Theories of play can inform practice

These challenges are fun and contribute to their holistic development. It is essential that children are given opportunities that will allow them to immerse themselves fully in what they are doing.

By immersing themselves in rich play environments, children can adapt situations by being creative. Providing such opportunities often allows children to connect their play to real life. If a child creates a rocket out of recycled materials, the child will be using their imagination, and making the most of the materials available.

In a situation such as this it is the process not the end result which is important. Childcare workers need to take an interest in children's play and watch what children are doing during the play process.

Children need a play environment full of challenges and risks in order to reach their full potential. It is important that childcare workers do not undermine the ability of children and children need opportunities to control risks for themselves in order to discover what they can do safely, without assistance. An activity without challenges will not enthuse the child nor allow the child to explore and discover new things.

Children learn by doing, revisiting the situation and making changes to what they have already achieved. By offering challenging play opportunities, where the childcare worker does not intervene too much, children will have an opportunity to think and offer their own answers.

It is important that children can choose what they want to play and how they want to play. Providing rich, high quality environments for children will allow them to make their own choices which will contribute to their confidence and self-worth. Not all children play in the same way nor with the same resources, therefore childcare workers need to offer a range of resources and activities to children. Children can then choose whether they want to participate in active play or play board games quietly.

They may prefer performing or building and creating something. Offering children choices gives them the opportunity to follow their interests and to take part in different types of play at the same time. They can also choose whether they want to play indoors or outdoors. Drwy ddysgu am hanes a daearyddiaeth Cymru, bydd plant yn datblygu eu dealltwriaeth o fywydau a chymunedau heddiw ac yn y gorffennol.

Bydd amgylchedd cadarnhaol yn eich galluogi i hyrwyddo datblygiad corfforol cymdeithasol, emosiynol, gwybyddol ac ieithyddol y plant yn eich gofal. Mae amgylchedd cadarnhaol yn cefnogi datblygiad cymdeithasol ac emosiynol plant. Drwy weld delweddau cadarnhaol yn gyson yn y lleoliad bydd plant yn datblygu ymdeimlad o hunaniaeth. Mae angen cynllunio er mwyn sicrhau bod pob plentyn yn gallu cael mynediad at yr holl adnoddau sydd ar gael.

Drwy gymryd rhan mewn gweithgareddau chwarae yn yr ardal dan do neu allan yn yr awyr agored, bydd plant yn cymdeithasu gydag oedolion a phlant eraill mewn ffordd hwyliog. Mae amgylchedd cadarnhaol yn cefnogi datblygiad ieithyddol drwy ddarparu ardaloedd addas ar gyfer cyfathrebu gydag oedolion neu blant eraill.

Gall adnoddau fel pypedau, offer recordio a theganau megis ffonau annog plant i gyfathrebu a datblygu eu sgiliau iaith a lleferydd. Dylai plant gael cyfleoedd i ysgrifennu yn yr ardal dan do ac yn yr awyr agored, er enghraifft ffurfio llythrennau mewn twb o sebon siafio. Gall gweithgareddau megis Lego, eu hannog i ddatrys problemau mathemategol.

Byddant yn trin arian ac yn dysgu ei werth. Mae angen eu cyflwyno i siapiau a synau llythrennau trwy gynnig amrywiaeth o lyfrau darllen ac adnoddau electronig a rhyngweithiol.

Gellir ymarfer eu Cymraeg drwy wneud marciau gan fynd ati i ffurfio llythyren gyntaf eu henw neu ffurfio llythyren gyntaf gwrthrych mewn llyfr darllen. Bydd cyfnodau trafod yn rhoi cyfle iddynt ddatblygu i siarad Cymraeg yn hyderus. Byddant yn medru dangos eu dealltwriaeth yn eu chwarae dychmygol yn dilyn yr ymweliadau hyn.

Mae teganau megis beiciau a sgwteri yn hyrwyddo datblygiad sgiliau echddygol bras, ac yn helpu plant i ddysgu am gyflymder, gofod a phellter. Dylai lleoliadau ddarparu amrywiaeth o adnoddau er mwyn datblygu creadigrwydd, er enghraifft gwahanol fathau o bapur megis papur newydd neu bapur wal, creonau, sialc a gwahanol fathau o baent.

Felly mae cynllun yr amgylchedd yn cael effaith ar ddatblygiad plant. Felly wrth chwarae gydag eraill byddant yn dysgu sgiliau a fydd yn aros gyda hwy am oes. Mae angen i gweithwyr gofal plant baratoi cyfleoedd i blant ddatrys problemau mewn amgylchedd diogel.

Mae angen iddynt ryngweithio gyda phlant eraill gan ddeall bod datrys problemau yn haws gyda chymorth, cefnogaeth a barn eraill. Ni ddylai gweithwyr gofal plant ddatrys problemau dros blant. Mewn amgylchedd ysgogol mae plant yn datblygu eu creadigrwydd heb fod yn ymwybodol eu bod yn gwneud hynny. Nid yw creadigrwydd yn golygu fod angen i blentyn greu rhywbeth penodol ond mae angen iddynt gael cyfleoedd i feithrin eu chwilfrydedd trwy chwarae.

Bydd rhoi cyfleoedd iddynt ddynwared sefyllfaoedd wir yn eu hannog i ddefnyddio eu dychymyg. Wrth ymgolli mewn amgylcheddau chwarae cyfoethog gall blant addasu sefyllfaoedd trwy fod yn greadigol.

Mae angen i gweithwyr gofal plant gymryd diddordeb mewn chwarae plant gan wylio'r hyn mae plant yn ei wneud yn ystod y broses chwarae. Mae plant angen amgylchedd chwarae sydd yn llawn her a risg fel eu bod yn medru cyrraedd eu llawn botensial. Efallai bod yn well ganddynt berfformio neu adeiladu a chreu rhywbeth. Mae cynnig dewisiadau i blant yn rhoi cyfleoedd iddynt ddilyn eu diddordebau a chymryd rhan mewn gwahanol fathau o chwarae ar yr un pryd.

Hint 2: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Awgrymiadau 2: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Continuous provision is what is provided to children every day within the learning environment. This can be in the form of areas including:. Areas within the setting must include appropriate resources so that identified learning can take place. It is not enough to merely establish the areas and let the children play in them.

The adult has a responsibility to meet the needs of every child by modelling, expanding and promoting learning. Continuous provision will promote learning as children use the resources independently. If the resources are engaging and suitable for the children's stage of development there will be opportunities to broaden their learning.

If continuous provision works well the children will revisit the area regularly and the childcare worker needs to ensure that the children do not become bored.

Consideration needs to be given to whether the range of continuous provision areas meets the interests of every child in turn, and adaptations will be required in order to ensure that this is the case. So that provision is successful, the childcare worker must use observations and assessments when planning and introducing continuous provision within the areas of learning.

Observing and assessing the provision is just as important as observing and assessing the children. If the provision is not suitable for the group of children at the setting it will not widen their skills nor promote their holistic development. Good practice can be ensured by considering:.

Active learning allows the child to become a core part of the process. Giving children choices and allowing them to make their own decisions contributes towards their holistic development. If children play an active role in their learning, then they can plan activities in line with their interests and participate in play which appeals to them.

Active learning will encourage children to develop independently and allow them to move their learning forward when they are ready. The childcare worker needs to understand how important it is to offer a combination of opportunities to children which includes those planned by the adult and those led by the children.

In order to allow children to participate in action learning the childcare worker should:. This means that children can use their prior learning and remember that information in order to use it again in a different activity or scenario. By enjoying a range of experiences children will develop confidently to trial new things, and learning from their findings.

Children will develop confidently overcoming challenges which will contribute to their holistic development. The early years' curriculum should provide activities for children within each area of learning where they can enjoy direct experiences.

As a result they will be given an opportunity to develop an understanding of themselves and the world around them, developing and learning holistically. When proving experiences, the child goes through the process of observation, discovery or encountering something for the first time. The experience will be reinforced as the child encounters the same experience again time after time. They will persevere with the task if they did not succeed the first time.

Some children will have had more experience than others of encountering numerous risks while playing. This may depend on where children play when they are not at their settings.

They may spend time in outdoor areas such as forests, gardens or parks where they will have had opportunities to explore and investigate the environment. In order to allow children to learn through experience, the activities or play opportunities need to be spontaneous, and initiated by children.

In order for this to happen, the environment will need to provide situations that encourage children to learn through their experiences. The childcare workers role is to provide suitable materials, equipment and resources within each area of learning that will allow this to happen successfully. The indoor and outdoor space should be flexible to enable children to change the space for different uses.

The outdoor area can encourage children to explore and encounter challenges that they would not face in the indoor area. Learning through experience in the outdoor area will help children to increase their physical development, by practising fine and gross motor skills. By looking at the environment in a different way, perhaps by hanging upside down from a tree or by using a mirror to look at things differently, the child will start to understand and learn about the world around them.

It is important that children and young people are offered activities and opportunities that are suitable for their age and stage of development and that give them pleasure.

Children will learn through play if they are interested in the activity. By using the child-centred approach to learning, children will learn by doing rather than be taught. It seems that children learn far more when taking a direct part in play. By experimenting and exploring they will learn how things work and why things happen. This will give children control over their actions and will allow them to experiment with new activities in new situations as they get to know themselves better.

When role playing or playing with friends, the child will be able to put themselves in a specific situation. They may imitate the behaviour of an animal they have heard about or read about in a story book. They will see some of their own characteristics come alive in the animals, and their personality and understanding of themselves will develop as a result.

Gall hyn fod ar ffurf ardaloedd gan gynnwys:. Gellir sicrhau ymarfer da drwy ystyried:. Bydd cynnig dewisiadau i blant a gadael iddynt wneud penderfyniadau eu hunain yn cyfrannu tuag at eu datblygiad cyfannol.

Dylai cwricwlwm y blynyddoedd cynnar ddarparu gweithgareddau i blant o fewn pob maes dysgu ble gallant dderbyn profiadau uniongyrchol. Mae rhai plant wedi cael mwy o brofiad nag eraill gan ddod ar draws risgiau niferus yn eu chwarae.

Bydd hyn yn ei dro yn cyfrannu tuag at ffitrwydd a iechyd y plant. Yn sgil hyn byddant yn canolbwyntio am fwy o amser. Gwelir fod plant yn dysgu llawer mwy wrth gymryd rhan uniongyrchol mewn chwarae. Trwy arbrofi ac archwilio byddant yn dysgu sut mae pethau yn gweithio a pam mae pethau yn digwydd. Efallai bydd yn dynwared ymddygiad anifeiliaid y gwnaeth glywed neu ddarllen amdanynt mewn llyfr stori.

Hint 3: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Awgrymiadau 3: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. It is important that childcare workers can identify the needs of children and young people in order to provide them with detailed planning. By observing it is possible to identify the child's pattern of development and the progress being made against the development norms.

The development of observation and assessment skills is an essential part of the childcare workers work. When observing , the childcare worker looks at what the child does and listens to what the child says, recording the findings accurately.

When assessing , a judgement will need to be made on the observation and the discoveries about the child in order to undertake further planning.

Observing children is important and is a professional skill which allows the childcare worker to find out about the child's intelligence, to see whether their skills are developing and to identify their preferences.

Observation contributes to a professional approach in order to take children's well-being into account, including:. As part of the observation and assessment process, childcare workers will need to lead, plan and prepare activities and experiences in order to support development. Perhaps the observation and assessment process may have identified a potential delay in a child's social development.

In order to meet their needs, the childcare worker may plan appropriate activities, such as role play with a small group of children in the creative area. The plans will need to focus on individual children's ages, interests, abilities and needs in order to support their development. They can choose between playing in the shop role play area, indoors or the mud kitchen in the outdoor area. By observing children regularly, childcare workers will learn about children's strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes.

The information will enable them to provide activities and resources to meet children's individual needs. A childcare worker may observe a child and discover that they enjoy sand play, and go to this area every day. The childcare worker may use the information to plan a specific activity in the sand pit to promote the child's development, for example adding money to the sand in order to support mathematical development.

Alternatively, the childcare worker may observe the role play area and discover that a child who uses a wheelchair does not go into the area. The childcare worker may use the information to adjust the role play area so that there is better access and more room there.

Children may be observed formally or informally. The focus may be on the child or the activity being undertaken. Formal observation will involve carrying out an assessment, making comments, making check-lists and development charts. When observing and monitoring children informally, children will need to be observed playing and mixing naturally with other children.

There is a variety of ways of recording the progress of children in terms of their achievements and development and each setting will have its own way of doing so, including:. The information gathered will need to be retained in order to undertake short term and long term planning. Efallai bod y broses arsylwi ac asesu wedi nodi oedi posib yn natblygiad cymdeithasol plentyn.

Wrth arsylwi plant yn gyson bydd gweithwyr gofal plant yn dysgu am gryfderau a gwendidau plant, eu hoffterau a'u cas bethau. Bydd y wybodaeth yn eu galluogi i ddarparu gweithgareddau ac adnoddau a fydd yn cwrdd ag anghenion unigol plant. Bydd arsylwi ffurfiol yn cynnwys gwneud asesiad, ysgrifennu sylwadau, gwneud rhestrau gwirio a siartiau datblygiad. Children will grow in confidence by being given constant encouragement by the childcare worker. The childcare worker needs to work in a way which offers encouragement through positive reinforcement, support and gestures in order to show that they appreciate the children's achievements.

Sometimes individual attention will need to be given to a child and this needs to be done in a sensitive manner so that the child does not feel that they are being belittled. The child will not be an expert in every area of learning and it is important to recognise that everyone is different, that they have different interests and develop skills at a different pace.

The childcare worker can encourage the child to ask questions if they see that an activity or task is proving difficult or they do not understand the logic behind the activity. This will allow them to cope with challenging situations in the future. It is important to ensure that the opportunities meet the needs of each individual child and the childcare worker will need to adapt activities and experiences across every area of learning to include children with additional needs.

More able and talented pupils include those who perform well across the curriculum and achieve above the expected level for their age. These children will have special talents and abilities in academic and creative areas, sports and socially. Due to their special talents, they will need opportunities to expand their learning further as they have a high level of motivation and thrive on receiving challenging learning experiences.

Settings and schools must meet all pupils' needs, including the more able and talented pupils planning activities suitable for individuals or groups of children or young people. Assessment and planning should be a continuous process; therefore the childcare worker needs to monitor, review and evaluate activities and experiences used to support children's holistic development within the areas of learning.

This provides information on the success of activities and helps the childcare workers when considering the effectiveness of activities and experiences in meeting individual children's needs and promoting their holistic development. This will also help the childcare workers reflect on the effectiveness of the areas of learning, their interaction with children and whether they have met their needs.

Childcare workers will need to work in a way which implements and monitors children's development plans in accordance with their own role and responsibilities. Plans will need to be created for every child based on the observations and assessments. Expectations should be realistic as children's progress relies on their existing experiences and how mature they are in terms of development. Plans will need to be reviewed and updated regularly, ensuring that they meet the needs of the child or group of children within the setting.

Although children tend to develop at the same rate there is some variation. In planning provision, the child needs to be considered holistically, ensuring that every aspect of their development is covered. By doing this purposeful activities and play can be provided, led by the adult and the child.

The term feedback is used to describe comments that some offer to others on their performance or work. Attention needs to be given to feedback as it can provide ideas on how to change and improve practice in the future. Feedback is important for learning and development. Childcare workers should receive regular feedback from managers during their induction. This will help to raise awareness of strengths and areas for improvement.

Constructive feedback helps to develop confidence and plan professional development. Feedback should be considered as a tool to help childcare workers to succeed rather than a threat. Childcare workers will receive feedback from a range of sources, including children. The importance of this variety of experience, and appropriating a repertoire of different perspectives cf. The discussed example also serves to highlight that didaktik is not restricted to teaching in the mode of as is ; this form of joint activity may also be carried out in the mode of as if , and importantly — as we will argue and show empirically in this study — to go between these modes of sense making.

In this chapter, we have reviewed key theory and research on play and its relation to teaching and learning. Particularly, we have acknowledged the work of Vygotsky, Elkonin, Lindqvist, van Oers and colleagues, and Fleer. We also presented meta-studies, including work on socio-cultural variation in caregiver beliefs about play, learning and development. Finally, we have discussed work showing empirically how teaching is not restricted to as is , but also can encompass as if.

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A Brief Note on Play Theories The phenomenon of play has interested scholars from many fields evolutionary theorists, philosophers, developmental researchers, and others for a long time.

These play theories all have what could be referred to as essentialist conceptions of play. He thus proposes here cited from its latest incarnation that play is behavior that: 1. Rather than attempting to define in any clear-cut manner what play is , we will thus suggest another way of approaching this phenomenon in our studies. Play has eluded scholarly definition for a long time, not in want of attempts to do so see e.

This reasoning proves challenging to the traditional way of defining a concept. Hence, some features may be presumed to be characteristic of play activities children engage in, but not necessarily unique to or common to all these and other play activities.

The latter means that what we are primarily interested in is how the participants themselves make known to each other that they speak and in other ways act as if , that is, play with reality, and when they do not do so speak and in other ways act as is. This discussion has clear bearing on the issue of the material basis of play, as much discussed in contemporary educational philosophy; however, without falling into the pitfalls of much of these more recent discussions.

This also means that there is no distinction made between the word for something and what it refers to. Language has not been discerned as something in itself; rather it is fused with what it is used to talk about.

The field of meaning and the field of perception are one and the same for the young child. Some time during the preschool years, the child develops the ability to separate the field of vision what he or she actually sees in the milieu from the field of meaning. This separation occurs in play when actions are separated from objects, and meaning comes to arise from ideas rather than from objects: Thought is separated from objects because a piece of wood begins to be a doll and a stick becomes a horse.

At first, the child perceives objects as they are designed. However, with the development of his or her speech, the child is able to sever the meaning of the object from the object, allowing her to constitute a new meaning. Doing this kind of transformation of objects — ascribing them new meaning — is something the child first does without realizing that this is what she does; just as a child, before he [or she] has acquired grammatical and written speech, knows how to do things but does not know that he [or she] knows, i.

This reasoning thus implies the importance of engaging children in mutual activities and through this participation become aware of what they know — as well, we might add — that others may know differently cf. Pramling, It is vitally in this creative space that play takes place; the mundane world can be transformed into imaginary realities. However, while illuminating, the mode of presenting data in the form of narrative descriptions makes it less functional for closer analysis and critical scrutiny.

It is, for example, not possible to see how many of the claims made are actually grounded in represented empirical data, and it is not possible to re-analyze the data presented with an interest in the more specific processes of interaction e.

It is therefore, unfortunately, not possible to discuss how to understand the similarities and differences between the findings reported in her study with the findings of the present study. What we can clarify, on a more abstract level, is how these two studies relate to each other.

We do so in Table 3. Table 3. There are many overlapping ideas between Developmental Education DE , as developed in the Netherlands by Bert van Oers and colleagues, and our present work and perspective in Table 3. In one particularly relevant study Fleer, , she clarifies how engaging children in imagination is critical to play and the conceptual development of what is sometimes referred to as academic content.

Luria, Rather than being disconnected from reality, Fleer argues that imagination move children toward and away from reality, and that it is always related to reality. Imagination moving the child toward reality can be exemplified by role-play; in exploring social roles children learn about real life.

Since we only in part build upon the same theoretical ground as Fleer our terminologies are not entirely overlapping; however, they are compatible cf. Through moving in and out of reality or in our terms, shifting between speaking and in other ways acting as is and as if — as children do in play — they develop an awareness of this distinction between imagination and reality, Fleer argues.

This allows children to investigate as well as liberate them from their immediate surroundings Fleer, ; cf. Still, the openness to identifying and analyzing playfulness beyond activates clearly initiated in terms of play is necessary, we adhere to, when investigating what we refer to as play-responsive teaching.

Regarding the latter, here was a positive relationship between play support and parental education, and an inverse relationship between parental education and academic focus, suggesting that parents with higher levels of educational attainment were more likely to endorse play as a means for learning early cognitive and social skills than those with lower levels of educational attainment. The role — if any — of play in education is, of course, controversial e. The former is presented thus: Arising from the essentialist and behaviorist philosophies, some believe that there is a core set of basic skills that children must learn and a carefully planned, scripted pedagogy is the ideal teaching practice.

In the study, children were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: guided play, direct instruction or control condition. In the instruction condition, in contrast, the adult verbally described the shape properties to children. In the control condition children listened to a story instead of engaging with shapes. Afterwards the children were asked to draw and sort shapes.

As clarified by Fisher et al. As Hedges points out, such a stance risks making content knowledge invisible and unattended. The questions are well aligned with the interest of the present project. Studying evolving activities, with small groups of children aged 1—3 years, around some simple objects buttons, containers and a blanket , what repertoire s children were introduced to and engaged in was analyzed.

These encompassed: Co-fantasizing where the buttons were used as props in evolving playful fantasies. Static cultural reproduction Dynamic human development As is size, colour, shape etc. As if pretend play, what something looks like, metaphor The objects per se The activities afforded by the objects e. Bateson, P. Theories of play. Pellegrini Ed. Google Scholar. Bruner, J. Acts of meaning. The culture of education. Burghardt, G. Defining and recognizing play.

New directions in studying the evolution of play. Roopnarine Eds. Clarke, S. Student agency to participate in dialogic science discussions.

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 10 , 27— CrossRef Google Scholar. Cook, G. Language play, language learning. ELT Journal, 51 3 , — Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Dewey, J. Democracy and education. Boydston Ed. Elkonin, D. On the historical origin of role play. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 43 1 , 49— Fisher, K. Playing around in school: Implications for learning and educational policy. Fleer, M. Early learning and development: A cultural-historical view of concepts in play.

Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 12 3 , — Grieshaber, S. The trouble with play. Hedges, H. Brooker, M. Edwards Eds. London, UK: Sage. Henricks, T. Classic theories of play. He also argued that a curriculum could only be justified if it related as fully as possible to the activities and responsibilities that students will probably have later , after leaving school.

To many educators these days, his ideas may seem merely like good common sense, but they were indeed innovative and progressive at the beginning of the twentieth century. Piaget described learning as interplay between two mental activities that he called assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the interpretation of new information in terms of pre-existing concepts, information or ideas. A preschool child who already understands the concept of bird , for example, might initially label any flying object with this term—even butterflies or mosquitoes.

Assimilation is therefore a bit like the idea of generalization in operant conditioning, or the idea of transfer described at the beginning of this chapter. Assimilation operates jointly with accommodation , which is the revision or modification of pre-existing concepts in terms of new information or experience. The preschooler who initially generalizes the concept of bird to include any flying object, for example, eventually revises the concept to include only particular kinds of flying objects, such as robins and sparrows, and not others, like mosquitoes or airplanes.

At any given time, cognitive equilibrium consists of an ever-growing repertoire of mental representations for objects and experiences. Piaget called each mental representation a schema all of them together—the plural—were called schemata. A schema was not merely a concept, but an elaborated mixture of vocabulary, actions, and experience related to the concept.

From these collective revisions and additions the child gradually constructs whole new schemata about birds, butterflies, and other flying objects. Exhibit 1 diagrams the relationships among the Piagetian version of psychological constructivist learning. Parents and teachers, it would seem, are left lingering on the sidelines, with few significant responsibilities for helping learners to construct knowledge. But the Piagetian picture does nonetheless imply a role for helpful others: someone, after all, has to tell or model the vocabulary needed to talk about and compare birds from airplanes and butterflies!

Piaget did recognize the importance of helpful others in his writings and theorizing, calling the process of support or assistance social transmission.

But he did not emphasize this aspect of constructivism. Piaget was more interested in what children and youth could figure out on their own, so to speak, than in how teachers or parents might be able to help the young figure out Salkind, Partly for this reason, his theory is often considered less about learning and more about development , or long-term change in a person resulting from multiple experiences that may not be planned deliberately.

We will therefore return to Piaget later to discuss development and its importance for teaching in more detail. This framework often is called social constructivism or sociocultural theory. An early expression of this viewpoint came from the American psychologist Jerome Bruner , , , who became convinced that students could usually learn more than had been traditionally expected as long as they were given appropriate guidance and resources. He called such support instructional scaffolding —literally meaning a temporary framework like the ones used to construct buildings and that allow a much stronger structure to be built within it.

Vygotsky made the reasonable proposal that when a child or novice is learning a new skill or solving a new problem, he or she can perform better if accompanied and helped by an expert than if performing alone—though still not as well as the expert. Someone who has played very little chess, for example, will probably compete against an opponent better if helped by an expert chess player than if competing against the opponent alone. Vygotsky called the difference between solo performance and assisted performance the zone of proximal development or ZPD for short —meaning, figuratively speaking, the place or area of immediate change.

If the expert is skilled and motivated to help, then the expert arranges experiences that let the novice to practice crucial skills or to construct new knowledge. In this regard the expert is a bit like the coach of an athlete—offering help and suggesting ways of practicing, but never doing the actual athletic work himself or herself.

These relationships are diagrammed in Exhibit 2. But compared to psychological constructivism, social constructivism highlights a more direct responsibility of the expert for making learning possible.

He or she must not only have knowledge and skill, but also know how to arrange experiences that make it easy and safe for learners to gain knowledge and skill themselves. These requirements sound, of course, a lot like the requirements for classroom teaching. In addition to knowing what is to be learned, the expert i. But of course, no one said that teaching is easy! As some of the comments above indicate, psychological and social constructivism have differences that suggest different ways for teachers to teach most effectively.

The theoretical differences are related to three ideas in particular: the relationship of learning and long-term development, the role or meaning of generalizations and abstractions during development, and the mechanism by which development occurs.

When acting or reacting to his or her surroundings, the child has relatively little language skill initially. From this point of view, therefore, a primary responsibility of teachers is to provide a very rich classroom environment, so that children can interact with it independently and gradually make themselves ready for verbal learning that is increasingly sophisticated. Social constructivists such as Vygotsky, on the other hand, emphasize the importance of social interaction in stimulating the development of the child.

Language and dialogue therefore are primary, and development is seen as happening as a result—the converse of the sequence pictured by Piaget. Obviously a child does not begin life with a lot of initial language skill, but this fact is why interactions need to be scaffolded with more experienced experts— people capable of creating a zone of proximal development in their conversations and other interactions. In the preschool years the experts are usually parents; after the school years begin, the experts broaden to include teachers.

Consistent with the ideas above, psychological constructivism tends to see a relatively limited role for abstract or hypothetical reasoning in the life of children—and even in the reasoning of youth and many adults. Such reasoning is regarded as an outgrowth of years of interacting with the environment very concretely.

Even older youth are thought to reason in this way much, or even all of the time. From this perspective a teacher should limit the amount of thinking about abstract ideas that she expects from students. Abstract thinking is possible, according to psychological constructivism, but it emerges relatively slowly and relatively late in development, after a person accumulates considerable concrete experience.

Social constructivism sees abstract thinking emerging from dialogue between a relative novice a child or youth and a more experienced expert a parent or teacher.

From this point of view, the more such dialogue occurs, then the more the child can acquire facility with it. They may not understand the experiment as an adult would, but the discussion can begin moving them toward adult-like understandings. In psychological constructivism, as explained earlier, development is thought to happen because of the interplay between assimilation and accommodation —between when a child or youth can already understand or conceive of, and the change required of that understanding by new experiences.

Acting together, assimilation and accommodation continually create new states of cognitive equilibrium. In practice the dissonance is often communicated verbally, by posing questions or ideas that are new or that students may have misunderstood in the past. In social constructivism, as also explained earlier, development is thought to happen largely because of scaffolded dialogue in a zone of proximal development.

In practice, however, the actual behavior of teachers and students may be quite similar in both forms of constructivism. Whether you think of yourself as a psychological constructivist or a social constructivist, there are strategies for helping students help in develop their thinking—in fact the strategies constitute a major portion of this book, and are a major theme throughout the entire preservice teacher education programs. For now, look briefly at just two.

One of the most widely used frameworks for organizing content, for example, is a classification scheme proposed by the educator Benjamin Bloom, published with the somewhat imposing title of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain Bloom, et al. The levels are defined briefly in Error: Reference source not found with examples from Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Put in more social constructivist terms, the teacher arranges a zone of proximal development that allows the student to compare species successfully, but the student still has to construct or appropriate the comparisons for him or herself.

A second strategy may be coupled with the first. As students gain experience as students, they become able to think about how they themselves learn best, and you as the teacher can encourage such self-reflection as one of your goals for their learning. These changes allow you to transfer some of your responsibilities for arranging learning to the students themselves. For the biology student mentioned above, for example, you may be able not only to plan activities that support comparing species, but also to devise ways for the student to think about how he or she might learn the same information independently.

Metacognition can sometimes be difficult for students to achieve, but it is an important goal for social constructivist learning because it gradually frees learners from dependence on expert teachers to guide their learning. Reflective learners, you might say, become their own expert guides. By assigning a more active role to expert helpers—which by implication includes teachers—than does the psychological constructivism, social constructivism may be more complete as a description of what teachers usually do when actually busy in classrooms, and of what they usually hope students will experience there.

As we will see in the next chapter, however, there are more uses for a theory than its description of moment-to-moment interactions between teacher and students. As explained there, some theories can be helpful for planning instruction rather than for doing it. It turns out that this is the case for psychological constructivism, which offers important ideas about the appropriate sequencing of learning and development.