“General methods of teaching” by Qudsia Kalsoom Lecture # 06

Lecture # 06

“Learning of children and perspectives on instructional decision making”

Lecture objectives:

 The prior knowledge and social context of learning as essential conditions of learning.
 Language, learning and development as interwoven areas.
 The three perspectives on instructional decision making:
- Developmental
- Behavioural
- Cognitive

Outline:

 Prior knowledge and social context of learning as essential conditions of learning.

 Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
 Active learning
 Perspectives on instructional decision making
- Developmental perspective
- Behavioural perspective
- Cognitive perspective

There is a video that shows the students learning. In this video the teachers ask the students to
make words using different sounds. We will relate this video to Vygotsky’s theory. Vygotsky
was a Russian psychologist. He worked a lot on the theories of social constructivism. Vygotsky’s
theory about prior learning and social context included four major ideas. They are:

1. Children construct their own knowledge.

Most of the time, teachers say the students that the knowledge is present in the
book, and you must acquire the knowledge by learning. But vygotsky says that
the students do not acquire knowledge in that way rather they construct their own
knowledge. Students can cram knowledge but they cannot construct knowledge.

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Vygotsky put a question mark to the following statement: if there is no

construction of knowledge by the students, then can we say that students have
learnt?
2. Language plays an important role in child’s learning.
Language is an important medium for learning. When a child doesn’t understand
a language then how can he learn a concept? Vygotsky says that when a child
born; his ultimate purpose is that he wants to communicate with the people
around him. When he starts communicating, he used many words like mama,
baba etc. Before he can communicate, he only starts weeping when he is hungry,
when he wants to sleep etc. he communicates in weeping. But as the child grows
up, he needs to learn language for communication. So, vygotsky says that unless a
child learns a language, it is very difficult for him to learn anything. Language is
basically a developmental tool.
3. Learning can lead development:
Learning may be defined as behavioural change or any other change like thinking
change etc. Vygotsky says that learning is there only when there is development.
E.g. there are some people of the same age i.e. 60 years; you feel that one person
is more mature than the other. The one who is more developed seems more
mature. His learning or experiences are more than the other person. As a result of
those experiences, we think that this person is more mature. On the other hand, a
person with fewer experiences seems less mature.
There is a misconception in the Pakistani context, it is said that males are more
mature, experienced and developed as compare to the females. It does not mean
that females do not have intellect. They can also be more developed and
experienced if they are given an equal opportunity to experience learning, and
create their social capital. Their experiences will be equal to that of males and
they would be equally developed. So, learning leads to development.
4. Learning/ development cannot be separated from the social context in which it
occur:
In the video, you have observed that the students who do not know the English
language, don’t know what are words producing sound of “pla”. But when her

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peer told her what are those words, she understood and respond well. So, social
context is very important. Prior knowledge is also very important. Teacher must
try to know the prior knowledge of his students. It is not necessary that if there are
30 students in the class, all of them have the same prior knowledge. So if a
teacher tries to teach all students with a same method then all students cannot
benefit from it.

What have we learnt till now:

- In order to make students learn something, teachers must first understand how
the students are representing a given concept or procedure.
- Children do have their prior conceptions and being teachers we should first
explore their prior conceptions.
- Speech is a powerful psychological tool that lays the foundation for basic
structures of thinking later in one’s development.
- Speech initially arises out of the need for a child to communicate with others
who share her/his environment.
- As a teacher, we should speak and we should use this speech as a tool for
learning. We should talk and we should let our children to talk.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD):

The gap between actual and potential level of a child is Zone of Proximal Development.
Vygotsky is very famous for this concept of his theory.

Actual level is the initial level of child’s learning and potential level is the level where a
child can stand. The potential level is usually one step ahead the actual level. If student is at the
actual level, he has the potential to come up to the potential level. The important role here is of
the teacher, if a teacher helps the student, he/she can reach to the potential level very easily. The
teacher helps the students at actual level of learning, or at the first level of any learning, it is
easier for the student to go one step ahead of that level. When a student is standing at his
potential level, he is one step ahead of the previous and needs the support of his adults or
teachers again to go ahead of that potential level as well. E.g. if you are teaching mathematics to
a student, you teaches him about one-digit addition. You cannot take him straight to the concept
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of two-digit addition unless he is expert in one-digit addition by practicing it. You teach him the
concept of ones and tens here. After he has learned one-digit addition, he couldn’t start doing
two-digit addition by himself. He needs the help of his elders or teacher to help him. Now the
student has jumped from the actual level to the potential level i.e. from one-digit addition to two-
digit addition. After that you give him the concept of ones, tens and hundreds, and he can go to
the third level by himself i.e. three-digit addition.

Perspectives on Instructional Decision-making:

- Developmental perspective
- Behavioural perspective
- Cognitive perspective

If I am going to teach in a class, I have to decide that what I am going to teach and how it should
be taught? How should I assess the students? How can I manage the classroom? All these things
are the part of instructional decision-making. The perspectives beyond these decision-making are
developmental, behavioural and cognitive. Piaget and Vygotsky are the key people who
developed theories. These perspectives are important for the teachers because whatever they are
going to teach to the students they can make decisions accordingly. When teachers will take
decisions according to these perspectives, the students will be more important in their eyes.

Developmental perspective:

If we take decisions in the class according to the developmental perspective and notices the
theories of Piaget and vygotsky we will conclude the following.

Piaget’s theory:

If followed by his theory, we will say that a child learns by himself. He play with the things, get
into different experiences and as a result he learns. Piaget’s perspective is stage-wise i.e. a child
will learn essential concepts at the first level then moves to the second and learns some other
concepts like-wise. E.g. when a child born, he learns to sit at the first level. Then at the second
level, his muscles get strong and he starts crawling, after that when his muscles get stronger, he

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starts walking. When his muscles get stronger then he starts running. These are linear stages of
learning that at a particular stage a child will learn this thing and the second at the next level.

Vygotsky’s theory:

Vygotsky also says that a child construct his own knowledge. But according to him, social
context is very important. He says that it is not a linear process that a child must learn stage-wise.
If a child’s social context is so enriched then he can learn many things through his social
environment. Whenever I will teach the students according to Vygotsky theory, I will first try to
judge their prior knowledge. Unless I don’t know that where the students stand I can’t help them
in development and learning.

Behavioral perspective:

Behavioural perspective means that students may get any change in their behaviour. The new
concept you are going to teach to a student must be measureable and can be seen from his
behaviour that the certain concept has been taught. E.g. you taught the students about rural and
urban life, after that their observable behaviour will be seen when you give them the task to
differentiate between urban and rural life. Whatever the difference a child will explain, it will
show his behavioural change. If a child doesn’t know the differences before, you will notice the
change that the child was not aware of the differences but now he is able to identify those
differences. It means that the child has learnt. If being a teacher, I will take decisions according
to the behavioural perspective then I will merely focus on the direct instruction. I will teach the
students in such a way that at the end they are able to show that particular behavior or change in
behavior. The preferred teaching methods in this perspective will be lecture method and direct
instruction. When you are going to teach to higher classes, then teacher’s decision-making comes
from behavioural perspective. At that time, it becomes difficult for us to take decisions at
developmental level. Lecturing is done with adults, if lecturing is done with children, it may not
be useful.

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Cognitive perspective:

Cognitive perspective is to develop students’ academic and thinking skills from a novice level to
a more expert level. Cognitive perspective can be related to ZPD but in that an adult’s presence
is important. In cognitive perspective, presence on adult is not necessary but complexity of task
is important. If your target is to improve a child’s thinking skills, then your task will be of such
kind that a child will learn from them. E.g. if we write on board and ask the students to copy that
on copies, or if we say that these things are written in your books, learn them, both are very low
level tasks. If you want to improve their thinking skill then you need to have projects with them.
Thinking skills can never be improved, unless you do not put them in a situation where they are
supposed to think. If a person has high problem solving skill, it means that he has experienced
many situations where he has solved many problems and as a result, he has got this higher
problem solving skill. So, cognitive perspective says that if a teacher want to take his/her child to
a certain level of thinking then we need to provide that range of experience to those people. This
perspective include tasks like portfolios, projects, independent tasks, inquiry tasks etc. an
important perspective of cognitive development is Active learning.

Active learning:

Active learning is where human mind is actively involved in constructing meaning of the
experience. When a teacher is teaching in a class, this is not active learning unless there is no
questioning in the class. When questions are asked from the students, then actually students
construct meanings. A good teacher is the one who engages the students in active learning.

Summary:

- In order to make students learn something, teachers must first understand how
the students are representing a given concept or procedure.
When we understand that what is the existing knowledge of the students then we can
develop them easily.
- Children do have their prior conceptions and being teachers we should first
explore their prior conceptions.

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- Speech is a powerful psychological tool that lays the foundation for basic
structures of thinking later in one’s development.

We have learnt from Vygotsky’s theory that speech is a tool as brick is the tool for the
foundation of the building; similarly, speech/language is a tool for higher level of
thinking.

- Speech initially arises out of the need for a child to communicate with others
who share his/her environment.

A child speaks by his need. He speaks with the people who are there in his immediate
environment. If a stranger comes to them, they usually do not talk in front of him.

- As a teacher, we should speak and we should use this speech as a tool for
learning. We should talk and we should let our children talk.

Learning can never happen in silence. Where there is silence, there is no learning.
According to Vygotsky’s theory, language, learning and environment is a social context.
They are interlinked

COMMENTS:

 Complexity of task means that you give student task independently. He will work
independently and will get cognition accordingly. If you give students easy tasks, he will
get cognitive development slowly. But if you give him complex tasks, he will ultimately
have higher thinking skills.

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