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Volume 2 |
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How Students Learn Science |
Note: This article introduces you to the ideas of Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist. Combined with the constructivist notions of Jean Piaget, they provide science teachers with a picture of how students learn in a hands-on/minds-on, and cooperative learning environment.
Over the past two decades most science teachers have been introduced to the discoveries and ideas of Jean Piaget. Piaget's ideas now permeate much our thinking about science teaching and are the basis for some of our most successful curriculum projects and teaching strategies.
Another psychologist whose ideas should become better known to science teachers is Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist who was born in the same year as Piaget but died in his thirties. His work was ignored in the United States for many years after he died but now we are beginning to see that he had some very interesting and stimulating ideas that may be relevant to science teaching.
Vygotsky, like Piaget, believed that the learner constructs knowledge; that is, that what we know is not a copy of what we find in the environment but is, instead, the result of thought and action (emphasis mine). Although both of these thinkers focused on the growth of children's knowledge and understanding of the world around them, Piaget placed more emphasis on the child's internal mental processes and Vygotsky placed more emphasis on the role of teaching and social interaction in the development of science concepts and other knowledge. He also sought to show that language plays a central role in mental development.
Mental Development. Vygotsky believed that development depends on both natural or biological forces and social and cultural forces. Biological forces produce the elementary functions of memory, attention, perception and stimulus-response learning but social forces are necessary for the development of the higher mental functions of concept development, logical reasoning and judgment. A main difference between lower, or elementary, and higher mental functions is a shift from outside control to inner control. Through social interaction the child gradually assumes more responsibility and becomes more self-directed and autonomous.
In practical terms this means that what children can do and learn in school depends, at every age, on such things as their attention span, their ability to remember and other biologically determined factors, but this is only part of the story. What they can do and learn also depends on the interaction that takes place between and among children and between children and adults, especially their parents and teachers. It is through social interaction, including the interaction with teachers, that children become conscious of their basic mental functions and able to use them in their growth toward self-control, self-direction and independent thinking and action.
In a series of experiments on the development of scientific concepts, Vygotsky and his students studied the differences between concepts acquired outside of school, which he called "spontaneous" concepts and those learned from instruction in school, which he called "scientific." Working with second and fourth grade children, he found that the children could explain and articulate the concepts learned in school better than they could those learned from everyday experience. In contrast to spontaneous concepts, those taught in school are defined, discussed, thought about and tied in with other concepts; because of this it becomes possible to generalize and to build a system of concepts.
Both Vygotsky and Piaget were interested in children's mental development and both conducted their research by asking children questions about rather ordinary things but, as Vygotsky pointed out, there was an important difference in their views. While Piaget assumed that development and instruction were separate, Vygotsky focused on the interaction between them. He believe that instruction leads to mental development and that further development makes higher level instruction possible.
Interaction as a Force in Development. Vygotsky's ideas were developed through observation and study of children in the context of their daily lives, including school and family. His writings emphasize the importance of the social interaction that takes place between children and adults or older persons as the main force in cognitive, or mental, development.
How can you use these ideas in teaching science? By applying the same general principles, the teacher sets tasks that are just beyond what the pupils can do on their own but are attainable with help. We might think of this as the teacher building a scaffold for the learner to climb to a higher level. At first the learner depends on the teacher to shown him/her what to do but gradually the learner masters the task and gains control over a new function or concept.
Teachers can provide a classroom environment that makes it possible, even probably for pupils to master new skills, gain new knowledge or improve understanding of things already known.
Here are some practical suggestions for teachers to implement these ideas:
1. The teacher models the behavior or skill that is to be taught or encouraged until the pupils can internalize the behavior. For example, if you use the metric system consistently and without even making a comment about it, the children will accept it as the way things are measured in science.
2. Peer tutoring is incorporated into the teaching strategies used in the classroom. Pupils have to taught how to be good tutors and to accept tutoring but this is a very powerful teaching method when well used.
3. Cooperative learning is used as a regular instructional strategy. Cooperative learning methods, which are gaining popularity all over the United States today (and other countries, including the Soviet Union---comment mine), take advantage of pupil interaction as a means of promoting both academic and social learning.
Vygotsky's ideas call for a classroom where active exchanges between children themselves and between children and teacher are an ongoing part of daily life. In this setting the teacher sets tasks that are just beyond the learners' current levels of competence and provides the help that learners need to reach higher levels. The help may take various forms but an important aspect will be opportunities for children to work together, to give and receive verbal instructions, to respond to peer questions and challenges and to engage in collaborative problem solving.