Roland G. Tharp

Vygotsky and education: Teaching mind in society: Teaching, schooling, and literate discourse

Time and again in this century the impulse to improve public schools has fallen short of reformist hopes. One reason for limited progress has been the absence of a basis for understanding and correcting teaching and schooling. Although the ideas of Vygotsky are having a profound influence on education, they are not alone sufficient to construct a fully satisfying theory of education. The achievements of social, cognitive, and behavioral science – achievements that have detailed the processes of learning in social interactions – must be brought into conjunction with the neo-Vygotskian understanding now being created. Such a union of neo-Vygotskian and behavioral/cognitive scientific principles can accelerate the impact of research on the practice of teaching and schooling and radically increase the explanatory power of neo-Vygotskian theory (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). Constructing a theory of education For over 100 years, there has been ample evidence that recitation, not teaching, is the predominant experience of American school children. Sitting silently, students read assigned texts, complete “ditto” sheets, and take tests. On those rare occasions when they are encouraged to speak, teachers control the topic and participation. Connected discourse occurs so rarely that observation detects barely a trace (e.g., Durkin, 1978–1979; Goodlad, 1984). Even in more effective classrooms, teachers do little that meets any acceptable image of serious interactive teaching.

Community Intervention Guided by Theoretical Development

In the first edition of this Handbook we authored a chapter entitled “Community Intervention and the Use of Multidisciplinary Knowledge” (O’Donnell &Tharp, 1982). Our purpose was to suggest a redirection in the community applications of behavior modification. We reviewed the considerable accomplishments of community applications of behavior theory in a variety of different settings, especially in the home and school. Next, we observed the limits of these accomplishments, and two factors were identified as crucial barriers to advances in knowledge and practice: (1) the lack of knowledge as to how generalization and maintenance of behavior change may be arranged, and (2) the lack of knowledge about everyday settings themselves. We suggested that the methods and concepts of other disciplines are required to overcome these limitations and provided examples of the contributions of some of these methods and concepts. We argued that this multidisciplinary knowledge provides links with behavioral methods and thus potentially extends the potential of community programs. Seven years later, we continue to believe that resolution of generalization/maintenance problems requires knowledge of everyday settings.

Developmental verbal control of behavior: Implications for self-instructional training☆

Abstract Kindergarten, first-grade, and second-grade children (5, 6, and 7 years of age, respectively) performed a Luria-type verbal control task in which motor responses are initiated to positive stimuli and inhibited to negative stimuli. The task was performed by motor responding only and verbal self-directed motor responding, with these conditions reversed in sequence for one half of each grade group. Although motor responding and verbal-motor responding by the two younger groups were generally poor, their performance equalled that of the second graders when the verbalizing condition followed the silent, motor-only condition. For these children, verbalizing appeared to constitute a second task which interfered with motor responding. Prior practice on motor-only responding, however, facilitated subsequent, concurrent performance of the two tasks. No interference or practice effects were found for the second graders. The results suggested that self-instructional training programs are likely to be successful when adequate verbal-motor coordination can be assumed or when the motor response is within the childs repertoire.

The Relationship of Sibling Caretaking and Attentiveness to a Peer Tutor

Ethnographic measures of sibling caretaking were correlated with attentiveness to a peer tutor. Boys from families who assigned childcare tasks to male siblings were more likely to be attentive in a dyadic peer-tutoring session. General classroom attentiveness was also highly correlated with attentiveness to a peer tutor and to male sibcare. Girl tutee attentiveness and female sibcare were not correlated. Families who assign major childcare tasks to boys apparently foster behaviors that generalize to the classroom. The transfer may not be specific from sibling interaction experiences to peer tutoring situations since family reliance on sibcare also correlated with generalized classroom attentiveness, and general (nonsibcare) chore demands

Rousing minds to life: The means of assisting performance

In Western psychology in this century, intense attention has been paid to the means of assisting performance: modeling, contingency managing, feeding back, instructing, questioning , and cognitive structuring . The studies of these various means of assistance have “belonged” to different theories, to different disciplines, and even to different nations. By considering them together, we can link large areas of knowledge into an articulated structure – a theory of teaching – and by linking the achievements of Western psychology to the neo-Vygotskian theory of development, the explanatory power of each is increased substantially. In discussing the social origins of cognition, Vygotsky insisted on the primacy of linguistic means in the development of higher mental processes. The signs and symbols of speech are primary “tools” of humankind. Only when linguistic tools are integrated with the tools of physical action can the potential for full human cognitive development be reached. Indeed, he wrote that semiotics – the study of signs – is the only adequate method for investigating human consciousness. Writers in this tradition have continued to presume the primacy of interpersonal speech for the development of intrapsychological functioning, and language is featured almost exclusively in their detailed accounts of the internalization process. This emphasis is in part due to the easily observable role of speech in the processes of internalization. Language appears to be like Mercury, the messenger who carries content from the interpsychological plane to the intrapsychological plane, a messenger with unique gifts for translation from one plane to another.

Rousing minds to life: Assisting teacher performance through the ZPD: a case study

The management of activity settings and the orchestration of assistance to teachers are complex tasks, with endless opportunities for error, delay, confusion, anxiety, and all the other problems that can arise in human social transactions. Cast as a set of propositions about teacher training, the theoretical structure presented thus far has all the advantage of the “schooled” or “scientific” or “systematic” set of concepts – and all the disadvantage: “Propositions are remarkably economical in form, containing and simplifying a great deal of complexity. … They gain their economy precisely because they are decontextualized, stripped down to their essentials, devoid of detail, emotion, or ambience” (Shulman, 1986, P. 11). The liability of this “schooled” propositional knowledge is its inability to convey how the structures and processes appear and function in concert, in particular circumstances of everyday life (Shulman, 1986, p. 11). In practice, the means and sources of assistance to teachers – in given activity settings – are inevitably concatenated and interpenetrated. Their complexities are further compounded by the personalities of the actors, the particularities of a given school, and other features of the local ecocultural niche. Knowing only the propositions of Chapter 9 would provide little assistance to any who sought to implement them. Shulman offered one remedy for the liability of propositional knowledge: case knowledge: A case, properly understood, is not simply the report of an event or incident. To call something a case is to make a theoretical claim – to argue that it is a “case of something,” or to argue that it is an instance of a larger class.… […]