Q1:
Piaget contributed several things to learning theory. First, he provided a different way to view the teacher’s role. Previously, the teachers were sages who possessed (or at least knew how to access) all the knowledge the students need to know. They then pass on this knowledge to the students. In Piagetian teaching, the teacher simply understands how to help the students discover and make meaning out of the world around them. This also changes the students’ roles; before, they were passive listeners who needed to be filled with knowledge. In Piaget’s eyes, they are now active explorers who will discover and construct their own meaning and system of knowledge.
Piaget added in the idea of accommodation. Before, James seemed to get stuck on the idea of assimilation. As he said, “we always try to name a new experience in some way which will assimilate it to what we already know. We hate anything absolutely new, anything without any name” (James, 1899/1962, p. 78). This leads to an idea that we are stuck with our old ways of thinking, and cannot really accept anything new or diverse. With the Piagetian theory, when assimilation will not do, accommodation steps in, allowing us to create a new schema for our world. This provides us the ability to accept many diverse ways of thinking, which seems to be a more valuable option.
With behaviorists, learners simply reacted to a stimulus, leaving nothing up to the actual learner. Piaget’s theory fills in the gap between stimulus and response, showing what goes on in the learners when they happen upon a stimulus. This adds in several benefits: students have a more active role in their learning, and have the possibility of having a will. It also allows them to have affective and cognitive aspects about themselves, instead of being machines with only a behavioral aspect.
Finally, Piaget’s theory adds in specific stages to learning. James had said that teachers need to be aware of native reactions, and had mentioned that subjects should not be taught before the student is ready, but he did not provide specific stages. Piaget maps out the stages and aligns them with the age of the student in years, providing a rubric for the teacher to follow.
Questions that I still have:
Can reinforcement still have a place? Since it seems that Piaget fills in what happens between stimulus and response, we may still be able to have a belief in the power of reinforcement. The difference is what occurs in the mean time.
Do I agree that constructivism is not an instructional approach, as Airasian and Walsh proclaim? It seems that he does at least provide the stages. What else is missing? What is needed for a “well-thought-out” instructional method? How do you turn a theory into a method?
Does constructivism have any room for truths? Most would agree that 2+2=4 is a universal truth. Sure, there are different ways of getting there, but most would agree that there is a right answer and it is a universal truth. If a child could make a compelling case for why 2+2 does not equal 4, would we grant them this? Can you say that your ways of constructing answers is wrong? Does constructivism allow us to do this? Maybe you come up with the same answer, but the way you get there is different? Could creating your own meaning sometimes mean that you have to have the same, universal truth answer (4), but you could have gotten there multiple ways (2+2, 1+1+1+1, etc.)?
Will students always react with interest to disequlibirum? I have not often seen children or even adults losing sleep over something not making sense or not being known to them. Perhaps this only affects people who cannot stand not knowing, and it seems they already have the motivation to learn. What about people who do not seem to have that innate motivation to learn? Or is that everyone does, but most people do not have this motivation tapped in to?
Q2:
Piaget argues that there are stages where children can learn and understand certain things. They progress through these stages at similar rates (as regarding age brackets), although some children may progress more or less quickly than others at certain things. The teacher needs to know these stages and be able to observe the children to see if they are progressing to the next stage. The teacher can then provide the correct activities to best address the needs of the students’ development.
James had a similar belief about what teachers need to know about students. He believed there were certain native reactions that all students have innately. In order to get children to be interested in other things, the teachers need to know the native reactions of children so that they can build upon these to provoke acquired reactions. As James (1899/1962) states, “The teacher’s art consists in bringing about the substitution or complication, and success in the art presupposes a sympathetic acquaintance with the reactive tendencies natively there” (p. 20).
Both also emphasize the importance of not pushing the students out of their stages too quickly. Lefrançois (2005) pointed out that with Piaget’s stages, trying to teach something in a higher stage (such as conservation) does not seem to work, and even when it does, testing has not “clearly shown that such acceleration studies have a generally beneficial effect on other aspects of child functioning” (p. 251). Therefore, the extra effort is probably not worth it. James (1899/1962) took a harsher stance, when he insisted that many children can be forever put off by a subject if a teacher tries to teach it too soon.
Q3:
Duckworth (1996) thought that it is important for a student “to feel confidence in their own ideas.” Bart was not able to feel confident about anything he was doing; all the other students were discussing things that were way over his head, and the only thing he was interested in in the room (the comic book) was taken away from him and had previously been used as a prop for illiteracy. One could assume that Duckworth would have thought that something valuable could be learned and built off from his interest in the comic book, but this teacher deemed it to be trash.
This classroom would also seem to go against the pace that Piaget pushed, and that Duckworth somewhat believed in. The students in the fictitious classroom were probably much further ahead than the standard age bracket, so Bart was being pushed too far out of his development stage. This would not be beneficial for Bart’s learning.
Bart assumed it would be “easy street,” and it seems that many students and instructors both seem to think this. Perhaps constructivism should allow learning to come easily to students, but this method did not work for Bart. Airasian and Walsh (1997) also do not want teachers to “assume that a constructivist orientation will make the same demands on teaching time as a nonconstructivist orientation” (p. 447). This kind of instruction might not come easily for the teacher, as they still need to closely follow and learn about each student in their classroom. The teacher in Bart’s classroom was not closely following his learning, and therefore was not really achieving the ideal concept of constructivism.
I do think this might be an example of a constructivist classroom, but not necessarily one with which Piaget or Vygotsky would agree. It did have the idea of students exploring and discovering (my favorite line was when the teacher told the students: “discover your desks!”), and to make their own meaning and work at their own pace. However, no attention seemed to be paid to the stages of development, as Bart was pushed out of his own stage. This class was for “gifted” students, rather than every student; this idea of only gifted students needing more open instruction has not been mentioned so far in my reading of constructivism. The teacher did not seem to have much of a role in the instruction whatsoever; the only time we see her facilitating is when she asks an open-ended question about the will, and when she allows Bart to conduct a dangerous science experiment. This seems to be more of a caricature of a constructivist classroom rather than an actual example.
I am still developing my own opinion about constructivism, but so far, I think it has valuable tenets; nevertheless, I do not believe I would accept it wholeheartedly. I like that it has a personal and active nature, allowing the students to discover their own meaning. I also like the opening it leaves for us to have a will.
I do not like that it seems to eliminate the possibility of universal truths, because I do think many of these exist and should be learned. It is great that they may be discovered by the student rather than simply told to the student, but there does need to be some understanding by the student that 2+2 always equals 4.
I am not sure if I really trust that all students will have an innate motivation due to the disequlibrium. I think it may still only help those who naturally have a love of school and learning. Look at Bart! Its lack of reinforcement also bothers me; although I do not think that learning should be based solely on reinforcement, I think it has an important place. Luckily, it seems like you can still use reinforcement and stimulus/response, as Piaget’s theory really works in the learner between the stimulus and the response.
Finally, the stages provide some concern. Some students are slower than others, while others may be gifted or can move faster than others. The stages and the heavy interaction with the teacher lead me to believe that some students will still be left behind while others are bored because it is not moving quickly enough.
I think I really like the combination of constructivism and behaviorism, and I think that teaching machines could be great for the two. The teaching machine can help lead the students on their way and let them make their own meaning, while providing the reinforcement that seems beneficial to some students. Since the students are primarily working with the machines, this allows the instructor to spend more time with each student, listening to their explanations about how they are constructing meaning, providing scaffolding, direction, and social interactivity that they require (according to Piaget and Vygotsky) and providing lots of reinforcement (which Skinner would like). Perhaps it is my nature to want to appease everyone, but so far my “philosophy of learning” would be a combination of the three theories.
Q4:
Vygotsky’s contributions:
One main contribution that Vygotsky added to the theory of learning is the social, historical, and cultural aspect of learning. Learners are a part of a larger culture, and it is important to notice how these factors affect their learning. This emphasis on the “nurture” aspect of learning is contrasted to Piaget, who believed that there is a role that the social feature plays, but the innate “nature” of learners has more weight.
Vygotsky also contributed the idea that language is a crucial part of learning. Once language has been developed, the act of thinking is language, while Piaget believed that cognition is in charge of language. For Vygotsky, language is what allows for critical thinking, and is what separates us from animals and infants.
Vygotsky believed that learning actually results in development, and therefore happens first, which contrasts with Piaget’s insistence that development must happen before learning can occur. Vygotsky’s theory allows for the student to perform outside of their actual developmental level, so that they are in their zone of proximal development. Once they have learned this skill, they can add it to their zone of actual development, and have grown in the process.
A crucial aspect of the zone of proximal development is the importance of interactivity in learning. He thinks the teacher should have a very specific role as a teacher-student, and the student acting as a student-teacher; this interaction is known as the obuchenie. The teacher should help build scaffolding for the student, by showing how to do something but then gradually providing less assistance, so that the student can achieve on their own. Piaget also saw the importance of social interactivity, but for him, the teacher was supposed to help the student discover their own meaning, and other students helped to create the “optimal mismatch” that resulted in disequilibrium, so that equilibration could take over.
Questions I still have:
Would Vygotsky believe that a student could ever learn with out assistance? Do we believe this?
How much of the learning process is from assistance, and how much is from imitation? Could students still learn by imitation if they were around a teacher, but were not directly assisted by that individual? Would they learn as much?
What is the motivation for the student? For Skinner, it was reinforcement and the desire to succeed. For Piaget, it was the desire to get out of a state of disequilibrium. What is it here?
What are the implications that result from the importance of culture? Should we only learn from people who are from our culture? Should we learn about other cultures, or will this mess up our learning? Is absolutely everything that we do and learn in context of culture, or can anything be independent of it? We only need one counterexample to disprove this statement… Can you think of one?
Q5:
Vygotsky saw the importance of the inner speech of which this NPR article speaks. According to him, the third and most important type of language that children learn is the stage of self-talk. According to Lefrançois’ (2005) interpretation of Vygotsky, our self-speech “allows us to observe and direct our thinking and, by the same token, our behavior. Inner speech is what makes all higher mental functioning possible” (p 262). Vygotsky noted that “a child first becomes able to subordinate her behavior to rules in group play and only later does voluntary self-regulation of behavior arise as an internal function” (p. 90). I think he would agree that not being able to engage in open and imaginative play would inhibit the growth of the student’s self-speech, and this would harm their ability to self-regulate and gain higher mental functions.
Interestingly, this seems to be an extreme example of Vygotsky’s idea of assistance, and shows that too much assistance could hurt a child’s development. The toys are allowing the children to play in very particular ways, and does not allow them to create their own experiences and meaning. Perhaps this could also happen in the classroom; if the teacher directs the class too much, they might not permit the students to develop their own thoughts. How can teachers make sure that they are not overstepping the bounds of assistance? What can teachers and parents do to make their children exercise their imaginations (besides just not buying the toys). Is there another way for children to learn self-speech, besides open play?
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