Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Week 5 Resources
Please publish your resources for week 5 (November 25) as comments to this post. Thanks!
Final Project
EDUU 606
FINAL PROJECT
Working with a group of no more than four people, design a charter school around one or more of the concepts we have examined. You may include elements of neuroscience, cognitive/behavioral theory, social development theory, humanism, attribution theory, multiple intelligences/learning modalities, and any other theoretical construct you believe to be relevant.
Your charter project must explicitly address the following questions:
➢ How do students learn?
➢ How do the school’s curricula and instructional delivery models support student learning?
➢ How does the school’s assessment methodology support and demonstrate student learning?
➢ In the context of your “best practices” approach, what are the appropriate roles and expectations for students, parents, teachers, and other constituents? How will you communicate and evaluate performance criteria?
➢ What factors distinguish your school from other formal or informal educational experiences available to students?
Your group is responsible for submitting your “charter” in class on January 6, 2009. In addition to a written version of no less than five pages with appropriate citations and recommendations, you may choose from the following presentation options (or petition Dr. Preston with a creative alternative of your own):
➢ Poster/2-D visual
➢ PowerPoint
➢ Video
Please make sure your presentation is 2-10 minutes in length (not counting Q&A), and use all of your abilities and newfound information to “WOW” your audience!
FINAL PROJECT
Working with a group of no more than four people, design a charter school around one or more of the concepts we have examined. You may include elements of neuroscience, cognitive/behavioral theory, social development theory, humanism, attribution theory, multiple intelligences/learning modalities, and any other theoretical construct you believe to be relevant.
Your charter project must explicitly address the following questions:
➢ How do students learn?
➢ How do the school’s curricula and instructional delivery models support student learning?
➢ How does the school’s assessment methodology support and demonstrate student learning?
➢ In the context of your “best practices” approach, what are the appropriate roles and expectations for students, parents, teachers, and other constituents? How will you communicate and evaluate performance criteria?
➢ What factors distinguish your school from other formal or informal educational experiences available to students?
Your group is responsible for submitting your “charter” in class on January 6, 2009. In addition to a written version of no less than five pages with appropriate citations and recommendations, you may choose from the following presentation options (or petition Dr. Preston with a creative alternative of your own):
➢ Poster/2-D visual
➢ PowerPoint
➢ Video
Please make sure your presentation is 2-10 minutes in length (not counting Q&A), and use all of your abilities and newfound information to “WOW” your audience!
Monday, November 17, 2008
Vygotsky online
In order to share another perspective with you, I have borrowed from a website that caters to professional educators by providing background on pedagogy and theory.
The following text may be found online at: http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Vygotsky.html
©2007 NewFoundations Gary K. Clabaugh, EdD, & Edward G. Rozycki, EdD, Editors
The Educational Theory of Lev Vygotsky: an analysis
Researched and Written by:
M. Dahms, K. Geonnotti, D. Passalacqua. J. N. Schilk, A. Wetzel,
and M. Zulkowsky
vygotsky
RETURN
edited 11/8/08
Introduction
Born in Czarist Russia in 1896, Lev Vygotsky lived a relatively short life, dying of tuberculosis in 1934. Because he was Jewish, the law limited his higher education options. He was, however, one of the 5% maximum of Jews permitted admission to a university. He was, however, not permitted to fulfill his ambition to pursue training as a teacher. In consequence, between the years of 1913 and 1917, Vygotsky studied medicine, philosophy, history, and law.[1]
Vygotsky began teaching in his home city almost immediately after the 1917 Communist Revolution. However, he was disappointed if he anticipated that this upheaval would result in greater overall freedom. The ascension of Joseph Stalin to power in 1922 meant that all of Vygotsky's scholarly work was to be accomplished in an ever more repressive police state.
Vygotsky's investigations of child development and educational psychology were influenced by his own Marxism – a philosophy that emphasizes the importance of one's social origins and place in the scheme of production.[2] Vygotsky's works, consisting of more than one hundred books and articles, were not published until after his death in 1934. Just two years later they were suppressed. This suppression endured for two decades during which time his works were held in a secret library that could only be accessed by permission of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs — commonly known as the NKVD.[3] Despite this prolonged attempt to suppress his ideas, Vygotsky's work survived and, particularly after the Cold War, came to wield considerable influence in the field of educational psychology.[4]
I. Theory of Value: What knowledge and skills are worthwhile learning? What are the goals of education?
Vygotsky's stresses the importance of looking at each child as an individual who learns distinctively. Consequently, the knowledge and skills that are worthwhile learning varies with the individual.
The overall goal of education according to Vygotsky is to "generate and lead development which is the result of social learning through internalization of culture and social relationships."[5] He repeatedly stressed the importance of past experiences and prior knowledge in making sense of new situations or present experiences.[6] Therefore, all new knowledge and newly introduced skills are greatly influenced by each student's culture, especially their family environment.
Language skills are particularly critical for creating meaning and linking new ideas to past experiences and prior knowledge. According to Vygotsky, internalized skills or psychological tools "are used to gain mastery over one's own behavior and cognition."[7] Primary among these tools is the "development of speech and its relation to thought."[8]
Vygotsky maintained that language plays a central role in cognitive development. He argued that language was the tool for determining the ways a child learns "how" to think. That is because complex concepts are conveyed to the child through words. "Learning, according to Vygotsky, always involves some type of external experience being transformed into internal processes through the use of language."[9] It follows that speech and language are the primary tools used to communicate with others, promoting learning.
Vygotsky promoted the development of higher level thinking and problem solving in education. If situations are designed to have students utilize critical thinking skills, their thought processes are being challenged and new knowledge gained.[10] The knowledge achieved through experience also serves as a foundation for the behaviors of every individual.[11]
II. Theory of Knowledge: What is knowledge? How is it different from belief? What is a mistake? A lie?
According to Davydov and Kerr, it was a momentous occasion in the history of psychology when Vygotsky asserted "...specific functions are not given to a person at birth but are only provided as cultural and social patterns."[12] Vygotsky saw "intellectual abilities as being much more specific to the culture in which the child was reared."[13] Through observation and study Vygotsky came to understand that people adapted to their surrounding environment based on their interpretations and individual perceptions of it.[14] Thus, humans are not born with knowledge nor is knowledge independent of social context. Rather, one gains knowledge as one develops by way of social interactions with peers and adults.
Vygotsky does not make as drastic a distinction between knowledge and belief as some other theorists do. For him, knowledge is obtained through past experiences, social situations, as well as ones general environment. In similar manner, beliefs are instilled into an individual via culture and parental upbringing.
"Mistakes are crucial in Vygotsky's theory of learning. In the course of development, mistakes are made during the process of "concept formation." They are important in that they impact future learning.[15] From Vygotsky's perspective, "A concept emerges and takes shape in the course of a complex interaction aimed at the solution of a problem...[A] concept is ...an active part of the intellectual process."[16]
We see, then that, for Vygotsky, concept formation is a dynamic, ever-changing activity during which "... the child relies on their own perception to make sense of objects that appear to them to be unrelated ... the child creates his or her own subjective relationships between objects and then mistakes his or her egocentric perspective for reality."[17] This stage of development is known, paradoxically, as "incoherent coherence."[18] During this stage, the making of mistakes is an integral part of a child's development.
Also at this time, the child's organization schema becomes less egocentric and begin to incorporate additional information gained from experience into his or her thought processes.[19] In this way, mistakes can be corrected and new knowledge gained. Therefore mistakes are developmentally necessary, resulting from the "...role of social interaction in transformation of prior knowledge.[20]
Tentatively one might infer that Vygotsky would view a lie as something that occurs as a result of the desire to conform to social norms. For example one might feel one way but report a more socially acceptable reality.
III. Theory of Human Nature: What is a human being? How does it differ from other species? What are the limits of human potential?
According to Marxist theory, "The essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations."[21] Vygotsky would agree that we develop as humans through the ways we interact with those around us. His view of human nature fits with his Marxist ideology. Human beings can only be understood within the context the time period and the part of the world in which they live. Human nature cannot be understood as never-changing and universal, but as always depending on its specific social and historical formation. This principle does not leave out biological factors.[22] To be human, however, means that you have surpassed a level of functioning that your biological traits would otherwise dictate.
[23]
Although some animals have the ability to create and use material tools, humans have the ability to utilize psychological tools. In other words, human beings are differentiated by their ability to develop psychological tools that are "used to gain mastery over one's own behavior and cognition"[24] that other forms of life are not capable of developing. Some psychological tools include: "language, different forms of numeration and counting, mnemotechniques, algebraic symbolism, works of art, writing, schemes, diagrams, maps, blueprints, etc."[25]
In his theories, Vygotsky placed great emphasis on the importance of spoken language, arguably the most critical tool that sets us apart from other species. He asserts that "speech is a very powerful psychological tool that lays the foundation for basic structures of thinking later in one's development."[26] Vygotsky further explains that speech is the first psychological tool used by children to communicate with others who share the environment. Naturally, this is continued through adulthood, as speech is a primary tool used for learning. Vygotsky insists that "humans learn best in cooperation with other humans."[27]
"Vygotsky contended that, unlike animals - who react only to the environment, humans have the capacity to alter the environment for their own purposes. It is this adaptive capacity that distinguishes humans from lower forms of life. ...The animal can only be trained. It can only acquire new habits. It can through exercises and combinations perfect its intellect, but is not capable of mental development through instruction in the real sense of the word."[28]
Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) posits that human potential is theoretically limitless; but the practical limits of human potential depend upon quality social interactions and residential environment. This zone of proximal development is "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers."[29] In theory, then, so long as a person has access to a more capable peer, any problem can be solved.
IV. Theory of Learning: What is learning? How are skills and knowledge acquired?
According to Piaget, learning is what results from both mental and physical maturation plus experience.[30] That is, development preceded learning. In contrast Vygotsky observed that learning processes lead development.[31] Vygotsky maintained that "learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human, psychological functions."[32] In other words, learning is what leads to the development of higher order thinking.
According to Vygotsky the two primary means of learning occur through social interaction and language. Language greatly enhances humans' ability to engage in social interactions and share their experiences. "The most important fact uncovered through the ... study of thought and speech is that their relationship undergoes many changes."[33] Initially, a child's new knowledge is interpsychological, meaning it is learned through interaction with others, on the social level.[34] Later, this same knowledge becomes intrapsychological, meaning inside the child, and the new knowledge or skill is mastered on an individual level.[35]
The previously mentioned idea of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is central to Vygotsky's view on how learning takes place. He described this zone as, "the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers."[36] Vygotsky maintained that learning occurs just above the student's current level of competence.[37] It follows then, that the copying student will have a higher performance when working with a more capable student.
The zone of proximal development works in conjunction with the use of scaffolding. "Scaffolding is a six-step approach to assisting learning and development of individuals within their zone of proximal development."[38] Knowledge, skills and prior experiences, which come from an individual's general knowledge, create the foundation of scaffolding for potential development. At this stage, students interact with adults and/or peers to accomplish a task which could possibly not be completed independently. The use of language and shared experience is essential to successfully implementing scaffolding as a learning tool. [39]
V. Theory of Transmission: Who is to teach? By what methods? What will the curriculum be?
Vygotsky defined those who are to teach as the "More Knowledgeable Other." The MKO is anyone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, particularly in regards to a specific task, concept or process.[40] Traditionally the MKO is thought of as a teacher or an older adult. However, this is not always the case. Other possibilities for the MKO could be a peer, sibling, a younger person, or even a computer. The key to MKO is that they must have more knowledge about the topic being learned than the learner does.[41] Teachers or more capable peers can raise the student's competence through the zone of proximal development (ZPD).
Vygotsky's findings suggest methodological procedures for the classroom. "In Vygotskian perspective, the ideal role of the teacher is that of providing scaffolding (collaborative dialogue) to assist students on tasks within their zones of proximal development."[42] During scaffolding the first step is to build interest and engage the learner. Once the learner is actively participating, the given task should be simplified by breaking it into smaller subtasks. During this task, the teacher needs to keep the learner focused, while concentrating on the most important ideas of the assignment. One of the most integral steps in scaffolding consists of keeping the learner from becoming frustrated. The final task associated with scaffolding involves the teacher modeling possible ways of completing tasks, which the learner can then imitate and eventually internalize. [43]
Vygotsky recommended a social context wherein a more competent learner would be paired with a less competent one, so that the former can elevate the latter's competence. This social context promotes sustained achievement and cognitive growth for less competent students."[44] Accordingly, students need to work together to construct their learning, teach each other so to speak, in a socio-cultural environment. In-class opportunities for collaboration on difficult problem-solving tasks will offer support to students who are struggling with the material. By interacting with more capable students who continue to mediate transactions between the struggling students and the content, all students will benefit.[45]
The implications of Vygotsky's theories and observations for educators are several and significant. In Vygotsky's view, the teacher has the collaborative "task of guiding and directing the child's activity."[46] Children can then solve novel problems "on the basis of a model he [sic] has been shown in class."[47] In other words, children learn by solving problems with the help of the teacher, who models processes for them and his or her peers, in a classroom environment that is directed by the teacher. In essence, "the child imitates the teacher through a process of re-creating previous classroom collaboration."[48] It is important to note that the teacher does not control the class with rule and structure; rather, the teacher collaborates with the students and provides support and direction.[49]
Assignments and activities that can be accurately completed by a student without assistance, indicate that the student has previously mastered the necessary prior knowledge. In the majority of classrooms this would be the conclusion of a unit; however, this is Vygotsky's entry point. However, as previously mentioned, the teacher must carefully group the student that "can potentially develop in collaboration with a more capable person."[50]
In our research, we found limited references to Vygotsky's specific views on curriculum content. One exception involves the teaching of writing to preschoolers. According to Garton and Pratt, Vygotsky argued for shifting the teaching of writing to preschool. They explain that Vygotsky differentiated between two forms of speech: spoken and written. Vygotsky, as cited by Garton and Pratt, asserts that a child develops an understanding that spoken speech can be symbolized in writing by progressing from "drawing things to drawing speech."[51] Vygotsky suggested then that the preschool curriculum should be designed so that it was organized to "ease child's transition from drawing things to drawing speech."[52]
Learning to master tools and technologies should also be included in the curriculum. "Students should be taught how to use tools such as the computer, resource books, and graphs in order to better utilize these tools in the future.[53] In this way, students will benefit as these tools and technologies influence the individual's thinking (along with the development of language).[54]
In sum, Vygotsky's findings suggest that the curriculum should generally challenge and stretch learner's competence.[55] The curriculum should provide many opportunities to apply previous skills, knowledge and experiences, with "authentic activities connected to real-life environment."[56] "Since children learn much through interaction, curricula should be designed to emphasize interaction between learners and learning tasks."[57]
VI. Theory of Society: What is society? What institutions are involved in the educational process?
According to Vygotsky, "society is the bearer of the cultural heritage without which the development of mind is impossible."[58] This 'society' allows the learner to develop cognitively through social interactions. As a result, the use of language makes it possible for a child to communicate and share the environment from within their society. "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological)."[59]
Perhaps Vygotsky was comfortable generalizing about 'society' in this way because he was living in post-revolutionary times. The revolution had been accomplished in Russia, and the "New Soviet Man", was emerging in the Soviet Union, and the dictatorship of the proletariat" was at hand.
So far as the institutions involved in the educational process are concerned, Moll reports that Vygotsky "considered school the best laboratory of human psychology."[60] He noted: "At first glace, it may be easily seen that no special educational environment is needed, that education may be accomplished in any environment whatsoever. ... It is not very hard to conclude that no sort of artificial educational environment has to be created, that life educates better than any school. ... This view is wrong, however."[61]
For Vygotsky, society (and therefore social interaction) happens in schools. "Schools are incorporated into the larger society and have that as their context, so that some of their activity settings are determined by this larger contextuality."[62] "For Vygotsky the classroom is also a social organization that is representative of the larger social community ... it is the social organization ... that is the agent for change in the individual."[63]
Fhis statement was not meant to "imply that informal education was not important."[64] Rather, as we stated before, for Vygotsky informal education is used by children through speech and language to develop higher mental functions. He stressed that "children's learning begins long before they attend school. ... Any learning a child encounters in school always has a previous history."[65]
VII. Theory of Opportunity: Who is to be educated? Who is to be schooled?
Vygotsky repeatedly asserts that it is within the "social environment" that learning takes place. Since no individual is able to escape their social surroundings, all within a society are inadvertently being educated.
Vygotsky writes:
"...In this sense, education in every country and in every epoch has always been social in nature. Indeed, by its very essence it could hardly exist as anti-social in anyway. Both in the seminary and in the old high school, in the military schools and in the schools for the daughters of the nobility ... it was never the teacher or the tutor who did the teaching, but the particular social environment in the school which was created for each individual instance."[66]
Every person is socialized in the society in which they are enveloped. Socialization is the process of cultural transmission, both unintentional and deliberate.[67] According to Vygotsky, this process is central to education.
We have already established that Vygotsky was a Marxist and, so far as we know, a supporter of the revolution; and further that socialization, education, and schooling are in a symbiotic relationship. So it seems likely that he would have favored reform of the entire socialization and educational process up to and including schooling, in order to create "The New Soviet Man."
Schooling, while similar to education, involves formalized teaching by a specialist in a specific place designated for instruction, such as a traditional school.[68] Vygotsky's Russia of the late 1920's and early 1930's was populated by millions of illiterate peasants and workers, and it is difficult to imagine that he would have regarded them as unworthy of the opportunities that schooling affords. Indeed, Vygotsky probably understood his theories to be, in part, a response to the need to solve the urgent and practical problems of schooling the new socialist state.
When referring to the education of children with disabilities, Vygotsky pointed out that "changes in the context of education may have profound consequences for the developmental processes."[69] He went on to say that children with disabilities should be included in the general education classroom, and not be separated into self-contained classrooms, because he felt that those children who were educated separately from "normal" children "would proceed in a totally different, and not beneficial, manner".[70] If he were alive today, Vygotsky would call this the model of full inclusion.[71]
Vygotsky also "considered the capacity to teach and to benefit from instruction a fundamental attribute of human beings".[72] He noted that "a child whose development is impeded by a disability is not simply a child less developed than his peers; rather, he has developed differently." [73] Given this, one can see that Vygotsky thought all children should be schooled side-by-side in a regular education classroom.
VIII. Theory of Consensus: Why do people disagree? How is consensus achieved? Whose opinion takes precedence?
To contemplate Vygotsky's theory of consensus, one must consider his Marxist perspective. Though Marxism is a very broad and diverse theory with many variations, certain commonalities exist.[74] The Encarta Reference Library defines Marxism as "a theory in which class struggle is a central element in the analysis of social change in Western societies."[75]
Depending on one's views, society can be seen in its natural or normal state as either a society of conflict or a society of consensus. Being a Marxist, Vygotsky would have looked at the world through the same lens as Karl Marx, who "...described all advanced....societies in conflictual terms." [76] However, it should be remembered that Vygotsky was living in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union. Consequently, at least some of the conflict mentioned above would be ameliorated by revolutionary attempts to build a classless and conflict-free society.
Anyway, the primary conflict that Marx saw was based on the "...conflict between the material forces of production and social relations of production."[77] Material forces of production "... can be considered society's capacity to produce ..." and has been somewhat continuous throughout time.[78] Social relations, on the other hand, can be seen as the "...distribution of income generated by the material forces of production" and tend to change only abruptly and violently.[79] As written in Marx's Communist Manifesto, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." [80] Marx added, however, that conflict was normal due to social structures and not due to human nature.[81]
Keeping his Marxism in mind, Vygotsky would probably have said that, at least prior to the revolution, people disagree ultimately because they are engaged in class struggle for dominance among competing social groups - classes, genders, races, religions, etc. When conflict theorists such as Marx look at society, they see the social domination of subordinate groups through the power, authority, and coercion of dominant groups. In the conflict view, the most powerful members of dominant groups create the rules for success and opportunity in society, often denying subordinate groups such success and opportunities; this ensures that the powerful continue to monopolize power, privilege, and authority.[82]
Since Vygotsky was involved in mutual consultation with other theorists and was clearly aware of the social context in which learning takes place, one can safely assume he appreciated that the evolution of consensus among experts was central to learning about learning, as well as to learning in general. His theories all were influenced by the other learning theorists of his time.
Consider Vygotsky's evaluation of Piaget's theories and findings. After detailed examination, Vygotsky concluded that Piaget had developed a clinical method that revolutionized the study of children's language and thought. Vygotsky admired Piaget's detailed pictures of children's thinking, his assertion that development occurs in distinct, measurable, and observable stages, his focus on what children have, not what they lack, and his finding that the difference between adults' and children's thinking is qualitative, not quantitative.[83] However, he also believed that there were flaws in Piaget's methods.
Vygotsky clearly was willing to work with and learn from others. But he was not intimidated by the official consensus of party ideologues.[84] For example, Vygotsky opposed the Marxist reflexologists (behaviorists), who were politically if not intellectually, ascendant at that time." He did so at great personal risk considering the nature of the Stalinist regime.[85] Also Vygotsky took on the man who had hired him R. N. Kornilov, director of the Kornilov Institute,. "One year after joining the Institute, Vygotsky saw fit to reject Kornilov's attempt at a compromise solution to the consciousness problem (i.e., "reactology"), subjecting it to...a devastating philosophical criticism."[86]
We see, then, that Vygotsky did not put consensus building above what he regarded as truth seeking. On the other hand, Cole explains that "... it was characteristic of both Vygotsky and his close colleague Luria that they attempted to place their research within the general circle of contemporary scientific ideas influencing psychology. In order to be maximally persuasive, they sought to demonstrate both the correctness of their own approach and the points where it made contact with (and then diverged from) the ideas of their contemporaries."[87] We see, then, that Vygotsky was aware of and sensitive to the professional consensus that he respected.
Citations
[1] "Lev Semonovich Vygotsky" http://evolution.masey.ac.nz.asssign2MHR/indexvyg.html
[2] Lev S. Vygotsky: The Man and the Era, International Journal of Group Tensions, vol 31, #4, http://www.springerlink.com/content/v3145jv768818187/
[3] Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich (1896-1934), MIA: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Glossary of People, http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/v/y.htm
[4] Idem.
[5] "Psychology Applied to Education: Lev. S. Vygotsky's Approach" Communiquè 25, no. 2 (1997), http://www.bgcenter.com/Vygotsky_Appr.htm.
[6] Preston D. Feden and Robert M. Vogel, Methods of Teaching: Applying Cognitive Science to Promote Student Learning (New York: McGraw Hill, 1993).
[7] Richard Hamilton and Elizabeth Ghatala, Learning and Instruction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 255.
[8] Ibid., 258.
[9] Preston D. Feden & Robert M. Vogel, Methods of Teaching: Applying Cognitive Science to Promote Student Learning ( New York: McGraw Hill, 1993).
[10] M.F. Goldfarb, The Educational Theory of Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896-1934)
[11] Robert Silverman, Educational Psychology. L.S. Vygotsky. Introduced by V.V. Davydov (St. Lucie Press, Florida, 1992), ch. 17.
[12] Vasily V. Davydov and Stephen T. Kerr. 1995. The Influence of L. S. Vygotsky on Education Theory, Research, and Practice. Educational Researcher 24 (3). 18.
[13] Sûlr˙n B. KristinsdÛttir, Lev Vygotsky, 31 July 07, Retrieved September 10, 2007 from http://starfsfolk.khi.is/solrunb/vygotsky.htm
[14] Fosnot, C. T., Constructivism: A Psychological Theory of Learning. In C. T. Fosnot (Ed.), Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives, and Practice 1996 (New York, NY: Teachers College Press)
[15] Paula Wellings. 2003. School learning & Life learning: The interaction of spontaneous and scientific concepts in the development of higher mental processes. http://ldt.stanford.edu/~paulaw/STANFORD/370x_paula_wellings_final_paper.pdf (accessed September 12, 2007): 3.
For an independent supporting analysis, see Edward G. Rozycki (1970) The Philosophical Foundations of Human Cognition available at http://www.newfoundations.com/CogTheo/CogTheoPro.html
[16] Idem..
[17] Ibid., 3-4.
[18] Ibid., 3.
[19] Ibid., 4.
[20] Jeremy Roschelle. 1995. Learning in Interactive Environments: Prior Knowledge and New Experience. http://www.astc.org/resource/education/priorknw.htm (accessed September 12, 2007).
[21] Spirkin, A. "On the Human Being and Being Human" http://www.markists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch05.html
[22] Ibid
[23] L. S. Vygotsky, Mind in society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978), 38-39.
[24] Richard Hamilton and Elizabeth Ghatala, Learning and Instruction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 259.
[25] Gredler, M. and Shields, C. (2004) Does No One Read Vygotsky's Words? Commentary on Glassman. Educational Researcher 33 (2), p.21.
[26] Preston D. Feden & Robert M. Vogel, Methods of Teaching: Applying Cognitive Science to Promote Student Learning (The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc, 2003).
[27] Preston D. Feden & Robert M. Vogel, Methods of Teaching: Applying Cognitive Science to Promote Student Learning (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003).
[28] Vygotsky, 1934; Understanding Vygotsky, Retrieved September 13, 2007 from http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/vygotsky.shtml
[29] Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society, edited by M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, and E. Souberman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 85-86.
[30] Luis C. Moll, Vygotsky & Education: Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 50.
[31] Luis C. Moll, Vygotsky & Education: Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 50.
[32] L. S. Vygotsky, Mind in society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978), 90
[33] Lev Vygotsky, Thought and Speech (The M.I.T Press, 1962), Ch 4. Retrieved September 10, 2007 http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/words/ch04.htm
[34] "Social Development Theory (Vygotsky)", http://www.learning-theories.com/vygotskys-social-learning-theory.html.
[35] Idem.
[36] L.S. Vygotsky, Mind in Society, pg 86.
[37] Deborah J. Leong and Elena Bodrova. "Pioneers in Our Field: Lev Vygotsky – Playing to Learn. Scholastic Early Childhood Today., (2001). http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3549
[38] Preston Feden, Robert Vogel, Education (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006), 187-190.
[39] Idem.
[40] Social Development Theory (Vygotsky), 2007, http://www.learning-theories.com/vygotskys-social-learning-theory.html
[41] Chad Galloway, Vygotsky's constructivism, 2007, http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Vygotsky's_constructivism
[42] Richard Hamilton and Elizabeth Ghatala, Learning and Instruction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 277.
[43] Preston Feden, Robert Vogel, Education (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006), 189.
[44] James A. Jaramillo. "Vygotsky's sociocultural theory and contributions to the development of constructivist curricula." Education. (1996), http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3673/is_199610/ai_n8734319/pg_
[45] Tharp, R. G., & Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing minds to life. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
[46] L. S. Vygotsky, Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia [Pedagogical psychology], 2nd Ed. (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1991), 118.
[47] L. S. Vygotsky, "The development of scientific concepts in childhood," in Problems of general psychology, Vol. 1, Collected works of L. S. Vygotsky, ed. R. W. Rieber and A. S. Carton (New York: Plenum, 1987), 216.
[48] Margaret Gredler and Carol Shields. 2004. Does No One read Vygotsky's Words? Commentary on Glassman. Educational Researcher 33 (2). 22.
[49] Richard Hamilton and Elizabeth Ghatala, Learning and Instruction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 277.
[50] Preston D. Feden & Robert M. Vogel, Methods of Teaching: Applying Cognitive Science to Promote Student Learning (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003).
[51] Alison F. Garton and Chris Pratt, Learning to Be Literate: The Development of Spoken and Written Language (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1998), 49.
[52] Idem.
[53] University of Iowa, College of Education. n.d. Comparing Piaget and Vygotsky. http://www.education.uiowa.edu/resources/tep/eportfolio/07p075folder/Piaget_Vygotsky.htm (accessed October 3, 2007).
[54] Richard Hamilton and Elizabeth Ghatala, Learning and Instruction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 254.
[55] Mooney, C.G., An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget & Vygotsky (St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press, 2000), 85.
[56] "Education about and through technology: In Search of More Appropriate Pedagogical Approaches to Technology Education", http://herkeles.oulu.fi/isbn9514264878/html/x340.html.
[57] Retrieved September 23, 2007 from //www.funderstanding.com/vygotsky.cfm
[58] Retrieved October 6, 2007 from http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/virtual/colevyg.html.
[59] Retrieved October 6, 2007 from http://tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html
[60] Retrieved October 6, 2007 from http://books.google.com/books?id=GUTyDVORhHkC&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=vygotsky+educational+process&source=web&ots=tukEYQGhtK&sig=Dn_NpU6EXMKrjklhZfyCZ-l0JwM#PPA50,M1.
[61]L. S. Vygotsky, Educational Psychology, translated by Robert Silverman (Boca Raton, FL: St. Lucie Press, 1997, 50.
[62] Vygotsky. n.d. http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~pthoma4/Vygotsky.htm (accessed October 9, 2007).
[63] Michael Glassman. 2001. Dewey and Vygotsky: Society, Experience, and Inquiry in Educational Practice. Educational Researcher, 30 (4), 13.
[64] Retrieved October 6, 2007 from http://books.google.com/books?id=GUTyDVORhHkC&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=vygotsky+educational+process&source=web&ots=tukEYQGhtK&sig=Dn_NpU6EXMKrjklhZfyCZ-l0JwM#PPA50,M1
[65] L. S. Vygotsky, Mind in Society. Retrieved October 5, 2007 from http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~pthoma4/Vygotsky.htm
[66] L.S. Vygotsky, Educational Psychology, (St. Lucie Press, Florida, 1997), 47.
[67] Clabaugh, G. and Rozycki, E. School and Society, Oreland PA. NewFoundations Press 2007, p. 14.
[68] Ibid.
[69] J. Tudge. Vygotsky, the zone of proximal development and peer collaboration: Implications for classroom practice. In L.C. Moll (Ed.), Vygotsky & Education: Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 157.
[70] Idem.
[71] B. Gindis. 1999. Vygotsky's Vision: Reshaping the Practice of Special Education for the 21st Century. http://www.bgcenter.com/Vygotsky_Vision.htm (accessed October 14, 2007).
[72] Luis C. Moll, Vygotsky & Education: Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 1.
[73] L.S. Vygotsky. Sobraniye Sochinenii [Collected Works], Vol. 5 (Moscow: Pedagogika Publisher, 1983), 96.
[74] www.allaboutphilosophy.org/what-is-marxism-faq.htm
[75] Idem.
[76] Thomas J. Bernard. The Consensus-Conflict Debate: Form and Content in Social Theories (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 89.
[77] Ibid., 96.
[78] Idem.
[79] Idem.
[80] Karl Marx. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
[81] Thomas J. Bernard. The Consensus-Conflict Debate: Form and Content in Social Theories (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 98.
[82] Conflict Theory. http://www.unc.edu/~kbm/SOCI10Spring2004/Conflict_Theory.doc.
[83] Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press.
[84] Richard S. Prawat. 2000. Dewey Meets the "Mozart of Psychology" in Moscow: The Untold Story. American Educational Research Journal, 37 (3). 668.
[85] Ibid., 667.
[86] Ibid., 668.
[87] Michael Cole, Introduction to "The Making of Mind." http://www.marxists.org/archive/luria/comments/cole.htm
TO TOP
The following text may be found online at: http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Vygotsky.html
©2007 NewFoundations Gary K. Clabaugh, EdD, & Edward G. Rozycki, EdD, Editors
The Educational Theory of Lev Vygotsky: an analysis
Researched and Written by:
M. Dahms, K. Geonnotti, D. Passalacqua. J. N. Schilk, A. Wetzel,
and M. Zulkowsky
vygotsky
RETURN
edited 11/8/08
Introduction
Born in Czarist Russia in 1896, Lev Vygotsky lived a relatively short life, dying of tuberculosis in 1934. Because he was Jewish, the law limited his higher education options. He was, however, one of the 5% maximum of Jews permitted admission to a university. He was, however, not permitted to fulfill his ambition to pursue training as a teacher. In consequence, between the years of 1913 and 1917, Vygotsky studied medicine, philosophy, history, and law.[1]
Vygotsky began teaching in his home city almost immediately after the 1917 Communist Revolution. However, he was disappointed if he anticipated that this upheaval would result in greater overall freedom. The ascension of Joseph Stalin to power in 1922 meant that all of Vygotsky's scholarly work was to be accomplished in an ever more repressive police state.
Vygotsky's investigations of child development and educational psychology were influenced by his own Marxism – a philosophy that emphasizes the importance of one's social origins and place in the scheme of production.[2] Vygotsky's works, consisting of more than one hundred books and articles, were not published until after his death in 1934. Just two years later they were suppressed. This suppression endured for two decades during which time his works were held in a secret library that could only be accessed by permission of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs — commonly known as the NKVD.[3] Despite this prolonged attempt to suppress his ideas, Vygotsky's work survived and, particularly after the Cold War, came to wield considerable influence in the field of educational psychology.[4]
I. Theory of Value: What knowledge and skills are worthwhile learning? What are the goals of education?
Vygotsky's stresses the importance of looking at each child as an individual who learns distinctively. Consequently, the knowledge and skills that are worthwhile learning varies with the individual.
The overall goal of education according to Vygotsky is to "generate and lead development which is the result of social learning through internalization of culture and social relationships."[5] He repeatedly stressed the importance of past experiences and prior knowledge in making sense of new situations or present experiences.[6] Therefore, all new knowledge and newly introduced skills are greatly influenced by each student's culture, especially their family environment.
Language skills are particularly critical for creating meaning and linking new ideas to past experiences and prior knowledge. According to Vygotsky, internalized skills or psychological tools "are used to gain mastery over one's own behavior and cognition."[7] Primary among these tools is the "development of speech and its relation to thought."[8]
Vygotsky maintained that language plays a central role in cognitive development. He argued that language was the tool for determining the ways a child learns "how" to think. That is because complex concepts are conveyed to the child through words. "Learning, according to Vygotsky, always involves some type of external experience being transformed into internal processes through the use of language."[9] It follows that speech and language are the primary tools used to communicate with others, promoting learning.
Vygotsky promoted the development of higher level thinking and problem solving in education. If situations are designed to have students utilize critical thinking skills, their thought processes are being challenged and new knowledge gained.[10] The knowledge achieved through experience also serves as a foundation for the behaviors of every individual.[11]
II. Theory of Knowledge: What is knowledge? How is it different from belief? What is a mistake? A lie?
According to Davydov and Kerr, it was a momentous occasion in the history of psychology when Vygotsky asserted "...specific functions are not given to a person at birth but are only provided as cultural and social patterns."[12] Vygotsky saw "intellectual abilities as being much more specific to the culture in which the child was reared."[13] Through observation and study Vygotsky came to understand that people adapted to their surrounding environment based on their interpretations and individual perceptions of it.[14] Thus, humans are not born with knowledge nor is knowledge independent of social context. Rather, one gains knowledge as one develops by way of social interactions with peers and adults.
Vygotsky does not make as drastic a distinction between knowledge and belief as some other theorists do. For him, knowledge is obtained through past experiences, social situations, as well as ones general environment. In similar manner, beliefs are instilled into an individual via culture and parental upbringing.
"Mistakes are crucial in Vygotsky's theory of learning. In the course of development, mistakes are made during the process of "concept formation." They are important in that they impact future learning.[15] From Vygotsky's perspective, "A concept emerges and takes shape in the course of a complex interaction aimed at the solution of a problem...[A] concept is ...an active part of the intellectual process."[16]
We see, then that, for Vygotsky, concept formation is a dynamic, ever-changing activity during which "... the child relies on their own perception to make sense of objects that appear to them to be unrelated ... the child creates his or her own subjective relationships between objects and then mistakes his or her egocentric perspective for reality."[17] This stage of development is known, paradoxically, as "incoherent coherence."[18] During this stage, the making of mistakes is an integral part of a child's development.
Also at this time, the child's organization schema becomes less egocentric and begin to incorporate additional information gained from experience into his or her thought processes.[19] In this way, mistakes can be corrected and new knowledge gained. Therefore mistakes are developmentally necessary, resulting from the "...role of social interaction in transformation of prior knowledge.[20]
Tentatively one might infer that Vygotsky would view a lie as something that occurs as a result of the desire to conform to social norms. For example one might feel one way but report a more socially acceptable reality.
III. Theory of Human Nature: What is a human being? How does it differ from other species? What are the limits of human potential?
According to Marxist theory, "The essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations."[21] Vygotsky would agree that we develop as humans through the ways we interact with those around us. His view of human nature fits with his Marxist ideology. Human beings can only be understood within the context the time period and the part of the world in which they live. Human nature cannot be understood as never-changing and universal, but as always depending on its specific social and historical formation. This principle does not leave out biological factors.[22] To be human, however, means that you have surpassed a level of functioning that your biological traits would otherwise dictate.
[23]
Although some animals have the ability to create and use material tools, humans have the ability to utilize psychological tools. In other words, human beings are differentiated by their ability to develop psychological tools that are "used to gain mastery over one's own behavior and cognition"[24] that other forms of life are not capable of developing. Some psychological tools include: "language, different forms of numeration and counting, mnemotechniques, algebraic symbolism, works of art, writing, schemes, diagrams, maps, blueprints, etc."[25]
In his theories, Vygotsky placed great emphasis on the importance of spoken language, arguably the most critical tool that sets us apart from other species. He asserts that "speech is a very powerful psychological tool that lays the foundation for basic structures of thinking later in one's development."[26] Vygotsky further explains that speech is the first psychological tool used by children to communicate with others who share the environment. Naturally, this is continued through adulthood, as speech is a primary tool used for learning. Vygotsky insists that "humans learn best in cooperation with other humans."[27]
"Vygotsky contended that, unlike animals - who react only to the environment, humans have the capacity to alter the environment for their own purposes. It is this adaptive capacity that distinguishes humans from lower forms of life. ...The animal can only be trained. It can only acquire new habits. It can through exercises and combinations perfect its intellect, but is not capable of mental development through instruction in the real sense of the word."[28]
Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) posits that human potential is theoretically limitless; but the practical limits of human potential depend upon quality social interactions and residential environment. This zone of proximal development is "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers."[29] In theory, then, so long as a person has access to a more capable peer, any problem can be solved.
IV. Theory of Learning: What is learning? How are skills and knowledge acquired?
According to Piaget, learning is what results from both mental and physical maturation plus experience.[30] That is, development preceded learning. In contrast Vygotsky observed that learning processes lead development.[31] Vygotsky maintained that "learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human, psychological functions."[32] In other words, learning is what leads to the development of higher order thinking.
According to Vygotsky the two primary means of learning occur through social interaction and language. Language greatly enhances humans' ability to engage in social interactions and share their experiences. "The most important fact uncovered through the ... study of thought and speech is that their relationship undergoes many changes."[33] Initially, a child's new knowledge is interpsychological, meaning it is learned through interaction with others, on the social level.[34] Later, this same knowledge becomes intrapsychological, meaning inside the child, and the new knowledge or skill is mastered on an individual level.[35]
The previously mentioned idea of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is central to Vygotsky's view on how learning takes place. He described this zone as, "the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers."[36] Vygotsky maintained that learning occurs just above the student's current level of competence.[37] It follows then, that the copying student will have a higher performance when working with a more capable student.
The zone of proximal development works in conjunction with the use of scaffolding. "Scaffolding is a six-step approach to assisting learning and development of individuals within their zone of proximal development."[38] Knowledge, skills and prior experiences, which come from an individual's general knowledge, create the foundation of scaffolding for potential development. At this stage, students interact with adults and/or peers to accomplish a task which could possibly not be completed independently. The use of language and shared experience is essential to successfully implementing scaffolding as a learning tool. [39]
V. Theory of Transmission: Who is to teach? By what methods? What will the curriculum be?
Vygotsky defined those who are to teach as the "More Knowledgeable Other." The MKO is anyone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, particularly in regards to a specific task, concept or process.[40] Traditionally the MKO is thought of as a teacher or an older adult. However, this is not always the case. Other possibilities for the MKO could be a peer, sibling, a younger person, or even a computer. The key to MKO is that they must have more knowledge about the topic being learned than the learner does.[41] Teachers or more capable peers can raise the student's competence through the zone of proximal development (ZPD).
Vygotsky's findings suggest methodological procedures for the classroom. "In Vygotskian perspective, the ideal role of the teacher is that of providing scaffolding (collaborative dialogue) to assist students on tasks within their zones of proximal development."[42] During scaffolding the first step is to build interest and engage the learner. Once the learner is actively participating, the given task should be simplified by breaking it into smaller subtasks. During this task, the teacher needs to keep the learner focused, while concentrating on the most important ideas of the assignment. One of the most integral steps in scaffolding consists of keeping the learner from becoming frustrated. The final task associated with scaffolding involves the teacher modeling possible ways of completing tasks, which the learner can then imitate and eventually internalize. [43]
Vygotsky recommended a social context wherein a more competent learner would be paired with a less competent one, so that the former can elevate the latter's competence. This social context promotes sustained achievement and cognitive growth for less competent students."[44] Accordingly, students need to work together to construct their learning, teach each other so to speak, in a socio-cultural environment. In-class opportunities for collaboration on difficult problem-solving tasks will offer support to students who are struggling with the material. By interacting with more capable students who continue to mediate transactions between the struggling students and the content, all students will benefit.[45]
The implications of Vygotsky's theories and observations for educators are several and significant. In Vygotsky's view, the teacher has the collaborative "task of guiding and directing the child's activity."[46] Children can then solve novel problems "on the basis of a model he [sic] has been shown in class."[47] In other words, children learn by solving problems with the help of the teacher, who models processes for them and his or her peers, in a classroom environment that is directed by the teacher. In essence, "the child imitates the teacher through a process of re-creating previous classroom collaboration."[48] It is important to note that the teacher does not control the class with rule and structure; rather, the teacher collaborates with the students and provides support and direction.[49]
Assignments and activities that can be accurately completed by a student without assistance, indicate that the student has previously mastered the necessary prior knowledge. In the majority of classrooms this would be the conclusion of a unit; however, this is Vygotsky's entry point. However, as previously mentioned, the teacher must carefully group the student that "can potentially develop in collaboration with a more capable person."[50]
In our research, we found limited references to Vygotsky's specific views on curriculum content. One exception involves the teaching of writing to preschoolers. According to Garton and Pratt, Vygotsky argued for shifting the teaching of writing to preschool. They explain that Vygotsky differentiated between two forms of speech: spoken and written. Vygotsky, as cited by Garton and Pratt, asserts that a child develops an understanding that spoken speech can be symbolized in writing by progressing from "drawing things to drawing speech."[51] Vygotsky suggested then that the preschool curriculum should be designed so that it was organized to "ease child's transition from drawing things to drawing speech."[52]
Learning to master tools and technologies should also be included in the curriculum. "Students should be taught how to use tools such as the computer, resource books, and graphs in order to better utilize these tools in the future.[53] In this way, students will benefit as these tools and technologies influence the individual's thinking (along with the development of language).[54]
In sum, Vygotsky's findings suggest that the curriculum should generally challenge and stretch learner's competence.[55] The curriculum should provide many opportunities to apply previous skills, knowledge and experiences, with "authentic activities connected to real-life environment."[56] "Since children learn much through interaction, curricula should be designed to emphasize interaction between learners and learning tasks."[57]
VI. Theory of Society: What is society? What institutions are involved in the educational process?
According to Vygotsky, "society is the bearer of the cultural heritage without which the development of mind is impossible."[58] This 'society' allows the learner to develop cognitively through social interactions. As a result, the use of language makes it possible for a child to communicate and share the environment from within their society. "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological)."[59]
Perhaps Vygotsky was comfortable generalizing about 'society' in this way because he was living in post-revolutionary times. The revolution had been accomplished in Russia, and the "New Soviet Man", was emerging in the Soviet Union, and the dictatorship of the proletariat" was at hand.
So far as the institutions involved in the educational process are concerned, Moll reports that Vygotsky "considered school the best laboratory of human psychology."[60] He noted: "At first glace, it may be easily seen that no special educational environment is needed, that education may be accomplished in any environment whatsoever. ... It is not very hard to conclude that no sort of artificial educational environment has to be created, that life educates better than any school. ... This view is wrong, however."[61]
For Vygotsky, society (and therefore social interaction) happens in schools. "Schools are incorporated into the larger society and have that as their context, so that some of their activity settings are determined by this larger contextuality."[62] "For Vygotsky the classroom is also a social organization that is representative of the larger social community ... it is the social organization ... that is the agent for change in the individual."[63]
Fhis statement was not meant to "imply that informal education was not important."[64] Rather, as we stated before, for Vygotsky informal education is used by children through speech and language to develop higher mental functions. He stressed that "children's learning begins long before they attend school. ... Any learning a child encounters in school always has a previous history."[65]
VII. Theory of Opportunity: Who is to be educated? Who is to be schooled?
Vygotsky repeatedly asserts that it is within the "social environment" that learning takes place. Since no individual is able to escape their social surroundings, all within a society are inadvertently being educated.
Vygotsky writes:
"...In this sense, education in every country and in every epoch has always been social in nature. Indeed, by its very essence it could hardly exist as anti-social in anyway. Both in the seminary and in the old high school, in the military schools and in the schools for the daughters of the nobility ... it was never the teacher or the tutor who did the teaching, but the particular social environment in the school which was created for each individual instance."[66]
Every person is socialized in the society in which they are enveloped. Socialization is the process of cultural transmission, both unintentional and deliberate.[67] According to Vygotsky, this process is central to education.
We have already established that Vygotsky was a Marxist and, so far as we know, a supporter of the revolution; and further that socialization, education, and schooling are in a symbiotic relationship. So it seems likely that he would have favored reform of the entire socialization and educational process up to and including schooling, in order to create "The New Soviet Man."
Schooling, while similar to education, involves formalized teaching by a specialist in a specific place designated for instruction, such as a traditional school.[68] Vygotsky's Russia of the late 1920's and early 1930's was populated by millions of illiterate peasants and workers, and it is difficult to imagine that he would have regarded them as unworthy of the opportunities that schooling affords. Indeed, Vygotsky probably understood his theories to be, in part, a response to the need to solve the urgent and practical problems of schooling the new socialist state.
When referring to the education of children with disabilities, Vygotsky pointed out that "changes in the context of education may have profound consequences for the developmental processes."[69] He went on to say that children with disabilities should be included in the general education classroom, and not be separated into self-contained classrooms, because he felt that those children who were educated separately from "normal" children "would proceed in a totally different, and not beneficial, manner".[70] If he were alive today, Vygotsky would call this the model of full inclusion.[71]
Vygotsky also "considered the capacity to teach and to benefit from instruction a fundamental attribute of human beings".[72] He noted that "a child whose development is impeded by a disability is not simply a child less developed than his peers; rather, he has developed differently." [73] Given this, one can see that Vygotsky thought all children should be schooled side-by-side in a regular education classroom.
VIII. Theory of Consensus: Why do people disagree? How is consensus achieved? Whose opinion takes precedence?
To contemplate Vygotsky's theory of consensus, one must consider his Marxist perspective. Though Marxism is a very broad and diverse theory with many variations, certain commonalities exist.[74] The Encarta Reference Library defines Marxism as "a theory in which class struggle is a central element in the analysis of social change in Western societies."[75]
Depending on one's views, society can be seen in its natural or normal state as either a society of conflict or a society of consensus. Being a Marxist, Vygotsky would have looked at the world through the same lens as Karl Marx, who "...described all advanced....societies in conflictual terms." [76] However, it should be remembered that Vygotsky was living in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union. Consequently, at least some of the conflict mentioned above would be ameliorated by revolutionary attempts to build a classless and conflict-free society.
Anyway, the primary conflict that Marx saw was based on the "...conflict between the material forces of production and social relations of production."[77] Material forces of production "... can be considered society's capacity to produce ..." and has been somewhat continuous throughout time.[78] Social relations, on the other hand, can be seen as the "...distribution of income generated by the material forces of production" and tend to change only abruptly and violently.[79] As written in Marx's Communist Manifesto, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." [80] Marx added, however, that conflict was normal due to social structures and not due to human nature.[81]
Keeping his Marxism in mind, Vygotsky would probably have said that, at least prior to the revolution, people disagree ultimately because they are engaged in class struggle for dominance among competing social groups - classes, genders, races, religions, etc. When conflict theorists such as Marx look at society, they see the social domination of subordinate groups through the power, authority, and coercion of dominant groups. In the conflict view, the most powerful members of dominant groups create the rules for success and opportunity in society, often denying subordinate groups such success and opportunities; this ensures that the powerful continue to monopolize power, privilege, and authority.[82]
Since Vygotsky was involved in mutual consultation with other theorists and was clearly aware of the social context in which learning takes place, one can safely assume he appreciated that the evolution of consensus among experts was central to learning about learning, as well as to learning in general. His theories all were influenced by the other learning theorists of his time.
Consider Vygotsky's evaluation of Piaget's theories and findings. After detailed examination, Vygotsky concluded that Piaget had developed a clinical method that revolutionized the study of children's language and thought. Vygotsky admired Piaget's detailed pictures of children's thinking, his assertion that development occurs in distinct, measurable, and observable stages, his focus on what children have, not what they lack, and his finding that the difference between adults' and children's thinking is qualitative, not quantitative.[83] However, he also believed that there were flaws in Piaget's methods.
Vygotsky clearly was willing to work with and learn from others. But he was not intimidated by the official consensus of party ideologues.[84] For example, Vygotsky opposed the Marxist reflexologists (behaviorists), who were politically if not intellectually, ascendant at that time." He did so at great personal risk considering the nature of the Stalinist regime.[85] Also Vygotsky took on the man who had hired him R. N. Kornilov, director of the Kornilov Institute,. "One year after joining the Institute, Vygotsky saw fit to reject Kornilov's attempt at a compromise solution to the consciousness problem (i.e., "reactology"), subjecting it to...a devastating philosophical criticism."[86]
We see, then, that Vygotsky did not put consensus building above what he regarded as truth seeking. On the other hand, Cole explains that "... it was characteristic of both Vygotsky and his close colleague Luria that they attempted to place their research within the general circle of contemporary scientific ideas influencing psychology. In order to be maximally persuasive, they sought to demonstrate both the correctness of their own approach and the points where it made contact with (and then diverged from) the ideas of their contemporaries."[87] We see, then, that Vygotsky was aware of and sensitive to the professional consensus that he respected.
Citations
[1] "Lev Semonovich Vygotsky" http://evolution.masey.ac.nz.asssign2MHR/indexvyg.html
[2] Lev S. Vygotsky: The Man and the Era, International Journal of Group Tensions, vol 31, #4, http://www.springerlink.com/content/v3145jv768818187/
[3] Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich (1896-1934), MIA: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Glossary of People, http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/v/y.htm
[4] Idem.
[5] "Psychology Applied to Education: Lev. S. Vygotsky's Approach" Communiquè 25, no. 2 (1997), http://www.bgcenter.com/Vygotsky_Appr.htm.
[6] Preston D. Feden and Robert M. Vogel, Methods of Teaching: Applying Cognitive Science to Promote Student Learning (New York: McGraw Hill, 1993).
[7] Richard Hamilton and Elizabeth Ghatala, Learning and Instruction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 255.
[8] Ibid., 258.
[9] Preston D. Feden & Robert M. Vogel, Methods of Teaching: Applying Cognitive Science to Promote Student Learning ( New York: McGraw Hill, 1993).
[10] M.F. Goldfarb, The Educational Theory of Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896-1934)
[11] Robert Silverman, Educational Psychology. L.S. Vygotsky. Introduced by V.V. Davydov (St. Lucie Press, Florida, 1992), ch. 17.
[12] Vasily V. Davydov and Stephen T. Kerr. 1995. The Influence of L. S. Vygotsky on Education Theory, Research, and Practice. Educational Researcher 24 (3). 18.
[13] Sûlr˙n B. KristinsdÛttir, Lev Vygotsky, 31 July 07, Retrieved September 10, 2007 from http://starfsfolk.khi.is/solrunb/vygotsky.htm
[14] Fosnot, C. T., Constructivism: A Psychological Theory of Learning. In C. T. Fosnot (Ed.), Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives, and Practice 1996 (New York, NY: Teachers College Press)
[15] Paula Wellings. 2003. School learning & Life learning: The interaction of spontaneous and scientific concepts in the development of higher mental processes. http://ldt.stanford.edu/~paulaw/STANFORD/370x_paula_wellings_final_paper.pdf (accessed September 12, 2007): 3.
For an independent supporting analysis, see Edward G. Rozycki (1970) The Philosophical Foundations of Human Cognition available at http://www.newfoundations.com/CogTheo/CogTheoPro.html
[16] Idem..
[17] Ibid., 3-4.
[18] Ibid., 3.
[19] Ibid., 4.
[20] Jeremy Roschelle. 1995. Learning in Interactive Environments: Prior Knowledge and New Experience. http://www.astc.org/resource/education/priorknw.htm (accessed September 12, 2007).
[21] Spirkin, A. "On the Human Being and Being Human" http://www.markists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch05.html
[22] Ibid
[23] L. S. Vygotsky, Mind in society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978), 38-39.
[24] Richard Hamilton and Elizabeth Ghatala, Learning and Instruction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 259.
[25] Gredler, M. and Shields, C. (2004) Does No One Read Vygotsky's Words? Commentary on Glassman. Educational Researcher 33 (2), p.21.
[26] Preston D. Feden & Robert M. Vogel, Methods of Teaching: Applying Cognitive Science to Promote Student Learning (The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc, 2003).
[27] Preston D. Feden & Robert M. Vogel, Methods of Teaching: Applying Cognitive Science to Promote Student Learning (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003).
[28] Vygotsky, 1934; Understanding Vygotsky, Retrieved September 13, 2007 from http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/vygotsky.shtml
[29] Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society, edited by M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, and E. Souberman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 85-86.
[30] Luis C. Moll, Vygotsky & Education: Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 50.
[31] Luis C. Moll, Vygotsky & Education: Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 50.
[32] L. S. Vygotsky, Mind in society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978), 90
[33] Lev Vygotsky, Thought and Speech (The M.I.T Press, 1962), Ch 4. Retrieved September 10, 2007 http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/words/ch04.htm
[34] "Social Development Theory (Vygotsky)", http://www.learning-theories.com/vygotskys-social-learning-theory.html.
[35] Idem.
[36] L.S. Vygotsky, Mind in Society, pg 86.
[37] Deborah J. Leong and Elena Bodrova. "Pioneers in Our Field: Lev Vygotsky – Playing to Learn. Scholastic Early Childhood Today., (2001). http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3549
[38] Preston Feden, Robert Vogel, Education (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006), 187-190.
[39] Idem.
[40] Social Development Theory (Vygotsky), 2007, http://www.learning-theories.com/vygotskys-social-learning-theory.html
[41] Chad Galloway, Vygotsky's constructivism, 2007, http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Vygotsky's_constructivism
[42] Richard Hamilton and Elizabeth Ghatala, Learning and Instruction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 277.
[43] Preston Feden, Robert Vogel, Education (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006), 189.
[44] James A. Jaramillo. "Vygotsky's sociocultural theory and contributions to the development of constructivist curricula." Education. (1996), http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3673/is_199610/ai_n8734319/pg_
[45] Tharp, R. G., & Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing minds to life. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
[46] L. S. Vygotsky, Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia [Pedagogical psychology], 2nd Ed. (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1991), 118.
[47] L. S. Vygotsky, "The development of scientific concepts in childhood," in Problems of general psychology, Vol. 1, Collected works of L. S. Vygotsky, ed. R. W. Rieber and A. S. Carton (New York: Plenum, 1987), 216.
[48] Margaret Gredler and Carol Shields. 2004. Does No One read Vygotsky's Words? Commentary on Glassman. Educational Researcher 33 (2). 22.
[49] Richard Hamilton and Elizabeth Ghatala, Learning and Instruction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 277.
[50] Preston D. Feden & Robert M. Vogel, Methods of Teaching: Applying Cognitive Science to Promote Student Learning (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003).
[51] Alison F. Garton and Chris Pratt, Learning to Be Literate: The Development of Spoken and Written Language (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1998), 49.
[52] Idem.
[53] University of Iowa, College of Education. n.d. Comparing Piaget and Vygotsky. http://www.education.uiowa.edu/resources/tep/eportfolio/07p075folder/Piaget_Vygotsky.htm (accessed October 3, 2007).
[54] Richard Hamilton and Elizabeth Ghatala, Learning and Instruction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 254.
[55] Mooney, C.G., An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget & Vygotsky (St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press, 2000), 85.
[56] "Education about and through technology: In Search of More Appropriate Pedagogical Approaches to Technology Education", http://herkeles.oulu.fi/isbn9514264878/html/x340.html.
[57] Retrieved September 23, 2007 from //www.funderstanding.com/vygotsky.cfm
[58] Retrieved October 6, 2007 from http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/virtual/colevyg.html.
[59] Retrieved October 6, 2007 from http://tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html
[60] Retrieved October 6, 2007 from http://books.google.com/books?id=GUTyDVORhHkC&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=vygotsky+educational+process&source=web&ots=tukEYQGhtK&sig=Dn_NpU6EXMKrjklhZfyCZ-l0JwM#PPA50,M1.
[61]L. S. Vygotsky, Educational Psychology, translated by Robert Silverman (Boca Raton, FL: St. Lucie Press, 1997, 50.
[62] Vygotsky. n.d. http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~pthoma4/Vygotsky.htm (accessed October 9, 2007).
[63] Michael Glassman. 2001. Dewey and Vygotsky: Society, Experience, and Inquiry in Educational Practice. Educational Researcher, 30 (4), 13.
[64] Retrieved October 6, 2007 from http://books.google.com/books?id=GUTyDVORhHkC&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=vygotsky+educational+process&source=web&ots=tukEYQGhtK&sig=Dn_NpU6EXMKrjklhZfyCZ-l0JwM#PPA50,M1
[65] L. S. Vygotsky, Mind in Society. Retrieved October 5, 2007 from http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~pthoma4/Vygotsky.htm
[66] L.S. Vygotsky, Educational Psychology, (St. Lucie Press, Florida, 1997), 47.
[67] Clabaugh, G. and Rozycki, E. School and Society, Oreland PA. NewFoundations Press 2007, p. 14.
[68] Ibid.
[69] J. Tudge. Vygotsky, the zone of proximal development and peer collaboration: Implications for classroom practice. In L.C. Moll (Ed.), Vygotsky & Education: Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 157.
[70] Idem.
[71] B. Gindis. 1999. Vygotsky's Vision: Reshaping the Practice of Special Education for the 21st Century. http://www.bgcenter.com/Vygotsky_Vision.htm (accessed October 14, 2007).
[72] Luis C. Moll, Vygotsky & Education: Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 1.
[73] L.S. Vygotsky. Sobraniye Sochinenii [Collected Works], Vol. 5 (Moscow: Pedagogika Publisher, 1983), 96.
[74] www.allaboutphilosophy.org/what-is-marxism-faq.htm
[75] Idem.
[76] Thomas J. Bernard. The Consensus-Conflict Debate: Form and Content in Social Theories (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 89.
[77] Ibid., 96.
[78] Idem.
[79] Idem.
[80] Karl Marx. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
[81] Thomas J. Bernard. The Consensus-Conflict Debate: Form and Content in Social Theories (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 98.
[82] Conflict Theory. http://www.unc.edu/~kbm/SOCI10Spring2004/Conflict_Theory.doc.
[83] Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press.
[84] Richard S. Prawat. 2000. Dewey Meets the "Mozart of Psychology" in Moscow: The Untold Story. American Educational Research Journal, 37 (3). 668.
[85] Ibid., 667.
[86] Ibid., 668.
[87] Michael Cole, Introduction to "The Making of Mind." http://www.marxists.org/archive/luria/comments/cole.htm
TO TOP
Preston's Lecture Notes: Vygotsky
Please read this outline actively, and feel free to post comments or questions-- if Pound and Eliot could demonstrate the value of social learning by sending letters across the Atlantic, surely we can do it on our blog!
__________________________________________________________________________
Lev Semenovich Vygotsky and Social Learning Theory
“A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.”
We tend to think of words and thoughts as independent entities, separated and distinct from one another. However, as we learned from our discussion on Linguistic Relativity, the relationship between thought and language is much more complex and interdependent. Vygotsky’s work in this area allows us some insight into how the collaboration between thoughts, words and interaction between individuals facilitates learning.
Most American Literature students will tell you that T.S. Eliot wrote “The Waste Land,” and any bibliographic research would appear to confirm this simple fact. However, it is simply not true. That poem was the result of a collaborative process between Eliot and Ezra Pound, in which dozens of letters and manuscripts were passed back and forth to facilitate a thought process that would not have been possible otherwise. “The Waste Land” exists as evidence of thinking between at least two creative sources, and we turn to Vygotsky for some illumination on what has come to be known as “the teachable moment.”
First some biographical facts:
• Vygotsky lived from 1896-1934
• Like several researchers/theorists we have studied, Vygotsky turned his attention to education and psychological development after exploring other fields
• Vygotsky died of TB, and his work did not become well-known in the U.S. until after the cold war
ORIGINS OF THOUGHT & LANGUAGE
• In Vygotsky’s model, the development of thought and language can be imagined as the strands of the DNA double-helix; they grow interdependently
• Around the age of 2, thought becomes verbal and speech becomes rational
• The child first uses language for superficial social interaction; later language becomes embedded and becomes the actual structure of conscious thought
WORD MEANING & CONCEPT FORMATION
• “…A problem must arise that cannot be solved otherwise than through the formation of new concepts.”
• The child solves a problem by naming it; when she doesn’t have a name, she substitutes from other sources
• Through this process, word meaning becomes the basis for concept formation
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM
• All fundamental cognitive activities take shape in context of socio-history and socio-historical development
• NOTE: this development is not innate—it is the product of activities within social institutions
• Language is crucial tool because advanced modes of thought are transmitted by means of words (here we may make a connection with Piaget’s abstract/hypothetical thinking in the formal operations stage)
ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT
• Includes all functions/activities as a child/learner can perform only with assistance from someone else (adult or peer)
• EXAMPLE: I.Q. Testing/ in isolation 2 children score at 8 year-old level, and with assistance one scores at 9, one scores at 12
IMPLICATIONS
• Human learning presupposes a specific social nature
• Learning is part of a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them
• Learning awakens a variety of internal processes that are able to operate ONLY when the child is in the action of interacting with people in her environment
KEYS
• Authenticity of environment
• Affinity between participants
VYGOTSKY’S INFLUENCE
• Krashen’s language acquisition theory
• Less structured, more natural/communicative/experiential approaches to learning
• Emphasis on real-world human interaction
• Assessment: Is the individual the only/best unit of analysis?
• “Teachable moment”
• Value on knowledge as a profoundly social process
• Recognition that often the epitome of ignorance is the reluctance to seek help
__________________________________________________________________________
Lev Semenovich Vygotsky and Social Learning Theory
“A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.”
We tend to think of words and thoughts as independent entities, separated and distinct from one another. However, as we learned from our discussion on Linguistic Relativity, the relationship between thought and language is much more complex and interdependent. Vygotsky’s work in this area allows us some insight into how the collaboration between thoughts, words and interaction between individuals facilitates learning.
Most American Literature students will tell you that T.S. Eliot wrote “The Waste Land,” and any bibliographic research would appear to confirm this simple fact. However, it is simply not true. That poem was the result of a collaborative process between Eliot and Ezra Pound, in which dozens of letters and manuscripts were passed back and forth to facilitate a thought process that would not have been possible otherwise. “The Waste Land” exists as evidence of thinking between at least two creative sources, and we turn to Vygotsky for some illumination on what has come to be known as “the teachable moment.”
First some biographical facts:
• Vygotsky lived from 1896-1934
• Like several researchers/theorists we have studied, Vygotsky turned his attention to education and psychological development after exploring other fields
• Vygotsky died of TB, and his work did not become well-known in the U.S. until after the cold war
ORIGINS OF THOUGHT & LANGUAGE
• In Vygotsky’s model, the development of thought and language can be imagined as the strands of the DNA double-helix; they grow interdependently
• Around the age of 2, thought becomes verbal and speech becomes rational
• The child first uses language for superficial social interaction; later language becomes embedded and becomes the actual structure of conscious thought
WORD MEANING & CONCEPT FORMATION
• “…A problem must arise that cannot be solved otherwise than through the formation of new concepts.”
• The child solves a problem by naming it; when she doesn’t have a name, she substitutes from other sources
• Through this process, word meaning becomes the basis for concept formation
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM
• All fundamental cognitive activities take shape in context of socio-history and socio-historical development
• NOTE: this development is not innate—it is the product of activities within social institutions
• Language is crucial tool because advanced modes of thought are transmitted by means of words (here we may make a connection with Piaget’s abstract/hypothetical thinking in the formal operations stage)
ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT
• Includes all functions/activities as a child/learner can perform only with assistance from someone else (adult or peer)
• EXAMPLE: I.Q. Testing/ in isolation 2 children score at 8 year-old level, and with assistance one scores at 9, one scores at 12
IMPLICATIONS
• Human learning presupposes a specific social nature
• Learning is part of a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them
• Learning awakens a variety of internal processes that are able to operate ONLY when the child is in the action of interacting with people in her environment
KEYS
• Authenticity of environment
• Affinity between participants
VYGOTSKY’S INFLUENCE
• Krashen’s language acquisition theory
• Less structured, more natural/communicative/experiential approaches to learning
• Emphasis on real-world human interaction
• Assessment: Is the individual the only/best unit of analysis?
• “Teachable moment”
• Value on knowledge as a profoundly social process
• Recognition that often the epitome of ignorance is the reluctance to seek help
Zull Chapter 6
If you're a chapter 6 expert, please post your summary of the chapter as a comment to this post. Everyone is encouraged to read each summary and chime in with questions and/or ideas.
Zull Chapter 5
If you're a chapter 5 expert, please post your summary of the chapter as a comment to this post. Everyone is encouraged to read each summary and chime in with questions and/or ideas.
Zull Chapter 4
If you're a chapter 4 expert, please post your summary of the chapter as a comment to this post. Everyone is encouraged to read each summary and chime in with questions and/or ideas.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Week 4 Resources
Please publish your resources for week 4 (November 18) as comments to this post. Thanks!
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Week 3 Resources
Please publish your resources for week 3 (November 11) as comments to this post. Thanks!
Skinner Quiz
Test your expertise by answering the following questions. Please either post your answers, or a general comment about your confidence in your knowledge, so that I have an idea of how much time we need to spend discussing/reviewing on Tuesday.
1. Define operant conditioning and describe an example.
2. According to Skinner, what is the likely outcome when a behavior is followed by a reinforcing stimulus?
3. Describe the difference between Skinner's schedules of reinforcement (i.e., continuous, fixed interval, fixed ratio, variable).
4. Define shaping and describe an example.
5. What is the difference between negative reinforcement and punishment?
6. What does Skinner's approach suggest about his view of human nature? Do you agree?
1. Define operant conditioning and describe an example.
2. According to Skinner, what is the likely outcome when a behavior is followed by a reinforcing stimulus?
3. Describe the difference between Skinner's schedules of reinforcement (i.e., continuous, fixed interval, fixed ratio, variable).
4. Define shaping and describe an example.
5. What is the difference between negative reinforcement and punishment?
6. What does Skinner's approach suggest about his view of human nature? Do you agree?
Week 2 Resources
Following are the resources for which I received hard copies on 11/4. If you don't see yours here, please post it as a comment.
www.brainpop.com
(submitted by Sarah Duarte)
This resource is a website I use in my classroom. BrainPop is an online animated educational program that includes videos and quizzes. Tim (a human) and Moby (a robot) are the characters that teach lessons from all subjects that align with state standards. BrainPop makes learning fun for kids because it is funny and interactive. BrainPop is relevant to ED 606 because it covers the brain and how the brain functions in one of its health video lessons. It also covers neurons.
http://www.molecularstation.com/science-news/2008/07/brain-function-and-learning
(submitted by Debbie Trujillo)
This article goes along with the first chapter of THE ART OF CHANGING THE BRAIN by James E. Zull, beginning with the assertion that neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center have recently "solved a mystery that lies at the heart of human learning" that may explain some forms of mental retardation and overall brain functioning. Read the article to learn more about a specific gene, BDNF, that is indirectly responsible for the neuronal connections that facilitate memory and learning.
www.brainpop.com
(submitted by Sarah Duarte)
This resource is a website I use in my classroom. BrainPop is an online animated educational program that includes videos and quizzes. Tim (a human) and Moby (a robot) are the characters that teach lessons from all subjects that align with state standards. BrainPop makes learning fun for kids because it is funny and interactive. BrainPop is relevant to ED 606 because it covers the brain and how the brain functions in one of its health video lessons. It also covers neurons.
http://www.molecularstation.com/science-news/2008/07/brain-function-and-learning
(submitted by Debbie Trujillo)
This article goes along with the first chapter of THE ART OF CHANGING THE BRAIN by James E. Zull, beginning with the assertion that neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center have recently "solved a mystery that lies at the heart of human learning" that may explain some forms of mental retardation and overall brain functioning. Read the article to learn more about a specific gene, BDNF, that is indirectly responsible for the neuronal connections that facilitate memory and learning.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
B.F. Skinner & Behaviorist Theory
B.F. Skinner & Behaviorist Theory
B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) was a well-known psychologist and Harvard professor whose theory of Radical Behaviorism has greatly influenced American psychology and public education policy. Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior proposed that human language is not a function of free will, personality, or purpose, but of operant conditioning, just like any other behavior.
Operant conditioning is the relationship between an individual organism and the world around it. The organism operates on its environment in a series of actions that last a lifetime. I bounce a ball, breathe, turn the key in my car’s ignition. Every moment I act the environment responds. Once in a while it responds kindly, in a way that makes us want to feel the effect again. So, according to Skinner, we assume that we cause the effect, and if we repeat the behavior that immediately preceded the effect the first time then it will happen again. Skinner called this positive environmental feedback a reinforcing stimulus or reinforcer. The reinforcer increases the operant, the preceding behavior that the organism believes causes the effect.
To test his theories, Skinner built a contraption called the operant conditioning chamber. The cage contains a lever on one side. When a rat or mouse pushes the lever a food pellet is released into the cage. The rat may or may not see a lot of action in this cage, but it doesn’t compare to getting fed whenever she presses the lever. This rat comes to associate this particular operant with a very pleasant reinforcer, which further encourages her to repeat the operant.
Here are two sets of notes on Skinner. Please read them actively (print and mark up the text, take notes, jot down questions). We will spend some time next week discussing the major ideas and implications, as well as the influence of Pavlov. For your journals, I’d like you to focus on the application of Skinner’s theories. Do you see evidence of these ideas in schools? Does the Radical Behaviorist approach work?
ARTICLE/NOTES 1: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/skinner.html
B. F. SKINNER
1904 - 1990
Dr. C. George Boeree
Biography
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born March 20, 1904, in the small Pennsylvania town of Susquehanna. His father was a lawyer, and his mother a strong and intelligent housewife. His upbringing was old-fashioned and hard-working.
Burrhus was an active, out-going boy who loved the outdoors and building things, and actually enjoyed school. His life was not without its tragedies, however. In particular, his brother died at the age of 16 of a cerebral aneurysm.
Burrhus received his BA in English from Hamilton College in upstate New York. He didn’t fit in very well, not enjoying the fraternity parties or the football games. He wrote for school paper, including articles critical of the school, the faculty, and even Phi Beta Kappa! To top it off, he was an atheist -- in a school that required daily chapel attendance.
He wanted to be a writer and did try, sending off poetry and short stories. When he graduated, he built a study in his parents’ attic to concentrate, but it just wasn’t working for him.
Ultimately, he resigned himself to writing newspaper articles on labor problems, and lived for a while in Greenwich Village in New York City as a “bohemian.” After some traveling, he decided to go back to school, this time at Harvard. He got his masters in psychology in 1930 and his doctorate in 1931, and stayed there to do research until 1936.
Also in that year, he moved to Minneapolis to teach at the University of Minnesota. There he met and soon married Yvonne Blue. They had two daughters, the second of which became famous as the first infant to be raised in one of Skinner’s inventions, the air crib. Although it was nothing more than a combination crib and playpen with glass sides and air conditioning, it looked too much like keeping a baby in an aquarium to catch on.
In 1945, he became the chairman of the psychology department at Indiana University. In 1948, he was invited to come to Harvard, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was a very active man, doing research and guiding hundreds of doctoral candidates as well as writing many books. While not successful as a writer of fiction and poetry, he became one of our best psychology writers, including the book Walden II, which is a fictional account of a community run by his behaviorist principles.
August 18, 1990, B. F. Skinner died of leukemia after becoming perhaps the most celebrated psychologist since Sigmund Freud.
Theory
B. F. Skinner’s entire system is based on operant conditioning. The organism is in the process of “operating” on the environment, which in ordinary terms means it is bouncing around its world, doing what it does. During this “operating,” the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer. This special stimulus has the effect of increasing the operant -- that is, the behavior occurring just before the reinforcer. This is operant conditioning: “the behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence modifies the organisms tendency to repeat the behavior in the future.”
Imagine a rat in a cage. This is a special cage (called, in fact, a “Skinner box”) that has a bar or pedal on one wall that, when pressed, causes a little mechanism to release a food pellet into the cage. The rat is bouncing around the cage, doing whatever it is rats do, when he accidentally presses the bar and -- hey, presto! -- a food pellet falls into the cage! The operant is the behavior just prior to the reinforcer, which is the food pellet, of course. In no time at all, the rat is furiously peddling away at the bar, hoarding his pile of pellets in the corner of the cage.
A behavior followed by a reinforcing stimulus results in an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
What if you don’t give the rat any more pellets? Apparently, he’s no fool, and after a few futile attempts, he stops his bar-pressing behavior. This is called extinction of the operant behavior.
A behavior no longer followed by the reinforcing stimulus results in a decreased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
Now, if you were to turn the pellet machine back on, so that pressing the bar again provides the rat with pellets, the behavior of bar-pushing will “pop” right back into existence, much more quickly than it took for the rat to learn the behavior the first time. This is because the return of the reinforcer takes place in the context of a reinforcement history that goes all the way back to the very first time the rat was reinforced for pushing on the bar!
Schedules of reinforcement
Skinner likes to tell about how he “accidentally -- i.e. operantly -- came across his various discoveries. For example, he talks about running low on food pellets in the middle of a study. Now, these were the days before “Purina rat chow” and the like, so Skinner had to make his own rat pellets, a slow and tedious task. So he decided to reduce the number of reinforcements he gave his rats for whatever behavior he was trying to condition, and, lo and behold, the rats kept up their operant behaviors, and at a stable rate, no less. This is how Skinner discovered schedules of reinforcement!
Continuous reinforcement is the original scenario: Every time that the rat does the behavior (such as pedal-pushing), he gets a rat goodie.
The fixed ratio schedule was the first one Skinner discovered: If the rat presses the pedal three times, say, he gets a goodie. Or five times. Or twenty times. Or “x” times. There is a fixed ratio between behaviors and reinforcers: 3 to 1, 5 to 1, 20 to 1, etc. This is a little like “piece rate” in the clothing manufacturing industry: You get paid so much for so many shirts.
The fixed interval schedule uses a timing device of some sort. If the rat presses the bar at least once during a particular stretch of time (say 20 seconds), then he gets a goodie. If he fails to do so, he doesn’t get a goodie. But even if he hits that bar a hundred times during that 20 seconds, he still only gets one goodie! One strange thing that happens is that the rats tend to “pace” themselves: They slow down the rate of their behavior right after the reinforcer, and speed up when the time for it gets close.
Skinner also looked at variable schedules. Variable ratio means you change the “x” each time -- first it takes 3 presses to get a goodie, then 10, then 1, then 7 and so on. Variable interval means you keep changing the time period -- first 20 seconds, then 5, then 35, then 10 and so on.
In both cases, it keeps the rats on their rat toes. With the variable interval schedule, they no longer “pace” themselves, because they can no longer establish a “rhythm” between behavior and reward. Most importantly, these schedules are very resistant to extinction. It makes sense, if you think about it. If you haven’t gotten a reinforcer for a while, well, it could just be that you are at a particularly “bad” ratio or interval! Just one more bar press, maybe this’ll be the one!
This, according to Skinner, is the mechanism of gambling. You may not win very often, but you never know whether and when you’ll win again. It could be the very next time, and if you don’t roll them dice, or play that hand, or bet on that number this once, you’ll miss on the score of the century!
Shaping
A question Skinner had to deal with was how we get to more complex sorts of behaviors. He responded with the idea of shaping, or “the method of successive approximations.” Basically, it involves first reinforcing a behavior only vaguely similar to the one desired. Once that is established, you look out for variations that come a little closer to what you want, and so on, until you have the animal performing a behavior that would never show up in ordinary life. Skinner and his students have been quite successful in teaching simple animals to do some quite extraordinary things. My favorite is teaching pigeons to bowl!
I used shaping on one of my daughters once. She was about three or four years old, and was afraid to go down a particular slide. So I picked her up, put her at the end of the slide, asked if she was okay and if she could jump down. She did, of course, and I showered her with praise. I then picked her up and put her a foot or so up the slide, asked her if she was okay, and asked her to slide down and jump off. So far so good. I repeated this again and again, each time moving her a little up the slide, and backing off if she got nervous. Eventually, I could put her at the top of the slide and she could slide all the way down and jump off. Unfortunately, she still couldn’t climb up the ladder, so I was a very busy father for a while.
This is the same method that is used in the therapy called systematic desensitization, invented by another behaviorist named Joseph Wolpe. A person with a phobia -- say of spiders -- would be asked to come up with ten scenarios involving spiders and panic of one degree or another. The first scenario would be a very mild one -- say seeing a small spider at a great distance outdoors. The second would be a little more scary, and so on, until the tenth scenario would involve something totally terrifying -- say a tarantula climbing on your face while you’re driving your car at a hundred miles an hour! The therapist will then teach you how to relax your muscles -- which is incompatible with anxiety. After you practice that for a few days, you come back and you and the therapist go through your scenarios, one step at a time, making sure you stay relaxed, backing off if necessary, until you can finally imagine the tarantula while remaining perfectly tension-free.
This is a technique quite near and dear to me because I did in fact have a spider phobia, and did in fact get rid of it with systematic desensitization. It worked so well that, after one session (beyond the original scenario-writing and muscle-training session) I could go out an pick up a daddy-long-legs. Cool.
Beyond these fairly simple examples, shaping also accounts for the most complex of behaviors. You don’t, for example, become a brain surgeon by stumbling into an operating theater, cutting open someone's head, successfully removing a tumor, and being rewarded with prestige and a hefty paycheck, along the lines of the rat in the Skinner box. Instead, you are gently shaped by your environment to enjoy certain things, do well in school, take a certain bio class, see a doctor movie perhaps, have a good hospital visit, enter med school, be encouraged to drift towards brain surgery as a speciality, and so on. This could be something your parents were carefully doing to you, as if you were a rat in a cage. But much more likely, this is something that was more or less unintentional.
Aversive stimuli
An aversive stimulus is the opposite of a reinforcing stimulus, something we might find unpleasant or painful.
A behavior followed by an aversive stimulus results in a decreased probability of the behavior occurring in the future.
This both defines an aversive stimulus and describes the form of conditioning known as punishment. If you shock a rat for doing x, it’ll do a lot less of x. If you spank Johnny for throwing his toys he will throw his toys less and less (maybe).
On the other hand, if you remove an already active aversive stimulus after a rat or Johnny performs a certain behavior, you are doing negative reinforcement. If you turn off the electricity when the rat stands on his hind legs, he’ll do a lot more standing. If you stop your perpetually nagging when I finally take out the garbage, I’ll be more likely to take out the garbage (perhaps). You could say it “feels so good” when the aversive stimulus stops, that this serves as a reinforcer!
Behavior followed by the removal of an aversive stimulus results in an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
Notice how difficult it can be to distinguish some forms of negative reinforcement from positive reinforcement: If I starve you, is the food I give you when you do what I want a positive -- i.e. a reinforcer? Or is it the removal of a negative -- i.e. the aversive stimulus of hunger?
Skinner (contrary to some stereotypes that have arisen about behaviorists) doesn’t “approve” of the use of aversive stimuli -- not because of ethics, but because they don’t work well! Notice that I said earlier that Johnny will maybe stop throwing his toys, and that I perhaps will take out the garbage? That’s because whatever was reinforcing the bad behaviors hasn’t been removed, as it would’ve been in the case of extinction. This hidden reinforcer has just been “covered up” with a conflicting aversive stimulus. So, sure, sometimes the child (or me) will behave -- but it still feels good to throw those toys. All Johnny needs to do is wait till you’re out of the room, or find a way to blame it on his brother, or in some way escape the consequences, and he’s back to his old ways. In fact, because Johnny now only gets to enjoy his reinforcer occasionally, he’s gone into a variable schedule of reinforcement, and he’ll be even more resistant to extinction than ever!
Behavior modification
Behavior modification -- often referred to as b-mod -- is the therapy technique based on Skinner’s work. It is very straight-forward: Extinguish an undesirable behavior (by removing the reinforcer) and replace it with a desirable behavior by reinforcement. It has been used on all sorts of psychological problems -- addictions, neuroses, shyness, autism, even schizophrenia -- and works particularly well with children. There are examples of back-ward psychotics who haven’t communicated with others for years who have been conditioned to behave themselves in fairly normal ways, such as eating with a knife and fork, taking care of their own hygiene needs, dressing themselves, and so on.
There is an offshoot of b-mod called the token economy. This is used primarily in institutions such as psychiatric hospitals, juvenile halls, and prisons. Certain rules are made explicit in the institution, and behaving yourself appropriately is rewarded with tokens -- poker chips, tickets, funny money, recorded notes, etc. Certain poor behavior is also often followed by a withdrawal of these tokens. The tokens can be traded in for desirable things such as candy, cigarettes, games, movies, time out of the institution, and so on. This has been found to be very effective in maintaining order in these often difficult institutions.
There is a drawback to token economy: When an “inmate” of one of these institutions leaves, they return to an environment that reinforces the kinds of behaviors that got them into the institution in the first place. The psychotic’s family may be thoroughly dysfunctional. The juvenile offender may go right back to “the ‘hood.” No one is giving them tokens for eating politely. The only reinforcements may be attention for “acting out,” or some gang glory for robbing a Seven-Eleven. In other words, the environment doesn’t travel well!
Walden II
Skinner started his career as an English major, writing poems and short stories. He has, of course, written a large number of papers and books on behaviorism. But he will probably be most remembered by the general run of readers for his book Walden II, wherein he describes a utopia-like commune run on his operant principles.
People, especially the religious right, came down hard on his book. They said that his ideas take away our freedom and dignity as human beings. He responded to the sea of criticism with another book (one of his best) called Beyond Freedom and Dignity. He asked: What do we mean when we say we want to be free? Usually we mean we don’t want to be in a society that punishes us for doing what we want to do. Okay -- aversive stimuli don’t work well anyway, so out with them! Instead, we’ll only use reinforcers to “control” society. And if we pick the right reinforcers, we will feel free, because we will be doing what we feel we want!
Likewise for dignity. When we say “she died with dignity,” what do we mean? We mean she kept up her “good” behaviors without any apparent ulterior motives. In fact, she kept her dignity because her reinforcement history has led her to see behaving in that "dignified" manner as more reinforcing than making a scene.
The bad do bad because the bad is rewarded. The good do good because the good is rewarded. There is no true freedom or dignity. Right now, our reinforcers for good and bad behavior are chaotic and out of our control -- it’s a matter of having good or bad luck with your “choice” of parents, teachers, peers, and other influences. Let’s instead take control, as a society, and design our culture in such a way that good gets rewarded and bad gets extinguished! With the right behavioral technology, we can design culture.
Both freedom and dignity are examples of what Skinner calls mentalistic constructs -- unobservable and so useless for a scientific psychology. Other examples include defense mechanisms, the unconscious, archetypes, fictional finalisms, coping strategies, self-actualization, consciousness, even things like hunger and thirst. The most important example is what he refers to as the homunculus -- Latin for “the little man” -- that supposedly resides inside us and is used to explain our behavior, ideas like soul, mind, ego, will, self, and, of course, personality.
Instead, Skinner recommends that psychologists concentrate on observables, that is, the environment and our behavior in it.
Readings
Whether you agree with him or not, Skinner is a good writer and fun to read. I’ve already mentioned Walden II and Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971). The best summary of his theory is the book About Behaviorism (1974).
Copyright 1998, 2006 C. George Boeree
________________________________________________________________
NOTES 2: http://www.coe.uh.edu/courses/cuin6373/idhistory/skinner.html
B. F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner(1904-90) was a psychologist. Born in Susquhanna, Pa., he studied at Harvard, teaching there from 1931-6 and again from 1947-74. A leading behaviorist, he was a proponent of operant conditioning, and the inventor of the Skinner box for facilitating experimental observations.
Research for testing and instruction continued to be piecemeal until the work of B.F. Skinner. Skinner's research was in stimulus-response and reinforcement. His research contributed to an understanding of the usefulness and application of teaching machines. He stated that, although positive reinforcement has been proven important in learning, schools use little reinforcement but instead use aversive control. Skinner (1954) also noted that the learning process should be divided into "a very large number of very small steps and reinforcement must be contingent upon the accomplishment of each step." Skinner also stated that by making the steps of learning small, the frequency of reinforcement can be increased and the frequency of being wrong is reduced.
In order to accomplish the goal of positive reinforcement delivered frequently to reward small steps in the learning process, Skinner suggested using mechanical devices. He noted that the teacher was not able to succeed in implementing increasing reinforcement because of the limitations of class size and styles of teaching and grading being used. Skinner (1954) stated:
If the teacher is to take advantage of recent advances in the study of learning, she must have the help of mechanical devices. The technical problem of providing the necessary instrumental aid is not particularly difficult. There are many ways in which the necessary contingencies may be arranged, either mechanically or electrically...The important features on the device are these: Reinforcement for the right answer is immediate. The mere manipulation of the device will probably be reinforcing enough to keep the average student at work for a suitable period each day, provided traces of earlier aversive control can be wiped out. A teacher may supervise an entire class at work on such devices at the same time, yet each child may progress at his own rate, completing as many problems as possible within the class period. If forced to be away from school, he may return where he left off. The gifted child will advance rapidly, but can be kept from getting too far ahead either by being excused from arithmetic for a time or by being given special sets of problems which take him into some of the interesting by-paths of mathematics. The device makes it possible to present carefully designed material in which one problem can depend upon the answer to the preceding and where, therefore the most progress to an eventually complex repertoire can be made. ( p. 95)
Skinner concluded with the theory that the proposed changes would free the teacher for more important functions and that mechanized instruction should be integrated into all schools, not as a replacement for, but as an adjunct to the teacher.
Skinner (1958) later developed a machine that was built on Pressey's model but differed in several ways. He stated that a teaching machine should have several important features. First, the student should compose his response rather than select it from a set of possible answers. Skinner supported this idea with the fact that responses should be recalled, not simply recognized, and that wrong selections may seem out of place and strengthen unwanted recall. Second, Skinner stated that a teaching machine should present information in a carefully designed sequence of steps.
Skinner also noted that the machine itself does not teach, but brings the student into contact with the person who composed the material it presented. The machine is a labor-saving device because it can bring one programmer into contact with an infinite number of students.
Skinner (1958) compared his teaching machine to a private tutor. The machine induces sustained activity while keeping the student active and busy and would not allow the student to proceed unless he understands the materials. The material is presented in sequence as the student is ready to receive it. The machine helps the student arrive at the correct answer both by a logical presentation of material and by "hinting, prompting, suggesting, and so on, derived from an analysis of verbal behavior" (1958, p. 971). Finally Skinner stated that the machine reinforces the student for every correct response with immediate feedback.
Another important part of Skinner's research included the program that the teaching machine contained. Skinner developed the concept of nearly errorless learning through two ideas - prompting and fading. Prompting was used to construct the correct or desired response; fading was the gradual withdrawing of stimulus supports. Both techniques were used to promote efficient learning.
Skinner's ideas launched the programmed instruction movement in the United States. Skinner's ideas attracted many followers who embraced the idea of programmed instruction as the first truly efficient method of learning.
B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) was a well-known psychologist and Harvard professor whose theory of Radical Behaviorism has greatly influenced American psychology and public education policy. Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior proposed that human language is not a function of free will, personality, or purpose, but of operant conditioning, just like any other behavior.
Operant conditioning is the relationship between an individual organism and the world around it. The organism operates on its environment in a series of actions that last a lifetime. I bounce a ball, breathe, turn the key in my car’s ignition. Every moment I act the environment responds. Once in a while it responds kindly, in a way that makes us want to feel the effect again. So, according to Skinner, we assume that we cause the effect, and if we repeat the behavior that immediately preceded the effect the first time then it will happen again. Skinner called this positive environmental feedback a reinforcing stimulus or reinforcer. The reinforcer increases the operant, the preceding behavior that the organism believes causes the effect.
To test his theories, Skinner built a contraption called the operant conditioning chamber. The cage contains a lever on one side. When a rat or mouse pushes the lever a food pellet is released into the cage. The rat may or may not see a lot of action in this cage, but it doesn’t compare to getting fed whenever she presses the lever. This rat comes to associate this particular operant with a very pleasant reinforcer, which further encourages her to repeat the operant.
Here are two sets of notes on Skinner. Please read them actively (print and mark up the text, take notes, jot down questions). We will spend some time next week discussing the major ideas and implications, as well as the influence of Pavlov. For your journals, I’d like you to focus on the application of Skinner’s theories. Do you see evidence of these ideas in schools? Does the Radical Behaviorist approach work?
ARTICLE/NOTES 1: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/skinner.html
B. F. SKINNER
1904 - 1990
Dr. C. George Boeree
Biography
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born March 20, 1904, in the small Pennsylvania town of Susquehanna. His father was a lawyer, and his mother a strong and intelligent housewife. His upbringing was old-fashioned and hard-working.
Burrhus was an active, out-going boy who loved the outdoors and building things, and actually enjoyed school. His life was not without its tragedies, however. In particular, his brother died at the age of 16 of a cerebral aneurysm.
Burrhus received his BA in English from Hamilton College in upstate New York. He didn’t fit in very well, not enjoying the fraternity parties or the football games. He wrote for school paper, including articles critical of the school, the faculty, and even Phi Beta Kappa! To top it off, he was an atheist -- in a school that required daily chapel attendance.
He wanted to be a writer and did try, sending off poetry and short stories. When he graduated, he built a study in his parents’ attic to concentrate, but it just wasn’t working for him.
Ultimately, he resigned himself to writing newspaper articles on labor problems, and lived for a while in Greenwich Village in New York City as a “bohemian.” After some traveling, he decided to go back to school, this time at Harvard. He got his masters in psychology in 1930 and his doctorate in 1931, and stayed there to do research until 1936.
Also in that year, he moved to Minneapolis to teach at the University of Minnesota. There he met and soon married Yvonne Blue. They had two daughters, the second of which became famous as the first infant to be raised in one of Skinner’s inventions, the air crib. Although it was nothing more than a combination crib and playpen with glass sides and air conditioning, it looked too much like keeping a baby in an aquarium to catch on.
In 1945, he became the chairman of the psychology department at Indiana University. In 1948, he was invited to come to Harvard, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was a very active man, doing research and guiding hundreds of doctoral candidates as well as writing many books. While not successful as a writer of fiction and poetry, he became one of our best psychology writers, including the book Walden II, which is a fictional account of a community run by his behaviorist principles.
August 18, 1990, B. F. Skinner died of leukemia after becoming perhaps the most celebrated psychologist since Sigmund Freud.
Theory
B. F. Skinner’s entire system is based on operant conditioning. The organism is in the process of “operating” on the environment, which in ordinary terms means it is bouncing around its world, doing what it does. During this “operating,” the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer. This special stimulus has the effect of increasing the operant -- that is, the behavior occurring just before the reinforcer. This is operant conditioning: “the behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence modifies the organisms tendency to repeat the behavior in the future.”
Imagine a rat in a cage. This is a special cage (called, in fact, a “Skinner box”) that has a bar or pedal on one wall that, when pressed, causes a little mechanism to release a food pellet into the cage. The rat is bouncing around the cage, doing whatever it is rats do, when he accidentally presses the bar and -- hey, presto! -- a food pellet falls into the cage! The operant is the behavior just prior to the reinforcer, which is the food pellet, of course. In no time at all, the rat is furiously peddling away at the bar, hoarding his pile of pellets in the corner of the cage.
A behavior followed by a reinforcing stimulus results in an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
What if you don’t give the rat any more pellets? Apparently, he’s no fool, and after a few futile attempts, he stops his bar-pressing behavior. This is called extinction of the operant behavior.
A behavior no longer followed by the reinforcing stimulus results in a decreased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
Now, if you were to turn the pellet machine back on, so that pressing the bar again provides the rat with pellets, the behavior of bar-pushing will “pop” right back into existence, much more quickly than it took for the rat to learn the behavior the first time. This is because the return of the reinforcer takes place in the context of a reinforcement history that goes all the way back to the very first time the rat was reinforced for pushing on the bar!
Schedules of reinforcement
Skinner likes to tell about how he “accidentally -- i.e. operantly -- came across his various discoveries. For example, he talks about running low on food pellets in the middle of a study. Now, these were the days before “Purina rat chow” and the like, so Skinner had to make his own rat pellets, a slow and tedious task. So he decided to reduce the number of reinforcements he gave his rats for whatever behavior he was trying to condition, and, lo and behold, the rats kept up their operant behaviors, and at a stable rate, no less. This is how Skinner discovered schedules of reinforcement!
Continuous reinforcement is the original scenario: Every time that the rat does the behavior (such as pedal-pushing), he gets a rat goodie.
The fixed ratio schedule was the first one Skinner discovered: If the rat presses the pedal three times, say, he gets a goodie. Or five times. Or twenty times. Or “x” times. There is a fixed ratio between behaviors and reinforcers: 3 to 1, 5 to 1, 20 to 1, etc. This is a little like “piece rate” in the clothing manufacturing industry: You get paid so much for so many shirts.
The fixed interval schedule uses a timing device of some sort. If the rat presses the bar at least once during a particular stretch of time (say 20 seconds), then he gets a goodie. If he fails to do so, he doesn’t get a goodie. But even if he hits that bar a hundred times during that 20 seconds, he still only gets one goodie! One strange thing that happens is that the rats tend to “pace” themselves: They slow down the rate of their behavior right after the reinforcer, and speed up when the time for it gets close.
Skinner also looked at variable schedules. Variable ratio means you change the “x” each time -- first it takes 3 presses to get a goodie, then 10, then 1, then 7 and so on. Variable interval means you keep changing the time period -- first 20 seconds, then 5, then 35, then 10 and so on.
In both cases, it keeps the rats on their rat toes. With the variable interval schedule, they no longer “pace” themselves, because they can no longer establish a “rhythm” between behavior and reward. Most importantly, these schedules are very resistant to extinction. It makes sense, if you think about it. If you haven’t gotten a reinforcer for a while, well, it could just be that you are at a particularly “bad” ratio or interval! Just one more bar press, maybe this’ll be the one!
This, according to Skinner, is the mechanism of gambling. You may not win very often, but you never know whether and when you’ll win again. It could be the very next time, and if you don’t roll them dice, or play that hand, or bet on that number this once, you’ll miss on the score of the century!
Shaping
A question Skinner had to deal with was how we get to more complex sorts of behaviors. He responded with the idea of shaping, or “the method of successive approximations.” Basically, it involves first reinforcing a behavior only vaguely similar to the one desired. Once that is established, you look out for variations that come a little closer to what you want, and so on, until you have the animal performing a behavior that would never show up in ordinary life. Skinner and his students have been quite successful in teaching simple animals to do some quite extraordinary things. My favorite is teaching pigeons to bowl!
I used shaping on one of my daughters once. She was about three or four years old, and was afraid to go down a particular slide. So I picked her up, put her at the end of the slide, asked if she was okay and if she could jump down. She did, of course, and I showered her with praise. I then picked her up and put her a foot or so up the slide, asked her if she was okay, and asked her to slide down and jump off. So far so good. I repeated this again and again, each time moving her a little up the slide, and backing off if she got nervous. Eventually, I could put her at the top of the slide and she could slide all the way down and jump off. Unfortunately, she still couldn’t climb up the ladder, so I was a very busy father for a while.
This is the same method that is used in the therapy called systematic desensitization, invented by another behaviorist named Joseph Wolpe. A person with a phobia -- say of spiders -- would be asked to come up with ten scenarios involving spiders and panic of one degree or another. The first scenario would be a very mild one -- say seeing a small spider at a great distance outdoors. The second would be a little more scary, and so on, until the tenth scenario would involve something totally terrifying -- say a tarantula climbing on your face while you’re driving your car at a hundred miles an hour! The therapist will then teach you how to relax your muscles -- which is incompatible with anxiety. After you practice that for a few days, you come back and you and the therapist go through your scenarios, one step at a time, making sure you stay relaxed, backing off if necessary, until you can finally imagine the tarantula while remaining perfectly tension-free.
This is a technique quite near and dear to me because I did in fact have a spider phobia, and did in fact get rid of it with systematic desensitization. It worked so well that, after one session (beyond the original scenario-writing and muscle-training session) I could go out an pick up a daddy-long-legs. Cool.
Beyond these fairly simple examples, shaping also accounts for the most complex of behaviors. You don’t, for example, become a brain surgeon by stumbling into an operating theater, cutting open someone's head, successfully removing a tumor, and being rewarded with prestige and a hefty paycheck, along the lines of the rat in the Skinner box. Instead, you are gently shaped by your environment to enjoy certain things, do well in school, take a certain bio class, see a doctor movie perhaps, have a good hospital visit, enter med school, be encouraged to drift towards brain surgery as a speciality, and so on. This could be something your parents were carefully doing to you, as if you were a rat in a cage. But much more likely, this is something that was more or less unintentional.
Aversive stimuli
An aversive stimulus is the opposite of a reinforcing stimulus, something we might find unpleasant or painful.
A behavior followed by an aversive stimulus results in a decreased probability of the behavior occurring in the future.
This both defines an aversive stimulus and describes the form of conditioning known as punishment. If you shock a rat for doing x, it’ll do a lot less of x. If you spank Johnny for throwing his toys he will throw his toys less and less (maybe).
On the other hand, if you remove an already active aversive stimulus after a rat or Johnny performs a certain behavior, you are doing negative reinforcement. If you turn off the electricity when the rat stands on his hind legs, he’ll do a lot more standing. If you stop your perpetually nagging when I finally take out the garbage, I’ll be more likely to take out the garbage (perhaps). You could say it “feels so good” when the aversive stimulus stops, that this serves as a reinforcer!
Behavior followed by the removal of an aversive stimulus results in an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
Notice how difficult it can be to distinguish some forms of negative reinforcement from positive reinforcement: If I starve you, is the food I give you when you do what I want a positive -- i.e. a reinforcer? Or is it the removal of a negative -- i.e. the aversive stimulus of hunger?
Skinner (contrary to some stereotypes that have arisen about behaviorists) doesn’t “approve” of the use of aversive stimuli -- not because of ethics, but because they don’t work well! Notice that I said earlier that Johnny will maybe stop throwing his toys, and that I perhaps will take out the garbage? That’s because whatever was reinforcing the bad behaviors hasn’t been removed, as it would’ve been in the case of extinction. This hidden reinforcer has just been “covered up” with a conflicting aversive stimulus. So, sure, sometimes the child (or me) will behave -- but it still feels good to throw those toys. All Johnny needs to do is wait till you’re out of the room, or find a way to blame it on his brother, or in some way escape the consequences, and he’s back to his old ways. In fact, because Johnny now only gets to enjoy his reinforcer occasionally, he’s gone into a variable schedule of reinforcement, and he’ll be even more resistant to extinction than ever!
Behavior modification
Behavior modification -- often referred to as b-mod -- is the therapy technique based on Skinner’s work. It is very straight-forward: Extinguish an undesirable behavior (by removing the reinforcer) and replace it with a desirable behavior by reinforcement. It has been used on all sorts of psychological problems -- addictions, neuroses, shyness, autism, even schizophrenia -- and works particularly well with children. There are examples of back-ward psychotics who haven’t communicated with others for years who have been conditioned to behave themselves in fairly normal ways, such as eating with a knife and fork, taking care of their own hygiene needs, dressing themselves, and so on.
There is an offshoot of b-mod called the token economy. This is used primarily in institutions such as psychiatric hospitals, juvenile halls, and prisons. Certain rules are made explicit in the institution, and behaving yourself appropriately is rewarded with tokens -- poker chips, tickets, funny money, recorded notes, etc. Certain poor behavior is also often followed by a withdrawal of these tokens. The tokens can be traded in for desirable things such as candy, cigarettes, games, movies, time out of the institution, and so on. This has been found to be very effective in maintaining order in these often difficult institutions.
There is a drawback to token economy: When an “inmate” of one of these institutions leaves, they return to an environment that reinforces the kinds of behaviors that got them into the institution in the first place. The psychotic’s family may be thoroughly dysfunctional. The juvenile offender may go right back to “the ‘hood.” No one is giving them tokens for eating politely. The only reinforcements may be attention for “acting out,” or some gang glory for robbing a Seven-Eleven. In other words, the environment doesn’t travel well!
Walden II
Skinner started his career as an English major, writing poems and short stories. He has, of course, written a large number of papers and books on behaviorism. But he will probably be most remembered by the general run of readers for his book Walden II, wherein he describes a utopia-like commune run on his operant principles.
People, especially the religious right, came down hard on his book. They said that his ideas take away our freedom and dignity as human beings. He responded to the sea of criticism with another book (one of his best) called Beyond Freedom and Dignity. He asked: What do we mean when we say we want to be free? Usually we mean we don’t want to be in a society that punishes us for doing what we want to do. Okay -- aversive stimuli don’t work well anyway, so out with them! Instead, we’ll only use reinforcers to “control” society. And if we pick the right reinforcers, we will feel free, because we will be doing what we feel we want!
Likewise for dignity. When we say “she died with dignity,” what do we mean? We mean she kept up her “good” behaviors without any apparent ulterior motives. In fact, she kept her dignity because her reinforcement history has led her to see behaving in that "dignified" manner as more reinforcing than making a scene.
The bad do bad because the bad is rewarded. The good do good because the good is rewarded. There is no true freedom or dignity. Right now, our reinforcers for good and bad behavior are chaotic and out of our control -- it’s a matter of having good or bad luck with your “choice” of parents, teachers, peers, and other influences. Let’s instead take control, as a society, and design our culture in such a way that good gets rewarded and bad gets extinguished! With the right behavioral technology, we can design culture.
Both freedom and dignity are examples of what Skinner calls mentalistic constructs -- unobservable and so useless for a scientific psychology. Other examples include defense mechanisms, the unconscious, archetypes, fictional finalisms, coping strategies, self-actualization, consciousness, even things like hunger and thirst. The most important example is what he refers to as the homunculus -- Latin for “the little man” -- that supposedly resides inside us and is used to explain our behavior, ideas like soul, mind, ego, will, self, and, of course, personality.
Instead, Skinner recommends that psychologists concentrate on observables, that is, the environment and our behavior in it.
Readings
Whether you agree with him or not, Skinner is a good writer and fun to read. I’ve already mentioned Walden II and Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971). The best summary of his theory is the book About Behaviorism (1974).
Copyright 1998, 2006 C. George Boeree
________________________________________________________________
NOTES 2: http://www.coe.uh.edu/courses/cuin6373/idhistory/skinner.html
B. F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner(1904-90) was a psychologist. Born in Susquhanna, Pa., he studied at Harvard, teaching there from 1931-6 and again from 1947-74. A leading behaviorist, he was a proponent of operant conditioning, and the inventor of the Skinner box for facilitating experimental observations.
Research for testing and instruction continued to be piecemeal until the work of B.F. Skinner. Skinner's research was in stimulus-response and reinforcement. His research contributed to an understanding of the usefulness and application of teaching machines. He stated that, although positive reinforcement has been proven important in learning, schools use little reinforcement but instead use aversive control. Skinner (1954) also noted that the learning process should be divided into "a very large number of very small steps and reinforcement must be contingent upon the accomplishment of each step." Skinner also stated that by making the steps of learning small, the frequency of reinforcement can be increased and the frequency of being wrong is reduced.
In order to accomplish the goal of positive reinforcement delivered frequently to reward small steps in the learning process, Skinner suggested using mechanical devices. He noted that the teacher was not able to succeed in implementing increasing reinforcement because of the limitations of class size and styles of teaching and grading being used. Skinner (1954) stated:
If the teacher is to take advantage of recent advances in the study of learning, she must have the help of mechanical devices. The technical problem of providing the necessary instrumental aid is not particularly difficult. There are many ways in which the necessary contingencies may be arranged, either mechanically or electrically...The important features on the device are these: Reinforcement for the right answer is immediate. The mere manipulation of the device will probably be reinforcing enough to keep the average student at work for a suitable period each day, provided traces of earlier aversive control can be wiped out. A teacher may supervise an entire class at work on such devices at the same time, yet each child may progress at his own rate, completing as many problems as possible within the class period. If forced to be away from school, he may return where he left off. The gifted child will advance rapidly, but can be kept from getting too far ahead either by being excused from arithmetic for a time or by being given special sets of problems which take him into some of the interesting by-paths of mathematics. The device makes it possible to present carefully designed material in which one problem can depend upon the answer to the preceding and where, therefore the most progress to an eventually complex repertoire can be made. ( p. 95)
Skinner concluded with the theory that the proposed changes would free the teacher for more important functions and that mechanized instruction should be integrated into all schools, not as a replacement for, but as an adjunct to the teacher.
Skinner (1958) later developed a machine that was built on Pressey's model but differed in several ways. He stated that a teaching machine should have several important features. First, the student should compose his response rather than select it from a set of possible answers. Skinner supported this idea with the fact that responses should be recalled, not simply recognized, and that wrong selections may seem out of place and strengthen unwanted recall. Second, Skinner stated that a teaching machine should present information in a carefully designed sequence of steps.
Skinner also noted that the machine itself does not teach, but brings the student into contact with the person who composed the material it presented. The machine is a labor-saving device because it can bring one programmer into contact with an infinite number of students.
Skinner (1958) compared his teaching machine to a private tutor. The machine induces sustained activity while keeping the student active and busy and would not allow the student to proceed unless he understands the materials. The material is presented in sequence as the student is ready to receive it. The machine helps the student arrive at the correct answer both by a logical presentation of material and by "hinting, prompting, suggesting, and so on, derived from an analysis of verbal behavior" (1958, p. 971). Finally Skinner stated that the machine reinforces the student for every correct response with immediate feedback.
Another important part of Skinner's research included the program that the teaching machine contained. Skinner developed the concept of nearly errorless learning through two ideas - prompting and fading. Prompting was used to construct the correct or desired response; fading was the gradual withdrawing of stimulus supports. Both techniques were used to promote efficient learning.
Skinner's ideas launched the programmed instruction movement in the United States. Skinner's ideas attracted many followers who embraced the idea of programmed instruction as the first truly efficient method of learning.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Week 2 News
Hi,
Following are two articles related to our course material. The first deals with the effects of groupthink, and the second raises questions about the unconscious nature of racism. The latter also contains a "resource within a resource"-- check out the bias tests at websites associated with Harvard and the University of Chicago. I look forward to your posts and discussing on Tuesday.
David
November 2, 2008
The New York Times/Economic View
Challenging the Crowd in Whispers, Not Shouts
By ROBERT J. SHILLER
ALAN GREENSPAN, the former Federal Reserve chairman, acknowledged in a Congressional hearing last month that he had made an “error” in assuming that the markets would properly regulate themselves, and added that he had no idea a financial disaster was in the making. What’s more, he said the Fed’s own computer models and economic experts simply “did not forecast” the current financial crisis.
Mr. Greenspan’s comments may have left the impression that no one in the world could have predicted the crisis. Yet it is clear that well before home prices started falling in 2006, lots of people were worried about the housing boom and its potential for creating economic disaster. It’s just that the Fed did not take them very seriously.
For example, I clearly remember a taxi driver in Miami explaining to me years ago that the housing bubble there was getting crazy. With all the construction under way, which he pointed out as we drove along, he said that there would surely be a glut in the market and, eventually, a disaster.
But why weren’t the experts at the Fed saying such things? And why didn’t a consensus of economists at universities and other institutions warn that a crisis was on the way?
The field of social psychology provides a possible answer. In his classic 1972 book, “Groupthink,” Irving L. Janis, the Yale psychologist, explained how panels of experts could make colossal mistakes. People on these panels, he said, are forever worrying about their personal relevance and effectiveness, and feel that if they deviate too far from the consensus, they will not be given a serious role. They self-censor personal doubts about the emerging group consensus if they cannot express these doubts in a formal way that conforms with apparent assumptions held by the group.
Members of the Fed staff were issuing some warnings. But Mr. Greenspan was right: the warnings were not predictions. They tended to be technical in nature, did not offer a scenario of crashing home prices and economic confidence, and tended to come late in the housing boom.
A search of the Federal Reserve Board’s working paper series reveals a few papers that touch on the bubble. For example, a 2004 paper by Joshua Gallin, a Fed economist, concluded: “Indeed, one might be tempted to cite the currently low level of the rent-price ratio as a sign that we are in a house-price ‘bubble.’” But the paper did not endorse this view, saying that “several important caveats argue against such a strong conclusion and in favor of further research.”
One of Mr. Greenspan’s fellow board members, Edward M. Gramlich, urgently warned about the inadequate regulation of subprime mortgages. But judging at least from his 2007 book, “Subprime Mortgages,” he did not warn about a housing bubble, let alone that its bursting would have any systemic consequences.
From my own experience on expert panels, I know firsthand the pressures that people — might I say mavericks? — may feel when questioning the group consensus.
I was connected with the Federal Reserve System as a member the economic advisory panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1990 until 2004, when the New York bank’s new president, Timothy F. Geithner, arrived. That panel advises the president of the New York bank, who, in turn, is vice chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets interest rates. In my position on the panel, I felt the need to use restraint. While I warned about the bubbles I believed were developing in the stock and housing markets, I did so very gently, and felt vulnerable expressing such quirky views. Deviating too far from consensus leaves one feeling potentially ostracized from the group, with the risk that one may be terminated.
Reading some of Mr. Geithner’s speeches from around that time shows that he was concerned about systemic risks but concluded that the financial system was getting “stronger” and more “resilient.” He was worried about the unsustainability of a low savings rate, government deficit and current account deficit, none of which caused our current crisis.
In 2005, in the second edition of my book “Irrational Exuberance,” I stated clearly that a catastrophic collapse of the housing and stock markets could be on its way. I wrote that “significant further rises in these markets could lead, eventually, to even more significant declines,” and that this might “result in a substantial increase in the rate of personal bankruptcies, which could lead to a secondary string of bankruptcies of financial institutions as well,” and said that this could result in “another, possibly worldwide, recession.”
I distinctly remember that, while writing this, I feared criticism for gratuitous alarmism. And indeed, such criticism came.
I gave talks in 2005 at both the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, in which I argued that we were in the middle of a dangerous housing bubble. I urged these mortgage regulators to impose suitability requirements on mortgage lenders, to assure that the loans were appropriate for the people taking them.
The reaction to this suggestion was roughly this: yes, some staff members had expressed such concerns, and yes, officials knew about the possibility that there was a bubble, but they weren’t taking any of us seriously.
I BASED my predictions largely on the recently developed field of behavioral economics, which posits that psychology matters for economic events. Behavioral economists are still regarded as a fringe group by many mainstream economists. Support from fellow behavioral economists was important in my daring to talk about speculative bubbles.
Speculative bubbles are caused by contagious excitement about investment prospects. I find that in casual conversation, many of my mainstream economist friends tell me that they are aware of such excitement, too. But very few will talk about it professionally.
Why do professional economists always seem to find that concerns with bubbles are overblown or unsubstantiated? I have wondered about this for years, and still do not quite have an answer. It must have something to do with the tool kit given to economists (as opposed to psychologists) and perhaps even with the self-selection of those attracted to the technical, mathematical field of economics. Economists aren’t generally trained in psychology, and so want to divert the subject of discussion to things they understand well. They pride themselves on being rational. The notion that people are making huge errors in judgment is not appealing.
In addition, it seems that concerns about professional stature may blind us to the possibility that we are witnessing a market bubble. We all want to associate ourselves with dignified people and dignified ideas. Speculative bubbles, and those who study them, have been deemed undignified.
In short, Mr. Janis’s insights seem right on the mark. People compete for stature, and the ideas often just tag along. Presidential campaigns are no different. Candidates cannot try interesting and controversial new ideas during a campaign whose main purpose is to establish that the candidate has the stature to be president. Unless Mr. Greenspan was exceptionally insightful about social psychology, he may not have perceived that experts around him could have been subject to the same traps.
Robert J. Shiller is professor of economics and finance at Yale and co-founder and chief economist of MacroMarkets LLC.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
October 30, 2008
New York Times/Op-Ed Columnist
What? Me Biased?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
For the last year and a half, a team of psychology professors has been conducting remarkable experiments on how Americans view Barack Obama through the prism of race.
The scholars used a common research technique, the implicit association test, to measure whether people regarded Mr. Obama and other candidates as more foreign or more American. They found that research subjects — particularly when primed to think of Mr. Obama as a black candidate — subconsciously considered him less American than either Hillary Clinton or John McCain.
Indeed, the study found that the research subjects — Californian college students, many of them Democrats supportive of Mr. Obama — unconsciously perceived him as less American even than the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
It’s not that any of them actually believed Mr. Obama to be foreign. But the implicit association test measured the way the unconscious mind works, and in following instructions to sort images rapidly, the mind balked at accepting a black candidate as fully American. This result mattered: The more difficulty a person had in classifying Mr. Obama as American, the less likely that person was to support Mr. Obama.
It’s easy to be skeptical of such research, so test for your own unconscious biases at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo or at http://backhand.uchicago.edu/Center/ShooterEffect.
Race is a controversial, emotional subject in America, particularly in the context of this campaign. Many Obama supporters believe that their candidate would be further ahead if it were not for racism, while many McCain supporters resent the insinuations and believe that if Mr. Obama were white, he wouldn’t even be considered for the presidency.
Yet with race an undercurrent in the national debate, that also makes this a teachable moment. Partly that’s because of new findings both in neurology, using brain scans to understand how we respond to people of different races, and social psychology, examining the gulf between our conscious ideals of equality and our unconscious proclivity to discriminate.
Incidentally, such discrimination is not only racial. We also have unconscious biases against the elderly and against women seeking powerful positions — biases that affect the Republican ticket.
Some scholars link racial attitudes to a benefit in evolutionary times from an ability to form snap judgments about who is a likely friend and foe. There may have been an evolutionary advantage in recognizing instantaneously whether a stranger was from one’s own tribe or from an enemy tribe. There’s some evidence that the amygdala, a center in the brain for emotions, flashes a threat warning when it perceives people who look “different.”
Yet our biases are probably largely cultural. One reason to think that is that many African-Americans themselves have an unconscious pro-white bias. All told, considerable evidence suggests that while the vast majority of Americans truly believe in equality and aspire to equal opportunity for all, our minds aren’t as egalitarian as we think they are.
“To me, this study really reveals this gap between our minds and our ideals,” said Thierry Devos, a professor at San Diego State University who conducted the research on Mr. Obama, along with Debbie Ma of the University of Chicago. “Equality is very much linked to ideas of American identity, but it’s hard to live up to these ideas. Even somebody like Barack Obama, who may be about to become president — we have a hard time seeing him as American.”
A flood of recent research has shown that most Americans, including Latinos and Asian-Americans, associate the idea of “American” with white skin. One study found that although people realize that Lucy Liu is American and that Kate Winslet is British, their minds automatically process an Asian face as foreign and a white face as American — hence this title in an academic journal: “Is Kate Winslet More American Than Lucy Liu?”
One might argue that Mr. Obama registers as foreign in our minds because he does have overseas family connections, such as his father’s Kenyan ancestry. But similar experiments have found the same outcome with famous African-American sports figures.
Moreover, Professor Devos found that when participants in the latest study were told to focus on the age of each candidate, or on the political party of each candidate, then Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain were perceived as equally American. It was only when people were prompted to focus on skin color and to see Mr. Obama as black that he was perceived as foreign.
This 2008 election is a milestone and may put a black man in the White House. That creates an opportunity for an adult conversation about the murky complexities of race, in part because there’s evidence that when people become aware of their unconscious biases, they can overcome them.
Following are two articles related to our course material. The first deals with the effects of groupthink, and the second raises questions about the unconscious nature of racism. The latter also contains a "resource within a resource"-- check out the bias tests at websites associated with Harvard and the University of Chicago. I look forward to your posts and discussing on Tuesday.
David
November 2, 2008
The New York Times/Economic View
Challenging the Crowd in Whispers, Not Shouts
By ROBERT J. SHILLER
ALAN GREENSPAN, the former Federal Reserve chairman, acknowledged in a Congressional hearing last month that he had made an “error” in assuming that the markets would properly regulate themselves, and added that he had no idea a financial disaster was in the making. What’s more, he said the Fed’s own computer models and economic experts simply “did not forecast” the current financial crisis.
Mr. Greenspan’s comments may have left the impression that no one in the world could have predicted the crisis. Yet it is clear that well before home prices started falling in 2006, lots of people were worried about the housing boom and its potential for creating economic disaster. It’s just that the Fed did not take them very seriously.
For example, I clearly remember a taxi driver in Miami explaining to me years ago that the housing bubble there was getting crazy. With all the construction under way, which he pointed out as we drove along, he said that there would surely be a glut in the market and, eventually, a disaster.
But why weren’t the experts at the Fed saying such things? And why didn’t a consensus of economists at universities and other institutions warn that a crisis was on the way?
The field of social psychology provides a possible answer. In his classic 1972 book, “Groupthink,” Irving L. Janis, the Yale psychologist, explained how panels of experts could make colossal mistakes. People on these panels, he said, are forever worrying about their personal relevance and effectiveness, and feel that if they deviate too far from the consensus, they will not be given a serious role. They self-censor personal doubts about the emerging group consensus if they cannot express these doubts in a formal way that conforms with apparent assumptions held by the group.
Members of the Fed staff were issuing some warnings. But Mr. Greenspan was right: the warnings were not predictions. They tended to be technical in nature, did not offer a scenario of crashing home prices and economic confidence, and tended to come late in the housing boom.
A search of the Federal Reserve Board’s working paper series reveals a few papers that touch on the bubble. For example, a 2004 paper by Joshua Gallin, a Fed economist, concluded: “Indeed, one might be tempted to cite the currently low level of the rent-price ratio as a sign that we are in a house-price ‘bubble.’” But the paper did not endorse this view, saying that “several important caveats argue against such a strong conclusion and in favor of further research.”
One of Mr. Greenspan’s fellow board members, Edward M. Gramlich, urgently warned about the inadequate regulation of subprime mortgages. But judging at least from his 2007 book, “Subprime Mortgages,” he did not warn about a housing bubble, let alone that its bursting would have any systemic consequences.
From my own experience on expert panels, I know firsthand the pressures that people — might I say mavericks? — may feel when questioning the group consensus.
I was connected with the Federal Reserve System as a member the economic advisory panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1990 until 2004, when the New York bank’s new president, Timothy F. Geithner, arrived. That panel advises the president of the New York bank, who, in turn, is vice chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets interest rates. In my position on the panel, I felt the need to use restraint. While I warned about the bubbles I believed were developing in the stock and housing markets, I did so very gently, and felt vulnerable expressing such quirky views. Deviating too far from consensus leaves one feeling potentially ostracized from the group, with the risk that one may be terminated.
Reading some of Mr. Geithner’s speeches from around that time shows that he was concerned about systemic risks but concluded that the financial system was getting “stronger” and more “resilient.” He was worried about the unsustainability of a low savings rate, government deficit and current account deficit, none of which caused our current crisis.
In 2005, in the second edition of my book “Irrational Exuberance,” I stated clearly that a catastrophic collapse of the housing and stock markets could be on its way. I wrote that “significant further rises in these markets could lead, eventually, to even more significant declines,” and that this might “result in a substantial increase in the rate of personal bankruptcies, which could lead to a secondary string of bankruptcies of financial institutions as well,” and said that this could result in “another, possibly worldwide, recession.”
I distinctly remember that, while writing this, I feared criticism for gratuitous alarmism. And indeed, such criticism came.
I gave talks in 2005 at both the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, in which I argued that we were in the middle of a dangerous housing bubble. I urged these mortgage regulators to impose suitability requirements on mortgage lenders, to assure that the loans were appropriate for the people taking them.
The reaction to this suggestion was roughly this: yes, some staff members had expressed such concerns, and yes, officials knew about the possibility that there was a bubble, but they weren’t taking any of us seriously.
I BASED my predictions largely on the recently developed field of behavioral economics, which posits that psychology matters for economic events. Behavioral economists are still regarded as a fringe group by many mainstream economists. Support from fellow behavioral economists was important in my daring to talk about speculative bubbles.
Speculative bubbles are caused by contagious excitement about investment prospects. I find that in casual conversation, many of my mainstream economist friends tell me that they are aware of such excitement, too. But very few will talk about it professionally.
Why do professional economists always seem to find that concerns with bubbles are overblown or unsubstantiated? I have wondered about this for years, and still do not quite have an answer. It must have something to do with the tool kit given to economists (as opposed to psychologists) and perhaps even with the self-selection of those attracted to the technical, mathematical field of economics. Economists aren’t generally trained in psychology, and so want to divert the subject of discussion to things they understand well. They pride themselves on being rational. The notion that people are making huge errors in judgment is not appealing.
In addition, it seems that concerns about professional stature may blind us to the possibility that we are witnessing a market bubble. We all want to associate ourselves with dignified people and dignified ideas. Speculative bubbles, and those who study them, have been deemed undignified.
In short, Mr. Janis’s insights seem right on the mark. People compete for stature, and the ideas often just tag along. Presidential campaigns are no different. Candidates cannot try interesting and controversial new ideas during a campaign whose main purpose is to establish that the candidate has the stature to be president. Unless Mr. Greenspan was exceptionally insightful about social psychology, he may not have perceived that experts around him could have been subject to the same traps.
Robert J. Shiller is professor of economics and finance at Yale and co-founder and chief economist of MacroMarkets LLC.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
October 30, 2008
New York Times/Op-Ed Columnist
What? Me Biased?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
For the last year and a half, a team of psychology professors has been conducting remarkable experiments on how Americans view Barack Obama through the prism of race.
The scholars used a common research technique, the implicit association test, to measure whether people regarded Mr. Obama and other candidates as more foreign or more American. They found that research subjects — particularly when primed to think of Mr. Obama as a black candidate — subconsciously considered him less American than either Hillary Clinton or John McCain.
Indeed, the study found that the research subjects — Californian college students, many of them Democrats supportive of Mr. Obama — unconsciously perceived him as less American even than the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
It’s not that any of them actually believed Mr. Obama to be foreign. But the implicit association test measured the way the unconscious mind works, and in following instructions to sort images rapidly, the mind balked at accepting a black candidate as fully American. This result mattered: The more difficulty a person had in classifying Mr. Obama as American, the less likely that person was to support Mr. Obama.
It’s easy to be skeptical of such research, so test for your own unconscious biases at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo or at http://backhand.uchicago.edu/Center/ShooterEffect.
Race is a controversial, emotional subject in America, particularly in the context of this campaign. Many Obama supporters believe that their candidate would be further ahead if it were not for racism, while many McCain supporters resent the insinuations and believe that if Mr. Obama were white, he wouldn’t even be considered for the presidency.
Yet with race an undercurrent in the national debate, that also makes this a teachable moment. Partly that’s because of new findings both in neurology, using brain scans to understand how we respond to people of different races, and social psychology, examining the gulf between our conscious ideals of equality and our unconscious proclivity to discriminate.
Incidentally, such discrimination is not only racial. We also have unconscious biases against the elderly and against women seeking powerful positions — biases that affect the Republican ticket.
Some scholars link racial attitudes to a benefit in evolutionary times from an ability to form snap judgments about who is a likely friend and foe. There may have been an evolutionary advantage in recognizing instantaneously whether a stranger was from one’s own tribe or from an enemy tribe. There’s some evidence that the amygdala, a center in the brain for emotions, flashes a threat warning when it perceives people who look “different.”
Yet our biases are probably largely cultural. One reason to think that is that many African-Americans themselves have an unconscious pro-white bias. All told, considerable evidence suggests that while the vast majority of Americans truly believe in equality and aspire to equal opportunity for all, our minds aren’t as egalitarian as we think they are.
“To me, this study really reveals this gap between our minds and our ideals,” said Thierry Devos, a professor at San Diego State University who conducted the research on Mr. Obama, along with Debbie Ma of the University of Chicago. “Equality is very much linked to ideas of American identity, but it’s hard to live up to these ideas. Even somebody like Barack Obama, who may be about to become president — we have a hard time seeing him as American.”
A flood of recent research has shown that most Americans, including Latinos and Asian-Americans, associate the idea of “American” with white skin. One study found that although people realize that Lucy Liu is American and that Kate Winslet is British, their minds automatically process an Asian face as foreign and a white face as American — hence this title in an academic journal: “Is Kate Winslet More American Than Lucy Liu?”
One might argue that Mr. Obama registers as foreign in our minds because he does have overseas family connections, such as his father’s Kenyan ancestry. But similar experiments have found the same outcome with famous African-American sports figures.
Moreover, Professor Devos found that when participants in the latest study were told to focus on the age of each candidate, or on the political party of each candidate, then Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain were perceived as equally American. It was only when people were prompted to focus on skin color and to see Mr. Obama as black that he was perceived as foreign.
This 2008 election is a milestone and may put a black man in the White House. That creates an opportunity for an adult conversation about the murky complexities of race, in part because there’s evidence that when people become aware of their unconscious biases, they can overcome them.
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