VYGOTSKY AND AGENCY IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

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VYGOTSKY AND AGENCY IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

• Praha 2007
• Jyrki Reunamo
• Marja Nurmilaakso

Department of Applied Sciences of
Education, UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI
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I INTRODUCTION

• Vygotsky describes the first continuum as
  extending from the interpsycholocical to
  intrapsychological
• Every function of the childs cultural
  development appears twice first, on the social
  level and later, on the individual level

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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

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• 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

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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

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• 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

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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

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

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THE AGENTIVE NATURE OF CHILDRENS ACTIONS

• Galperin The ability of looking ahead
  (orientation) is a precondition for and even a
  prime aspects of learning
• Vygotskys ideas of language development can been
  arranged according to social and agentive
  continuums 1) Actual, 2) Proximal, 3)
  Instrumental and 4) Producing

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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 childs mental functions that
  has beeb established as a result of certain
  already completed developmental cycles

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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

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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

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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

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II METHODS

• The research problem has been What pedagogical
  cues do different language development functions
  produce?
• The short excerpts of childrens talk come from
  previous research

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• 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 childs language skills?
• What could you do to figure out the childs
  actual level of language development? Give an
  example

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• 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

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• 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 childs objective be in the
  situation?
• How could you find out the objective? Give an
  example

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• Language as a tool for cultural production
• What consequences do the childrens descriptions
  have?
• In what way do childrens views and actions
  advance the situation at hand? What happens next?

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• 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

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• All students were presented with the same seven
  excerpts of childrens talk, but different groups
  were asked to consider childrenss 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

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III RESULTS

• Altogether there were 544 answers regarding the
  seven short talk situations
• Examples of results

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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

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Table 1. 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. 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.
Instrumental tools The child does not know how to negotiate with the other child rather she or he finds it better to withdraw totally. She wants to try again later with better luck. Producing tools The child does not necessarily get upset she or he just gets a new friend to play with.
Actual development The child understood the question and was able to answer it. The second clause is insufficient who is coming back? Proximal development We could consider other play alternatives or the possibility to take part in the play.
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Table 2. Examples of the four orientations in a
situation of conflict
Adult Somebody comes to tease you. What do you do? Child Then I did almost nothing. Adult Somebody comes to tease you. What do you do? Child Then I did almost nothing.
Instrumental tools The child looks at the situation from his or her own point of view. It is hard for him or her to imagine the situation further and his own actions. The child lives in the present. A strategy to deal with the situation by answering something that does not provoke continuation. Producing tools A pity! The teaser, on the other hand, can find the other as ignorant and the teasing stops. Something totally different can happen too!
Actual development Here the child is not capable of using tenses and the structure of the talk is not logical. Proximal development I would discuss the childs feeling in the situation How do you feel when somebody teases you? I would try to bring the child into contact with his or her feelings and that way start to talk about what should be done in the situation.
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IV DISCUSSION

• Different views on learning have different
  consequences for teaching
• The teacher looking at childrens actual
  development is parallel to that of the
  traditional teacher
• Here, a proper language quite independent of
  the child or teacher seems to exist

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

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• 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 childrens use and learning of language

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