Artists who teach or teachers who make art? To explore the identity of the artist-teacher in contemporary educational contexts, the ethical differences between the two fields of art and learning need to be considered. Equity is sought between the needs of the learner and the demands of an artist’s practice; a tension exists here because the nurture of the learner and the challenge of art can be in conflict. The dual role of artist and of teacher have to be continually navigated in order to maintain the composite and ever-changing identity of the artist-teacher. The answer to the question of how to teach art comes through investigating attitudes to knowledge in terms of the hermeneutical discourses of “reproduction” and “production” as a means to understand developments in pedagogy for art education since the Renaissance. An understanding of the specific epistemological discourses that must be navigated by artist-teachers when they develop strategies for learning explicate the role of art practices in considering the question: What to teach? The answer lies in debates around technical skills and the capacity for critical thought.
Article
The Artist-Teacher
Esther Sayers
Article
The Controversy of Muslim Women in Liberal Democracies
Nuraan Davids
Liberal democracies have convinced themselves that persistent attempts to regulate the dress codes of Muslim women are driven by a democratic imperative toward their “emancipation.” They have convinced themselves that the imposition of integration is in the best interest of a democratic society. As a result, Muslim women, or more specifically, their dress codes, have become the reluctant centerpieces of a debate that has much less to do with democratic preservation than it has to do with an overt, systemic discrimination against a particular group. By taking into account the ensuing tensions and controversies that perceivably exist between liberal democracies and Muslim women, there are certain questions worth considering. On the one hand, is the concern of Muslim women, who are seemingly viewed and treated as a homogenous group. Who are they? What informs their Muslim identities and practices? On the other hand, is the matter of liberal democracies, which, through their actions of trying to regulate the dress code of Muslim women in the public sphere, have brought into contestation notions of democratic principles and practices. Why have liberal democracies chosen to respond to Muslim women in the way that they have? What is it about the dress code of Muslim women, which presents such an aversion or undermining of liberal democracies? It would seem, and as will be discussed in this article, that what liberal democracies perceivably know about Muslim women might in fact not be how they (Muslim women) conceive of themselves. That is, unlike the perceptions created by liberal democracies, Muslim women might not necessarily interpret their particular dress codes as being irreconcilable with what it means to be and act in a democracy. In turn, while the interest of the ensuing discussion is on the treatment of Muslim women by liberal democracies, the implications of this discussion might not be limited to one group identity; instead, there are necessary questions and concerns about how liberal democracies respond to and reconcile with pluralist forms of being.
Article
The “Crisis” in Teacher Education
Michael Schapira
In 1954, Hannah Arendt wrote that talk of a crisis in education “has become a political problem of the first magnitude.” If one trusts the steady stream of books, articles, jeremiads, and statements from public officials lamenting the fallen status of our schools and calling for bold reforms, the 21st century has shown no abatement in crisis as an abiding theme in education discourse. But why does education occupy such a privileged space of attention and why is it so susceptible to the axiomatic evocation of “crisis?” Arendt provides a clue when she argues that “Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token, save it from the ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable.”
The crisis in education has come to signal a variety of issues for which the teacher is either a direct or indirect participant: declining student performance, inadequacy of teacher preparation, inequities of opportunity as well as outcome, or a curriculum ill-fitted to the shape of the modern world. However, at base is the issue of social reproduction that Arendt sees at the heart of education. Thus, the crisis in education serves as a forum for expressing, critiquing, and instantiating the values that are at play when considering “the coming of the new and the young.”
Article
The Four Pillars of the Philosophy of Higher Education
Søren S.E. Bengtsen and Ronald Barnett
The research field of the philosophy of higher education is young, having emerged within the last half-century. However, at this stage four strands, or pillars, of thought may be detected in the core literature, around which the discussions and theorizing efforts cluster. The four pillars are (a) knowledge, (b) truth, (c) critical thinking, and (d) culture. The first pillar, “knowledge,” is concerned with the meaning of academic knowledge as forming a link between the knower and the surrounding world, thus not separating but connecting them. Under the second pillar, “truth,” are inquiries into the epistemic obligations and possibilities to seek and tell the truth universities and academics have in a “post-truth” world. The third pillar, “critical thinking,” addresses the matter as to what understandings of being critical are appropriate to higher education, not least against a background of heightening state interventions and self-interest on the part of students, especially in marketized systems of higher education. The fourth pillar, that of “culture,” is interested in the possibility and ability for academics and universities to intersect and contribute to public debates, events, and initiatives on mediating and solving conflicts between value and belief systems in culturally complex societies. When seen together, the four pillars of the research field constitute the philosophy of higher education resting on four foundational strands of an epistemic, communal, ethical, and cultural heritage and future.
Article
The Necessity for Coexistence of Equity and Excellence in Inclusive and Special Education
Garry Hornby
Rather than being viewed as incompatible or polar opposites, special education and inclusive education can be seen as equally important components of effective education systems that produce optimal outcomes for all learners. The same can be said for equity and excellence, as a focus on equity should be combined with measures to promote excellence for all learners in order to optimize overall outcomes. Alternatively, emphasizing either special education or inclusive education, to the exclusion of the other, within education systems will jeopardize both equity and excellence and lead to less than optimal educational achievement. Having an education system with a balance of both special education and inclusive education, however, within a comprehensive service delivery model, will result in superior educational outcomes. Clearly, there needs to be a synthesis of key components of special education and inclusive education in order to provide an equitable and excellent education for all learners, including those with special educational needs and disabilities.
Article
Theories of Complex Systems and Educational Change at Multiple Scales
Wolff-Michael Roth
Theories of complex systems originated in the natural sciences, where it became necessary to move away from describing systems in simple cause–effect models to using descriptions that take into account nonlinearity, emergence, path dependence, the interrelation of continuous (quantitative) and discontinuous (qualitative) transitions, and the interrelation of phenomena at multiple scales. Although some educators have begun to explore the usefulness of complex systems theories for describing educational phenomena at the different levels of scale, the vast majority of educational research continues to be dominated by simple and simplistic (quantitative and qualitative) models. After definition and discussion of different conceptions of systems, this article presents constraint satisfaction networks, chaos theory, and catastrophe theory, as dynamic models for social processes in education. The different models are introduced with easily accessible phenomena from the natural sciences. The models not only are sources of analogies and metaphors for articulating a variety of phenomena in educational systems, including learning and development, conceptual change, decision making, categorization, and curriculum implication, but also can be used for studying real educational systems. Readers find how these models can be used to think about and predict the behavior of systems at scales as small as student–teacher talk to school systems as a whole. The concepts are used to show why educational systems tend to be stable even when policymakers intend change and why some classroom contexts do not provide the conditions for student development despite well-meaning efforts of dedicated teachers.
Article
Theories of Educational Leadership
Gabriele Lakomski and Colin W. Evers
From its beginnings in the 1940s, leadership research has been conducted as a scientific activity, with the aim of discovering the essence of leadership that, once found, would provide social–organizational benefits. However, no essence has been discovered, and research continues undeterred. Leadership theories old and new rely on the conception of science, known as logical empiricism, to support their claims. The identification of logical empiricism with science, however, is a mistake as empiricism is no longer considered valid, a mistake perpetuated in contemporary education leadership theories that present their accounts as alternatives to science. A better account of science, “naturalistic coherentism,” is able to advance the theory and practice of education leadership by growing knowledge, not by denying it.
Article
Theories of Generative Change in Teacher Education
Arnetha F. Ball
In 1950, Erik Erickson introduced the concept of generativity in psychosocial development when referring to an individual’s desire to produce new knowledge that contributes to the guidance of the next generation. Nearly fifty years later, Epstein built on the term generativity in his research when referring to the generation of new or novel behavior in problem-solving. According to Epstein, generativity theory is a formal, predictive, empirically based theory of ongoing behavior in novel environments. Because it can be used to predict generative behavior and engineer new performances, it is also predictive of creativity and offers important contributions to the study of the transformative processes needed by teachers who desire to work effectively with students in culturally and linguistically complex classrooms. The evolution of theories of generativity can be traced from their use in studies of psychosocial development, to their use in studies of education, teacher education, and the preparation of teachers who work effectively in complex, 21st century classrooms. It should be noted that the theme that runs throughout the research literature on generativity over the last seventy years is a focus on using the term generativity theory to refer to a formal, predictive theory of creative behavior in individuals. When applied to education and the development of teachers to teach in culturally and linguistically complex classrooms, it is important to note that oftentimes teachers—many of whom have never worked with diverse student populations before—must develop the ability to translate their desire to teach into a conscious concern to serve the next generation—into a generative commitment to teach all students. They must make decisions to establish goals for generative behavior and then turn those decisions into generative actions and the creation of effective pedagogical solutions that meet the needs of their diverse students. One meaning of generative behavior is to generate things and people, to be creative, productive, and fruitful, to “give birth” to creative pedagogical problem-solving both figuratively and literally. The scholarship on generativity theory emphasizes the notion that generativity, unlike simple altruism or general prosocial behavior, involves the creation of a product or legacy. The qualities emphasized in generativity theory are the qualities needed by teachers who hope to be effective in their work with diverse populations. Generative behavior involves the conservation, restoration, preservation, cultivation, nurturance, or maintenance of that which is deemed worthy of such behavior, as in nurturing children and adapting traditions that link generations and assure continuity over time—through generative concern, action, and narration. Reflection is not enough. Rather, generative action that stems directly from teachers’ commitment, enhanced belief, and stimulated by concern, inner desire and cultural demand is needed. Generative action—which includes the behaviors of creating, maintaining, and offering to others—is the ultimate result of generativity. Narrations of generativity and the use of writing as a pedagogical tool for deep thinking are two means by which the complex relations among demand, desire, concern, belief, internalization, commitment, and action can be captured and analyzed.
Article
Theories of Tolerance in Education
Ben Bindewald
Scholars in diverse democratic societies have theorized tolerance in various ways. Classical liberal tolerance can best be understood as non-interference with forms of behavior or expression one finds objectionable. It has been criticized for being too permissive of hate speech and not demanding enough as a theoretical guide to civic education. Alternatively, robust respect is characterized by open-mindedness and respect for diversity. Critics have suggested that it is too relativistic and overly ambitious as a guide to civic education. Discriminating (in)tolerance suggests that tolerance should only be extended to individuals and groups who support the advancement of egalitarian politics and the interests of historically marginalized groups. It has been criticized for being overly authoritarian and dogmatic. Mutuality emphasizes reciprocity and sustained engagement across difference. Critics argue that it is not revolutionary enough to address past injustices and persistent inequality.
Article
Tolerance and Education
Elisabet Langmann
Tolerance has long been regarded as essential to liberal democratic life as well as to educational theory and practice. In educational policy and research, the school is seen as an important sphere where interpersonal tolerance can be studied and learned, and within schools, teachers and students are frequently asked to embody and practice tolerance. Whereas the need and value of tolerance may be evident in everyday life, the concept of tolerance is regarded as puzzling or even counterintuitive within the fields of philosophy and philosophy of education. Despite its overall harmonious connotation, tolerance seems to require two contradictory yet interdependent responses: in order to be tolerant (open-minded, accepting, welcoming) toward the tolerable, we also need to be intolerant (narrow-minded, resisting, hostile) toward the intolerable. In the philosophical debate, much work has been done to discuss the reasons and justifications for extending tolerance, while less attention has been paid to what determines the way in which an encounter becomes an issue of tolerance in the first place. In relation to the latter, three enduring questions can be identified. Is tolerance to be understood as a symmetrical or a hierarchal relation between the one who tolerates and the one being tolerated (the dilemma of welcoming)? What are the limits of tolerance and how are they to be drawn and justified (the dilemma of drawing boundaries)? And how much “unwanted otherness” can one suffer and bear before tolerance passes into intolerance or converts into pure acceptance (the dilemma of enduring)? In responding to the dilemmas of tolerance, different competing but coexisting discourses or conceptions on tolerance have developed historically over time. Within philosophy of education, two main conceptions can be traced, each of them implying a different way of responding to the dilemmas of interpersonal tolerance: tolerance as permission and tolerance as mutual respect. Besides these more traditional conceptions, a third conception of tolerance as an embodied and lived practice is identified. Taken together, the different coexisting conceptions of tolerance can be seen as an invitation to an ongoing conversation about the meaning and value of promoting tolerance in education, between and within different schools of philosophy of education.
Article
Tradition and Change in the Curriculum of Liberal or General Education
D. G. Mulcahy
The concept of a liberal or general education as it emerged in the Western tradition is one of the most consequential and enduring in the history of education. From its origins in antiquity, the concept and the form of a liberal arts and sciences curriculum associated with it grew to become a shaping force in the formation of the universities of the Middle Ages. Largely unchanged, it remained influential for centuries to follow. With the spread of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, however, the concept and the curriculum associated with it ran into outspoken opposition. Yet once again today, the traditional concept and varying modifications of both that concept and of its curriculum content continue to be asserted all around the world. In response, discontent with liberal education and its curricular expressions is assuming new and increasingly challenging forms. One upshot of this is that opposition to the concept has a new vibrancy that is not readily quelled. This is especially evident among those arguing for innovative conceptualizations of this venerable if increasingly ambiguous idea. Yet, while such a conceptualization is at best emergent, one may detect in its evolution elements of a progressive theory of liberal education, even if there are few sustained attempts at articulating this emergent model.
Before proceeding, it is necessary to acknowledge non-Western formative influences and forms of education that are sometimes viewed as counterparts of a liberal or general education as it has evolved in the Western tradition, and which is the focus of attention here. These include forms of higher education rooted in the Confucian tradition in China, Hindi and Buddhist traditions in India, and Islamic traditions.
Article
Trans and Gender Diverse Youth and Education
Jenny E. Kassen
As more young people find language to describe their gendered experiences, education as a field is reckoning with how to best support and affirm them in schools. Research centering on the experiences of transgender and gender diverse students (TGDSs) has brought to light many issues that impact on their school experiences, such as lack of curricular visibility, in-school support, and lack of appropriate facilities, illuminating the systemic forces at play that hamper TGDS participation and livability in schools and drawing attention to the violence that is enacted against them through erasure and overt transphobia. Examining the pervasive violence that TGDSs face at school through a framework of epistemic injustice provides an entry point conceptualizing of violence as extending beyond direct physical or verbal victimization to include the harm done when an individual is disqualified by others as a knower of their own experience. Cultural cisgenderism, the systemic erasure of TGD people in all aspects of society, is the vehicle by which epistemic injustice organizationally and instructionally informs and creates school climates where TGDSs come to be subject to verbal and physical aggression. Understanding the violence that impacts on every aspect of TGDSs’ academic trajectories as expressions of cultural cisgenderism and epistemic violence provides educators with options for intentionally examining the ways in which school systems are complicit in the production of a silence and invisibility around gender diversity which cultivates unsafe gender climates and thus facilitates more overt forms of harm. Examining the more insidious and normalized forms of epistemic violence opens up space to probe more deeply into how a positive—not merely bearable—school experience might be imagined for and with TGDSs.
Article
Transformative Leadership
Carolyn M. Shields
Transformative leadership theory (TLT) is distinct from other leadership theories because of its inherently normative and critical approach grounded in the values of equity, inclusion, excellence, and social justice. It critiques inequitable practices, oppression, and marginalization wherever they are found and offers the promise not only of greater individual achievement but of a better life lived in common with others.
Two basic propositions (or hypotheses) and eight tenets ensure the comprehensiveness of TLT. The first hypothesis is that when students feel welcome, respected, and included, they are better able to focus on learning and, hence, distal academic outcomes improve. The second hypothesis is that when there is a balance between public and private good emphases, and students are taught about civic participation, democratic society is strengthened. To fulfil these hypotheses, TLT is neither prescriptive nor instrumental; it does not offer a checklist of actions, but instead offers eight guiding tenets to ensure responsiveness to the needs of specific organizational and cultural contexts.
The origins of TLT lie in a rejection of primarily technical approaches to leadership that do not adequately address the diversity of 21st-century schools and that have not been able to reduce the disparities between dominant and minoritized groups of students. Transformative leadership theory, like transformational leadership, draws on Burns’s concept of transforming leadership, although the two have sometimes been confused and confounded. Transformational leadership has more positivist overtones and focuses more on organizational effectiveness and efficiency; TLT has been operationalized as a values-based critical theory, focused both on beliefs and actions that challenge inequity and that promote more equity and inclusive participation.
TLT draws on other critical theories, including critical race theory, queer theory, leadership for social justice, and culturally responsive leadership, as well as transformative learning theory, in order to promote a more equitable approach to education. Thus, it takes into account the material, lived realities of those who participate in the institution as well as organizational contingencies. To do so, the following eight specific interconnected and interrelated principles have been identified from the literature:
• the mandate for deep and equitable change;
• the need to deconstruct and reconstruct knowledge frameworks that perpetuate inequity and injustice;
• the need to address the inequitable distribution of power;
• an emphasis on both private and public (individual and collective) good;
• a focus on emancipation, democracy, equity, and justice;
• an emphasis on interdependence, interconnectedness, and global awareness;
• the necessity of balancing critique with promise;
• the call to exhibit moral courage.
Questioning, dialogue, free-writing, reflection, deliberative and distributive processes, and relationship-building are central to the successful implementation of TLT.
TLT in education is a proven way to address the persistent opportunity and achievement gaps between dominant and minoritized students and of enhancing democratic participation in civil society. In other areas, such as business, non-profits, social services, or sociocultural support agencies, TLT offers a comprehensive way for leaders to reflect on how to provide equitable, inclusive, and excellent environments for both clients and employees.
Article
Translanguaging in Educating Teachers of Language-Minoritized Students
Carla España, Luz Yadira Herrera, and Ofelia García
Teacher education programs to prepare those who teach language-minoritized students many times continue to uphold modernist conceptions of language and bilingualism. Translanguaging disrupts the logic that nation-states have constructed around named languages, focusing instead on the language practices of people. Translanguaging theory is changing perceptions of bilingualism and multilingualism as well as the design of language education programs for language-minoritized students. And yet, teachers of language-minoritized students are educated in programs that hold on to traditional views of language, bilingualism, and language education. In the best cases, these teachers are prepared in specialized teacher education programs that credential teachers of a second language or bilingual teachers. In the worst cases, these teachers get no specialized preparation on bilingualism at all. But whether teachers are prepared as “general education” teachers, teachers of a “second language,” or “bilingual” teachers, programs to educate them most often hold on to traditional views about language and bilingualism; they then impart those views to future teachers who design instruction accordingly.
Teacher education programs need to help teacher candidates understand their own language practices and see themselves as translanguaging beings. Teacher candidates also need to understand how the students’ translanguaging is a way of making knowledge and how to design lessons that leverage the translanguaging of students and communities to democratize schooling. It is imperative that teacher preparation programs implement a new theory of bilingualism, one that rejects the compartmentalization of languages and the stigmatization of the language practices of language-minoritized students. Providing teacher candidates with the tools to reflect on their experiences and on how raciolinguistic ideologies cut across institutions can help them not only understand but also find ways not to internalize oppressive notions of self, language practices, and teaching.
Article
Transnational Curriculum Formation and Change
Noel Gough
This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Please check back later for the full article.
Although much curriculum work continues to take place within national borders (often informed by governmental policies and priorities), accelerating processes of economic and cultural globalization, together with an increase in various types of cross-border movements of people, resources, ideas, and images, are blurring nation-state boundaries and destabilizing national authority in curriculum decision-making.
Typically, transnational work is understood as acting across national borders with a view to optimizing the interrelationships between local, national, regional, and global spheres of curriculum formation and change. This is distinguished from international collaboration (actions taken by conventional nation-states) and supranational work, which includes initiatives and interventions by broader global institutions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, UNESCO, OECD, and so on. The involvement of supranational institutions such as the World Bank and IMF has tended to support curriculum policies derived from neoliberal economic perspectives, which focus on the measurable production of human capital. Transnational curriculum work encourages critical examination of the impact of globalization in relation to national and international debates on such matters as human rights; social justice; democratization; national, ethnic, and religious identities; issues of gender and racial justice; the concerns of indigenous peoples; and poverty and social exclusion. Transnational curriculum work is also a response to the discourses of standardization and homogenization of curriculum thinking that characterize modern nation-states.
Article
Transnational Curriculum Studies
Seungho Moon
Transnational curriculum studies (TCS) examines the fluid dynamics of knowledge creation, knowledge circulation, and knowledge representation across nation-state borders. It challenges the rigid architectures of state power and brings local concerns to the global context such as antiracist pedagogy and climate change issues. At the same time, TCS opens spaces for collaborative study of the same curriculum issues across nation-states from multiple perspectives. Curriculum scholars have extended scholarship to respond to various sociopolitical, cultural movements. Issues studied include human rights, recognition, and epistemicide through a framework that emphasizes hybrid identities and power operations across nation-states. Feminist postcolonial scholars within this field also highlight unequal power operations among nation-states, particularly for “marginalized” communities. They interrogate discourse on equity, power, and exploitation as a consequence of transnationalism. TCS scholars critically examine important questions on recolonization of knowledge through Eurocentric, patriarchal ideologies and the social reproduction of knowledge through curriculum. They also incorporate Indigenous approaches to knowledge learning and dissemination with the support of transnational curriculum inquiry. Key issues in TCS include global inequity and postcolonial discourse in transnationalism, transnational subjectivity and identity discourse, and epistemicide in curriculum and integration of Indigenous knowledge. Future directions for TCS arise from ontological, pedagogical, and methodological issues, which include collaborating with those in the field of border studies as physical and metaphorical spaces in research, linguistic issues in academic communities, and transnational curriculum studies for social actions and transformation. TCS contributes to opening space in curriculum theorizing to draw from multiple ways of knowing, including Indigenous epistemologies.
Article
Trans Theory and Gender Identity in Education
Alden Jones
Trans theory is a set of ideas, tools, contestations, divergences, and investments in gender(s) in and beyond the gender binary of male and female as it is understood in Western contexts. Gender identity is, in part, an individual’s gendered sense of self. Both transgender theory and gender identity are implicated by and concerned with education given the relative (in)visibility of transgressive or variant genders. Educational spaces are concerned with gender since they are one of many socializing and normalizing structures that seek to instill binary genders. Trans theory and gender identity are understood in educational spaces as additive to the social norm of binary gender, though both the theory and the concept ultimately elucidate the need for a reexamination of what gender is and what it does, as well as to and for whom.
Article
Understanding Adult Pedagogy and Technology Use
Mary Dereshiwsky
Theories exist in number that concern how adults learn. Despite surface differences, these theories also contain common themes relevant to adult learning. They include self-direction, problem- or need-based motivation to learn, the ability to anchor past experiences to make meaning from current learning, and the skills to self-assess one’s learning experience.
Given the prevalence of technology in virtually all areas of personal and professional life, a solid understanding of how to use technology effectively is essential for 21st-century adults. At the same time, these adults are often hampered by anxiety and past negative experiences related to technology use, especially in the learning process itself. How can instructors leverage the best practices of adult learning theory to create meaningful learning experiences for adult learners? In order to address this question, it is important to understand the unique characteristics of adult learners as a first step. Instructors should also self-reflect and consider how their own attitudes and experiences can shape how they use technology with adult learners. With learning theories in mind, designing meaningful learning experiences with technology for adult learners can optimize learning experiences.
Article
The Value of Play in Education
Einar Sundsdal and Maria Øksnes
Play has been an interest of philosophers and educationalists since the first academies and a field of scholarly interest for over a hundred years. There is no memorandum of understanding on what is common to all forms of play, neither in a philosophical nor an educational context. Despite this lack of a common understanding of play, philosophers of education have had high expectations for play’s contributions to human life. In troubling times, when philosophers and educationalists assume that freedom is compromised, the future is uncertain and bleak, and there is not much hope for freedom and progress, play is often considered a valuable problem-solving apparatus. Bold claims are made on behalf of play—that it is “the absolute primary category of life,” “the purest, most spiritual activity of man,” and not least that man is “only fully a human being when he plays.”
It is a common assumption that children’s play is a future-oriented practice central to all development and learning in childhood. Play has been valued for its role in the education and upbringing of children based on the belief that through play the child moves forward. This assumption raises important questions about both play and educational practice. When formal schooling is a central part of children’s lives, educationalists ask how play can contribute to the best academic education. Thus, a central question has been to figure out how play can be put to use as a means for reaching certain educational goals, and how play can be organized to best prepare children for further education and development. Most researchers do not deny that play may contribute to a child’s development, but some argue that we have gone too far in assuming the contributions play makes to development and learning. They question whether it is possible to make play work for academic education and suggest that we risk replacing the spontaneous experience of play with a more instrumental version of play where it becomes a skill or literacy. This questioning points to the discussion of when something is play and when it is not play but something else. In addition, the claim that play can contribute to a range of developmental and learning outcomes seems to hinder research premised on the intrinsic value of play.
Article
Vygotskian Theory of Development
Yuriy Karpov
Russian followers of Vygotsky have elaborated his theoretical ideas into an innovative theory of development. In this theory, children’s development is viewed as the outcome of adult mediation: adults engage children in the age-specific joint activity (the so-called leading activity) and, in the context of this activity, promote the development in children of a new motive, and teach them new tools of thinking, problem-solving, and self-regulation. As a result, children outgrow their current leading activity and transition to the new leading activity, which is specific to the next age period. Vygotskians have described the leading activities of children in industrialized societies thus:
• first year of life: emotional interactions with caregivers.
• ages one to three: object-centered joint explorations with caregivers.
• ages three to six: sociodramatic play.
• middle childhood: learning at school.
• adolescence: interactions with peers.
Vygotskian developmental theory has received strong empirical support from the studies of contemporary researchers. Its major strength lies in the fact that it integrates in a meaningful way motivational, cognitive, and social factors as resulting in children’s engagement in the age-specific leading activity. This theory also provides an explanation of the mechanism of children’s transition from one developmental stage to the next, which many alternative theories of development fail to do. Some of the Vygotskians’ notions, however, weaken their analysis and can be disputed (for example, their disregard of the role of physiological maturation in children’s development).
