Tying it all together

This semester I am taking two graduate classes, and as I move further along through the course readings I find points of contact where the information from one of them influences my thoughts about the other and vice-versa.  Of course, I am enrolled in EDF 6496 Teaching and Learning in Urban Settings - that is the class for which I keep this blog.  I am also enrolled in a course on learning theory.  This week my aha moment came from my readings about Lev Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory of psychological development.  Thrilling, right?

First, a general primer on Vygotsky for those who haven't had the pleasure.  Vygotsky believed that mastering the signs and symbols of one's culture is the key to development of complex mental functions and mastery of learning.  He considered signs and symbols, including verbal and written language, as "psychological tools" that bring about transformation of human consciousness.  The potential for development of mental capabilities is determined by the cultural-historical heritage of the child's culture and the child's social experience.  Essentially, "through others we become ourselves."  He also believed that adults represent the "ideal form" of behavior in any given culture, and are extremely important as both models and guides in a child's development.

One particular section from this week's readings stood out for me with regard to teaching diverse populations of students.  That is, "According to Vygotsky, the culture does more than simply provide the setting for the individual's cognitive development.  The culture provides cultural symbols (psychological tools) and the child learns to think with these forms of reasoning."  The author of the text goes on to describe a study from the Soviet Union in which women from different cultural groups were given skeins of yarn and asked to name and classify them by color.  Women from one of the cultural groups maintained that the task could not be done.  Women from another group arranged the skeins according to brightness, placing pale pink, yellow, and pale blue in the same group.  Still other women arranged the colors in seven or eight groups, using categorical names.  The study concluded that comparing objects and grouping them into logical categories are not universal  operations.  

How does this apply to teaching in urban settings?  If Vygotsky's theory holds any water, then the implication is that people from different cultural backgrounds literally think differently.  If something as seemingly common as organizing items by color cannot be generalized among certain cultural groups, then we really cannot make any assumptions about what is or is not "common knowledge" or "common sense" among diverse students in our classrooms.  Our expectations need to be explicitly clear, and we need to be sure to take the time to listen to our students so we can understand what cultural symbolism they bring to the table and how it can benefit the group as a whole.