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VYGOTSKY AND AGENCY IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

VYGOTSKY AND AGENCY IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT. Praha 2007 Jyrki Reunamo Marja Nurmilaakso. Department of Applied Sciences of Education, UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI. I INTRODUCTION. Vygotsky describes the first continuum as extending from the interpsycholocical to intrapsychological

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VYGOTSKY AND AGENCY IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

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  1. VYGOTSKY AND AGENCY IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT Praha 2007 Jyrki Reunamo Marja Nurmilaakso Department of Applied Sciences of Education, UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI

  2. I INTRODUCTION • Vygotsky describes the first continuum as extending from the interpsycholocical to intrapsychological • Every function of the child`s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level and later, on the individual level

  3. THE INTERPSYCHOLOGICAL VS. INTRAPSYCHOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES • INTERPSYCHOGICAL: • 1. Social level • 2. The attention is guided by external stimuli • 3. External signs needed for thinking and language tools

  4. 4. The content of thinking act is determined by concrete memory recollections • 5. The signs are presented or attached as external forms as activity • Concrete spontaneous concepts have no distance from the immediate experience

  5. INTRAPSYCHOLOGICAL • 1. Individual level • 2. The child begins to master his attention, freeing him or her to reconstruct the perceptive field • 3. External stimuli can be used as an instrument for organizing the task

  6. 4. The content of memory recollections is guided by the thinking process, e.g. logical relations • 5. The activity is turning inward, gradually becomming inner functions • 6. Eventually scientific concepts organised into a system of generalized relations

  7. CULTURAL PRODUCTS VS. CULTURAL PRODUCTION • Vygotsky extends from using cultural products to the production of culture • Activities with culture products includes for example something that already exists or something that facilitates the adaptation to the word • Culture products are something that already exists

  8. Creating new content means combinatorial or creative behaviour • Culture as a product of human imagination and creation • Productive imagination

  9. THE AGENTIVE NATURE OF CHILDREN`S ACTIONS • Galperin: The ability of looking ahead (orientation) is a precondition for and even a prime aspects of learning • Vygotsky`s ideas of language development can been arranged according to social and agentive continuums: 1) Actual, 2) Proximal, 3) Instrumental and 4) Producing

  10. ACTUAL DEVELOPMENT • Development is intrapsychogical and language is seen as cultural product, as signs and meaning • According to Vygotsky the level can be called the actual developmental level, that is, the level of development of a child`s mental functions that has beeb established as a result of certain already completed developmental cycles

  11. PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT • The developmental aspects are interpsychological and language is seen as something that can be learned with assistance of others • The zone of proximal development: an educator can elaborate on the act and give support and direction for the process

  12. INSTRUMENTAL TOOLS • The development is intrapsychological and the focus of the development is on the cultural production, whereby language is seen as a tool for personal, social and cultural production • According to Vygotsky, while at 18 months of age, the child makes discovery that everything has a name

  13. PRODUCING NEW CULTURAL TOOLS • This type of development is interpsychological and the focus is on producing cultural tools • When interpersonal, these new developments become new cultural tools • The collective work depends on cultural conditions. Vygotsky: the historical or social experience allows us to venture beyond our own experiences

  14. II METHODS • The research problem has been: What pedagogical cues do different language development functions produce? • The short excerpts of children`s talk come from previous research

  15. The four theoretical aspects described earlier were orationalized into four questions: Actual development: • What kind of ideas come to mind when you think about the child`s language skills? • What could you do to figure out the child`s actual level of language development? Give an example

  16. Proximal development: • In what way could the discussion be deepened to help the child look at the situation from different perspectives? • How could you help the child to advance in his or her view? Give an example

  17. Language as a tool for individual change: • What possible motives could the child have to answer the way he or she does? • What could the child`s objective be in the situation? • How could you find out the objective? Give an example

  18. Language as a tool for cultural production: • What consequences do the children`s descriptions have? • In what way do children`s views and actions advance the situation at hand? What happens next?

  19. Altogether 80 students in their second year of studies took part in the research in February 2007 • All student teachers studied in the University of Helsinki • The students were arranged into four groups, where each studied on of the questions

  20. All students were presented with the same seven excerpts of children`s talk, but different groups were asked to consider childrens`s talk from only one of the four different perspectives • In this way, it was possible to study the differences the four views produced as the educational settings remained same • The data was analysed by content analysis

  21. III RESULTS • Altogether there were 544 answers regarding the seven short talk situations • Examples of results:

  22. Examples of the four orientations on a peer to peer situation: • Adult: Your friend does not agree to play with you. What do you do? Child: I get fully out of play. Some other time back

  23. Table 1. Examples of the four orientations on a peer to peer situation

  24. Table 2. Examples of the four orientations in a situation of conflict

  25. IV DISCUSSION • Different views on learning have different consequences for teaching • The teacher looking at children`s actual development is parallel to that of the ”traditional” teacher • Here, a ”proper” language quite independent of the child or teacher seems to exist

  26. The teacher concentrating on the proximal development resembles the constructivist teacher • The tension is between children`s abilities and the level the children can reach with the help of a more capable adult or peer • Looking at children`s language as instrumental tools seems to be encourage childcentred teaching

  27. Concentration on tools production seems to evoke teaching along the lines of Reggio Emilia • Pedagogical views are deeply rooted in the functions of the basic understanding of early childhood learning • These roles also call for a new interpretation for children`s use and learning of language

  28. Language is not just the means of communication or undersatnding; it is also an ingredient in cultural production

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