So, to get started, I will start with the background of
Vygotsky’s life- because I think this is why we had Piaget as the “gold”
standard for as long as we did in education. Vygotsky is a Russian psychologist
and his prime time for writing and publishing was during the Marxist period and
while it was a very intellectual environment, it was an environment where they
were focused in the means of production and he was focusing on thought and
cognition- this seemingly did not mesh well with the theories the Marxists had
in mind because his theories were pretty well buried for many years –
especially in the US. This really is unfortunate because I personally believe
that his theories are much more realistic for education than some of the other psychologists
that I have read from. Going off of this, Vygotsky has several main
themes/ideas throughout his work. He says we have tools that are symbols and
signs from where all thought arises. One example of thought is language that we
use to express ourselves. Vygotsky also studied speech. For instance, when we
learn speech and use symbols this leads us to think because language=thought
and thought=language. No more than me typing this right now, I am using my
tools of writing to see what my thoughts actually are on the topic. This begs
the question: what thoughts does speech promote? Perception, attention,
categorizing, discriminating among ideas, and memory. We talked in class about
how perception also has a lot to do with our own experiences- like how a tribe
in Africa only has color words for light and dark, or an Inuit tribe has twenty
something different words for snow. These are just two examples of how
perception shapes the symbols we use- even language! Our development hinges
upon experiences and thus the tools and symbols we use relate back to what we
have surrounding us.
We then went on to talk about what tools go with print:
things like cross-indexing, logical, linear, sequential, and abstract. These
things are the tools that help us meet with the world. They help us to shape
thought in a written format. These things are related but not exactly the same
that relate to speech. It is a bit different of a process, but still ways to
figure out what we think.
We then talked about all of the different book topics that
were really important in Mind in Society.
Some of the more important topics that we talked about and used for making our
Vygotsky maps are things like: symbols and speech, tools, Zone of Proximal
Development, the role of others (experts), play, nature and nurture
interacting, internalization, and higher psychological thinking. So we started
looking at the ZPD and we talked about how up until you get to the Zone, there
is nothing, just the possibilities and readiness to learn. With help and
modeling you get into the Zone and then you come out the other side to do it
independently. Vygtosky says this is not biology the ZPD process is readiness
and culture. He says play=learning and learning=play. Play is using what you
know to experiment and manipulate your tools to learn and find out what the
“rules” are. Like in little kids playing house- they say things like “Dad does
that not Mom or Mommy does the cooking” they are playing to understand they way
the world works. I had never thought about play in that way before, I never
really thought about the WHY behind kids needing to play.
The next thing we did in class was we wrote our next design principal,
which is the learning principal. It reads: “Good learning designs engage
students in social play activities at the edge of their knowledge and
understanding using symbolic tools to develop and internalize meaningful
thought.” I think this phrase basically just sums up all of what I said in the
past 500 words in a matter of a sentence, which is really impressive. It talks
about the relationship between play activities advancing knowledge and
learning, and it also talks about using tools to get to higher order thinking
and meaningful thought. This is literally the crux of what we talked about for
the past two weeks while studying Vygotsky.
So, my personal takeaway from this whole topic is that kids are given specific tools like language and play to express themselves.This is
not magic or biology, it is wholly dependent upon their own personal
development. This is why some kids talk early and some talk later in the
development process. It also makes sense why play is so important to kids. They
are not just merely playing, they are thinking, processing, and using higher
order thinking to figure out what they know. I think that as educators, we also
need to apply this to what we do. We need to let the kids play with the
information that we are giving them. Making them do things solo and without the
exchange of the tool of language between themselves can literally stunt their
development. I personally will be thinking about this as I go on and make sure
to include play among the other activities I have my kids do. Basically, we cannot separate learning from speech or play. We speak and play to learn and we learn while playing and talking to share ideas. Really, it makes sense when you think about it. It's why we talk to ourselves when we are making a new recipe. It's why little kids babble at the end of their day- we talk to make sense of the world around us. We play to learn new things! It literally is the most basic idea in the world when you put it that way, but it really is not something we often think about. Three cheers to Vygotsky for making me realize some of what IS actually going on in the minds of the kiddos I teach! (Pictures above are: play, talk, learn!)
I think that one of my biggest takeaways from this week's design principle is the part where it says at the edge of their knowledge and understanding. It wastes time and creates frustration "teaching" students what they are already capable of doing independently. And on the flip side of that, it also wastes time and frustrates to try to cram something into them that is beyond their zpd. If they are not ready to learn it yet, then trying to teach it is anything but play time. :-)
ReplyDeletePart of what I find so valuable about reading others’ blogs is that I am exposed to another perspective or way of explaining what we read and learned about in class. Your summary of Vygotsky – especially of his theory of the relationship between speech, perception, attention, and thought – refined my own understanding of his work. And I was pretty shaky on it. Many thanks for helping to shape my thoughts with a written format! And I heartily agree with you when you talk about the importance of including play in learning designs. So often, play is considered a 4-letter word – administrators and others think of play as running wildly around with no focus or purpose beyond running wildly around (not that there is anything wrong with that!). Those I will call the “anti-play” contingent have no idea about (or choose to ignore) the developmental nature of play and its role in academic learning (a distinction that we make but that I don’t really like since learning is learning and all learning acts as a building block for subsequent learning, IMHO). And so the aspects of play that may help students internalize concepts are ignored and play is viewed as a physical rather than a mental activity and benefit. Whenever I visit a classroom where housekeeping and blocks and dress-up have been banished, I think how glad I am that my kids had the opportunity to learn in a “traditional” kindergarten classroom with a teacher that valued play and understood its role in learning. It’s where my kids learned to love school – because play was seen as their work.
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