The construction zone : working for cognitive change in school / Denis Newman, Peg Griffin, Michael Cole ; with the collaboration of: Shelia Broyles, Andrea L. Petitto, Marilyn G. Quinsaat.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Newman, Denis.

Contributor:

Jenkins, Peggy Davison.

Cole, Michael, 1938-

Series:

Learning in doing

Learning in doing : social, cognitive, and computational perspectives

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Learning, Psychology of.

Cognition in children.

Child development.

Social interaction in children.

Physical Description:

xv, 169 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Summary:

In this description of several years of painstaking classroom observations and carefully crafted experimental interventions, Denis Newman, Peg Griffin, and Michael Cole make clear the cleavage lines between the everyday requirements of classroom teaching and the practices of experimental psychologists. The best intentions of researchers to improve education are often undermined by such differences.

The "construction zone" is the shared psychological space within which teachers construct environments for their students' intellectual development and students construct deeper understandings of the cultural heritage embodied in the curriculum.

The core of the book is a set of analyses of children's developmental changes during classroom lessons and individual tutorials designed to teach basic concepts in such diverse areas as natural science, social studies, and arithmetic. Fusing techniques currently in wide use in microsociology, experimental psychology, and ethnographic studies of the classroom, the authors offer a compelling vision of intellectual development as a process of joint constructive interaction mediated by cultural artifacts. Their approach makes it possible to retain the strength of a developmental perspective which treats intellectual change as a constructive process in the spirit of Piaget, while making it clear that developmental change is simultaneously a social process of cultural transformation as emphasized by Vygotsky and his students.

A wide audience of developmental and cognitive psychologists and educational researchers in other fields will find much of interest in The Construction Zone.

Contents:

2 Building tasks into curriculum units 17

3 Making goals happen 32

4 Basic concepts for discussing cognitive change 59

5 Assessment versus teaching 76

6 Social mediation goes into cognitive change 90

7 How the West has won 114

8 Conclusions for a cognitive science of education 134.

Notes:

Includes indexes.

Bibliography: pages 157-163.

ISBN:

0521362660

OCLC:

18191882