Learning Relationships in the Classroom

Dorothy Faulkner, Karen Littleton, Martin Woodhead, Dorothy Faulkner, Karen Littleton, Martin Woodhead

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138161504
• eBook ISBN: 9781136223372
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

This reader explores the nature of interactions between children and their teachers in the classroom. It emphasises the importance of such relationships for children's learning and for educational practice.
Part 1 looks at different cultural conceptions of the teacher-learner relationship, and how this relates to schooling, cognitive development and the aquisition of knowledge.
Part 2 takes a closer look at the role of language and dialogue in interactions between adults and children in classrooms.
Part 3 describes research by developmental psychologists on peer interaction and collaborative learning, and discusses how it has advanced our understanding of how children learn from each other.
Part 4 considers the implications of classroom-based collaborative learning initiatives and the potential for creating 'communities of enquiry' which change how we think about knowledge acquisition.

Part I

Cultural Psychology

A framework for understanding teaching and learning

Chapter 1

L.S. Vygotsky and contemporary developmental psychology*

James V. Wertsch and Peeter Tulviste

Over the past decade there has been a major upsurge of interest in the ideas of Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896–1934)….

Our goal in this chapter is to review a few of Vygotsky’s ideas that have particular relevance for contemporary developmental psychology and to see how these ideas can be extended in light of recent theoretical advances in the social sciences and humanities. Our discussion focuses primarily on two points in Vygotsky’s theoretical approach: his claim about the social origins and social nature of higher (i.e., uniquely human) mental functioning and his uses of culture. In examining these points we also touch on his use of a developmental method and on his distinction between elementary and higher mental functioning.

Social origins of individual mental functioning

Perhaps the major reason for Vygotsky’s current appeal in the West is his analysis of the social origins of mental processes. This is a theme that has reemerged with considerable force in Western developmental psychology over the past twenty years or so, and Vygotsky’s ideas have come to play an important role in this movement.

In Vygotsky’s view, mental functioning in the individual can be understood only by examining the social and cultural processes from which it derives. This involves an analytical strategy that may appear to some to be paradoxical at first glance. Namely, it calls on the investigator to begin the analysis of mental functioning in the individual by going outside the individual. As one of Vygotsky’s students and colleagues, A.R. Luria, put it:

In order to explain the highly complex forms of human consciousness one must go beyond the human organism. One must seek the origins of conscious activity … in the external processes of social life, in the social and historical forms of human existence.

(1981, p. 25)

This view stands in marked contrast to the strong individualistic assumptions that underlie the bulk of contemporary Western research in psychology (see Sarason, 1981, for a critique of these assumptions).

Vygotsky’s claims about the analytic priority to be given to social processes were in evidence throughout his career as a psychologist (basically the decade before his death from tuberculosis in 1934). For example, in one of his first articles from this period he asserted that “the social dimension of consciousness is primary in time and in fact. The individual dimension of consciousness is derivative and secondary” (Vygotsky, 1979, p. 30)….

Perhaps the most useful general formulation of Vygotsky’s claims about the social origins of individual mental functioning can be found in his “general genetic law of cultural development.”

Any function in the child’s cultural development appears twice, or on two planes. First it appears on the social plane, and then on the psychological plane. First it appears between people as an interpsychological category, and then within the child as an intrapsychological category. This is equally true with regard to voluntary attention, logical memory, the formation of concepts, and the development of volition…. [I]t goes without saying that internalization transforms the process itself and changes its structure and functions. Social relations or relations among people genetically underlie all higher functions and their relationships.

(Vygotsky, 1981a, p. 163)

There are several aspects of this statement worth noting. The first is that the notion of mental functioning it presupposes differs from that which is typically assumed in contemporary Western psychology. Instead of beginning with the assumption that mental functioning occurs first and foremost, if not only, within the individual, it assumes that one can speak equally appropriately of mental processes as occurring between people on the intermental plane.¹ Indeed, it gives analytic priority to such intermental functioning in that intramental functioning is viewed as being derivative, as emerging through the mastery and internalization of social processes.

This fundamental difference in orientation is clearly manifested in how terms are used. In contemporary usage terms such as cognition, memory, and attention are automatically assumed to apply exclusively to the individual. In order to use these terms when speaking of processes carried out on the social plane, we must attach some modifier. This is the source of recent terms such as socially shared cognition (Resnick, Levine, and Behrend, 1991), socially distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1991), and collective memory (Middleton, 1987). The need to use modifiers such as “socially shared” reflects the derivative, or nonbasic, status that mental functioning carried out on the social plane is assumed to have in contemporary paradigms.

In contrast to traditions in which individualistic assumptions are built into the very terms used to discuss psychological phenomena, Vygotsky’s view was based in his claims about the social origins and “quasi-social nature” (Vygotsky, 1981a, p. 164) of intramental functioning. This orientation reflects an implicit rejection of the primacy given by individual functioning and the seemingly neat distinction between social and individual processes that characterize many contemporary approaches in psychology. In contrast to such approaches, Vygotsky viewed mental functioning as a kind of action (Wertsch, 1991) that may be carried out by individuals or by dyads and larger groups. Much like that of authors such as Bateson (1972) and Geertz (1973), therefore, this view is one in which mind is understood as “extending beyond skin.” Mind, cognition, memory, and so forth are understood not as attributes or properties of the individual, but as functions that may be carried out intermentally or intramentally

Vygotsky’s claims about the social origins of individual mental functioning surface in many ways throughout his writings. Two issues that have taken on particular importance in contemporary developmental psychology in the West are the “zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky, 1978, 1987) and “egocentric” and “inner speech” (Vygotsky, 1978, 1987). Each of these phenomena has taken on a sort of life of its own in the contemporary developmental literature, but from a Vygotskian perspective it is essential to remember how they are situated in an overall theoretical framework. In particular, it is important to remember that they are specific instances of more general claims about the social origins of individual mental functioning.

The zone of proximal development has recently received a great deal of attention in the West (e.g., Brown and Ferrara, 1985; Brown and French, 1979; Cole 1985; Rogoff, 1990; Rogoff and Wertsch, 1984; Tharp and Gallimore, 1988). This zone is defined as the distance between a child’s “actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving” and the higher level of “potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86).

Vygotsky examined the implications of the zone of proximal development for the organization of instruction and for the assessment of intelligence. With regard to the former he argued that instruction should be tied more closely to the level of potential development than to the level of actual development: with regard to the latter he argued that measuring the level of potential development is just as important as the actual developmental level. He used the following example to illustrate his ideas about assessment:

Imagine that we have examined two children and have determined that the mental age of both is seven years. This means that both children solve tasks accessible to seven-year-olds. However, when we attempt to push these children further in carrying out the tests, there turns out to be an essential difference between them. With the help of leading questions, examples, and demonstrations, one of them easily solves test items taken from two years above the child’s level of [actual] development. The other solves test items that are only a half-year above his or her level of [actual] development.

(Vygotsky, 1956, pp. 446–447)

Given this set of circumstances, Vygotsky (1956, p. 447) went on to pose the question, “Is the mental development of these two children the same?” In his view it was not:

From the point of view of their independent activity they are equivalent, but from the point of view of their immediate potential development they are sharply different. That which the child turns out to be able to do with the help of an adult points us towards the zone of the child’s proximal development. This means that, with the help of this method, we can take stock not only of today’s completed process of development, not only the cycles that are already concluded and done, not only the processes of maturation that are completed; we can also take stock of processes that are now in the state of coming into being, that are only ripening, or only developing.

(Vygotsky, 1956, pp. 447–448)

In such analyses, it is essential to keep in mind that the actual and potential levels of development correspond with intramental and intermental functioning, respectively. By doing so one can avoid the temptation to view the zone of proximal development simply as formulation for improving the assessment of individual mental functioning. Instead, it can be seen as having powerful implications for how one can change intermental, and hence intramental, functioning. This has been the key to intervention programs such as the “reciprocal teaching” outlined by Palincsar and Brown (1984, 1988).

As in the case of the zone of proximal development, Vygotsky’s account of egocentric and inner speech reflects his more general concern with the sociocultural origins of individual mental functioning and has given rise to a spate of recent research (e.g., Berk, 1986; Berk and Garvin, 1984; Bivens and Berk, 1990; Bivens and Hagstrom, 1992; Diaz and Berk, 1992; Emerson, 1983; Kohlberg, Yaeger, and Hjertholm, 1968; Wertsch, 1979a, 1979b, 1985. Vygotsky claimed that inner speech enables humans to plan and regulate their action and derives from previous participation in verbal social interaction. Egocentric speech is “a [speech] form found in the transition from external to inner speech” (Vygotsky, 1934, p. 46). The appearance of egocentric speech, roughly at the age of 3, reflects the emergence of a new self-regulative function similar to that of inner speech. Its external form reflects the fact that the child has not fully differentiated this new speech function from the function of social contact and social interaction.

As was the case in his account of the zone of proximal development Vygotsky’s treatment of egocentric and inner speech is grounded in the assumptions spelled out in his general genetic law of cultural development. This is reflected at several points in his treatment. For example, let us turn once again to the terminology involved. Why did Vygotsky formulate his claims in terms of inner speech rather than in terms of thinking, mental processes, or some other commonly used label? The answer to this question lies in the assumptions about the social origins and quasi-social nature of intramental functioning. As was the case for other theorists in his milieu (e.g., Potebnya, 1922), Vygotsky’s use of the term speech here reflects the fact that he viewed individual mental functioning as deriving essentially from the mastery and internalization of social processes.

Vygotsky’s emphasis on the social origins of individual mental processes in this case emerges quite clearly in his analysis of the functions of language. He argued that “a sign is always originally a means used for social purposes, a means of influencing others, and only later becomes a means of influencing oneself” (Vygotsky, 1981a, p. 157). And focusing more specifically on the sign system of language, he argued that “the primary function of speech, both for the adult and for the child, is the function of communication, social contact, influencing surrounding individuals” (Vygotsky, 1934, p. 45). With regard to egocentric and inner speech Vygotsky argued that because these forms derive from “communication, social contact, influencing surrounding individuals,” it follows that they should reflect certain properties of their intermental precursors, properties such as a dialogic structure. This is precisely what he seems to have had in mind when he asserted that “egocentric speech … grows out of its social foundations by means of transferring social, collaborative forms of behavior to the sphere of the individual’s psychological functioning” (Vygotsky, 1934, p. 45). Explications and extensions of this basic argument of how social, dialogic properties of speech characterize inner speech have been made by scholars such as Bibler (1975, 1981), Emerson (1983), and Wertsch (1980, 1985, 1991).

The role of a developmental method

A second theme in Vygotsky’s work that has made it attractive to contemporary Western psychology is his use of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Introduction
• Part I: Cultural psychology: a framework for understanding teaching and learning
• Part II: Teaching and learning: scaffolding and the zone of proximal development
• Part III: Experimental studies of collaborative learning and peer interaction
• Part IV: Collaborative learning and peer interaction in the classroom
• Index