1. Constructivism, Social learning, and vygotsky

2. Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) Of Russian origin
Never saw his ides being acclaimed or accepted
Political environment: shortly after the Russian Revolution in 1917
New philosophy (Marxism) stressed socialism and collectivism, sacrifing private goals over the national goals
Died at the age of 37

4. The teacher must adopt the role of facilitator not content provider
The teacher must adopt the role of facilitator not content provider. [the role of the teacher]
What a child can do today with assistance, she will be able to do by herself tomorrow. [ZPD]
By giving our students practice in talking with others, we give them frames for thinking on their own. [interaction/ culture/ collaboration]

5. The true direction of the development of thinking is not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual. [culture shapes an individual]
In play, the child is always behaving beyond his age, above his usual everyday behaviour; in play he is, as it were, a head above himself. Play contains in a concentrated form, as in the focus of a magnifying glass, all developmental tendencies; it is as if the child tries to jump above his usual level.

6. The child begins to perceive the world not only through his [or her] eyes but also through his [or her] speech. [language as a tool]
Language is the tool of the tools.
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. [scaffolding and guiding]

7. Sociocultural Approach
Individual’s development is a product of his/her culture
Mental development (thought, language, reasoning processes) occurs when interacting with others
Representation of the shared knowledge of the culture
Piaget claimed that the devepomental patterns in children across the globe are universal, Vygotsky – that they are culture-based.
Conflict Nature vs. Nurture

8. Culture Culture teaches children how to think and what to think.
Children learn from their previous knowledge and culture around them.
Children learn from the thinking processes from their culture. They observe and adapt the thinking processes that adults manifest.

9. Nature vs. Nurture
Locke & Rousseau: pure environmental models of child development
Hall & Gesell: it’s about nature
Modern debate is far more complex (Plomin & McClearn, 1993)
Child A hits the child B when fighting over a toy. Are reasons for such behaviour a biological reaction based on anger or frustration, or the child A is acting in a way which he/she have seen before?[nature vs. nurture]

10. Nature vs. Nurture Boys having more space-awareness
Nature: brain structure differs form girls’
Boys tend to get more encouragement than girls to play/do spacial activities
Boys innately prefer activities involving spacial tasks

11. Nature vs. Nurture Heredity vs. Environment Maturation vs. Learning
Emergent abilities vs. Acquired skills

12. Continuity vs. Discontinuity
Continuity : Is development smooth and stable, are new abilities gradually added at a relatively uniform pace?
Discontinuity: Development occurs at different rates alternating between periods of little change and periods of abrupt, rapid change?

13. Continuity
Human behaviour consists of many individual skills that are added one at a time, usually through learning and experience. Children combine and recombine the skills to produce more complex structures.

14. Discontinuity
Development is guided primarily by internal biological factors.
Unevennsess of children’s development: relatively stable periods are followed by abrupt changes. It reflects the discontinuous nature of the changes taking place in the body and brain of a child becoming an teenager.

15. It is not all-or-nothing
Psychologists say that some developmental processes are more accurately described by one model and other by the competing one. (Ruttler, 1987)

16. Dialectical process
Children learn through shared problem solving with someone else (a parent, a teacher, a friend). (Rogoff, 1998)
The responsibility shifts partly and then completely to the child.
Language plays a central role in this process.
It describes ad transmits to children the richness of knowledge.
It also provides the means to direct theirs own behaviour.
The transfer of control is called INTERNALISATION (Cox & Lightfoot, 1997)

17. Remember when we…?
Children of elaborative parents are more likely to approximate an adultlike narrative style, marked by clear temporal and causal relations and (…) contextual information.
In general, children who engage in such conversations (…) seem to be learning not only what to remember but how to organise and communicate their memories of the past.
Gradually shifting the responsibility from the parents to the child. (Vygotsky)

18. Remember when we…?
Vygotsky suggests that interactions with more competent peers contributes to children’s intellectual development.
Benefits form peer teaching have been shown in experimental studies of problem solving. (Forman, 1992; Phelps & Damon, 1991)

19. Early Social Development
Ethologists claim that evolution provided babies with mechanisms that keep the caregiver close. Pure biology.
Social-learning theorists favour a less biological explanation. They assume that mother-infant attachment responses result from social-learning processes. The infant and the caregiver (mother) are providing consequences for the other’s behaviour.

20. ?

21. Concept of self
Autobiograohical memory: children’s memories of the past events and personal experiences.
Children build it through interactions with the parents.
About 2,5 year old children begin ti coconstruct autobiographical narratives with the parents.
Responsibility and control shift.

22. Private speech
Children talk to themselves as they solve problems. (Vygotsky, 1934/1962)
Piaget labeled that ‘self-directed behaviour’.
Also, that it is ‘egocentric speech’.
He believed that it’s minimally relevant to children’s cognitive development and self-regulation. (Hodapp & Goldfield, 1985)

23. Private speech Vygotsky believed quite the opposite.
He said that children’s private speech mirrors the utterances that children have experienced or heard.
Children begin to use their parents’ instructional comments to direct their own behaviour.
Gradually the controlling speech becomes internalised as though and children begin to produce silent statements similar to the verbal ones.
It’s called SOCIOGENESIS. (van der Veer & Valsiner, 1988)

24. Private speech
Private speech as a way of helping myself out when the parent isn’t around? A kind of transitional object? A security/transitional object can give a child both emotional and tangible comfort, The object reminds them of the parents; therefore, it calms them by giving them a peace.

25. Classroom Success and Social Interaction
Empirical evidence supports the idea that classroom success is closely linked with the interpersonal skills of the learner.
Two way relationship with the teacher
Two way relationship with peers

26. Social and emotional aspects of learning (SEAL)
The Teacher Skillstreaming Checklist
SEAL
Every Child Matters
Children Act
No Child Left Behind
USA, Australia, UK
CASEL Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning
It is more generally accepted that social and emotional well-being is important to overall success of the pupil in terms of the nonacademic outcomes.

27. The teacher- “What was wrong with him/her?”
3 Areas:
Teacher involvement (care, liking, trust)
Teacher regulation (rules, expectations, enforcement)
Teacher support for autonomy (choice and decision)
Teacher as a support: providing a safe context and a secure framework
Teacher as a prompt: using questions to redirect the learner
Teacher as a critical listener and provider of feedback
Teacher as a simplifier

28. The teacher- what was wrong with him/her?
Teacher as a motivator
Teacher as a highlighter
Teacher as a model
Respects autonomy

29. Strategies of a constructivist teacher
Have a look at the text, chapter 5, p
KWL grid
Multimedia (social media, innovative databases which are basis for conversation/cooperation)
Working in pairs
Cross-curriculum collaboration (Scotland) culum/interdisciplinarylearning/index.asp , literacy across learning
5 characteristics of collaboration: positive interdependence, promotive interaction, individual accountability, interpersonal skills, common goal,