Reflective learning response 1
There are a number of ways as a teacher that I can use Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory within the classroom to enhance student’s learning and development. Vygotsky’s main idea was that learning and development should be a social collaborative activity and through scaffolding the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) this learning can and will be achieved (Bodrova & Leong, 2007).
The interaction between children is just as crucial as interactions children have with adults or teachers. It is important for students in their own mind, to build a solid understanding of all content areas (Berk, 2013). Therefore, by supporting collaborative activities in my classroom, I will enhance the learning environment by having planned group activities with children at different levels who can help and learn from each other. As I teach through cooperative learning, I will be touching upon Vygotsky’s concept of the ZPD.
The ZPD is the point where a child alone may find a task impossible, but with the support of someone more skilled, the task becomes achievable (Fellowes & Oakley, 2010, p. 235). ZPD can guide my teaching of the curriculum and lesson planning in that a child’s knowledge is not black or white, it is not that they simply know it or they do not. There are many grey areas in a child’s knowledge because they experience different things which give them a foundation of knowledge, leaving them ready to accomplish the task with the help of suitable support (Daniels, 2012, pp. 5-23). Having resources such as computers, access to internet, dictionaries, encyclopedia’s and other books in my classroom can sometimes be all the support they need. Other times, students may need me as a teacher to simplify the problem an...
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...iology. Retrieved from http://www.eblib.com
Fellowes, J., & Oakley, G. (2010). Language, Literacy and Early Childhood Education. South Melbourne, Victoria: Oxford University Press.
Lane, K. A. (2012). Visual attention in children. Thorofare New Jersey: SLACK.
Marsh, C. J. (2010). Becoming a teacher: Knowledge, skills and issues (5th ed.). Frenchs Forrest, New South Wales: Pearson Australia.
Schwartz, M., & Day, R. H. (1979). Visual shape perception in early infancy. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press For The Society For Research In Child Development.
Washington Post. (2014). Physical activity may help kids do better in school, studies say. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/physical-activity-may-help-kids-do-better-in-school-studies-say/2013/10/21/e7f86306-2b87-11e3-97a3-ff2758228523_story.html [Accessed: 21 Mar 2014].
This reading reminded me about how Vygotsky’s theory is mostly based on the interactions and influences help children to learn. I really do believe this theory is very accurate, because students can learn from each other. If a teacher is having trouble explaining a complex topic to a student, another student can explain it in more relatable way. Also, I was fascinated when I read about what cultural tools, were and how they related to Vygotsky’s beliefs. Learning about what cultural tools were, helped me to broaden my understanding of how crucial cultural tools are to student’s learning process. Also, the chapter did a great job of elaborating on how these tools can help to advance and grow in the understanding of student’s thinking process. Another aspect of this reading that interested me was the elaboration on private speech and the Zone of Proximal Development. Each of the definitions displayed help me to advance my own thinking on what it was and how it is used in regards to the education of students. The description of what private speech and how it is basically the inner narration of their thinking process helped me to understand how this aspect can help with students learning. Also, the Zone of Proximal Development helped me to make a connection to both what is and how it relates to private speech as well. The Zone of proximal development plays a crucial role in the
Marsh, C. (2010). Becoming a teacher: Knowledge, skills and issues. 5th Ed. Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson.
In considering Lev Vygotsky’s learning theories and thinking about their implications in my own future teaching as an early childhood and primary teacher, I know that Vygotsky’s connections between social interaction and cognitive development give a strong argument against the industrial methods of schooling we can see in the classroom today. My feelings as a teacher about how I want my classroom to work and how I see my role and involvement in my students’ learning mesh well with Vygotsky’s theory, especially with regard to providing meaningful, social learning experiences. I plan to work hard to apply his theories in my classroom.
Jones Diaz, C. (2007). Literacy as social practice. In L. Makin, C. Jones Diaz & L. McLachlan (Eds.), Literacies in childhood: Changing views, challenging practice. (pp. 203-216).Marrickville, NSW: Elsevier.
Sociocultural theory was introduced by the psychologist Lev Vygotsky, a contemporary of Sigmund Freud and B.F. Skinner. Vygotsky believed that parents, caregivers and the culture at large were responsible for a child's cognitive development, especially in regards to the development of higher order functions. From this perspective, when children are participating in an activity with a peer, caregiver or parent, their actions are based upon the environment in which they learned to navigate social relationships. As children age, their personalities and capacities are further developed by their interactions in a particular society, determined by cultural and historical events. A sociocultural perspective would be utilized in a situation in which
Marsh, C.J. (2010). Becoming a teacher: Knowledge, skills and issues. Frenchs Forest, Sydney, NSW: Pearson Australia
Baillargeon, R., & Graber, M. (1987). Where’s the rabbit? 5.5 month-old infants’ representation of the height of a hidden object. Cognitive Development, 2, 375-392.
Furthermore, Vygotsky declares that knowledge is constructed by social interactions with people who surround the child. The author also presents the concept of “zone of proximal development” as the distance between what children do without any supervision and what they are not able to achieve unless a more knowledgeable person guides them through it. In other words, the zone of proximal development refers to activities children cannot do, though they manage to fulfill with certain level of difficulty by following their better skilled fellows' suitable guidance. In the educational field, teachers play an essential role on their learners’ developmental process. Educators serve as models and provide a vast range of learning opportunities that enable their students reach their next level of development and become more autonomous each
Bandura’s social cognitive theory, relates to the way Student A acts. Bandura’s theory focuses on observational learning like imitating and modeling, which Student A does through out the days I have observed. When the teacher teaches her how to say a word, student A imitates the lip movement and sounds the teacher makes. “People acquire a wide range of behaviors, thought, and feelings through observing others’ behaviors and that these observations form an important part of children’s development” (Santrock, 2010, p. 31). As I observed Student A, I saw how she always focused on what the teacher was doing, she would do exactly what the teacher was doing, on my fourth observation, when they were doing math, student A was doing exactly
The period of childhood is the most significant in the establishment of human beings as mature, independent and socially active people. Thus, no wonder that children 's psychological development was thoroughly studied by such psychologists as Piaget, Freud, Vygotsky and many more. All of them have seen their own principles of development and pointed the key topics and elements that influenced the most. Why is it so important to explore the childhood development? Multiple researches and evidences show that the brain is especially sponge like during the first few years of growing up. This is the time, when kids
John-Steiner, V., & Mahn, H. (1996). Sociocultural Approaches to Learning and Development: A Vygotskian Framework. Educational Psychologist, 191-206.
Early childhood learning communities: Sociocultural research in practice (pp. 1). 193-208. French Forrest, Australia: Person Education Australia. Heider, K. L. & Heider, K. L. (2009). The 'Standard' of the 'Standard' Information Literacy: The Missing Link In Early Childhood Education?
The sociocultural theory was developed by a theorist named Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky was born in 1896 and was from the former Soviet Union. He was a psychologist who had an abundance of ideas and put them into many theories and writings. Although Vygotsky died from tuberculosis at the young age of thirty-eight, his most prominent work was done in a short period of ten years. When he died in 1934, the Soviet Union held most of his work and it was not until about 1960 that his work was translated into English. Currently in the education field, Vygotsky’s main work on the sociocultural theory is getting a lot of attention.
SHANNON LOCKHART (2012) 'Supporting Communication, Language, and Literacy Learning With Infants and Toddlers', 26(3), pp. [Online]. Available at:http://www.highscope.org/file/NewsandInformation/Extensions/ExtVol26No3_low.pdf(Accessed: 18-Mar-2014).
The base of Vygotsky's theory rests on the idea of internalization where development proceeds mainly from the absorption of information from a specified social environmental context. An example of a specific social environment is a school where children can learn from observing the interactions of others (e.g. teachers and peers) and through their own interactions within the environment (e.g. a specific problem “math problem”). A key concept is the zone of proximal development (ZPD) which Vygotsky states "is the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers." Cognitive growth is accomplished when a child is able to solve problems more independently through continued practice and mentoring. In this fashion, the development of the child is continuous as there is quantitative evidence of the growth being accomplished. The quantitative evidence can be as simple as child’s progression through a math problem where they build upon the ideas of addition and subtraction to multiplication and