Lev Vygotsky & Urie Bronfenbrenner

Lev Vygotsky:
He had Four Assumptions:
1) He believed in child trajectory.  Everything that they have learned before helps them where they are.
2) Cognitive Skills are structured by language.  Vygotsky says that we can't think without language because thinking and learning is structured by language.
3) Importance of social relations and culture.  Vygotsky's theory is called "social cultural approach."  Social interactions help develop children.  The thought of "apprenticeship" worked well with his theory (ie: parent, coach, older peer, etc.)
4) Learning is situated and collaborative.  It requires working together between the students and teacher.  (apprenticeship)

Zone of Proximinal Development (ZPD):
"It is a range of tasks that are too difficult for the children to do alone but can be helped with assistance from adults or children that are more skilled."(text book)  With this, it was a core idea for Vygotsky.  He believed that the teacher had to push the boundaries a little bit for them to learn more.  The teacher can push the bar up a little higher each time to help in the students' learning experience.

Scaffolding:
This is the instructional approach that follows in ZPD.  "It's a technique of changing the level of support over the course of a teaching session with a more skilled person adjusting the amount of guidance to fix a student's current performance level."(text book)
ie) Direct-teaching, answering questions, guided practice, formative assessment (For learning [during], as learning [self], and all learning [exam])

PIAGET AND VYGOTSKY VIDEO FOUND ON YOU TUBE

Out of Piaget and Vygotsky, I think Vygotsky resonates more with my personal inclination and teaching preference because his idea of ZPD and Scaffolding really appeal to me.  I agree that teachers need to raise that bar up a little higher every time when their students surpass it.  Also, it makes sense that one cannot think if we didn't know the language, or think coherently anyways.  With language, one can understand what they are thinking.  I also believe that culture and social interaction plays a huge role on the students because they are influenced in those types of things and also changed how they might learn.


Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory:
(http://www.aifs.gov.au/growingup/pubs/reports/krq2009/images/fig2.gif)

This focuses on the social context in which a students life, the people who influence their development, and the interaction between students' characteristics, and their enviroment (from the txt)

Five Systems:

1) Microsytem: the individual directly participates in. It's a recipical relationship between the person and the system.
2) Mesosystem: links the microsystem. Meso = in the middle.  They also affect each other.
3) Exosystem: the first system that the indivudual doesn't have an active role.
4) Macrosystem: attitudes and ideologies of a culture.  Everyone is responsible for their own self and it impacts how lives are organized.
5)  Chronosystem: (Chronos = Time) refers to socio-historical conditions of students' development (text book).