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?
I too tend to think about the notion of cultural and environmental influences as they relate to psychological functions. My blog post also talks about the transition between the biologically given and culturally acquired (environmental and social interactions). How do you think this idea fits into our role as teachers and in our classrooms? Additionally, I enjoyed your comment about how we don’t remember learning English at a young age, and I agree that something definitely must have happened mentally from then until now.
I think how you start to explore Vygotsky’s addition of social learning theory is interesting. It seems like you were unsatisfied with the explanation of the effect of culture and environment on learning before reading Vygotsky. I wonder how Vygotsky might argue the stark difference between a science classroom and the rest of a child’s social life affects learning?