Class, Jan 31, 2011
Gee, J. (2000). Discourse and sociocultural studies in reading. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. Pearson, R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, ... R. Barr (Eds.) , Handbook of reading research, Vol. III (pp. 195-207). Mahwah, NJ US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. (full book online, “get full text,” then “netlibrary.”)
Begins with lit review of:
Ethnomethodology and conversational analysis – interactional sociolinguistics
-Knowing is a matter of “knowing how to proceed”
Ethnology of speaking (Gumperz) –
-“language in use” is contextualized
-participants use “cues” in speech and writing
-varies across cultures
Sociohistorical psychology (Vygotsky and Bakhtin)
-“thinking is not “private” but mediated by cultural tools
Situated cognition
-knowledge and intelligence are not soley “in the head” but distributed across social practices and tools
-Knowing is a matter of being able to participate centrally in practice, and learning is a matter of changing patterns of participations
Cultural models theory
-a social version of schema theory
-people make sense of experiences by applying (tacit) “theories” or “cultural models” to them
Cognitive linguistics
-all human lang are organized in terms of systems of metaphors
-metaphors shape how we interpret our experience and how we think about ourselves and the material, social, and cultural world.
The new science and technology studies
-scientific knowledge is rooted in (particular) culture
Modern Composition theory –
-knowledge and meaning are situated in disciplines
Connectionism
-thinking and acting are a matter of using stored patterns or images of our past experiences.
-patterns and images are shaped by contexts of those experiences
Modern sociology
-human thinking, acting, interaction are structured by institutional forces
-impossible to say which came first: institutions or the human social practices that continually enact and reproduce them.
-global economic and demographic changes radically transform human interaction and human institutions.
Postculturalist and postmodernist work
-Discourses are characteristic ways of talking and writing about people and things, such that certain perspectives and states of affairs come to be “normal” and others “deviant.”
(sums up later, p. 202) “So far I have argued that language is given meaning-in-use through its association with situated meanings, cultural models, and the sociocultural groups that socialize learners into these.”
The Social Mind
Humans are not “rule followers” but “pattern recognizers.” (patterns are understood through experience, not generalizable (decontextualized) rules.
We are guided by curriculum, teachers to focus on specific patterns.
Knowledge is “distributed throughout the system.” Cannot understand one piece, unless it is seen as part of the whole.
Mid-level generalizations: goldilocks principal, not too specific nor too general. Also called situated meanings or “world-building situated meanings” (flexibly transformable patterns that come out of experience)
I.e. “bedroom” – definition transformed by addition of “refrigerator.”
“Thinking and using language is an active matter of assembling the situated meanings that you need for action in the world” (p. 8).
Situated Meanings in Reading
“Situated meanings” are dynamic, contextualized versions of schemas
Children reading and writing – must be taught to focus on the “right” situated meanings – those shared by the community of practice (the classroom)
I.e. of two HS girls reading Frost poem – two different “theories of reading” in action
Cultural Models
Cultural models – words are tied to these models, storylines, theories that belong to socioculturally defined groups of people.
Cultural models, storylines, and theories organize the thinking and work of different cultural groups – rationalize the situated meaning and practices the people in the group use.
“Maria reads from her own experience to the words and back again to her social experience.”
Mary theorizes that words symbolize other things – not concrete
“Any efficacious pedagogy must be a judicious mixture of immersion in a community of practice and overt focusing and scaffolding from “masters” or “more advanced peers” (Vygotsky) who focus learners on the most fruitful sorts of patterns in their experience.” (p. 201).
The who and the what – we write for different purposes, in different contexts (scientist example about writing for butterflys) Socioculturally meaningful “dances” are enacted in various genre, various purposes, various situated meanings, and Discourses. (capital “D”)
“To appreciate this ‘aptness” and this “marriage’ is the heart and soutl of acquiring the ‘code’ in reading and writing, at all levels, from phonics to genre to Discourse.” (p. 204)
Implications
“To read is to be able to actively assemble situated meanings in one or more specific ‘literate’ Discourses. There is no ‘reading in general,’ at least none that leads to thought and action in the world.”
Halliday, M. K. (1990). The Place of Dialogue in Children's Construction of Meaning. Retrieved from EBSCOhost and Interlibrary loan from UCF library.
Argues against “romantic” notions of individualism in child learning.
Three stages of language:
Phase I - Symbolic: Protolanguage
“meaning is created at the point of impact of the material and the conscious, in the dialectic engagement between these two domains of experience.” The event is what constructs meaning, not the language. Goes with crawling.
Phase II - Transition:
Phase III – Symbolic: language
Goes with walking.
“Conversation, then, evolves as the joint construal of shared experience, whereby phenomena that are accessible to the consciousness of both parties – things both can see, events both have experiences – are turned dialogically into meanings”
Dialogue is important when constructing meaning – early dialogue between parents and children can provide a glimpse into what a child knows.
“Meaning” is created at the intersection of “experience” and “interpersonal” connections.
John-Steiner, V., & Mahn, H. (1996). Sociocultural approaches to learning and development: A Vygotskian framework. Educational Psychologist, 31(3/4), 191. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.ucf.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?hid=112&sid=f4cafb70-5477-4da4-97e8-2737803e2323%40sessionmgr104&vid=6
An Overview of SocioCultural Theory
Developed in 20s and 30s; Vygotsky
“Human activities take place in cultural contexts, are mediated by language and other symbol systems, and can be best understood when investigated in their historical development.” (p. 191)
“Vygotsky conceptualized development as the transformation of socially shared activities into internalized processes.” (p. 192).
Social Sources of Development
All knowledge is internalized from an external source. Scaffolding (gradual release of responsibility) “by internalizing the effects of working together, the novice acquires useful strategies and crucial knowledge.”
Semiotic Mediation
Key to all aspects of knowledge coconstruction. (p. 192). Connections between the external and internal; between the social and individual.
“Knowledge is not internalized directly, but through the use of psychological tools” (p. 193). Cognitive pluralism
These tools can be: texts, conversations about social norms, experiences, etc. John-Steiner’s list: words, drawings, musical notes, scientific diagrams.
Genetic Analysis
Examines the origins and the history of phenomena – Vygotsky focused on interconnectedness: concentrate on process, not product.
“Learning and development take place in socially and culturally shaped contexts.” (p. 194).
“Learning” is change and development. Writing and speaking are windows into learning.
Functional systems provide insight to cognitive development. They are “dynamic psychological systems in which diverse internal and external processes are coordinated and integrated.” (p. 194).
Vygotsky’s Methodological Approach
Theoretical: he examined systems in the process of change
Psychological: he chose research methods to capture the dynamics of process
Emphasis: Examine cognitive change in diverse contexts
Method: He used “experimental-developmental method in which developmental changes are provoked in lab settings.” Used a dialectical method to examine change.
Dialectical method: evolving methodology, as the study progressed. Recognizes and embraces opposites as natural processes. The individual constructs the social – and is transformed by the social.
Verbal thought: Word meaning is the basic unit. This is the transition between thought and language.
Internalization: The point at which learning occurs. Social information turns to Inner speech
“In working with, through, and beyond what they have appropriated in social participation and then internalized, individuals coconstruct new knowledge” (p. 197).
ZPD: “The distance between the actual developmental level as determined through independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboratiom with more capable peers.”
Literacy Acquisition
Vygotsky noted that reading and writing should be taught so that they are necessary for something. Writing should be meaningful, taught naturally, and environment is important. (p. 203)
Tudge, J. H., & Winterhoff, P. A. (1993). Vygotsky, Piaget, and Bandura: Perspectives on the Relations between the Social World and Cognitive Development. Human Development, 36(2), 61-81. Retrieved from http://152.13.13.169/hdf/facultystaff/Tudge/vpb93.pdf
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Only Chapter 1: Chapter 1 full text available: http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1934/tool-symbol.htm
Importance of speech in learning – separates humans from apes – development of notions for ZPD
Gee, J. (2000). Discourse and sociocultural studies in reading. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. Pearson, R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, ... R. Barr (Eds.) , Handbook of reading research, Vol. III (pp. 195-207). Mahwah, NJ US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. (full book online, “get full text,” then “netlibrary.”)
Begins with lit review of:
Ethnomethodology and conversational analysis – interactional sociolinguistics
-Knowing is a matter of “knowing how to proceed”
Ethnology of speaking (Gumperz) –
-“language in use” is contextualized
-participants use “cues” in speech and writing
-varies across cultures
Sociohistorical psychology (Vygotsky and Bakhtin)
-“thinking is not “private” but mediated by cultural tools
Situated cognition
-knowledge and intelligence are not soley “in the head” but distributed across social practices and tools
-Knowing is a matter of being able to participate centrally in practice, and learning is a matter of changing patterns of participations
Cultural models theory
-a social version of schema theory
-people make sense of experiences by applying (tacit) “theories” or “cultural models” to them
Cognitive linguistics
-all human lang are organized in terms of systems of metaphors
-metaphors shape how we interpret our experience and how we think about ourselves and the material, social, and cultural world.
The new science and technology studies
-scientific knowledge is rooted in (particular) culture
Modern Composition theory –
-knowledge and meaning are situated in disciplines
Connectionism
-thinking and acting are a matter of using stored patterns or images of our past experiences.
-patterns and images are shaped by contexts of those experiences
Modern sociology
-human thinking, acting, interaction are structured by institutional forces
-impossible to say which came first: institutions or the human social practices that continually enact and reproduce them.
-global economic and demographic changes radically transform human interaction and human institutions.
Postculturalist and postmodernist work
-Discourses are characteristic ways of talking and writing about people and things, such that certain perspectives and states of affairs come to be “normal” and others “deviant.”
(sums up later, p. 202) “So far I have argued that language is given meaning-in-use through its association with situated meanings, cultural models, and the sociocultural groups that socialize learners into these.”
The Social Mind
Humans are not “rule followers” but “pattern recognizers.” (patterns are understood through experience, not generalizable (decontextualized) rules.
We are guided by curriculum, teachers to focus on specific patterns.
Knowledge is “distributed throughout the system.” Cannot understand one piece, unless it is seen as part of the whole.
Mid-level generalizations: goldilocks principal, not too specific nor too general. Also called situated meanings or “world-building situated meanings” (flexibly transformable patterns that come out of experience)
I.e. “bedroom” – definition transformed by addition of “refrigerator.”
“Thinking and using language is an active matter of assembling the situated meanings that you need for action in the world” (p. 8).
Situated Meanings in Reading
“Situated meanings” are dynamic, contextualized versions of schemas
Children reading and writing – must be taught to focus on the “right” situated meanings – those shared by the community of practice (the classroom)
I.e. of two HS girls reading Frost poem – two different “theories of reading” in action
Cultural Models
Cultural models – words are tied to these models, storylines, theories that belong to socioculturally defined groups of people.
Cultural models, storylines, and theories organize the thinking and work of different cultural groups – rationalize the situated meaning and practices the people in the group use.
“Maria reads from her own experience to the words and back again to her social experience.”
Mary theorizes that words symbolize other things – not concrete
“Any efficacious pedagogy must be a judicious mixture of immersion in a community of practice and overt focusing and scaffolding from “masters” or “more advanced peers” (Vygotsky) who focus learners on the most fruitful sorts of patterns in their experience.” (p. 201).
The who and the what – we write for different purposes, in different contexts (scientist example about writing for butterflys) Socioculturally meaningful “dances” are enacted in various genre, various purposes, various situated meanings, and Discourses. (capital “D”)
“To appreciate this ‘aptness” and this “marriage’ is the heart and soutl of acquiring the ‘code’ in reading and writing, at all levels, from phonics to genre to Discourse.” (p. 204)
Implications
“To read is to be able to actively assemble situated meanings in one or more specific ‘literate’ Discourses. There is no ‘reading in general,’ at least none that leads to thought and action in the world.”
Halliday, M. K. (1990). The Place of Dialogue in Children's Construction of Meaning. Retrieved from EBSCOhost and Interlibrary loan from UCF library.
Argues against “romantic” notions of individualism in child learning.
Three stages of language:
Phase I - Symbolic: Protolanguage
“meaning is created at the point of impact of the material and the conscious, in the dialectic engagement between these two domains of experience.” The event is what constructs meaning, not the language. Goes with crawling.
Phase II - Transition:
Phase III – Symbolic: language
Goes with walking.
“Conversation, then, evolves as the joint construal of shared experience, whereby phenomena that are accessible to the consciousness of both parties – things both can see, events both have experiences – are turned dialogically into meanings”
Dialogue is important when constructing meaning – early dialogue between parents and children can provide a glimpse into what a child knows.
“Meaning” is created at the intersection of “experience” and “interpersonal” connections.
John-Steiner, V., & Mahn, H. (1996). Sociocultural approaches to learning and development: A Vygotskian framework. Educational Psychologist, 31(3/4), 191. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.ucf.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?hid=112&sid=f4cafb70-5477-4da4-97e8-2737803e2323%40sessionmgr104&vid=6
An Overview of SocioCultural Theory
Developed in 20s and 30s; Vygotsky
“Human activities take place in cultural contexts, are mediated by language and other symbol systems, and can be best understood when investigated in their historical development.” (p. 191)
“Vygotsky conceptualized development as the transformation of socially shared activities into internalized processes.” (p. 192).
Social Sources of Development
All knowledge is internalized from an external source. Scaffolding (gradual release of responsibility) “by internalizing the effects of working together, the novice acquires useful strategies and crucial knowledge.”
Semiotic Mediation
Key to all aspects of knowledge coconstruction. (p. 192). Connections between the external and internal; between the social and individual.
“Knowledge is not internalized directly, but through the use of psychological tools” (p. 193). Cognitive pluralism
These tools can be: texts, conversations about social norms, experiences, etc. John-Steiner’s list: words, drawings, musical notes, scientific diagrams.
Genetic Analysis
Examines the origins and the history of phenomena – Vygotsky focused on interconnectedness: concentrate on process, not product.
“Learning and development take place in socially and culturally shaped contexts.” (p. 194).
“Learning” is change and development. Writing and speaking are windows into learning.
Functional systems provide insight to cognitive development. They are “dynamic psychological systems in which diverse internal and external processes are coordinated and integrated.” (p. 194).
Vygotsky’s Methodological Approach
Theoretical: he examined systems in the process of change
Psychological: he chose research methods to capture the dynamics of process
Emphasis: Examine cognitive change in diverse contexts
Method: He used “experimental-developmental method in which developmental changes are provoked in lab settings.” Used a dialectical method to examine change.
Dialectical method: evolving methodology, as the study progressed. Recognizes and embraces opposites as natural processes. The individual constructs the social – and is transformed by the social.
Verbal thought: Word meaning is the basic unit. This is the transition between thought and language.
Internalization: The point at which learning occurs. Social information turns to Inner speech
“In working with, through, and beyond what they have appropriated in social participation and then internalized, individuals coconstruct new knowledge” (p. 197).
ZPD: “The distance between the actual developmental level as determined through independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboratiom with more capable peers.”
Literacy Acquisition
Vygotsky noted that reading and writing should be taught so that they are necessary for something. Writing should be meaningful, taught naturally, and environment is important. (p. 203)
Tudge, J. H., & Winterhoff, P. A. (1993). Vygotsky, Piaget, and Bandura: Perspectives on the Relations between the Social World and Cognitive Development. Human Development, 36(2), 61-81. Retrieved from http://152.13.13.169/hdf/facultystaff/Tudge/vpb93.pdf
| | Basic tenants | Differs from __ | Similar to ___ | All agree that: |
| Vygotsky | Development is assisted by others; fostered by collaboration within the ZPD *ZPD - functions in the process of maturation *Theorists: process of interaction AND the consequences of interaction have been researched. *Research has shown that children paired with adult learned more than child paired with peer. *Unit of analysis: diad | Piaget: development precedes learning Piaget: individual child progressively becomes social *Bandura: performance may precede competence. | Piaget: development includes a dialectical process Bandura: critical of stimulus/ response models and behaviorism | Children do not passively imitate models in their social world, but are cognitively active in this process *Social factors important *maturation plays a critical role |
| Piaget | Children are “little scientists” working alone on the physical, logical, and mathematical material of their world. *Driving force “cognitive conflict” * Children’s development must precede learning *peer interaction is qualitatively different from and superior to adult-child interaction in facilitating cognitive growth. *Unit of analysis: individual | *Vygotsky: learning precedes development *Vygotsky: child is social from the start | Vygotsky: huge role played by society Vygotsky: development includes a dialectical process *Piaget: peers can be useful models | Children do not passively imitate models in their social world, but are cognitively active in this process *Social factors important *maturation plays a critical role |
| Bandura | *Social Cognitive Theory *Children primarily learn by imitation of models. *Driving force “observational learning.” And “rule learning” *personal self-efficacy is a determinant of behavior. *Unit of analysis: individual | *Piaget: emphasis on the child’s activity with the physical world *Piaget: cognitive development *Vygotsky: competence has to precede performance. | *Vygotsky: critical of stimulus/ response models and behaviorism *Piaget: peers can be useful models | Children do not passively imitate models in their social world, but are cognitively active in this process *Social factors important *maturation plays a critical role |
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Only Chapter 1: Chapter 1 full text available: http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1934/tool-symbol.htm
Importance of speech in learning – separates humans from apes – development of notions for ZPD
