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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 8, Issue 1, Article 3 (June, 2007) Beverley JANE and Jill ROBBINS Intergenerational learning: grandparents teaching everyday concepts in science and technology |
Socio-cultural informants for research
As mentioned above, people develop through their changing participation in the cultural activities of their communities (which in turn also change). These ideas are inherent within socio-cultural (or cultural-historical) perspectives, which maintain that people, contexts, actions, meanings, communities and cultural histories are all mutually constituted. From this perspective development is seen as a process of participation with others in activities that are mediated by cultural tools, and are constituted with and by interpersonal and community or contextual factors. Socio-cultural theory derives from the work of Vygotsky and his colleagues in the early twentieth century. Three important Vygotskian concepts are discussed below.
A fundamental element of Vygotskian theorising is the concept of mediation. He argues that higher mental actions are mediated within activities by tools, artefacts and cultural inventions (for example, different kinds of numbering systems and counting, mnemonic aids, algebraic systems, art works, writing, schemes, diagrams, maps, drawings and all sorts of conventional signs) (Vygotsky, 1997). Other tools recognised in sociocultural discourse include paintbrushes, computers, calendars, and symbol systems (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996), although for Vygotsky speech was the most important tool (Wertsch, 1990). These tools and signs being social in origin are used to communicate firstly with others, and secondly to mediate our interaction with self (Moll, 1992). Most tools and artefacts bring a cultural inheritance with them, and by learning to use these artefacts, and the practices in which they are used, people integrate the experiences of their society (Wells, 2000), or as Säljö (1998:55) wrote, "...the world is pre-interpreted for us by previous generations, and we draw on the experiences that others have made for us". Tool-based 'mediation is first intermental and then becomes intramental as children learn to regulate the mediational cultural tools with their own social and mental activity' (Lantolf, 2003:350).
Intermental and intramental functioning
Another important Vygotskian principle is the notion that thinking progresses through 'intermental' functioning to 'intramental' functioning. That is, thinking occurs first on the social plane (between people engaged in joint sociocultural activity), and later on the individual plane (that is, within the child). Hedegaard (2001) explains:
In Vygotsky's theory, learning is a social process that takes place between people. He conceptualized learning as internalisation of social interactions in which communication is central. Learning takes place in social interaction in a specific context which comes internalised by a person. By internalisation, Vygotsky did not mean copying but transforming the external interaction to a new form of interaction that guides the child's actions. Internalisation does not directly mirror the external social relations; it is a transformed reflection (Hedegaard, 2001:16-17; our emphasis).
Rogoff (1998) contends that the concept of internalization has been used in several theoretical approaches to describe how shared thinking (or intermental functioning) results in changes in the thinking of the individual (intramental functioning). However, she argues that the idea of internalisation implies that there is some sort of 'boundary' between the individual mind and the external social world, and this differentiates what she sees as the 'social add-on' or 'social influences' approach from sociocultural theory. From the latter perspective, learning and development are creative processes that occur through a changing participation in activities, not via internalization across a boundary. From this 'transformation of participation' perspective, an individual is continually in the process of developing and using their understanding through participation in shared endeavours in sociocultural activity (including endeavours shared with grandparents). "In the process of participation, individuals change, and their later involvement in similar events may reflect these changes" (Rogoff, 1998:689).
Everyday and scientific thinking
Vygotsky emphasised that the process whereby children acquire concepts, is mediated by speech. Through a series of experiments, he demonstrated that children acquire important concepts not only inside school (scientific concepts) but also outside (everyday concepts) and, that both are important and related (Panofsky, John-Steiner & Blackwell, 1990). Vygotsky used the term scientific (academic or scholarly) concepts to refer to ideas that have explicitly been introduced by adults in school, and sometimes by parents (van der Veer & Valsiner, 1993) (or other adults such as grandparents). Scientific concepts begin in the domain of conscious awareness and volition, and form a logical system in a particular discipline. They are generalisable, removed from material experience and exist within a hierarchical network of related concepts (Vygotsky, 1987).
These concepts contrast with spontaneous or everyday concepts, or those concepts that develop within children's daily lives as a result of their interaction with adults, peers and the non-social environment. Vygotsky saw the two types of concepts as interdependent. The development of scientific concepts in school depends on a previously developed set of word meanings stemming from the child's everyday experiences, and this spontaneously acquired knowledge mediates the learning of the new scientific concepts (Panofsky, John-Steiner & Blackwell, 1990). For example, children will not readily understand scientific concepts such as 'technical systems' if they do not have the everyday concepts of things such as computers and switches, or music boxes and levers. When children learn scientific concepts, their understanding of switches and computers, music boxes and levers, changes.
According to Vygotsky (1987), both scientific and the everyday concepts have their strengths and their weaknesses. The strength of the scientific concept (such as technical systems) is that it is "embedded in a whole, connected, conceptual structure that supposedly reflects the true nature of the subject one is talking about" (van der Veer, 1998:91). As scientific concepts are explicitly taught, children commonly can relate their formal properties and consider their relationship with other concepts. However, a potential weakness of these concepts is that they may be beyond children's personal experience, and thus may not be truly meaningful or relevant (van der Veer, 1998). In contrast, the strength of everyday concepts is that they have arisen from personal experience, rather than having to memorise. A disadvantage can be that they are only applicable within specific contexts or activities (van der Veer, 1998).
