Vision of Vygostky, Wink and Putney

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Learning precedes development. Performance precedes competence

Ideas for classroom (29-30)
  1. issues log on readings
    1. Come to class, small groups, discusses issues each has highlighted
    2. Whole class discussion determined by logs, not by the text and not by instructor, because students are asking significant questions about our own understanding
  2. Mid-term project
    1. Students create possibilities, each students chooses own, negotiation possible.
    2. Grading decided by students, rubric created
  3. Group projects
    1. Difficult articles, off-line group discussion, then group presentation in class
    2. Would require FB, TXT, e-mail, Skype, or F2F communication
Purpose of education
create new knowledge, become lifelong learners, but students also are prepared to be social members. They continually expand their repertoires of appropriate ways of interacting with others in constructing knowledge (35)
Thought and Language
Every thought is altered as it moves into thought. The relationship between thought and language is reciprocal, dynamic, and constantly changing. As students learn and use new language, the process impacts their thinking, and v/v. It is through the fusion of thinking, speaking, and our experience that we construct our knowledge (43).
Framework for Critical Praxis (see Frank, 1999)

  1. NoteTaking
    1. Describe
    2. What?
  2. NoteMaking
    1. Interpret
    2. Why?
  3. NoteRemaking
    1. Transform
    2. How?
ZPD
The zone of proximal development today will be the actual developmental level tomorrow -- that is, what a child can do with assistance today she will be able to do by herself tomorrow ... the only 'good learning' is that which is in advance of development (Vygostky 1978, 87-89) W&P 99
Construction of community
We come from a historical tradition in which it was assumed that the curriculum focused on basic skills so that the transmission of a general body of knowledge would provide a foundation for economic survival. However, we face a new world in the twenty-first century. There are no guarantees ... Citizens of the future need far more. Students of today and citizens of tomorrow will need the ability to transfer and transform their knowledge to challenging, unforeseen problems and complex realities. They will need to solve problems that do not yet exist; they will need to be able to find workable solutions, both individually and with others; and they will need to learn dialectically from oppositional thought (121)

Notes to Self

  1. Need similar book on college students -- see Zebroski
  2. The general idea is that social history affects learning; the speech act is part of the social influence -- interextuality, intercontextuality, intersubjectivity. We learn in the speech act and the speech act helps us learn
    1. I need to write more. I need to talk more
  3. In class, I need to have students talk to each other more, and reflect on what they learn from their language and what they learn from each other.
    1. More journals? This seems to be discouraged by Z.
    2. But more reflection? See Tamara
    3. Can reflection be re-incorporated into formal writing? See Tamara
    4. Perhaps the Portfolio instead of journals 
  4. Interested in the idea of language strengthening learning. Can Hispanics use their language with each other to strengthen understanding of texts and writing? What Spanish texts can I use to encourage their engagement and learning? What about bi-lingual texts, or English-language texts that refer to Hispanic issues?
    1. What are the major Latino-culture magazines, in Spanish or English?

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