SCIED 552: Science Teaching and Learning Developing Models of Science Teaching

I remember driving in the backwoods of Alabama at night with a dead cell phone and no street lighting- and I feel more lost in this Vygotsky journey than I did in those woods.

Dr. Scott TOLD us Vygotsky was like a rich meal – and therefore to not take it in all at once. And even so, I was a glutton! I tried to digest Vygotsky in one sitting. No dice.

I feel like I’ve got a regurgitation of the main points more than my thoughts… Vygotsky talks about memory and thinking processes. He seemingly (?) recognized the difficulty in prescribing an answer to questions based around simply observing behaviors and responses. The problem of processing/thinking itself being internal. How can we know what someone is thinking? Even observation of behaviors and words is a guess at best. Just cause it might be right isn’t enough. And yet still to the summary thought that memories (forming or retention?) comes from a strong social component (does this explain why we remember more events involving people we are bonded to vs doing the dishes solo? Or does this suggest that some recluses/hermits or others don’t have memories to a particular degree?) (39). We also take on social behaviors through memories formed because of these social bonds? That’s a lot of focus on the social, the environment (chosen or otherwise)- which makes me hate to feel like my parents were right when lecturing me about my friends. There’s a social feedback loop here (what happens when it is interrupted?)…

That being said…with Vygotsky’s focus on the impact of things ‘social’- this also ties us to language and learning. Culture is important in the development of language. Language is important in learning. Language is important in connecting socially. Connecting socially leads to formation of memories. Formation of memories connects to social behaviors. Social behaviors are a key identifier of a culture.

Am I tying it too much together? Is it not a circle but instead an arrow?

Favorite pithy quote: “…a comprehensive approach that would make possible description and explanation of higher psychological functions in terms acceptable to natural science” (5)

Quote to argue over: “…the animal merely uses external nature; man, by his changes, makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals” (291). How little our psych forefathers knew at the time of the ways in which animals make nature serve their ends and shape the land around them purposely…

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Chapter 3, 4. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes (M.Cole, V. JohnSteiner, S. Scribner & E. Souberman, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

In the introduction for this week’s reading, the authors summarize that Vygotsky sought a “comprehensive approach that would make possible description and explanation of higher psychological functions in terms acceptable to natural science” (p. 5).

I found it interesting that Vygotsky focused much of his work on the experimental methods associated with psychological studies, and I think there are certainly some connections here to learning theory. I related to his concerns about introspective analysis and specifically “the discovery that there are no conscious feelings of choice in the choice reaction” (p. 67). Here he explains that we’re putting names on reactions, which reminded me of our discussion around assimilation and its holes and how we don’t actually go through the 5 (?) step process of deciding whether to accommodate or assimilate as we’re learning. I also thought that Vygotsky’s experimental methods could have interesting implications on assessment. His claim that “critical data furnished by the experiment is not performance level as such but the methods by which the performance is achieved” (p. 13) make me wonder how an assessment system that focuses more on methods might play out in a science classroom setting. For my final rumination on the topic of experimental methods, I noticed that Vygotsky seems to perhaps place some emphasis on authenticity of the experimentation environment. In the introduction, the authors describe that he sought “to break down some of the barriers that are traditionally erected between ‘laboratory’ and ‘field’. Experimental interventions and observations may often be as well or better executed in play, school, and clinical settings than in the psychologist’s laboratory” (p. 14). I think it would be interesting to explore how this connects to our discussions last week on authenticity in a learning environment. 

I noticed a lot of social threads in Vygotsky’s work, as well. In the introduction, the authors state that “… he was the first… to suggest the mechanisms by which culture becomes a part of each person’s nature” (p. 6). I’m not sure I completely connected all of the dots in Vygotsky’s writing to this sentiment about culture, but I can see how it’s closely tied to his theories of individual change rooted in historical and societal development. The authors go on to say that much of Vygotsky’s work was based in Marxist theory (“historical changes in society and material life produce changes in ‘human nature’ (consciousness and behavior)” (p. 7)), which I think I would benefit from a bit more background on. I wonder how “culture” in Vygotsky’s work is similar or different from the “culture” we discussed last week. It seems to me that Vygotsky’s sense of “culture” has a much wider historical perspective and is not as domain-based as in cognitive apprenticeship. The first podcast also contained many ties to the social nature of learning, specifically language learning. Ildefanso entered larger societal networks upon discovering language, but later expressed that he lost connection to those like him after gaining language. At the deaf school in Nicaragua, the students created their language outside of the classroom – I wonder how this circles back to authenticity in learning environments? 

Stop, go back, re-read, and repeat is the process I used that best encapsulates my experience reading the scholarly article Mind in Society -The Development of Higher Psychological Processes.  Ironically, I had to develop a process to read about a process.   With that said, my reflection of the article is what I was able to infer from those things I believe I understood, and also how I can then use the information in lesson planning and strategies in the classroom.

I was intrigued by the methodology of the research in respect to the various studies referenced in the article; some of which included studies by: Vygotsky, Marx, Pavlov, Wertsch and Lewin.  It seemed to me that although the methodologies of the studies varied and were disputed, to some extent, the conclusions however, coincided and were intertwined.  I think I can best show this with a simple summary of the basic tenets of the theories below:

Vgotsky: The mechanism of individual change is rooted in society and                culture

Marx:  Historical changes in society and material life produce changes in human nature (consciousness and behavior)

Lewin:  Behavior of an individual is always geared toward some goal or objective and it is precisely this intention that matters most in the performance of behavior

Pavlov:  Two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response

Wertsch:  Human mental functioning is inherently situated in social interaction, cultural, institutional, and historical context

What I came to conclude, is that there is a relationship between our biological instincts (elementary processes) and sociocultural origin (higher functions).  “Observations show that between the initial level (elementary behavior) and the high levels (mediated forms of behavior) many transitional systems lie between the biologically given and the culturally acquired.” (p.46) In this context then, we can use curriculums and activities in the classroom that encompass what children can do on their own, as well as, what they can learn from others.  Such a curriculum would encompass activities that incorporate group work, cooperative learning, and planned activities with groups of children at different levels.

Moreover, having students explain their thought processes out loud and not offering too much help reflect strategies that correlate with Vygotsky’s Theory.   Also in correlation with theory is the AST framework of instruction and recent discussions about Progressive Discourse.  I think that the norms we establish inside the classroom are rooted in society and the culture we wish to create for learning.  Therefore, an understanding of individual capabilities inside the cultural classroom of the school’s society will foster adult guidance and learning from each other.

I started this exercise by a process which involved starting, stopping, repeating, and re-reading.   I believe these are elementary behaviors.  My higher levels of behavior in this exercise was what you just read which involves cooperative learning (Vygostky Theory).  My objective was to make sense of it all and complete the assignment (Lewin Theroy). All in all, there was a lot to unpack from this reading and I am not confident that I correctly conceptualized all the ideas that were discussed.

While reading Vygotsky over this week I often thought about what our memory is. What does it look like, and how does our memory work?

Vygotsky uses the words tools and signs in his work frequently and understanding what he means by them specifically seemed to help me get through this reading with more understanding. While they are both big parts of the learning process, Vygotsky poses tools as secondary or external objects that can be used to associate with things in the world. For example, Vygotsky poses the example of children associating words with pictures. This experiment used the pictures as an external tool to link to a word, or a sign. Vygotsky thinks of signs as internally created representations of things. I found it interesting that Vygotsky called out Dewey too, being upset with Deweys use of language as the “tool of tools”.

Vygotsky holds high regard to the environments and surroundings of learners, where conceptual change oriented theorists hole cognition and individual learning as a main driver. I certainly think that the culture and environment that people are subjected to has impact on student learning. I have been wrestling with this concept personally for awhile, even though I never have thought of in through the scope of Vygotsky.

Vygotsky suggests that as humans grow older, their ways of thinking and memorizing change. Sarah had brought up an example of not remembering learning English when she was young, and neither do I. I think something in between now and then had to have happened in our brains that caused a change in how we think or remember. If it didn’t, wouldn’t we be able to remember these memories from a very young age?

This weeks blog covers the ideas that were covered in chapter three and four of Vygotsky’s Mind in Society (1978), and wow, was that a lot to work through! Hopefully I can make some sense out a couple things that stuck out to me.

First, I was definitely appreciative of the introduction on this piece as it helped put Vygotsky’s work in perspective of his life and environmental influences during the post-revolutionary period in Russia. I found it particularly helpful to learn what seminal texts jump-started the discussions about how to study the nature of man. I was even more excited to see a text I knew well – On the Origin of Species by Darwin. I’ve actually thought about Darwin a couple times throughout our class discussions. I’m trained as an evolutionary biologist, so I tend to always think about things from an evolutionary perspective, so I was pleased to see that Darwin made an appearance. 

One of my first thoughts while reading was that we haven’t really discussed memory, or how we remember, or even how its linked to learning, but to me, it almost seems like Skinnerian memorization. There is a response, or some sort of action that is done in order to show ‘learning’, however, unlike Skinner who was observing behaviors, we cannot see what is happening inside a students mind, which would make it arguably more difficult to assess, which reminded me of conceptual change. I was also reminded of conceptual change when Vygotsky wrote “…rather it arises from something that is originally not a sign operation and becomes one only after a series of qualitative transformations. Each of these transformations provides the conditions for the next stage and is itself conditioned by the preceding one; thus, transformations are linked like stages of a single process, and are historical in nature” (pg 46). This is also very Dewey sounding!

I am not sure that I have fully understood what Vygotsky actually means when referring to ‘signs’ and ‘tools’. I think I’ve interpreted signs to be internal mastering of something using things like language, diagrams, symbols and the like, where tools are the external, physical objects, that help lead to some change in understanding – like computers, protractors, rulers? Am I way off base here? My thoughts on these seemed to dissolve as I read more and they seemed to be more of the same thing… I kept having flashbacks to last week when we tried to define what a tool was and Scott said just you wait until Vygotsky. I get that now!

Vygotsky also really supported the thought that learning is influenced largely by the social environments and interactions one has. In fact, he argues that learning can only take place when the learner is interacting with their social environment. This seems intuitive for me – the environment we grow up in will ultimately shape how we think. Approaching this as an educator seems daunting as most classrooms are incredibly diverse. I didn’t really get a sense of how this was to be approached by educators? It almost seems as is Vygotsky was implying that all societies, at their core, must be the same. Or that everyone will grow at the same cognitive rate? 

VYGOTSKY, L. (1978). Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes (Cole M., Jolm-Steiner V., Scribner S., & Souberman E., Eds.). Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: Harvard University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctvjf9vz4

We talk a lot about memorizing being a “bad” way to teach. Through AST, we are trying to get our students to really understand a phenomena, instead of memorizing and repeating what we say, so I was interested this week to read Vygotsky’s thoughts on memory and thinking. Specifically, he notes that “for the young child, to think means to recall; but for the adolescent, to recall means to think” (p. 51). At a young age, developmentally children recall different memories, but this process shifts/reverses as the child grows up. If I understand Vygotsky correctly, he is suggesting that cognitive development affects thinking, and there is an age-component to memory.

I am confused, though, about how the podcasts tied into Vygotsky’s connection between memory and thinking. I also love Radiolab and was excited to have some podcasts from them included this week! I don’t know a lot about developmental psychology, but I’ve always wondered why I don’t remember learning English. Is it because I learned it when I was so little, or because learning a language changed my “memory paths”? I was really interested in the story of the woman who had a stroke and had to relearn English. She mentioned that she didn’t like talking about her days without language at first, as they were too dark, and after a while, she couldn’t remember what it was like without language. Her story seems to support the hypothesis that learning a language at a young age isn’t the only reason why we don’t remember the process. Somehow, our ability to remember is tied to language?

So my next thought is what if some other being (alien) interacted with us, but they had so many more senses than we do? I can’t even imagine another sense outside of our 5, but what if an alien had it and taught us to? What if we were Ildefonso and we are missing a whole other way of thinking?

…

Other curious quotes:

“the animal merely uses external nature; man, by his changes, makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals” (p. 291)

There was a lot of information contained within only three chapters of the Vygotsky reading this week.  One of the parts I found particularly interesting was his focus on breaking down why previous experimental approaches to creating a framework for human behavior (and learning) were incomplete and studied the wrong things; thus, leading to incorrect conclusions.  Decades before Skinner’s work on human behavior regarding stimulus-response research, Vygotsky had already laid out why this approach was both a natural choice (easily testable via experimental methods) and inadequate for the study of higher psychological functions (it would only probe elementary psychological functions) (Vygotsky 1978, p. 60).  Vygotsky goes on to lay out that even those experimental methods that attempt to probe more complex choice responses fail to investigate the period of time when the learning actually occurs.  Instead, researchers would deliberately exclude the trials of an experiment when a subject was still learning the ropes as to achieve uniformity in experimental conditions (Vygotsky 1978, p. 68).  Vygotsky emphasized that instead “we need to concentrate not on the product of development but on the very process by which higher forms are established” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 64).  This seemingly calls back to the conceptual change model when it was stated that true learning and understanding lay in the thought process, not on the final external demonstration of what was learned.

Vygotsky also dives into a discussion of memory and its role in thought and humans’ interactions with the external world via “signs”.  He laid out in a single sentence how memory’s role was different between childhood and adolescence: “For the young child, to think means to recall; but for the adolescent, to recall means to think” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 51).  This idea stems from the fact that children, when asked about something, seemed to tend towards descriptions involving concrete instances (i.e. recalling memories) versus in adolescents, who could use abstracted concepts to discuss things.  Thus, if past experiences have a significant impact on how one later organizes their thoughts and behaviors (similar to both conceptual change and cognitive apprenticeship models), it is important to note their influence on learning.  Beyond this, even the way learning occurs partially lies in the external world through interactions with objects.  These interactions can be externally oriented via the use of tools which lead to changes within objects; or the interactions can be internally oriented via the use of signs which do not change the object but serve as “a means of internal activity aimed at mastering oneself” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 55).

The use of signs are the portion of human behavior and learning arguably most affected by the socio-cultural environment in which one is.  Many times signs take the form of symbols or language which then aids the learning process and thus affects how things become encoded.  For example, in the Yupik language spoken by indigenous peoples of western Alaska, they have about 100 terms for sea ice and ice formations (Krupnik).  The environment that they live in obviously influenced what was of importance to learn and thus it makes sense to create a wide variety of signs to fit the numerous instances of the objects they would come into contact with regularly.  Vygotsky very much acknowledges this socio-cultural impact on sign usage and thus learning.  He sums up his thoughts succinctly: “the elementary processes… are of biological origin… and the higher psychological functions [are] of sociocultural origin” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 46).

References:

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes (M.Cole, V. JohnSteiner, S. Scribner & E. Souberman, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Krupnik, I. Sea Ice Dictionary. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. https://forces.si.edu/arctic/03_00_02.html.

For Vygotsky to know means “grasping the very structure of the process, learning to understand the laws according to which external signs must be used” (p.72) This is the result of a developmental process in which the child uses external stimuli at first and then “an operation that initially represents an external activity is reconstructed and begins to occur internally” (p. 56-57). The podcast made more clear to me that according to this theory thinking starts through language. There is an external dialogue of the person with other people at first, then the person starts talking with herself and when this talking happens silently in the mind there is thinking. It is like if to make real connections in our mind we need words and external dialogues with other people that shape our mind. He talks about the importance of relationships saying ” all the higher functions originate as actual relations between human individuals” (p.57). Anyway, I still have the feeling that I did not grasp completely this theory, I am not sure that I understood it well. I found very interesting his distinction between “elementary functions” and “higher functions” and also the discussion about the method. I loved his idea of observing the process instead of something that already ended. I read that Vygotsky was influenced by Marx and I am interested in understanding better the connection between Marx’s theory and Vygotsky’s theory.  Education in Italy was influenced by Vygotsky and it is different compared to the USA. In Italy, the classroom is the same during the year and teachers come and go compared to the individualistic approach in the USA where students change classroom. The consequence of this is that learning in Italy is lived more as associated with classmates, while in the USA sometimes students don’t know each other’s names in a class. In Italy, if I did not understand something or I was absent I asked a classmate, while here I have a feeling that the reference point is the teacher, learning happens between the student and the teacher. Also, usually teachers in Italy would talk about “how the classroom goes” instead of the individual students. I wonder if this is a way to apply Vigotsky’s theory. I am interested in understanding how this theory works in all the details of the classroom work.

This is the first theory of learning that we have seen that investigates the role of language in learning.  I think this is interesting because no other theory has really gone into detail with how language plays a role, and considering language is really the only way to communicate, it is obviously important in this process.  To build on that, this theory also considers culture to be important in the development of language, and thus learning.  The only other theory that considered culture was cognitive apprenticeship, but the difference there is the culture of the discipline was considered, not the learner.  I suppose this theory sits apart from the Skinnerian view as well as a cognitive view because it doesn’t lean 100% to one side of the scale.  In fact, Vygotsky wanted a “unified theory of human psychological process.”

Vygotsky also identifies a difference in signs and tools that I am still trying to figure out.  Maybe typing this out will help my understanding.  I think it is confusing because the paper discusses how tools and signs are very close in definition, but they are not exactly the same.  They are both part of the ‘mediated activity,’ but a major difference is that tools are externally oriented, and signs are internally oriented.  Earlier, Vygotsky explained an experiment where he asked participants to answer a series of questions without using certain colors as answers.  In another trial, the participants could not answer with those colors, and they couldn’t repeat colors.  In a third, trial, they were given the same rules, but now they had cards with colors on them to help them keep track.  So, the cards were the tools to help them with the activity.  The signs were the words the participants had for themselves..?  This is where I am looking for help.  I am not sure I fully understand the difference here, or if this is the best example to see the difference.

The podcast was also very thought-provoking.  I think the idea of language being separate ‘islands’ in a young mind that eventually connect is neat.  I also can’t imagine how wild it would be for you to lose your language.  Not having internal thoughts would be an intense experience, although it was described as ‘bliss.’  Ildefonso also provides an interesting example that juxtaposes Skinner’s view with Vygotsky’s.  Maybe this is unfair, but I think it is still worth thinking about.  Ildefonso was a deaf student that could sign, but would only mimic what people were saying to him.  So, “hello my name is Susan,” was answered with “hello my name is Susan.”  When introduced to new signs like ‘book,’ Ildefonso thought he was to open the book.  He wasn’t learning anything new, but would mimic what he sees or perform a task he thought was present.  Could this be compared to Skinner’s model for learning?  I mean, Ildefonso did produce a behavior, but it wasn’t until he understood that language exists to name things that he really started to learn.  After typing this out, I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison, but I put a lot of work into it and am interested what people think.

After learning about cognitive apprenticeship, I’m wondering how learning (especially wrt this model) is affected by online teaching. In my pre-student teaching, I’ve noticed Mike and Heath at PFMS both comment on how their labs being online has changed their respective classes. They noticed this initially makes their classes more efficient, because the students don’t have to work through the implicit processes associated with collecting data. However, reducing the time students spend struggling with science through automating the data collection and removing the faux “cognitive apprenticeship” has reduced the student understanding according to the teachers.

I think Skinner would argue the removal of in person labs is good, because it makes class more efficient. If the goal of school is for students to demonstrate “knowledge” in terms of definitions and facts on papers instead of focusing on all the small details that go into actually training as a scientist, then why should we teach students how to collect data? It just wastes time. But here, we see that there’s some deeper value to getting students to do science (…maybe when I say there’s some deeper value that’s part of my educational framework? I’m not sure what I think knowledge and learning are, but I do think the students seem able to find patterns and understand information if they are learning via a more active apprenticeship model than via a Skinnernian model.)

In writing ^^, I also note that a lab is only kind of an cognitive apprenticeship. Both texts describe cognitive apprenticeships as learning through authentic measures and we can argue ad nauseam over whether a school lab is “authentic”. But labs do at least prepare you from a teacher/master of Western education to excel at Western education…