Day 12: Knowing and Learning
Lot-sa Vygotsky
Today
http://128.83.243.140/utclasses/knl2003fa
ll/knl2003.htm
• Student responses are now posted
• Go to 12 in-class and enter 4 digits,
answer question
• Wait until later to go to in-class activity
Why do we talk to ourselves?
Contributions of Vygotsky
• What is the relation between
THOUGHT and LANGUAGE?
Contributions of Vygotsky
• Collabortive learning
• Role of Tools and Symbols
Using to negotiate meaning or
make sense
• Culture/Social central and
changes/develops
Piaget and Vygotsky
• Behaviorism - We all live in the same world and
this world shapes behavior. (Know what we see).
We can shape behavior better (more efficiently).
Change comes from outside
• Piaget and Vygotsky - We don’t live in the same
world. We see what we know.
• So, How do we change? - Both say have to
change from within.
– Piaget in relation to experience
– Vygotsky experience too, but with language mediating
– (Both have a sense of changing tires while moving …)
Piaget and Vygotsky
• Evolution/Development Happens
• Vehicles of Change
– Piaget - Structures of Thought (e.g., conservation)
– Vygotsky
• Language and Tools
• Language as Tool
• Social/Cultural/Historical
• Cause
– Piaget - Disequilibrium
– Vygotsky - Desire to say something (make meaning)
Tools including Symbols
• A way to talk to yourself
– Tools start off external and then get turned around ->
inward (stick to extend reach -> idea of extension)
– Symbols about the world and then turned inward
• In a group (talk to ourselves)
– How meaning is made
– And this allows one to say (know)
• Collaborative Learning
What changed?
• Genotype from 1769 until now is
overwhelmingly the same
• Can a society get smarter (basics for the
elite to basics for all, can calculus be far
behind?)
• Maybe the evolution at this “level” is
different (at least in time scale)
Culture Improves one’s
Psychological Functions
• In the historical evolution of language, the very
structure of meaning and its psychological
nature also changes.
• The relation of thought to word is not a thing
but a process - a continual movement from
thought to word and from word to thought.
(change within)
• Social development and thinking ability linked
Play with Words/Tools
• To grasp structure - Introduce new
words/tools and let them play with them
• You’ll know because of what they can SAY
• Allow kids to “talk”
• ZPD -->
Contributions of Vygotsky
• ZPD
• The “difference between the child’s actual level of
development and the level of performance that he
achieves in collaboration with the adult.”
• Now “more knowledgable”, not necessarily “the
adult”
Collaborative Learning
• “… in collaboration the child can always do more than he
can independently”
• “… a central feature for the psychological study of
instruction is the analysis of the child’s potential to raise
himself to a higher intellectual level of development
through collaboration, to move from what he has to what
he does not have through imitation”
• “… what the child is able to do in collaboration today he is
able to do independently tomorrow”
Formation of Scientific Concepts
• “… the child’s spontaneous and scientific
concepts can be schematically represented as two
lines moving in opposite directions.”
• “… the child’s spontaneous concepts develop
from below to above, from the more elementary
and lower characteristics to the higher, while his
scientific concepts develop from above to below.”
• “… from the thing to the concept” vs. “the
opposite” (to abstract vs. to instantiate)
“Imitation”
• Not “automatically and mechanically as
meaningless habit”
• “The resolution of a problem is learned suddenly - once and forever. It does not require repetition.”
[not “training”]
• “The solution is attained as a consequence of
grasping the structure of the field.” (p. 210)
• What is the role of the teacher?
Both Emphasize Adaptation
Piaget
Vygotsky
person
Movement
From specific
To general
Assimilation
Requries dev.
Movement
General to specific
(Flower --> Rose)
Instruction
Ahead of dev.
(internalization)
VYGOTSKY
• Culture
• Language
• Meaning made
• Cooperation
(learn more;
ZPD)
• Tools
(intellectual &
physical)
Look for in video
• Three columns
• Column 1 (L1) - Social interacting with
Content
• Column 2 (L2) - Talking, negotiating
meaning/action - GENERAL to SPECIFIC
• Colum 2 (L3) - Tool important (couldn’t’
do with out cultural [graph] or physical
tool)
How do we design
for collaboration
or group learning?
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As learning progresses, the child's own language comes to serve as
her primary tool of intellectual adaptation. Eventually, children can use
internal language to direct their own behavior.
11.Internalization refers to the process of learning--and thereby
internalizing--a rich body of knowledge and tools of thought that first
exist outside the child. This happens primarily through language.12.
much of what a child learns comes form the culture around her and
much of the child's problem solving is mediated
Culture matters: Interactions with surrounding culture and social
agents,
7.Language is a primary form of interaction through which adults
transmit to the child the rich body of knowledge that exists in the
culture.8.9.As learning progresses, the child's own language comes to
serve as her primary tool of intellectual adaptation. Eventually, children
can use internal language to direct their own behavior.
Internalize