great that they resulted in an ability for students to learn effectively!
Second, I always find it strange, when I'm around a parent and his/her young child, to see the parent ask the child "training" questions (such as "Where's the puppy in the picture?"). Such questions are not natural, at least for me, because I am used to asking questions that I don't know the answer to (more in line with the families in Trackton). Thus, I can understand why some cultures would not develop the pattern of asking these training questions. In fact, I find it really intriguing that such training questions are so pervasive in our culture that almost all parents ask them. Does anyone feel natural asking these training questions at first, or does everyone do it simply because that's what everyone else is doing?
