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Periods in Child Development: Vygotsky's Perspective
Abstract
Smiles and coos of recognition; tentative first steps and first words; communicating and making sense of the world; anxious excitement on the first day of school; awareness of others; conceptual thinking; awareness of self; and the transition to young adulthood: As parents and teachers, we marvel at children's myriad journeys. At times, we experience frustration when we witness profound, often unsettling, changes in children's behavior and interactions with others. During these difficult times, such as the “terrible twos” or the “dreaded” adolescent years, children often seem to take on different personalities. How and why, we wonder, does this occur? The same question fascinated Lev Vygotsky and was at the center of his theory of child development. He went further, asking what these times of crisis, or critical periods as he called them, demonstrate about the patterns and processes of children's mental and social functioning. The answers he developed are helpful today for educators trying to shape educational opportunities that meet the needs of all children. This chapter focuses on Vygotsky's analysis of the relationship between children's individual growth and development and the sociocultural situations into which they are born.
... Other authors further emphasized frequent positive interactions (De Shipper, Tavecchio, and Van IJzendoorn 2008) with a stable caregiver (Barnas and Cummings 1994;Hamilton 1992a, 1992b) as necessary factors for secure caregiver-child relationships. In a distributed approach to attachment relationships where it is not clear who is in charge of the needs of whom, regular one-on-one interactions (Mahn 2003) and finely tuned guidance (Dalli 2014;Rogoff, Malkin, and Gilbride 1984) are not assured for all children. Another emerging aspect of professionalism in early childhood education is 'professional love' as discussed by Dalli (2006) and Page (2011). ...
... These relationships enhance the child's sense of security, and enable the educator to read the child's cues and respond accordingly (Lally 2010(Lally , 2013. Primary caregivers are generally responsible for the intimate care of infants and toddlers, like feeding and changing routines, and offer regular individual attention to the children in their care (Goldschmied and Jackson 2004;Mahn 2003). Ebbeck and Yim (2009) found a positive influence of primary caregiving on children, parents, and educators, and in their study on the implementation of primary caregiving both parents and educators were in favour of the system. ...
Using case study methodology including weekly focus group meetings and individual interviews, this article reports results of a study in a Canadian childcare centre in which four educators shared their attitudes and experiences on their role as educators and on building relationships with the children transitioning into their care and their parents. Analysis of the data reveals that educators are most concerned with their role as professionals, and that their interpretations of professionalism influences structural and organizational elements in the centre like shifts and schedules of the educators, but also their relationships with children in their care, and with parents.
... Cognition and learning as social phenomena are not the end of this theoretical story. The complexities of higher mental functions recognize the social process, and the individual function of internalization as well as self-regulation (Karpov, 2003;Mahn, 2003;Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991;Vygotsky, 1978Vygotsky, , 1986Vygotsky, , 1997aVygotsky, , 1997bWertsch, 1985). Vygotsky used four principles to differentiate higher mental functions: ...
Intersubjectivity in this research context means mutual understanding. The study examines preschool teacher and child interactions to determine whether they engage in communication to reach mutual understanding; so teacher and child can effectively learn together.
... Third, is the concept of SSD, the unique relationship between an individual and their social reality, built from their engagement with their SS (Vygotsky, 1998). In any given period, an individual's self-awareness and relationship to the SS significantly affects their SSD, and this internal and external relationship is based on the new formations in their personality (Mahn, 2003). The SSD is created by the individual, and it is potential, requiring the development of agency to be realised (Edwards, 2017). ...
Teachers’ pedagogical practices have been consistently highlighted either as a support, or as a barrier, to girls’ science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) engagement. Research suggests that teachers can display forms of gender bias during STEM experiences, such as unintentionally favouring boys in STEM participation. Investigation into early childhood and primary STEM education highlights teacher professional development as a priority, with a key focus on the awareness of gender issues. This study explores whether and how the STEM practices of early childhood teachers change and develop towards supporting girls’ STEM engagement through Conceptual PlayWorlds as a model of practice. Through an educational experiment, the study design involved professional development workshops introducing teachers to the Conceptual PlayWorld model for the intentional teaching of STEM, with ideas on how to engage girls through the five characteristics of a Conceptual PlayWorld. Interview responses of seven teachers and one assistant principal regarding their experience of teaching STEM through Conceptual PlayWorlds are analysed in line with the cultural-historical approach. Findings highlight the teachers’ developing consciousness regarding girls’ STEM engagement through participation in the professional development workshops and Conceptual PlayWorlds, creating a shift in their teaching practices towards becoming more agentic in actively engaging girls with STEM. It is argued that while increasing teachers’ consciousness informed and transformed their STEM practices, leading to teacher development, further relevant and meaningful professional development opportunities are required to support early childhood teachers in positioning STEM as a truly welcoming and inclusive space for girls.
... It should not be forgotten the power of individuals who make up the social structure and at the same time enrich human characterize and personality. According to Vygotsky, there are critical periods in children's lives, and children determine their future with the effects of established and conducted social relationships (Mahn, 2003). In addition, Bandura (1974) states that children learning and gaining vital behaviors by observing people situated in their environmental space. ...
In educational environments, students' academic achievements can be associated with many concepts. In this context, in addition to educational aspects such as teacher education, teacher behaviors and, characteristics, the role of the peers', curriculum; sociological concepts such as discrimination, poverty, gender, etc. can be interpreted as key factors that influence students' academic achievements. In this study, education and its sub-components that create essential differentiates in students' academic achievements were examined in terms of sociological and educational factors.
... Culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) is an approach to teaching that has as its goal "to perpetuate and foster-to sustainlinguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of schooling for positive social transformation" (Paris & Alim, 2017, p.1). Adolescence is often a time when individuals make choices about their language use, abandoning the home language if it is seen as socially stigmatized (Cho & Krashen, 1998;Tse, 2000;, or continuing to develop their home language if support is available to do so in the home, school, and community (Paradis, Genesee & Crago, 2011). During adolescence, then, there is opportunity to discuss issues such as language and culture, as young students are just beginning to deepen their awareness of the roles these play in their social experiences and to form their identities in impactful ways (Mahn, 2008). Pedagogical approaches that capitalize on investigating and validating the home language and culture can help students to develop positive identities during this time of new discovery and deepening understanding (Bucholtz, Casillas, and Lee, 2017). ...
This qualitative curricular case study investigated the implementation of a project
called the Language Box in a seventh grade Humanities classroom in Albuquerque, New
Mexico. I worked with the classroom teacher to design the Language Box project, which
focused on the language use practices of the students and their families. We designed the
project with the goal of addressing issues of home language loss, bilingualism, and English
language acquisition. The students in the classroom were almost exclusively Hispanic, many
came from low income families and some were undocumented. Each student acted as a
researcher, investigating the language use practices in their homes and at school, and wrote a
final project in which they analyzed how language use practices were changing across
generations in their families. As a researcher, I had two goals. First, I was interested in the
design and implementation of the Language Box curriculum. I sought to understand how the
project could be transformative for bilingual adolescent students in New Mexico, as we
hoped to raise consciousness about the effects of home language loss. Secondly, I wanted to
understand how students perceived their opportunities to develop bilingualism within the
context of their school experiences and family histories. I use culturally sustaining pedagogy
v
(Paris, 2012) and sociocultural-historical theory (Rogoff, 2003), along with Norton’s (2013)
concept of investment as theoretical guides to analyze the data. My analysis reveals that the
project was indeed transformative for some students, who reported their desires to reverse
home language loss, their increased appreciation for linguistic diversity, and the realization
of the integral role that they were playing in developing bilingualism with and for their
families, thereby improving their opportunities of success in the future. However, I also
found that though bilingualism was highly valued among the families and within the school
community, not all students had equal opportunity to develop bilingual language skills.
There were significant social barriers, especially in the case of two students, who refrained
from using Spanish with friends and family members. Analyzing students’ perspectives
sheds light on the realities of bilingual language development for this group of young
adolescents and can help researchers and teachers understand how to best nurture
bilingualism in other classrooms.
Keywords: Culturally sustaining pedagogy, bilingual language development, bilingual
education, heritage language maintenance, sociocultural historical theory, investment
... In the process of participating in social relations, elementary psychic functions are transformed and different ways of doing and being in the world become possible through a process of quantitative and qualitative changes (Mahn, 2003;Roth, 2016). Such processes make possible the emergence of higher psychological functions (thought, language, emotions, memory, etc), which are transformed from an 'ensemble of social relations' that constitute the person (Vygotsky, 1929(Vygotsky, /1989. ...
This study captures the possibilities of infants’ interactions in a Brazilian Early Childhood Education Centre. It contributes to an increasing number of educational research that is capturing the specificities of how young children use their understandings of context through gestures and verbal forms of language to create meanings as they develop social relationships with their peers and adults. The meanings of these interactions are explored based on the Vygotskyan notion of perezhivanie. The research design was guided by ethnography in education principles. Participant researchers used fieldnotes and video recording to capture infants’ interactions at the centre. For the purposes of this study, events were selected that related to the use of the cultural artefact pacifier. While teachers and families regarded the pacifier as an artefact that calms infants, helping them settle into a new environment, this study expands infants use of pacifiers as they also became artefacts to be explored and part of infants’ social relations with each other. The events analysed highlight the biology/culture and emotion/cognition unities in infants’ processes of development. This study argues for expanding teachers’ practices in a process of appreciating what infants’ intentions are and what they are communicating.
The possible, in educational terms, suggests the pedagogical potential of schooling to help children and young persons to change their perceptions about their imagined worlds of the future. It also highlights the possibilities for learning and development for all. Yet international evidence suggests that the potentials of many young people from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds and/or with a special educational need or disability are not currently met by many school systems. In addressing these issues, there is a considerable body of educational research in the fields of inclusion, social justice, and child and adolescent development that draws on the theoretical body of work developed by the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Most of these studies draw on either sociocultural or cultural historical activity theory, both of which can be traced back to Vygotsky’s work on learning and development with a respective focus on semiotic mediation and speech as a cultural tool or human activity systems. Both theories attempt to provide a nondualist account of the social, cultural, and historical factors that influence human development. This has important pedagogic implications for considerations of the processes and possibilities of teaching and learning.
Every year, tens of thousands of English language teachers worldwide graduate from the University of Cambridge Certificate in Teaching English to Speaker of Other Languages (CELTA). Despite the significant impact this pre-service certificate exerts in the English language teaching (ELT) profession, research on Language Teacher Education (LTE) has traditionally relied on studies conducted in academic-based programs at higher education institutions. This mixed methods research investigates what it means for student teachers to learn how to teach and develop as English language teachers in CELTA courses. It also investigates the nature of such learning and development, and the ways in which student teachers learn how to teach and develop as teachers in CELTA. A three-phased “enhanced” exploratory sequential mixed methods research design was employed. In Phase 1, data from semi-structured interviews, course documents, classroom observations, field notes, diaries and a WhatsApp group chat were collected at 2 CELTA programs: one in the US, where the researcher co-taught the course, and the other in Canada. Findings showed that student teachers learned teaching knowledge and skills and that, through this learning, they interacted with teacher educators, peers and ESL students, interactions which influenced and were influenced by their emotions and teacher identity. In Phase 2, these findings were used to develop the teacher learning and development (TLD) Scale. Data collected from CELTA graduates and student teachers (N = 880) from 78 countries were analyzed and a novel TLD construct was identified. In Phase 3, mixed methods synthesis occurred, and findings revealed how, by self-regulating and being regulated by teacher educators and peers through the use of course activities, artifacts and concepts, student teachers internalized teaching knowledge and developed pedagogical content knowledge. Findings also showed how student teachers developed as individuals and teachers by resolving the dialectical contradictions that constituted the moving force for their teacher development as well as the forms of their teacher development. The importance of perezhivanie (commonly translated as “lived experience”) as a lens to explain teacher development in LTE is discussed, and the concepts of teaching knowledge as praxis (TKP) and teacher’s teaching knowledge as praxis (TTKP) are proposed.
Este texto tem por objetivo apresentar algumas reflexões teóricas sobre o que pode levar alguns dançarinos a alcançar excelência no domínio de sua arte, a partir do ponto de vista da psicologia do desenvolvimento. Toma-se por referencial teórico a Psicologia Histórico-Cultural, criada por L.S. Vygotsky e continuada por outros pesquisadores russos que entendem haver interdependência entre os produtos da cultura e o surgimento das funções psicológicas superiores, exclusivamente humanas. Sugere-se que um dos aspectos diferenciais entre os dançarinos poderia ser o maior desenvolvimento da função perceptiva e sua relação com a afetividade.
Conventions of transcription Introduction Part I. Establishing the Theoretical Framework: 1. The complementary contributions of Halliday and Vygotsky to a 'language-based theory of learning' 2. In search of knowledge 3. Discourse and knowing in the classroom Part II. Discourse, Learning, and Teaching: 4. Text, talk, and inquiry: schooling as semiotic apprenticeship 5. Putting a tool to different uses: a reevalution of the IRF sequence 6. From guessing to predicting: progressive discourse in the learning and teaching of science 7. Using the tool-kit of discourse in the activity of learning and teaching 8. Making meaning with text: a genetic approach to the mediating role of writing Part III. Learning and Teaching in the ZPD: 9. On learning with and from our students 10. The zone of proximal development and its implications for learning and teaching Appendices References Indexes.
Discourse, Learning, and Schooling explores theoretical and methodological relationships between childrens' discourse - or socially used language - and their learning in educational settings. Within the fields of education and psychology, the role that discourse plays in social processes of learning and teaching has emerged as a critical, empirical and theoretical question. Authors in this volume address a range of issues, including literacy, authorship, the construction of self and classroom interaction. The chapters range from research studies of classroom discourse to essays reflecting on discourse and literacies. Collectively these chapters reflect both sociocognitive perspectives on relations between discourse, learning, and schooling, and sociocultural perspectives on discourse and literacies among diverse cultural groups.
