Term
| Lev Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory |
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Definition
| Suggests that society and culture provide a wide variety of concepts and strategies that children gradually begin to use in thinking about and dealing with tasks. |
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Term
| What was Vygotsky's primary focus in his theory? |
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Definition
| He acknowledged that biological factors play a role and that children bring certain dispositions to the situations, but his primary focus was on the role of the environment. |
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Term
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Definition
| Certain basic ways of learning and responding to the environment. |
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Term
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Definition
| Deliberate, focused cognitive processes that enhance learning, memory, and logical reasoning. |
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Term
| How can adults promote mental functions in children? |
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Definition
| Adults share with children the meaning they attach to objects and human experience: in this process, they transform, or mediate, the situation children encounter. |
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Term
| What kind of value did Vygotsky place on independence? |
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Definition
| He saw some value in allowing children to make some discoveries, but he saw more value in having adults pass along the discoveries of previous generations. |
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Term
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Definition
| Tools that are at least partly symbolic or mental in nature which greatly enhances children's thinking abilities. Different cultures pass along different cognitive tools. |
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Term
| What is an important cognitive tool, according to Vygotsky? |
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Definition
Language. Vygotsky proposed that thought and language are distinctly separate functions for infants and young toddlers.
- When language first appears, its first used primarily for communication, rather than thought.
- Around the age of 2, thought and language become intertwined. |
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Term
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Definition
| Private speech, which plays an important role, by talking to themselves, children learn to guide and direct their own behaviors through difficult tasks. |
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Term
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Definition
| Children talk to themselves mentally, rather than aloud. |
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Term
| Where do complex mental processes emerge from? |
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Definition
| They emerge out of social activities; as children develop, they gradually internalize the process they se in social contexts and begin to use them independently. |
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Term
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Definition
| The process through which social activities evolve into internal mental activities. |
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Term
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Definition
| The process of internalizing, but also adapting the ideas and strategies of one's culture for one's own use. |
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Term
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Definition
| is the upper limit of tasks that he/she can perform independently, without help from anyone else. |
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Term
| Level potential development |
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Definition
| is the upper limit of tasks that he/she can perform with the assistance of a more competent individual. |
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Term
| Zone of proximal development (ZPD) |
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Definition
| the range of tasks that children can't yet perform independent but can perform with the help and guidance of others is. |
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Term
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Definition
| tasks that a child can't accomplish even with assistance and support. |
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Term
| How does play allow children to cognitively stretch themselves? |
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Definition
| In play a child always behaves beyond their average age, above his daily behavior, and their behaviors must conform to certain standards and adhere to such restrictions on their behavior. |
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Term
| Common themes of Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories |
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Definition
1. Qualitative changes in the nature of thought: children acquire more complex reasoning over time.
2. Children benefit most from tasks and develop more sophisticated knowledge and though processes when challenged.
3. Readiness:
- Piaget: children can accommodate to new objects only when some assimilation into existing schemas is possible.
- Vygotsky: children's newly forming abilities fall within their ZPD and can be fostered though adult assistance. |
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Term
| To what extent is language essential for learning and cognitive development? |
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Definition
- Piaget: language provides verbal labels for many of the concepts and others schemes children have previously development.
- Vygotsky: language is absolutely critical for learning and cognitive development |
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Term
| What kinds of experiences promote learning and development? |
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Definition
- Piaget: children's independent, self-motivated explorations of the physical world form the basis for many developing schemes and children often construct these schemes with little or no guidance from others.
- Vygotsky: activities that are facilitated and interpreted by more competent individuals |
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Term
| What kinds of social interactions are most valuable? |
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Definition
- Piaget: emphasized the benefits of interactions with peers (who could create conflict).
- Vygotsky: placed greater importance on interactions with adults and other more advanced individuals (who provide support). |
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Term
| When is social interaction with peers beneficial? |
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Definition
| When children's development requires them to abandon old perspectives in favor of new more complex ones, conflict between age-mates is optimal. |
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Term
| When is social interaction with adults beneficial? |
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Definition
| When children's development instead requires that they learn new skills, patient guidance is more often beneficial. |
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Term
| How influential is culture? |
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Definition
- Piaget: didn't address the role.
- Vygotsky: culture is of paramount importance in determining the specific thinking skills children acquire. |
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Term
| Mediated learning experience |
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Definition
| An adult can help a child make sense of the world through a discussion of a phenomenon or event that the two of them are simultaneously experiencing. This process encourages the child to attach labels to the event, recognize principles, and draw certain conclusions. |
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Definition
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| Peer-group discussions that can help children make sense of a situation. |
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Definition
| A variety of supportive techniques that can help students accomplish challenging tasks in instructional contexts. |
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Term
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Definition
| Children's involvement in adult activities is mediated. scaffolded, and supervised which helps children tie newly acquired skills and thinking abilities to the specific contexts in which those skills are apt to be useful. |
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Term
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Definition
an intensive form of guided participation, in which a novice works with an expert mentor for a lengthy period to learn how to perform complex tasks within a particular domain.
- The mentor gradually removes scaffold and gives the novice more responsibility as competence increases. |
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Term
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Definition
| an apprenticeship can show novices how expert typically think about a task or activity. |
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Term
| What are some features of apprenticeship? |
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Definition
1. Modeling
2. Coaching
3. Articulation
4. Reflection
5. Increasing complexity of tasks
6. Exploration |
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Term
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Definition
A way to assess children's level of potential development.
1. Identify tasks that children cannot initially do independently.
2. Providing in-depth instruction and practice in behaviors and cognitive processes related to the task.
3. Determining the extent to which each child has benefited from the instruction. |
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Term
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Definition
| For two people to interact and communicate, they must have shared understanding on which to build: mutual understanding. |
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Term
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Definition
| the pair monitor the other's attention to the object and coordinating their behaviors toward the object. |
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Term
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Definition
| looking at someone else for clues about how to respond to or feel about a particular object or event. |
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Term
| Co-constructed narratives |
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Definition
| parents begin to engage them in conversations about past events, helping them construct the narratives, which can help children make sense of an event and apply labels to it. |
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Term
| Situation learning/cognition |
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Definition
| cognitive theorists propose that a good deal of learning and thinking is context specific, meaning it's situated in the environment in which it initially tasks place and the skills developed in that environment won't necessarily be used in other contexts. |
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Term
| Distributed cognition/intelligence |
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Definition
| People can often think and learn more effectively when they offload some of the cognitive burden onto something else or someone else. |
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Term
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Definition
| one's immediate physical context and bodily reactions to it. |
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Term
| What role does culture play? |
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Definition
| Our culture passes along key concepts, symbols, and visual representations that can help growing children interpret, organize, and successfully deal with the physical and social worlds in which they live. |
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Term
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Definition
| tasks identical or similar to those that children will eventually encounter in the outside world. |
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Term
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Definition
| students acquire new knowledge and skills as they work on complex problems or projects similar to those they might find in the outside world. |
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Term
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Definition
| Projects that directly or indirectly enhance the quality of life in the outside world. |
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Term
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Definition
| Students spread the learning task across many minds and can draw on multiple knowledge bases and ideas. |
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Term
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Definition
1. Students must clarify and organize heir ideas in such a way that they can explain it to others.
2. Students elaborate on what they've learned which may help others.
3. Students are exposed to the views of others.
4. Students can model effective ways of thinking about and studying a particular subject.
5. Students can also gain practice in argumentation skills. |
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Term
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Definition
1. Students may have insufficient expertise to tackle a task or problem without adult assistance.
2. Students of high social status may dominate discussions.
3. Students may become annoyed or frustrated and begin to "tune out".
4. Students may pass along misconceptions. |
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Term
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Definition
a classroom teacher and several students meet in a group to read a section of text, stop periodically to discuss what they're reading.
1. Summarizing
2. Questioning
3. Clarifying
4. Predicting |
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Term
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Definition
| students work in small groups to achieve a common goal, they vary in duration (depending on the task to be accomplished). |
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Term
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Definition
| Cooperative groups that last an entire semester or school year. |
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Term
| Advocated and Disagreers of cooperative groups |
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Definition
- Advocates suggest that groups be heterogenous.
- Disagreers: heterogeneity makes ability differences among students obvious and discourages low-ability students. |
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Term
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Definition
| New information is divided equally among all group member, and each student must each his or her portion to the group members. |
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Term
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Definition
| students work in pairs to read and study expository text. |
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Term
| Guided peer questioning or elaborative interrogation |
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Definition
| Students pairs are given a structure that encourages them to ask one another higher-level questions about classroom material. |
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Term
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Definition
| students who have mastered a topic teach those who haven't. |
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Term
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Definition
| a sense that teacher and students have shared goals, respect and support one another's efforts, and believe that everyone makes an important contribution to classroom learning. |
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Term
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Definition
| in which teacher and students collaborate to build a body of knowledge about a topic and help one another learn about it. |
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Term
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Definition
| authentically advancing the frontiers of the group's knowledge about a topic. |
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Term
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Definition
| theories, models, and other cognitive tools that can be used to evaluate and possibly modify over time. |
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Term
| Communities of learners: weaknesses |
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Definition
1. Students learn is limited to the knowledge that they themselves acquire and share with one another.
2. Students may occasionally pass their misconceptions on to classmates. |
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