Common Core & International Benchmarking


I had to read this a couple of times to grasp what Vygotsky was saying; it felt like we read an excerpt of a larger work and were thrown in the middle without much context. That being said, after reading it the second time for some reason Common Core math popped into my head (for anyone unfamiliar I have pasted an example below). The worksheet turns simple addition into addition, subtraction, and division for some unfathomable reason, but I digress. What stood out to me from Vygotsky’s short discussion of structure is that the way in which a child approaches a problem or the process he uses for remembering while solving will depend on the signs he employs, which determines how the problem solving unfolds, if I understood him correctly. When we make children do math following Common Core, it restricts the tools that a child can use, while at the same time expanding the number of problems that actually have to be solved, since, in the example below, the child also has to subtract and divide if they follow the Common Core rules described at the top of the worksheet.

I am not too familiar with Common Core, but when I explored their website, it appears it all stemmed from producing globally competitive citizens. I fell even further down this Common Core rabbit hole and learned that Common Core (and the Next Generation Science Standards) were largely influenced by international benchmarking and a company called Achieve, Inc. which was founded by business leaders. When education standards are based internationally, it seems like we’re asking students to internalize signs that are not within their culture and that they therefore don’t necessarily have everyday concepts for. This brought me back to ZPD and scaffolding, and how with scaffolding, students won’t be able to transfer across contexts because they haven’t internalized information to use as a tool. If that is the case, then by benchmarking internationally we have no more improved our international education ranking (which is economic and not at all based on education, but that’s just me being cynical). If students can’t transfer what they’ve acquired to other contexts, Vygotsky’s fourth stage of genesis that he discusses in this week’s reading, then we haven’t improved at all. We’ve created a whole new problem of cultural development.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ZPD vs. Scaffolding

Reading Wood et al.'s (1976) original article in which they introduce the metaphor of "scaffolding" really makes clear how different this is from ZPD.  There is no collaboration (perhaps a better word is co-operation) between the expert and the child... the expert guides the child's actions through controlling their immediate problem-solving experience. The model of scaffolding assumes that the expert is, in a sense, all-knowing in relation to the problem and is not an active participant in the actions of problem-solving.  Vygotsky's theory really seems to require a much more dynamic social interaction or series of social interactions. I also question to what extent a tutor operating in this way can engage with a child's everyday and scientific concepts in a meaningful way. Having read Smagorinsky's (2018) article once more, it is hard not to be convinced of his position. He confirmed with Anna Stetsenko at CUNY (who earned her PhD in Psychology at Mosco...
Read more

Can scientific concepts be taught as everyday concepts? My middle school physics teacher

Image
I began reading the chapter on the development of scientific concepts and it was interesting to see how Vygotsky differentiates between scientific and everyday concepts. Scientific concepts are simply learned or received in completed form (most commonly introduced as a term along with its definition) which in turn leads to understanding, learning, and comprehension. Whereas, everyday concepts do not have a formal definition, need not be universal but still helps us understand the functioning of the society and the world in which we live. When reflecting on all this, I was reminded of a middle school physics teacher I had (Sadly, we had her only for one year), who would not introduce new concepts as 'words' and definitions but instead, would begin class with a demonstration. One of which is depicted below. I so vividly remember her explaining inertia through this method:                                 ...
Read more

Learning from teaching vs Impactful experiences from child’s play

I remember very little about my past schooling and I am not sure if it is because I have this belief that we should spend little time reminiscing on the past and looking towards the future or is it that my classroom experiences were all “traditional” and are not stored in my active memory. The latter would seem applicable as I really do remember more key events from my “play times” but very few from the formal school settings. Lev S. Vygotsky states: “In play a child is always above his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself. As in the focus of a magnifying glass, play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form; in play it is as though the child were trying to jump above the level of his normal behavior” (1967, 16). The interpretation of the above quote can and has taken many forms but I do not agree that children learn more from play and interactions with their peers than in a formal environment. My ...
Read more