Learning and Development

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that teaching school-aged children is an involved and psychological process, involving a variety of problems that must be overcome in order to ensure success. The writer discusses that the underlying principles of this issue were initially expressed in three simple yet specific theoretical positions: the assumption that processes of child development are independent of learning; that learning is development; and that the relationship between learning and development subdues the conflicts of the other two principles by joining with them. However, the writer notes that more recent thinking has trended in a different direction - toward the notion of various levels of development relative to learning. The writer concludes with the opinion that no schoolchild can adequately be taught unless the curriculum focuses on zones of proximal development.

Outline:
Introduction
Early Thinking on Child Learning
Theoretical Position 1: Child Development Processes are Independent of Learning
Theoretical Position 2: Learning Is Development
Theoretical Position 3: The Relationship Between Learning and Development Counters the Extremities of the Former Two Principles by Joining Them
The Zone of Proximal Development Position
Conclusion
Reference List

From the Paper:

"Such thinking seems to suggest that the human mind is not, as was once thought, a complex combination of general capabilities including observation, attention, judgment, memory and so on, but rather an extensive, largely independent set of separate capabilities. Learning does not affect one's overall ability to focus attention on subject matter, but rather it improves ones ability to focus better on the learnt matter.
"This thinking, made famous by Thorndike, has been opposed by both Koffka and the Gestalt School, proponents of the third theoretical position. Rather, these latter critics propose that learning is never specific, but is interactive and general. Learning of a specific operation, the researchers attest, stimulates a structural network of a kind that can be applied to other forms of learning. Learning is not simply the process of habit, acquiring skills, nor based on simple identity: it is complex."

Sample of Sources Used:

• How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (1999). Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
• Marsh, G. E. & Ketterer, J. J. (2005). Situating the Zone of Proximal Development. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Volume VIII, Number II Summer 2005. Retrieved April 2, 2007 from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/summer82/marsh82.htm.
• Riddle, E.M. (1999). Lev Vygotsky's Social Development Theory. Helen A. Keller Institute for Human Disabilities. Retrieved March 16, 2007 from http://chd.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/theorists/constructivism/vygotsky.htm.
• The Mozart of Psychology: Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. (2005). Retrieved March 16, 2007 from http://vygotsky.afraid.org/#ZoneProximalDevelopment.
• Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. U.S.A.: President and Fellow of Harvard College.

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