Social Context of Learning Flashcards
Who was a key figure in taking into account social context in learning?
Lev Vygotsky.
What is culture?
A system of shared beliefs and values, conscious and unconscious, transmitted across generations.
What does socio-cultural theory argue?
You cannot separate a person from their culture as culture transforms an individuals way of thinking.
- development is a product of social and cultural experiences
- cultural variation is important in development
Is cultural internalised?
Culture is not internalised, as this implies a passive process, but appropriating into your culture is active.
What is the zone of proximal development?
The difference between what a child can do on their own and what they can do with a parent, teacher or more experienced person guides them.
What was Lev Vygotsky’s view on children’s learning?
Children construct knowledge.
Language plays a central role in learning development.
What is scaffolding?
(Wood and Middleton 1975)
Mother helps when child fails and withdraws help when child succeeds.
When more scaffolding used, child better able to complete task on their own.
What is egocentric speech?
2nd level of speech: private speech.
- declines with age
- serves a developmental role
- helps child understand social information and internalise it
- forerunner to silent speech in our heads
- guides children in comprehending, finding solutions or planning
What did Bivens and Berk find in their private speech study?
Egocentric speech in grade 1 predicted academic success in grade 2.
What were Piaget’s views on egocentric speech?
- egocentric speech is the 1st level of speech
- egocentric speech serves no developmental purpose
- egocentric speech dies out once socialised speech is learnt
What did Barbara Rogoff do?
- built on Vygotsky’s work
Believed:
can’t understand learning if you take someone outside of their culture
there is no endpoint to development - her term for scaffolding was ‘guided participation’
What is constructivism in learning?
- children start with naive theories of science
- synthetic models are created as they assimilate scientific information into their naive theory
- new knowledge must be integrated with existing knowledge
- existing networks of knowledge may be challenged by new ideas.
What is evidence for constructivist theory of learning?
Studying children’s views and drawings of the Earth.
What are some criticisms of general socio-cultural theories?
- a more developmental account of both contexts and children is needed
- cognitive level may permit or constrain processes in the zone of proximal development: need to look at how children learn in their everyday experiences.
