Hi,
Just a quick comment:
From Vygotsky's pint of vie - the following was also true
>Thus, the constructivist teacher's role centers
>on orchestrating a task environment to provoke transformative experiences
>for the student.
Vygotsky wrote that the role of the teacher is in DIRECTING the developmental
activities of the student. (in Educational Psychology)
Further more you wrote
>For constructivists, the student learns ONLY from their
>engagement in the world. They do not learn from their engagement with
>OTHER's ideas, as in a ZPD, except insofar as those ideas are translated
>into world experiences.
and little further down:
>2. Develop a task environment for the student designed to produce
>experiences that will challenge the limitations of the student's current
>conceptions.
This just proves that the 'subject-object' relationship (or the
relationship between the student and the world s/he conceptualizes is
MEDIATED by the social mediator (the teacher). The teacher CHANGES the
environment for the student making it possible for the student to
experience another point of view and "experience a cognitive conflict" ,
i.e. change earlier concepts and construct the new ones.
The teacher as a director of learning activity - interacts with the student
in order for her/him to conceptualize a strategy of changing the student's
environment which would result in the student's "spontaneous" activity of
creating new concepts.
>In this case, the student's blank look convinces the teacher that the
>intervention has not been successful. The student's blank stare is analyzed
>as a problem with the task rather than the initial hypothesis. In
>particular, the take-away situation is seen as too remote from the missing
>addend problems the student is facing in his homework. The magic marker
>task is reformulated as a missing addend problem for which the student
>already possess a subtraction strategy. The teacher then successfully
>supported the student's making an analogy back to the homework difficulty.
And to answer your last question
>Any thoughts on why a sociocultural analysis might preferred to a
>constructivist analysis for this teaching/learning fragment?
It seems obvious that the constructivist explanation is overlooking the
fact that stares it in the eye: the role of the teacher as a MEDIATOR
(director) in the relationship between the student and the object of
her/his learning.
Ana
Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane, professor and researcher
Chestnut Hill College and
City of Philadelphia, Office of Mental Health and Mental Retardation
home: (215) 843-2909
work: (215) 685-4767
e-mail: anashane@speakeasy.net
URL: http://www.geocities.com/anchula
http://www.geocities.com/anchula/CHC
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