Or what does this different form of social structuring allow children to
know and do?
Bruner seems to hint at our theories of development facilitate our creating
environments that reinforce our theories of development. I do however think
there is a wisdom, and sometimes lack of wisdom, in the different social
structuring we may give to a four or a nine year old. We can teach a four
year old to read and write or create environments where it would senseful,
but that does not imply that it would have the same relationship as to how
a nine year olds world is organized.
Goethe said, I think, "we don't play because we were children but have
childhood so we can play". We all play, but for a certain age it seems to
have a unique relationship to how they organize their world. Likewise, to
say the child has performed this operation or demonstrated that
intelligence says nothing about its relationship to how they organize their
world. As El'konin might say the nine year old has a different
relationship to the division of labor than the four year old.
I am always amazed at the different ways a four or nine year old will go
about organizing their world, but am often puzzled how these different
systems tend to be looked at linearally. One thing that I have always
found interesting with Venger's work is the idea of the preschool period
having a complexity in its own right without being seen as a precurser to
elementary school. Piaget seemed to argue for qualitive difference in that
(a) is different than (b) because (b) has or can do something that (a)
can't. Stages are differentiated by what a child can't do rather than what
they can. Vygotsky in play seemed to be more focused on differentiation by
what a child could do, but he also fell into that linear trap, I think.
At times its seems sad that rather than ways of knowing/organizing the
world becoming more complex they just disappear. It is amazing how similar
the organization of dramatic play of four and eight year olds are. Rather
than becoming more complex it is often seen as no longer appropriate and is
avoided in the curriculum. Perspectives in Activity Theory had a nice
chapter on play becoming more complex in facilitating the children in their
ZPD.
I would assume the difference in social structuring has to do with
familiarity with the different theories of the world. The nine year old,
because of school probally, is an organization that I am more familiar with
and can take a expert role in, if I wish. The four year old on the other
hand is a way of organizing the world in which I am less familiar with. My
role needs to be more passive if I want to understand that world.
Personally, I question if the reasoning of domains, multiple intelligences
is our way of making sense of a world we can not totally understand.
Nate
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Cole <mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 24, 1999 1:44 PM
Subject: reading
>
> Hi Eva-- I have just read book by U. Goswami on the development of
> children's thinking -- I forget the exact title, but its published
> by Blackwells.
>
> Goswami is a student of Ann Brown's who works in England. She has done a
> lot of interesting work on young children's use of analogical thinking
> and she is very well read in the literature on early cognitive
> development.
>
> Her book emphasize the tremendous influence of those studies, begun
> about 30 years ago, showing that when preschoolers were placed in
> situtions that made "human sense" to them, they performed sophisticated
> cognitive operations that Piaget said didn't develop until later. One
> direction this discussion has led to is to the notion of core conceptual
> domains that organize cognitive development. At one extreme of this
> tendency one arrives at modularity theory -- Chomskian cognitive
pscychology
> but that is not Goswami's position. Rather, she adopts something like
> the "skeletal principles" version of domain theory, and places a special
> emphasis on what she calls the "causal bias," an innate bias of humans
> to seek the causes of the events they participate in.
>
> Questions of theory aside, I came away from the book with the following
> odd question: According to the data, 4-5 year olds have developed
theories
> about how the world works in all of the major "core domains" current
> theorists bandy about (they read a lot like Gardner's seven
> intelligences, and not by accident).
>
> If the little one's know so much, what does cognitive in middle
> childhood add? Or substract, or change, or whatever? Adults clearly
> treat 4 year old and 9 year old kids differently. What do the older
> kids know/do that makes this different form of social structuring
> work?
>
> On a summer's day.
> mike
>