Social learning theories: Sociocultural theory

Week 3

Tonight

• Basics• Introduction to Sociocultural Theory• Discussion Leads• HW

Basics

• Name tags• HW

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY

Vygotsky

• Where does knowledge/learning come from?

Mediation

• Self-regulation• Concept-based regulation• Lantolf (2011), “It must be stressed that the

distinction is only analytical—in normal activity the two aspects of mediation are inseparable” (p. 27, emphasis added).

I and You conversation

• “… there is a close relationship between social and psychological uses of language” (Lantolf, 2011, p. 25).

• What is he talking about here?

Nature and Nurture: But more nurture

• “… SCT holds that development orginates in the integration of biologically endowed abilities with culturally organized artifacts that mediate thinking” (Lantolf, 2011, p. 26).

Genetic law of cultural development

• Vygotsky states:– We can formulate the genetic law of cultural

development in the following way: any function in the child's cultural development appears on stage twice, on two planes. First it appears on the social plane, then on the psychological, first among people as an interpsychological category and then within the child as an intra psychological category.

ZPD

• What is it?

• Why, on p. 29, is with the learner, instead of for the learner, so important?

Scaffolding• Without your book, and discussing what you know about the ZPD and SCT, put the following scaffolding prompts in order. – Teacher identifies correct answer– Teacher repeats the whole phrase questioningly– Teacher pauses– Teacher explains why– Teacher repeats the part of the sentence with the

error– Teacher states generally that something is wrong with

the sentence– Teacher asks an either/or question (e.g., Is it “an” or

“a”?)– Teachers points out the incorrect word

Lantolf and Poehner (2001, p. 20)

Scientific Knowledge

• What is the difference between spontaneous and scientific knowledge?

• How does this relate to declarative and procedural knowledge?

Artificial knowledge?

• How does declarative vs. procedural knowledge relate to SLA?

CBI

• What is it?

• How does it relate to SLA?

CBI procedure• The first phase, explanation, must be based on scientific knowledge of the concept under

study. In my view, cognitive linguistics provides a potentially useful source of such knowledge for language instruction (Lantolf, in press). This is because cognitive linguistics foregrounds meaning and seeks to develop theoretical concepts that generalize across language domains. A second reason I believe cognitive linguistics is compatible with SCT is its robust use of visual models to depict linguistic concepts. This links the theory closely with Gal’perin’s (1970) first two phases of instruction—explanation and materialization, with the latter concept being based on the premise that the former alone is often problematic for learners. Thus, Gal’perin argued that students tend to memorize explanations as rules rather than understanding concepts well enough for them to inform and guide practical activity.

• He therefore proposed the second phase—materialization—in which the concept is represented visually as a model, graph, or other synthetic depiction. Gal’perin called the materialization of a concept a schema for the orienting basis of action (SCOBA).

• SCOBAs provide learners with resources that are then formulated as a plan of action in the third, or communication, phase of instruction. In language instruction, communication can involve a wide array of activities, ranging from tasks to scenarios (Di Pietro, 1987) to literature-based conversations and writing activities (Yáñez-Prieto, 2008) to service learning (Grabois, 2008), where language is used as a tool for accomplishing specific goals.

• The fourth phase, verbalization, is the point at which learners use language (i.e., engage in languaging—Swain, 2006) to both explain the concept to themselves and explain to themselves how they use it in specific communicative activities.

• In essence, this phase calls for production of speech in its psychological function with the intention of giving rise to the final, or internalization phase of the developmental process.

DISCUSSION LEADS

Discussion Leads

• 15 mins max• Will hold up sign with 4 minutes remaining. • As listeners, you are trying to find links to the

ideas we have discussed so far. We will share these links.

DL 1: Mediation

DL 2: Dunn and Lantolf

DL 3: McNeil

DL 4: Renshaw and Brown

Evaluating L2 activity from SCT

• If wanted to examine L2 activity from this perspective, what questions would we ask?

Theory and practice

• Van Patten vs. Vygotsky • Lewin

HW

• SITUATED LEARNING • Lave and Wenger (1991), Situated Learning• Discussion lead: Brown et al. (1989):• Discussion lead: Young & Miller (2004) :• Discussion lead: Collins, Brown, Holum

(1991):