Learners working in zones of proximal development: J.V. Wertsch on private speech

I have some data that show in detail an English language learner (ELL) in the classroom working on some linguistic structures in an attempt to create a written text. This was a small group activity and prior to this, the teacher had worked with the class in a whole class collaborative dialogue on the structures that emerged from a spoken text the learners had listened to. I’ve been puzzling over the significance of his speech to himself, or ‘private speech’ in Vygotskian terms. Wertsch (2008), though, has shed some light on what’s going on by highlighting the importance of the prior social interactions between the learner and the expert other(s). That is, Wertsch points out that Vygotsky was very clear in his theory of self-regulating private speech that if we are to understand it, we first must understand the other-regulation that has occurred in the interactions leading up to the move to self-regulation.

Thinking back to earlier posts here on imitation, internalisation and transformation, this makes very good sense. To quote Wertsch on the matter:

No one would argue that the speech used in social interaction is unrelated to the speech used by the child for self-regulative purposes.  However, by  failing  to take earlier forms of social interaction into account in their analysis of egocentric speech, investigators have often failed to appreciate many aspects of its form and function. That is, they have arrived at an incomplete (if not distorted) account of Vygotsky’s ideas about egocentric speech because they have abstracted the phenomenon out of the framework of genetic explanation in which it was developed. Wertsch (2008)

This underscores the importance of tying together the interactions in prior activity with the private speech that emerges in subsequent activity. It also underscores the importance of making good attempts at trying to tap into a learner’s private speech in order to investigate the transformation from a cognitive ability on the social plane to one on the individual plane. It’s investigating the dialectical junction where the external (social) engages with the internal (individual).

Wertsch, J.V., (2008) From Social Interaction to Higher Psychological Processes: A Clarification and Application of Vygotsky’s Theory. Human Development 51, no. 1.

How do we ‘become ourself through others’?

As Vygotsky almost blithely suggests in his 1929 notes, ‘we become ourselves through others’ (1989, p. 56). A central aspect of his theory that seems to get overlooked, or possibly taken for granted, in the second language acquisition literature is the premise that the development of higher psychological functions has its genesis in social interaction. Vygotsky summarises this idea by stating that ‘the means of acting upon oneself is first a means of acting on others’ (Vygotsky 1989, p. 56). Elsewhere, he elaborates:

‘The law of sociogenesis of higher forms of behavior: speech, being initially the means of communication, the means of association, the means of organization of group behavior, later becomes the basic means of thinking and of all higher mental functions, the basic means of personality formation’ (Vygotsky, 1998, p. 169).

While this may appear rather abstract on the surface, it is on the contrary a highly practical theoretical proposition that carries great promise and opportunity for language teaching, and especially promising for supporting the interactive language classroom.

Put plainly, an individual’s cognitive activity other than that which is naturally endowed (lower psychological functions) begins not as functions that are only capable of successfully operating with the individual in interaction with another, but it begins as the social interaction itself. An individual (whether a child or adult, depending on the cognitive activity in question) gradually becomes capable of performing those functions independently at a later stage of development. Importantly, this theory is applied not only to infant and child psychological development, but also to adults. And this has direct application to the adult second language classroom during the interactions between learners and between teachers and learners, especially in terms of the role of various interaction types, including small group learning activity and whole class teaching/learning dialogue.

Vygotsky, L.S., (1989), Concrete Human Psychology, Soviet Psychology, 27(2), pp. 53-77.

Vygotsky, L.S., (1998), The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky: Vol. 5 Child Psychology, Rieber, R.W. ed. Springer, New York; London.

Strategic Management of Pedagogic Discourse

Effective interactive language lessons require the teacher to be skilled in the management of the talk and the interactions that make up the activity of the classroom. Interaction enables second language classroom activity to occur; making the most of it results in qualitatively better classroom activity (Allwright, 1984). Following Rojas – Drummond & Mercer (2003), a central premise behind this study is the belief in the usefulness of raising teachers’ awareness and meta-awareness and developing their understandings of how and why they use dialogue to facilitate their students’ language learning. Hence the use of the term “strategic” in the title: “strategic management of pedagogic discourse”. To unpack this noun phrase and introduce the agency of the teacher and her/his learners, the proposal becomes “teachers and learners strategically manage the instructional and regulative discourse involved in classroom learning”.

Allwright, R.L., (1984), The Importance of Interaction in Classroom Language Learning, Applied Linguistics, 5(2), pp. 156-71.

Rojas-Drummond, S. & Mercer, N., (2003), Scaffolding the development of effective collaboration and learning, International Journal of Educational Research, 39, pp. 99-111.

Pedagogic Discourse as an analytic principle

Pedagogic discourse enables a systematic way of talking about the ways that the teacher and learners manage the curriculum content and each other’s interactions. This is exemplified below in the explanations of the grammatical tools used for the analysis of the discourse.

Christie’s innovative adaptation of Bernstein’s original formulations of pedagogic discourse call into play register theory of SFL. As Christie explains:

[T]here are two registers (or sets of language choices) at work in classroom texts: those of the ‘first order’ or ‘regulative register’, to do with types of behaviours in the classroom, and those of the ‘second order’, or ‘instructional’ register, to do with the ‘content’ being taught and learned…The choice of the term ‘register’ rather than ‘discourse’ reflects the particular SF theory involved. (2002, pp. 14-15; 25)

What Christie’s adaptation offers this project is firstly, that it foregrounds the fact that choices from a linguistic system are made, and that these choices will vary based on the prevailing register (and vice-versa, in a dialectical relation). Thus, the instructional discourse found in classrooms is linked to the instructional register, which has as constituent elements the field, tenor and mode of activity, which, as argued earlier, are in dialectical relation with the spoken texts constructed by the participants (see Figure below). Like Bernstein, Christie argues that the instructional register is embedded in the regulative register, but to avoid confusion, Christie adopts the term ‘project’ rather than ‘embed’, as in SF theory, ‘embed’ describes a relationship of dependency, as when one clause is embedded in (down-ranked), and therefore dependent on, another clause. On the contrary, the theory of pedagogic discourse here is that regulative discourse is realised in a regulative register that limits the language choices possible in the spoken texts of the classroom concerned with its social order. When there is a shift to the instructional register, another possible set of language choices is available to realise classroom talk associated with the skills and knowledge to be taught and learned.

From a SF theoretical perspective, the notion of projection provides a functionally more useful notion than that of embedding, as projection in SF theory suggests the appropriation and reformulation of a proposition, as in I told you not to damn well do that, where the clause I told you projects the proposition not to damn well do that, but is in some ways a reformulation of an earlier proposition, realised in different linguistic terms, not to carry out some form of action. The regulative register projects the instructional register in such a way that the propositions of both registers are evident in the resulting classroom talk.

Therefore, having established the boundaries within which the social activity of the classroom teaching of English is enacted, and the two discourses that represent that activity, it remains to identify the tools that will provide the analysis that was referred to above as fine-grained. As Christie remarked (personal communication, 28/8/05), without applying systemic functional grammar, the analysis of classroom interaction, even against the backdrop of proposed complementarities between sociocultural and SFL theories, is compromised. This is so because the capacity to analyse and penetrate what goes on in classroom interaction is limited by imprecise tools, for example, see Wells (1999), who has contributed greatly to the discourse linking the work of Halliday and Vygotsky, but who uses alternative and less precise applications of discourse analysis than are proposed by Christie and adopted here.

Drawing on the theory of systemic functional linguistics, it is possible to specify grammatical realisations of the semantic system, which in turn is itself a realisation of the features of the context (though recall the dialectical relations at these levels). This is outlined by Halliday and Hasan (1985, p. 85) diagrammatically in the figure below.

Text-Context

FIGURE: Relation of the language choices to the context of situation

Christie, F., (2005), Classroom discourse analysis: a functional perspective, Continuum, London.

Halliday, M.A.K. & Hasan, R., (1985), Language, context and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective, Deakin University, Melbourne.

Wells, G., (1999), Dialogic inquiry: towards a sociocultural practice and theory of education, Cambridge University Press, New York.

Teacher Talk in the Interactive Language Classroom: Shaping pedagogy, shaping consciousness

Effective interactive language lessons require the teacher to be skilled in the management of the talk and interactions that make up the activity of the classroom.

Reacting to what he considered an unnecessary divide in educational research and practice between the teaching of competence and the teaching of values, Bernstein (2000) developed an approach which reduces this dualism to one discourse. That is, he devised a unitary principle for the management of the content of teaching through not only how the content is selected and then sequenced and paced in curriculum genres and macrogenres, but also how the learners’ social relations and behaviours are constructed and managed.

Bernstein defines pedagogic discourse as:

a principle for appropriating other discourses and bringing them into a special relation with each other for the purposes of their selective transmission and acquisition. (Bernstein 1990, p. 183)

For the purpose of this project, the term is restricted to representing a general principle for, or rule of the discourse practices in classroom settings associated with the teaching and learning of the knowledge and skills required to competently use English as a second/foreign language.

For the second language classroom, pedagogic discourse plays a special role in removing discourses from their original communicative practices and contexts and relocating those discourses according to new principles of ordering and selection. According to Bernstein (1990), this process of recontextualisation involves the transformation of actual communicative practices into ‘virtual or imaginary practices’ (Bernstein 1990, p. 184). For the English as a second language classroom, that may be the virtual practice of engaging in academic debate in a university tutorial class for the purposes of preparing the students for academic study in an English-medium university; or it may be the virtual practice of engaging in a business negotiation for the purposes of developing the students’ abilities to use English to mediate negotiations in real-world international business settings. In fact, it may be as simple as undertaking a virtual role play associated with having a casual conversation in the park.

Pedagogic discourse in this sense, then, is ‘a recontextualizing principle which selectively appropriates, relocates, refocuses, and relates other discourses to constitute its own order and orderings’ (Bernstein, 1990, p. 184). It has no discourse of its own, however, a fundamental characteristic is that while the original social basis, including power structure, is removed, a new, imaginary/virtual social basis and power structure comes into place in the classroom. This calls into play the operation of the two discourses that are embedded in pedagogic discourse – instructional and regulative discourse.

Instructional discourse, a ‘discourse of skills and their relations to each other’ is said to be embedded in regulative discourse, ‘a discourse of social order (Bernstein, 2000, pp. 31-2). Regulative discourse always dominates instructional discourse; that is, ‘the discourse creating specialised order, relation and identity … always dominates the discourse transmitting specialised competences’ (p. 183). This immediately calls to mind the parallel activities going on in the classroom, requiring the specialised skills of the teacher to firstly, manage the overall direction of the curriculum macrogenre as realised through the curriculum genre, and the sequencing, pacing, selection of activities, and management of student behaviours; and secondly, to enable the development of new language knowledge and skills. The latter is enabled through the former – there can be no development of new language knowledge and skills without the mediation of the regulative discourse.

Pedagogic discourse, then, provides a model of classroom discourse that allows for an analysis of how the students’ identities as pedagogic subjects (Bernstein, 1990) are created. The students, together with the teacher, are contributing to the construction of, as well as being shaped by that discourse (Christie 1995)  in the parallel processes of intra- and inter- psychological development. This is a key intersection of Vygotskyan and Bernsteinian theory: the shaping of consciousness during the construction of pedagogic discourse occurs on the social plane, as interpersonal processes involving the creation of knowledge and skills of the second language become intrapersonal ones. As Christie claims, during participation in pedagogic discourse, the students are ‘enabled to enter into possession of the common knowledge of a culture’ (1995, p. 221), in this case, the common knowledge of English as a second language.

Bernstein, B., 1990, Class, Codes and Control. The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse, Routledge: London and New York.

Bernstein, B., (2000), Pedagogy, symbolic control, and identity: theory, research, critique, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Maryland.

Christie, F., (2005), Classroom discourse analysis: a functional perspective, Continuum, London.

Hiatus

I won’t be posting any new ideas for a short while as I tidy up a final draft of a paper, the ideas of which I’ve blogged here. I’ve titled the paper “A Sociocultural Account of the Role of Imitation in Instructed Second Language Learning”. See its word cloud here.. Once that’s out of the way, I’ll be interested in further exploring the “mechanics” of modelling and also looking further at mimesis in second language learning, trying to flesh out and extend upon the ideas in McCafferty (2008) and the volume McCafferty and Stam (2008). I’m also starting a paper on managing pedagogic discourse and will be posting thought on that soon.

McCafferty, S.G., (2008), Mimesis and second language acquisition: A Sociocultural Perspective, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30(02), pp. 147-67.

McCafferty, S.G. & Stam, G. (eds.), 2008, Gesture: Second Language Acquisition and Classroom Research, Routledge, New York.

On tools and signs

In the previous post I included sign mediation as the basis for models and modelling. The following section from Wertsch’s ‘Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind’ was informative, and is a good sign in itself to mediate one’s understanding of tools and signs in mediated activity.

Vygotsky extended Engels’s notion of instrumental mediation by applying it to “psychological tools” as well as to the “technical tools” of production. He invoked the analogy between psychologi­cal tools, or what he termed “signs,” and technical tools, or simply “tools,” at several places in his writing. While recognizing a general similarity between signs and tools, Vygotsky also noted that “this analogy, like any analogy, has its limits and cannot be extended to a full comparison of all the features of both concepts” (1981a, p. 136). He was quite clear about the fundamental differences between technical tools and psychological tools, or signs. Drawing on Marx (1977), he stated that “a tool … serves as a conductor of humans’ influence on the object of their activity. It is directed toward the external world; it must stimulate some changes in the object; it is a means of humans’ external activity, directed toward the subjugation of nature” (1960, p. 125). In contrast to this external object orientation of a technical tool, Vygotsky argued that “a sign [that is, a psychological tool] changes nothing in the object of a psychological operation. A sign is a means for psychologically influencing behavior – either the behavior of an­ other or one’s own behavior; it is a means of internal activity, directed toward the mastery of humans themselves. A sign is inwardly directed” (ibid.) . (Wertsch, 1985, pp. 77-78)

Wertsch, J.V., 1985, Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind, Harvard University Press, Harvard.

Models, modelling and sign mediated imitation in the zone of proximal development

In Vygotsky’s theory, that which connects the social with the individual is known as mediation, which occurs through both tool and sign use. Tools are concrete (material) cultural artefacts which act as a means to influence the object of activity, such as materials the teacher uses to enable her/his acts of teaching. Signs are abstract, symbolic representations which are oriented toward ‘psychologically influencing behaviour … it is a means of internal activity‘ (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 55). Examples of signs include language, numbers, charts, and bodily actions. Thus, key to the internalisation process is the use of signs as representations of the cultural practices which are the focus of teaching/learning. The signs of interest in this study are in the form of a model, either as a static representation (e.g. in written form on a whiteboard) or as an exemplar of a process (e.g a teacher demonstrating a task). For second language learning, the nature of that model will most likely be communicative in orientation; that is, the model will be functional in some way in terms of its communicative value. Bandura (1977, 1986) provides a useful framework for conceptualising the nature of models that act as signs to mediate language learning in the ZPD.

The relationship between the brain and the mind in second language learning

Donald’s theory of mimesis has the potential to act as the thread that weaves together the ideas being developed in this work (imitation and learning from a sociogenetic perspective). He makes the claim that:

Human brains have evolved and are designed to live in communities of minds. Mimetic skill was the cognitive foundation skill for our most distinctive human trait, the tendency to hook up, create, and live in communities of minds. (Donald, 2005, p. 294)

A major aim here is to unpack the process of internalisation, and the proposal has been that imitation is a major element of that process. Recalling Vygotsky’s proposal that imitation mediates between what a learner has and does not have via the interactions with an expert other (Vygotsky, 1988), the aim has been to seek an account of the process whereby intermental activity is transformed into intramental activity. It has been proposed that part of this account include the idea that modelling in the zpd allows for principles to be derived upon which social action is based, which are the basis for mastering one’s behaviour, performing above the level that one is capable of outside of the zpd, and which guides future performance.

This project, then, is traversing the conceptual field of mimetic activity set by Donald, who, with respect to language acquisition, exhorted that:

[w]e should be studying the executive brain systems that govern social learning and enable the brain to import language effortlessly from the social environment. (Donald, 2005, p. 294)

For second language acquisition, it has been established over several decades of research activity that instruction is necessary for acquisition to occur, and the question now stands as to what constitutes the most effective instruction (Dӧrnyei, 2009). Thus, a revision of Donald’s exhortation might read:

We should be studying both the the executive brain systems and effective pedagogy that govern social learning and enable language to be internalised as effortlessly as possible from the interactive environment. (based on Donald, 2005, p. 294)

Donald, M. 2005, Imitation and mimesis, in N Chater & S Hurley (eds), Perspectives on Imitation: from neuroscience to social Science: imitation, human development and culture, MIT, Cambridge, pp. 283-300.

Dörnyei, Z., 2009, The psychology of second language acquisition, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Vygotsky, L.S. & Rieber, R.W., 1988, The Collected works of L. S. Vygotsky. Vol. 1 Problems of General Psychology, Plenum, London.

Mimesis, Imitation and Pedagogy

Accepting Donald’s proposition that mimesis is a human predisposition to use the whole body as a device for semiotic activity, it seems a sensible idea for mimesis to be included in theories of second language acquisition, and in second language pedagogy. This also provides the opportunity to analyse an additional modality when investigating communicative interaction in the classroom. Mimetic actions can include gesture, facial expression, and other non-linguistic bodily expression. This strengthens the case for using pedagogic strategies such as role play (see the comments by Matusov below). It also brings into question the practice of breaking communication down into discrete skills, such as speaking, listening, reading and writing.

The potential benefits for interactive second language acquisition of considering mimesis, imitation and mimcry on a cline, as Donald proposes, require scrutiny, as does a re-thinking of including gesture, etc. in classroom language learning activity. For example, given Donald’s argument that different social and cultural groups have different mimetic actions, such as ways of walking and ways of gesturing, this would logically mean that there are non-verbal, non-linguistic pragmatics that are part of the meaning-making repertoire of the learner, and which may or may not be understood in the way that the speaker intends.