THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS IN CHILDHOOD
Chapter 6
Zaretskaya Svetlana
2010 0507
Lev Vygotsky 1896 - 1934
The development of scientific concepts in the school-age child
This question is primarily a practical issue of tremendous importance for the school's task of instructing the child in a system of scientific concepts.
This problem contains the key to the whole history of the child's mental development. It must, therefore, be our point of departure in studying the child's thinking.
Until recently, however, this problem has remained almost entirely unexplored.
Our knowledge of the development of scientific concepts is extremely limited.
Vygotsky own experimental research, which he will cite frequently in the present chapter, is among the first systematic studies of the issue.
A comparative study of the development of scientific and everyday concepts in school-age children.
So, Shif’s basic task was to carry out an experimental evaluation of the working hypothesis concerning the unique haracteristics of the development of scientific as opposed to everyday concepts.
The attempt to study the actual development of the child's thinking in the course of school instruction grew from several basic assumptions: (1) in general terms, concepts or word meanings develop; (2) scientific concepts are not learned in final form --they too develop; (3) findings based on the study of everyday concepts cannot be generalized to scientific concepts; and (4) the problem as a whole must be studied experimentally.
The findings from this study lead to several conclusions
A comparative analysis of the results for each age group demonstrates that with the appropriate educational program the development of scientific concepts outstrips the development of spontaneous concepts.
This method shows:(1) that there is a higher level of conscious awareness of scientific than everyday concepts, and (2) that there is a progressive development of scientific thinking which is followed by a rapid increase in levels of performance with everyday concepts.
This indicates that the accumulation of knowledge leads directly to an increase in the level of scientific thinking and that this, in turn, influences the development of spontaneous thinking.
The unique processes in the development of scientific concepts.
The development of scientific concepts begins with the verbal definition. As part of an organized system, this verbal definition descends to the concrete; it descends to the phenomena which the concept represents.
In contrast, the everyday concept tends to develop outside any definite system; it tends to move upwards toward abstraction and generalization.
Development of Scientific Concepts
The development of the scientific social science concept, a phenomenon that occurs as part of the educational process, constitutes a unique form of systematic cooperation between the teacher and child. The maturation of the child's higher mental functions occurs in this cooperative process, that is, it occurs through the adult's assistance and participation.
The earlier maturation of scientific concepts is explained by the unique form of cooperation between the child and the adult that is the central element of the educational process; it is explained by the fact that in this process knowledge is transferred to the child in a definite system.
This is also why the level of development of scientific concepts forms a zone of proximal possibilities for the development of everyday concepts.
Strengths and weaknesses in scientific and everyday concepts.
The weakness of the everyday concept lies in its incapacity for abstraction, in the child's incapacity to operate on it in a voluntary manner. Where volition is required, the everyday concept is generally used incorrectly.
In contrast, the weakness of the scientific concept lies in its verbalism, in its insufficient saturation with the concrete. This is the basic danger in the development of the scientific concept.
The strength of the scientific concept lies in the child's capacity to use it in a voluntary manner, in its "readiness for action."
How do scientific concepts develop in the course of school instruction?
We know from research on concept formation that the concept is not simply a collection of associative connections learned with the aid of memory.
We know that the concept is not an automatic mental habit, but a complex and true act of thinking that cannot be mastered through simple memorization. The child's thought must be raised to a higher level for the concept to arise in consciousness.
At any stage of its development, the concept is an act of generalization. The most important finding of all research in this field is that the concept --represented psychologically as word meaning - develops. Any word meaning, at any age, is a generalization. However, word meaning develops.
The development of concepts or word meanings presupposes the development of a whole series of functions. It presupposes the development of voluntary attention, logical memory, abstraction, comparison, and differentiation. These complex mental processes cannot simply be learned.
Pedagogical experience demonstrates that direct instruction in concepts is impossible. It is pedagogically fruitless.
Under these conditions, the child learns not the concept but the word, and this word is taken over by the child through memory rather than thought. Such knowledge turns out to be inadequate in any meaningful application. This mode of instruction is the basic defect of the purely scholastic verbal modes of teaching which have been universally condemned.
The sole law of the child's mental development according to Piaget
Development is reduced to the dying out of the characteristics of the child's thinking. What is new to development arises from without.
The child's characteristics have no constructive, positive, progressive, or formative role in the history of his mental development. Higher forms of thought-do not arise from the characteristics of the child, but simply take their place.
The relationship between instruction and development is represented as one of antagonism in the process of the formation of the child's concepts. From the outset, the child's thinking is placed in opposition to adult thought.
Child's mental development according to Vygotsky
The goal of the present study, the primary motivation for the construction and experimental verification of the working hypothesis, is essentially to overcome these limitations in what is one of the best contemporary theories (Piaget) of the development of the child's thought.
The first basic assumption is the direct opposite of Piaget's first mistaken thesis.
The development of nonspontaneous concepts (particularly scientific concepts, which we consider a high, pure, and, both theoretically and practically, important type of nonspontaneous concept) will manifest all the basic qualitative characteristics of the child's thought at a given stage of development.
This position is based on the idea that scientific concepts are not simply acquired or memorized by the child and assimilated by his memory but arise and are fonned through an extraordinary effort of his own thought. This implies that the development of scientific concepts must manifest the characteristics of the child's thought. This assumption is fully supported by experimental research.
Vygotsky second assumption is also in opposition to Piaget's
Scientific concepts not only manifest features that are the opposite of those manifested by spontaneous concepts but manifest features that are identical to those manifested by spontaneous concepts. The boundary that separates these two types of concepts is fluid. In the actual course of development, it shifts back and forth many times.
The development of spontaneous and scientific concepts are closely connected processes that continually influence one another. The development of scientific concepts will depend directly on a particular level of maturation of spontaneous concepts. There is evidence for this in our practical experience.
In opposition to Piaget's mistaken and contradictory third position
Finally in the process of concept formation -the relationship between the processes of instruction and development must be immeasurably more complex and positive in nature than the simple antagonism proposed by Piaget.
It is reasonable to anticipate that research will show that instruction is a basic source of the development of the child's concepts and an extremely powerful force in directing this process.
Scientific concepts can arise in the child's head only on the foundation provided by the lower and more elementary forms of generalization which previously exist. They cannot simply be introduced into the child's consciousness from the outside.
The distinction between spontaneous and nonspontaneous concepts.
To construct the working hypothesis and explain this distinction in theoretical terms, we must consider the factors which permitted us to anticipate the difference between these two types of concepts. These considerations fall into four groups:
1) Here we are concerned with our empirical, experiential knowledge rather than experimental research.
2) We are concerned here with theoretical considerations . The child's thought is even more original and unique than his language.
3) Here we are concerned with heuristic considerations.
4) Here we are concerned with practical considerations.
Relationships between the development of scientific and everyday concepts. The characteristics of the school-age child's everyday concepts.
Piaget has demonstrated that the essential characteristic of the child's thinking and concepts at this age is his incapacity for reflective awareness of relations that he can use correctly when no reflective awareness on his part is required, that is, when he acts spontaneously and automatically. It is egocentrism that prevents the child's conscious awareness of his own thought.
The child's incapacity for conscious awareness of his own thought or for establishing logical connections with conscious awareness extends through the age of eleven to twelve years. The child manifests an incapacity for the logic of relationships and substitutes his own egocentric logic. Between seven and twelve years of age, these difficulties carry over into the verbal plane.
The relationship between scientific and everyday concepts
The development of scientific and spontaneous concepts take opposite paths. This is a key point of our hypothesis.
Scientific concepts begin their life at a level that the development of the child's spontaneous concepts has not yet reached.
The strengths and the weaknesses of everyday and scientific concepts differ.
Analysis of the child's spontaneous concept indicates that he has more conscious awareness of the object than of the concept itself.
Analysis of his scientific concept indicates that he has more conscious awareness of the concept than of the object that is represented by it.
The child's mental development
We were able to demonstrate empirically that the child's mental development consists not so much in the development or maturation of separate functions as in changes in the connections and relationships among these functions.
Indeed, the development of each mental function depends on these changes in interfunctional relationships.
Consciousness develops as a whole. With each new stage in its development, its internal structure - the system of connections among its parts -changes.
Development is not a sum of the changes occurring in each of the separate functions. Rather, the fate of each functional part of consciousness depends on changes in the whole.
The interfunctional connections and relationships are neither constant nor inessential. They cannot be placed outside the analytic frame within which psychological investigations are carried out.
Change in these interfunctional connections, -change in the functional structure of consciousness - is the main and central content of the entire process of mental development.
For the new psychology, this change in interfunctional connections and relationships becomes the central problem.
It is a general law of development that conscious awareness and mastery characterize only the higher stages of the development of a given function.
By the time the transition to school age occurs, perception and memory are comparatively developed, creating a basic prerequisite for mental development during this stage.
The core of Vygotsky’s hypothesis
Only within a system can the concept acquire conscious awareness and a voluntary nature.
Conscious awareness and the presence of a system are synonyms when we are speaking of concepts, just as spontaneity, lack of conscious awareness, and the absence of a system are three different words for designating the nature of the child's concept.
The dependence of scientific concepts on spontaneous concepts and their influence on them stems from the unique relationship, that exists between the scientific concept and its object. As we said, this relationship is characterized by the fact that it is mediated through other concepts.
A single illustration.
The distinction between spontaneous and nonspontaneous concepts in the child coincides logically with the distinction between empirical and scientific concepts.
It is well known that more general concepts arise in the child earlier than more specific ones. Thus, the child usually learns the word "flower" earlier than the word "rose." In this context, the concept of "flower" is not actually more general that the concept of "rose"; it is merely broader. When the child has mastered only a single concept, its relationship to the object is different than it is after he masters a second. However, even after he masters a second concept, there is a long period during which the concept of "flower" continues to stand alongside, rather, than above, the concept of "rose."
How does conscious reflection arise?
We found the source of the lack of conscious awareness of concepts not in egocentrism but in the absence of system in the child's spontaneous concepts. This is why spontaneous concepts lack conscious awareness and volitional control.
We found that conscious awareness is realized through the formation of such a system, a system which is based on specific relations of generality among concepts.
We also found that conscious awareness of concepts leads to their volitional control. By its nature, the scientific concept presupposes a system. Scientific concepts are the gate through which conscious awareness enters the domain of the child's concepts.
The importance of scientific concepts for the development of the child's thinking.
Thinking first crosses the threshold that separates preconcepts from true concepts.
The problem of nonspontaneous concepts –of scientific concepts in particular --is the problem of instruction and development. Spontaneous concepts create the potential for the emergence of nonspontaneous concepts in the process of instruction. Instruction is the source of the development of this new type of concept.
The problem of spontaneous and nonspontaneous concepts is a special case of the more general problem of instruction and development. Isolated from this more general context, the problem of spontaneous and nonspontaneous concepts cannot be correctly stated.
The relationship between instruction and development
There is a mutual dependency between the two types of development, that is, between maturation and instruction.
For structural psychology, instruction represents the emergence of new structures and the development of old ones. Thus, if the child forms a structure or learns an operation in the course of instruction, he has acquired more than the potential of reproducing that structure or operation. A single step in instruction can represent a hundred steps in development. This constitutes the most positive feature of the new theory.
Instruction is not limited to trailing after development or moving stride for stride along with it. It can move ahead of development, pushing it further and eliciting new formations.
This insight has immeasurable importance and value.
Basic to the approach is the concept that instruction and development are neither two entirely independent processes nor a single process. They are two processes with complex interrelationships.
The mental functions must mature before instruction can begin, this first series of studies consistently indicated that they do not, even though instruction may be proceeding smoothly (the foundation for instruction in basic school subjects such as reading, writing, arithmetic, and natural science).
We will clarify this point using the example of written speech.
The written speech. Why is written speech so difficult for the school child?
Written speech is an entirely unique speech function. Its structure and mode of functioning are as different from those of oral speech as those of inner speech are from external speech.
Even the most minimal level of development of written speech requires a high degree of abstraction.
Written speech lacks intonation and expression. It lacks all the aspects of speech that are reflected in sound.
Written speech is speech in thought, in representations. It lacks the most basic feature of oral speech; it lacks material sound.
It is speech without an interlocutor. This creates a situation completely foreign to the conversational speech the child is accustomed to.
Written speech is speech-monologue.
Written speech requires a dual abstraction from the child. It requires an abstraction from the auditory aspects of speech and an abstraction from the interlocutor. This is the second of the basic difficulties the school child encounters in his mastery of written speech.
The motives that would cause one to resort to written speech are even less accessible to the child when he begins to learn to write. As is true of any new form of activity, the motivation for speech and the need for it is fundamental to its development. When he begins to write, the school child does not sense the need for this new speech function.
Written speech is the most expanded form of speech. Even things that can be omitted in oral speech must be made explicit in written speech. Written speech must be maximally comprehensible to the other. This transition from a maximally contracted inner speech (i.e., from speech for oneself) to a maximally expanded written speech (i.e., to speech for the other) requires a child who is capable of extremely complex operations in the voluntary construction of the fabric of meaning.
The second basic characteristic of written speech (i.e., its greater consciousness) is closely linked with its volitional nature.
In sum
In summarizing this brief discussion of the study of the psychology of written speech, we can say that the mental functions which form written speech are fundamentally different from those which form oral speech. Written speech is the algebra of speech. It is a more difficult and a more complex form of intentional and conscious speech activity.
Two conclusions follow:
(1) this explains the radical difference between the child's oral and written speech (this difference is a function of differences in the level of development required by activities that are spontaneous, involuntary, and without conscious awareness and those that are abstract, voluntary, and characterized by conscious awareness);
(2) when instruction in written speech begins, the basic mental functions that underlie it are not fully developed; indeed, their development has not yet begun. Instruction depends: on processes that have not yet matured, processes that have just entered the first phases of their development.
Teaching grammar
Since grammar would seem the least necessary or useful school subject for the child, the issue of the value of instruction in grammar is methodologically and psychologically complex.
If we analyze instruction in grammar and written speech, however, we find that it has tremendous significance for the general development of the child's thought.
What the child does learn in school, however, is conscious awareness of what he does. He learns to operate on the foundation of his capacities in a volitional manner. His capacity moves from an unconscious, automatic plane to a voluntary, intentional, and conscious plane. Instruction in written speech and grammar play a fundamental role in this process. Thus, both grammar and writing provide the child with the potential of moving to a higher level in speech development.
The temporal relationship between the processes of instruction and development.
Research has shown that instruction always moves ahead of development. There is always a divergence between school instruction and the development of the corresponding functions. These processes never run in parallel.
Development has a different tempo than instruction. What we have here is a situation inherent in any scientific attempt to establish a relationship between two related processes that must be measured in accordance with different units of measurement.
Development is not subordinated to the school program. It has its own internal logic.
In sum
At the moment a given arithmetic operation or scientific concept is acquired, the development of this operation or concept is not completed.
The curve representing its development does not correspond with that representing the school program.
Instruction moves ahead of development.
A process of instruction
The child's abstract thinking develops in all his lessons. Its development does not move in separate channels corresponding to the school subjects.
Three facts have been solidly established in the experiments: (1) there is significant commonality in the mental foundations underlying instruction in the various school subjects that is alone sufficient to insure the potential for the influence of one subject on the other,
(2) Instruction influences the development of the higher mental functions in a manner that exceeds the limits of the specific content and material of each subject,
(3) The mental functions are interdependent and interconnected. The common foundation of all the higher mental functions is conscious awareness and mastery.
The zone of proximal development. How can this be accomplished?
Psychological research on the problem of instruction is usually limited to establishing the level of the child's mental development. The sole basis for determining this level of development are tasks that the child solves independently. This means that we focus on what the child has and knows today.
Using this approach, we can establish only what has already matured. That is, we can determine only the level of the child's actual development.
If he is to fully evaluate the state of the child's development, the psychologist must consider not only the actual level of development but the zone of proximal development.
The difference between the child's mental ages, this difference between the child's actual level of development and the level of performance that he achieves in collaboration with the adult, defines the zone of proximal development.
The children are not at the same level of mental development. The difference between these two children reflected in our measurement of the zone of proximal development is more significant than their similarity as reflected in their actual development.
Research indicates that the zone of proximal development has more significance for the dynamics of intellectual development and for the success of instruction than does the actual level of development.
Collaborative work and imitation
The child can imitate only what lies within the zone of his own intellectual potential.
In collaboration the child can always do more than he can independently. What collaboration contributes to the child's performance is restricted to limits which are determined by the state of his development and his intellectual potential.
In collaboration, the child turns out to be stronger and more able than in independent work. He advances in terms of the level of intellectual difficulties he is able face. However, there always exists a definite, strictly lawful distance that determines the differential between his performance in independent and collaborative work.
Development based on instruction is a fundamental fact. Therefore, a central feature for the psychological study of instruction is the analysis of the child's potential to raise himself to a higher intellectual level of development through collaboration, to move from what he has to what he does not have through imitation. It is also is the content of the concept of the zone of proximal development.
Understood in a broad sense, imitation is the source struction's influence on development. The child's instruction in speech, and school instruction generally, is largely a function of imitation.
It is only possible to teach a child when he is able to learn. Instruction is possible only where there is a potential for imitation.
Characteristics of instruction and development
We can identify characteristics of instruction and development that are unique to the school age, since instruction and development do not begin when the child comes to school.
Instruction occurs on all levels of the child's development. As we shall see in the following section, however, instruction takes on forms that are specific to each age level.
Further, at each of these levels, instruction has a unique relationship to development.
Conclusions
We have seen that instruction and development do not coincide.
They are two different processes with very complex interrelationships.
Instruction is only useful when it moves ahead of development. When it does, it impells or wakens a whole series of functions that are in a stage of maturation lying in the zone of proximal development.
Instruction is maximally productive only when it occurs at a certain point in the zone of proximal development.
The analysis of a basic fact which has been established through the comparative study of the school child's scientific and everyday concepts.
This type of research leads to the finding that these two kinds of concepts do not manifest identical levels of development.
Depending on whether the operation is carried out on the basis of scientific or everyday concepts, the child will manifest different capacities to grasp relationships of causation and dependency or relationships of implication.
Comparative analysis of scientific and everyday concepts within a single age group indicates that -with an appropriate educational program -the development of scientific concepts outstrips that of spontaneous concepts.
In scientific concepts, we encounter higher levels of thinking than in everyday concepts.
The strength of the scientific concept lies in the higher characteristics of concepts, in conscious awareness and volition. In contrast, this is the weakness of the child's everyday concept.
The strength of the everyday concept lies in spontaneous, situationally meaningful, concrete applications, that is, in the sphere of experience and the empirical.
The development of scientific concepts begins in the domain of conscious awareness and volition. It grows downward into the domain of the concrete, into the domain of personal experience. In contrast, the development of spontaneous concepts begins in the domain of the concrete and empirical. It moves toward the higher characteristics of concepts, toward conscious awareness and volition.
The link between these two lines of development reflects their true nature. This is the link of the zone ofproximal and actual development.
The influence of scientific concepts on the child's general mental development
Our theory and research indicate that scientific concepts provide a segment of development which the child has not yet passed through; they indicate that the scientific concept moves ahead into a zone where the corresponding potentials have not yet matured in the child.
This allows us to begin to understand that instruction in scientific concepts plays a decisive role in the child's mental development.
What are the laws that govern this movement of concepts from the general to the specific and from the specific to the general?
Until recently, this question has remained unanswered. In our research on the child's actual concepts, we have attempted to identify the most basic laws in this domain.
First of all, we were able to show that generality (i.e., the difference of generality) does not coincide with the levels of structural generalization that we identified in our experimental studies of concept formation (i.e., the levels associated with syncretic concepts, complexes, preconcepts, and true concepts).
First, concepts of different levels of generality are possible within any given structure of generalization. For example, concepts with different levels of generality (e.g., "flower"and "rose") may be present at the stage of complexes.
Second, concepts-with the same level of generality may be present within different structures of generalization. For example, the concept of "flower" may have a general meaning that allows it to represent all species of flowers whether the structure is that of complexes or concepts.
Thus, there is no direct correspondence between relationships of generality and the structure of generalization. The two are not entirely foreign to each other nor entirely unconnected with one another. There is a complex mutual dependency between them.
The basic finding of the research
The basic finding of our research is that relationships of generality between concepts are closely associated with the structure of generalization (i.e., they are closely associated with the stages of concept development that we studied in our experimental research).
Each structure of generalization (i.e., syncretic, complexes, preconcepts, and concepts) corresponds with a specific system of generality and specific types of relationships of generality between general and specific concepts.
Each structure of generalization has a characteristic degree of unity, a characteristic degree of abstractness or concreteness, and characteristic thought operations associated with a given level of development of word meaning.
