Early in this week’s reading, Cole and Scribner set the stage for Vygotsky’s works by describing the questions psychology was attempting to solve. Primarily the work at the time was aimed at answering, “What are the relationships between animal and human behavior?” (p. 3) They go on to detail how some scholars described human consciousness in relation to stimulus and believed “high psychological processes could only be investigated by using “historical studies of cultural products” (p. 3) rather than experimental methods. This led to many psychologists to focus on behaviors rather than consciousness that sounded like the foundations of a Skinnerian model of thinking about learning. Vygotsky took these two competing ideas and worked to find a “unified theory of human psychological processes” (p. 5) because the available models either did not explain behaviors or did not manage to go beyond describing complex phenomenon.
Key to Vygotsky’s understanding of how thinking works are tools and signs. Tools are simply ideas or conceptions that mediate responses to a given sign. A sign on the other hand, while described similarly to tools, are situationally bound signifiers of something. In the case of Vygotsky’s experiments, the tool the children used was their method of remember using the various cards, while the sign was the culturally embedded ideas that indicated what strategy to use to remember in various tasks. For example, some of the participates turning the images to represent a bucket to remember such an item. What makes Vygotsky stand out above his contemporaries and has allowed him to remain relevant today is his willingness to consider both biology and culture in his understanding of human thinking; biology controls initial responses and more complex responses become mediated by culture.
Many of Vygotsky’s ideas connect directly to the ideas that Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989) describe because as Vygotsky states, “The child does not suddenly and irrevocably deduce the relation between the sign and the method for using it.” (p. 45) This indicates the children must be taught HOW to use the sign. In a science classroom, this means providing students with tools (the conceptual method) of engaging in particular science signs such as experimentation (I put the words tool and sign in here to indicate my thinking because I want to make sure I am understanding these concepts correctly.) Overtime, by engaging in enough of the ideal behaviors, students will begin to experience internalization, or in other words, being able to utilize the tools for specific signs without the need of them being externalized. This is similar to how Brown et al. (1989) discuss the need to engage in authentic activities. In essence, students need to engage in activities that will provide the signs which lead to the development of tools.
Another important feature of Vygotsky’s thinking that connects to Brown et al. (1989) is how culturally bound signs and tools are. First, the transition for adolescents from thinking by recall to recalling to think is a huge transition. It implies the need for students to recognize specific signs to implement the correct tools; both of which are culturally and situationally embedded. For example, Vygotsky states, “Equating psychological and nonpsychological phenomena is possible only if one ignores the essence of each form of activity, as well as the difference between their historic roles and nature” (p. 53) to demonstrate how unique each sign is and the tools ascribed to them. This is the same for Brown et al.’s (1989) description of how students can do math in grocery stores, but not in a classroom. The signs in both areas are completely different and therefore, they are not able to recall the tools needed to solve problems that by all intensive purposes are the same.
Moving forward, I hope to receive feedback on my understandings of this week’s reading, especially around signs and tools. Additionally, I want to examine how Vygotsky’s thinking has influences in other areas of education, particularly with a focus on social justice science pedagogy, teacher education, and science teaching practices.
I completely agree that it becomes important for students to know how to use the sign. However, in the case of an internalised sign system, it becomes difficult, perhaps impossible, to get an externalisation of the sign that is a true and accurate representation of the internalised version. In that sense, we will have to resort to considering the interactions of the student that are internally stimulated by the sign to see if the corresponding actions align with scientific thinking. The biggest worry with Vygotsky’s theory is that we are still powerless in some regard to the nature of the signs being formed. However, we can guide this sign formation by actively showing externalised sign systems and conceptual tools that are best in line with accepted scientific practice.
The use of signs and tools are confusing to say the least. I agree with Mieke’s comment that experimentation is a tool as it is externally oriented in actively changing the object of mediated action. I think conceptual methodor scientific method is also a cognitive tool as it relates to the transformation of objects in a scientific manner (it could be something like a theoretical manipulation or extrapolation from data). A sign, given my understanding would be something that prompts us to take a cognitive decision – say if we had a pendulum in front of us and we had to decide what experiment to perform or what factors to measure
In addition to your question of Vygotsky’s other influences, I wonder how Vygotsky’s writings were received in Russia. Did the Russian education system embrace any of his ideas and if not, why?
I appreciate your mention of the quote “The child does not suddenly and irrevocably deduce the relation between the sign and the method for using it.” (p. 45) I think this reveals how important it is to provide context, meaning that concepts can’t just be presented as a list of facts. I think I’m also having some difficulty with tool vs. sign. In regards to your examples, wouldn’t experimentation be a tool and not a sign? Since experimentation is an externally oriented practice. Then the conceptual method (the scientific method?) would be a sign since it is internally oriented, such that activities like coming up with hypotheses and procedures for testing hypotheses are developed internally.