Very good, Bloomfield. But if you're intending to charge me tuition you're the worse off for it.Bloomfield wrote:Self-RegulationNanohedron wrote:Good Lord, Carol! Are you sleeping with the enemy, after all? And who's this knob, Vygotzky? He's not listed in Webster so he HAS to be a hack.
Vygotzky (1978) places the origins of cognition in social interaction. He argues that the acquisition of cognitive skills occurs when children solve problems as they interact with adults or more knowledgeable peers. First as they observe adults and more advanced peers and then as they actively participate in increasingly complex tasks, children become adept at independent problem solving. This process is the transition from other-regulation to self-regulation. According to Vygotzky, talk is the most important mediator in cognitive development. In the transition from the expert giving instructions and providing guidance to final self-regulation, through a stage of inner speech, the child achieves competent functioning. Inner speech decreases over time as the child internalizes the social message and turns it into thought.
Successful self-regulation is contingent upon the existence of a zone of proximal development. Vygotzky created this concept to account for the distance between the child's ability to problem solve individually and his or her potential ability to problem solve with adult or expert guidance.
From this point of view, the optimal learning situation includes the novice, still unable to solve problems independently, and the more advanced peer or adult. The latter uses problem-solving behaviors, experiments with new approaches, and, by assigning responsibility for certain aspects of the task to the novice, encourages him or her to develop cognitive skills. When an adult or a more advanced peer facilitates the functioning of the novice so that his or her functioning is at a higher level than that achieved individually, the process is called "scaffolding." Scaffolding alleviates some of the cognitive burden experienced by the novice and occurs in two ways: First, the adult or the more capable expert assumes responsibility for parts of the problem; second, by supervising the novice's behaviors to see if they fit the task, the expert exerts metacognitive control. Through such metacognitive control, the novice becomes increasingly aware of the mental processes required by the task, thereby activating and practicing them as necessary (Vygotzky, 1962). As the novice develops more and more advanced problem-solving skills, he or she needs less help and is able to solve problems independently (Newman, Griffin, & Cole, 1989).
Vygotzky argues that higher-order, psychological functions develop through social interaction. Adults and more knowledgeable peers broker and foster the novice's development. They manage the environment and demonstrate how to interact with it, explain and give meaning to actions and experiences, call attention to the relevant dimensions of behavior, and illustrate problem-solving strategies. The acquisition of a new skill is not only added knowledge and improved functioning, but also a passage from a dialectic on the outside to an internal world. In other words, new skills help the individual handle the environment.
And that had better not be an entry.
