The idea from this chapter that most stuck out to me was grouping in the classroom. This concepts relates to Vygotsky's theory because he also believed in the social aspect of learning and discussed grouping students in a classroom. There are many different ways to group students in a classroom such as grouping them in heterogeneous groups or homogeneous groups. Heterogenous groups are groups with different attributes and homogenous groups don't have variation or have little variation in their attributes. The book discussed how under different conditions students may be placed in a different group when doing different things. They may be heterogenous doing one thing and be homogeneous while preforming a different task. They split into these groups based on ability which is the most common and most effective way of grouping. Vygotsky puts a big emphasis on learning as a group rather than individual learning, which is what in-class grouping is.
One question I have is what if students dislike learning in groups? What if they prefer individual work and don't think that group work is beneficial? Also, if one person ends up doing all of the work wouldn't that negatively impact the learning of others?
Grouping has to do with Vygotsky because he believes that learning happens socially. He believes that there is no such thing as individual learning and that we learn with and by watching others. Vygotsky might recommend heterogeneous grouping because then higher ability students are grouped with lower ability students which helps them learn.
Vygotsky believes that learning happens through social interactions whiles Piaget believes that learning happens in stages. Vygotsky says that we are constantly learning through our development and that we all learn and develop differently because we are all different people. He thinks that we learn by modeling others and imitating them because we see what they are doing and then we learn it. Piaget believes that there are 4 stages of development and that we develop first and then learn what is developmentally appropriate for that stage.
My thoughts and actions are being influenced right now because of my previous knowledge as well as what I have read in the book and learned in class. My previous knowledge was learned because of the thoughts and ideas of other people. In class, I learn others ideas as well when we have discussions as well as what Jackie puts on the power points. The book we read was written by someone else so those are their ideas. The things that I learn all come from other people.
I agree with the idea that students do not learn as much in groups than individually because there is always one student that does all the group while the others do not benefit from the group work. The best way to prevent this is if there is going to have group work assigned is to make each person have an assigned task within the group or have there just be partner work which will limit the amount of students not helping out.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a good question! Many students, including myself sometimes, dread group work. However, simply because students do not like it doesn't mean that it is not worthwhile. As these less than ideal situations of some students not pulling their weight inevitably arise, it gives all of the students in the group a chance to work on social skills like conflict resolution that will be very useful in life.
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