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Chapter 13
Sociocultural Theory and Contextual Perspective
61
Psychology
Undergraduate 1
03/16/2013

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Term
Lev Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory
Definition
Suggests that society and culture provide a wide variety of concepts and strategies that children gradually begin to use in thinking about and dealing with tasks.
Term
What was Vygotsky's primary focus in his theory?
Definition
He acknowledged that biological factors play a role and that children bring certain dispositions to the situations, but his primary focus was on the role of the environment.
Term
Lower mental functions
Definition
Certain basic ways of learning and responding to the environment.
Term
Higher mental functions
Definition
Deliberate, focused cognitive processes that enhance learning, memory, and logical reasoning.
Term
How can adults promote mental functions in children?
Definition
Adults share with children the meaning they attach to objects and human experience: in this process, they transform, or mediate, the situation children encounter.
Term
What kind of value did Vygotsky place on independence?
Definition
He saw some value in allowing children to make some discoveries, but he saw more value in having adults pass along the discoveries of previous generations.
Term
Cognitive tools
Definition
Tools that are at least partly symbolic or mental in nature which greatly enhances children's thinking abilities. Different cultures pass along different cognitive tools.
Term
What is an important cognitive tool, according to Vygotsky?
Definition
Language. Vygotsky proposed that thought and language are distinctly separate functions for infants and young toddlers.
- When language first appears, its first used primarily for communication, rather than thought.
- Around the age of 2, thought and language become intertwined.
Term
Self- Talk
Definition
Private speech, which plays an important role, by talking to themselves, children learn to guide and direct their own behaviors through difficult tasks.
Term
Inner Speech
Definition
Children talk to themselves mentally, rather than aloud.
Term
Where do complex mental processes emerge from?
Definition
They emerge out of social activities; as children develop, they gradually internalize the process they se in social contexts and begin to use them independently.
Term
Internalization
Definition
The process through which social activities evolve into internal mental activities.
Term
Appropriation
Definition
The process of internalizing, but also adapting the ideas and strategies of one's culture for one's own use.
Term
Actual development level
Definition
is the upper limit of tasks that he/she can perform independently, without help from anyone else.
Term
Level potential development
Definition
is the upper limit of tasks that he/she can perform with the assistance of a more competent individual.
Term
Zone of proximal development (ZPD)
Definition
the range of tasks that children can't yet perform independent but can perform with the help and guidance of others is.
Term
Proximal Development
Definition
tasks that a child can't accomplish even with assistance and support.
Term
How does play allow children to cognitively stretch themselves?
Definition
In play a child always behaves beyond their average age, above his daily behavior, and their behaviors must conform to certain standards and adhere to such restrictions on their behavior.
Term
Common themes of Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories
Definition
1. Qualitative changes in the nature of thought: children acquire more complex reasoning over time.
2. Children benefit most from tasks and develop more sophisticated knowledge and though processes when challenged.
3. Readiness:
- Piaget: children can accommodate to new objects only when some assimilation into existing schemas is possible.
- Vygotsky: children's newly forming abilities fall within their ZPD and can be fostered though adult assistance.
Term
To what extent is language essential for learning and cognitive development?
Definition
- Piaget: language provides verbal labels for many of the concepts and others schemes children have previously development.
- Vygotsky: language is absolutely critical for learning and cognitive development
Term
What kinds of experiences promote learning and development?
Definition
- Piaget: children's independent, self-motivated explorations of the physical world form the basis for many developing schemes and children often construct these schemes with little or no guidance from others.
- Vygotsky: activities that are facilitated and interpreted by more competent individuals
Term
What kinds of social interactions are most valuable?
Definition
- Piaget: emphasized the benefits of interactions with peers (who could create conflict).
- Vygotsky: placed greater importance on interactions with adults and other more advanced individuals (who provide support).
Term
When is social interaction with peers beneficial?
Definition
When children's development requires them to abandon old perspectives in favor of new more complex ones, conflict between age-mates is optimal.
Term
When is social interaction with adults beneficial?
Definition
When children's development instead requires that they learn new skills, patient guidance is more often beneficial.
Term
How influential is culture?
Definition
- Piaget: didn't address the role.
- Vygotsky: culture is of paramount importance in determining the specific thinking skills children acquire.
Term
Mediated learning experience
Definition
An adult can help a child make sense of the world through a discussion of a phenomenon or event that the two of them are simultaneously experiencing. This process encourages the child to attach labels to the event, recognize principles, and draw certain conclusions.
Term
Sociocognitive conflict
Definition
Peer-group discussions.
Term
Social constructivist
Definition
Peer-group discussions that can help children make sense of a situation.
Term
Scaffolding
Definition
A variety of supportive techniques that can help students accomplish challenging tasks in instructional contexts.
Term
Guided participation
Definition
Children's involvement in adult activities is mediated. scaffolded, and supervised which helps children tie newly acquired skills and thinking abilities to the specific contexts in which those skills are apt to be useful.
Term
Apprenticeship
Definition
an intensive form of guided participation, in which a novice works with an expert mentor for a lengthy period to learn how to perform complex tasks within a particular domain.
- The mentor gradually removes scaffold and gives the novice more responsibility as competence increases.
Term
Cognitive apprenticeship
Definition
an apprenticeship can show novices how expert typically think about a task or activity.
Term
What are some features of apprenticeship?
Definition
1. Modeling
2. Coaching
3. Articulation
4. Reflection
5. Increasing complexity of tasks
6. Exploration
Term
Dynamic assessment
Definition
A way to assess children's level of potential development.
1. Identify tasks that children cannot initially do independently.
2. Providing in-depth instruction and practice in behaviors and cognitive processes related to the task.
3. Determining the extent to which each child has benefited from the instruction.
Term
Intersubjectivity
Definition
For two people to interact and communicate, they must have shared understanding on which to build: mutual understanding.
Term
Joint attention
Definition
the pair monitor the other's attention to the object and coordinating their behaviors toward the object.
Term
Social referencing
Definition
looking at someone else for clues about how to respond to or feel about a particular object or event.
Term
Co-constructed narratives
Definition
parents begin to engage them in conversations about past events, helping them construct the narratives, which can help children make sense of an event and apply labels to it.
Term
Situation learning/cognition
Definition
cognitive theorists propose that a good deal of learning and thinking is context specific, meaning it's situated in the environment in which it initially tasks place and the skills developed in that environment won't necessarily be used in other contexts.
Term
Distributed cognition/intelligence
Definition
People can often think and learn more effectively when they offload some of the cognitive burden onto something else or someone else.
Term
Embodiment
Definition
one's immediate physical context and bodily reactions to it.
Term
What role does culture play?
Definition
Our culture passes along key concepts, symbols, and visual representations that can help growing children interpret, organize, and successfully deal with the physical and social worlds in which they live.
Term
Authentic activities
Definition
tasks identical or similar to those that children will eventually encounter in the outside world.
Term
Problem-based learning
Definition
students acquire new knowledge and skills as they work on complex problems or projects similar to those they might find in the outside world.
Term
Service learning
Definition
Projects that directly or indirectly enhance the quality of life in the outside world.
Term
Distributed cognition
Definition
Students spread the learning task across many minds and can draw on multiple knowledge bases and ideas.
Term
Benefits of peer groups
Definition
1. Students must clarify and organize heir ideas in such a way that they can explain it to others.
2. Students elaborate on what they've learned which may help others.
3. Students are exposed to the views of others.
4. Students can model effective ways of thinking about and studying a particular subject.
5. Students can also gain practice in argumentation skills.
Term
Downsides of peer groups
Definition
1. Students may have insufficient expertise to tackle a task or problem without adult assistance.
2. Students of high social status may dominate discussions.
3. Students may become annoyed or frustrated and begin to "tune out".
4. Students may pass along misconceptions.
Term
Reciprocal teaching
Definition
a classroom teacher and several students meet in a group to read a section of text, stop periodically to discuss what they're reading.

1. Summarizing
2. Questioning
3. Clarifying
4. Predicting
Term
Cooperative learning
Definition
students work in small groups to achieve a common goal, they vary in duration (depending on the task to be accomplished).
Term
Base group
Definition
Cooperative groups that last an entire semester or school year.
Term
Advocated and Disagreers of cooperative groups
Definition
- Advocates suggest that groups be heterogenous.
- Disagreers: heterogeneity makes ability differences among students obvious and discourages low-ability students.
Term
Jigsaw technique
Definition
New information is divided equally among all group member, and each student must each his or her portion to the group members.
Term
Scripted cooperation
Definition
students work in pairs to read and study expository text.
Term
Guided peer questioning or elaborative interrogation
Definition
Students pairs are given a structure that encourages them to ask one another higher-level questions about classroom material.
Term
Peer tutoring
Definition
students who have mastered a topic teach those who haven't.
Term
Sense of community
Definition
a sense that teacher and students have shared goals, respect and support one another's efforts, and believe that everyone makes an important contribution to classroom learning.
Term
Community of learning
Definition
in which teacher and students collaborate to build a body of knowledge about a topic and help one another learn about it.
Term
Knowledge building
Definition
authentically advancing the frontiers of the group's knowledge about a topic.
Term
Conceptual artifacts
Definition
theories, models, and other cognitive tools that can be used to evaluate and possibly modify over time.
Term
Communities of learners: weaknesses
Definition
1. Students learn is limited to the knowledge that they themselves acquire and share with one another.
2. Students may occasionally pass their misconceptions on to classmates.
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