09.24.08

The 10s The Aces Liz, Denise, Andy

I loosely followed Vygotsky's conceptual example of memorizing but would like to have a more clear understanding of the processes that children go through in internalizing signs and other mediated activities. **Internalization, signs, ZPD

Humans are incredibly complex creatures which have many confounding factors based on our social tendencies. Issues relating to the mind and development are incredibly hard to quantify without looking at culture and society at large.

I mention this because I feel this position differs significantly from Vygotsky, who speaks of how the act of memorization changes as a child grows in contrast to Piaget's idea of discrete 'stages' that define what a child is capable of understanding.

"The internalization of socially rooted and historically developed activities is the distinguishing feature of human psychology." (p. 57)

 What fascinates me is that the signs that we use to memorize things many times have nothing to do with the object to be memorized. I also found it interesting that in his studies, whether the sign was related to the fact or not made no difference in the ability to memorize the fact.

       Vygotsky focuses on tools and signs involved with mediated behavior. The central characteristic of elementary functions is that they are totally and directly determined by stimulation from environment. For higher functions, the central feature is self-generated stimulation, that is, the creating and use of artificial stumuli which become the immediate causes of behavior (pg. 39).

The cognitive ability of abstraction is unique to humans and provides us the opportunity to create signs.

So now my questions...would Vygotsky side with Brown and his theory because Brown and the situated theorists also use the environment/tools to support their learning theory or would he side with the conceptual theorists with having facts and making connections to these facts or would he be on his own with no connection to the rest of the theorists?

Also, the student and the "authentic activity" must be placed within an environment that nurtures the culture of learning and the lesson to be taught. It also, to my mind, runs counter to cognitive apprenticeship.

If the way that students learn is so greatly influenced by the activities of their society, then it's no wonder that so many kids today have a negative view of school. Kids hear from the time they are very young from TV, older siblings, maybe even parents, about how homework is hard, bad, and not fun.

 If children are all in various stages when you finally get them in your classroom, who are you supposed to direct your teaching to? Also, where does this leave children who are from different cultural backgrounds?