A CTIVIDADES ECONÓMICAS . D ATOS MÁS RELEVANTES

In his book on second language acquisition, Ellis (2012) outlines key

components of Socio-cultural Theory, and reading this through a Bio-ecological lens highlights several consistencies between the two theoretical stances. These key ideas include ‘mediated learning’, ‘internalisation’, ‘self-regulation’ and the ‘Zone of Proximal Development’.

With regard to mediated learning, like the Bio-ecological Model, Socio- cultural Theory acknowledges biological inheritance as the basis for subsequent development, but maintains that higher order functioning develops through the “interweaving of cultural and biological inheritances” (Lantolf and Thorne, 2006, p. 59). In Bronfenbrenner’s terms, such interweaving constitutes an element of

‘process’. Socio-cultural theorists believe that “mediated minds are developed out of

the social activity that is embedded in the cultural values of particular communities” (Ellis, 2012, p. 524), and this is in harmony with a Bio-ecological perspective on the child in society.

Later Socio-cultural Theories, such as ‘Activity Theory’ (Leontiev, 1981) are particularly consistent with the Bio-ecological perspective on individual differences within cultures. Activity Theory emphasises ‘motives’ which may be biologically based (like hunger) or socially constructed (like the need to learn about a theory to pass an exam), and they can determine how each individual approaches a task. Activity Theory, like a Bio-ecological perspective, recognises the intertwining of the social and the psychological, as well as the biological or embodied, in this concept of

socially constructed motives. For example, Wertsch, Minick and Arns (1984) found differences between middle class urban mothers and rural uneducated mothers in Brazil in how they instruct their children, with middle class mothers aiming to teach skills for future use, and rural mothers aiming to get the task completed in the most efficient and straightforward manner possible, so relying on more directive

approaches. This resonates with Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, and a sense of ‘what is important’ based on social class.

Within Activity Theory, the ‘activity system’ (Engstrom, 1993) incorporates the individual, the object of activity, the mediational means and the contextual

framework provided by the community and its social rules. The Bio-ecological Model offers a framework within which to synthesise and understand all of these concepts. In describing human learning, the socio-cultural theorist Lantolf could be writing about Bronfenbrenner’s concept of ‘process’:

The person and the world are necessarily connected in a dialectic and

inseparable relationship (Lantolf, 2005, p. 343)… [Development is] about the appropriation by individuals (and groups) of the mediational means made available by others (past or present) in their environment in order to improve control over their own mental activity (Lantolf, 2000).

Here we see the key Bio-ecological concepts of relationships and interaction between the child and people or objects (in the language of Socio-cultural Theory ‘artefacts’) in the environment over time. However, it could be argued that the Bio-

ecological Model extends these ideas beyond the Socio-cultural interpretation since Socio-cultural Theory largely emphasises the influence of culture (‘context’) on the individual mind (‘person’), whereas Bio-ecological theory agrees while also

According to Socio-cultural Theory, as the child develops and becomes more proficient he or she begins to depend less on external ‘artefacts’ and ‘mediators’ and more on internal ones, moving from ‘object-regulation’ to ‘other-regulation’ to ‘self- regulation’ (Ellis, 2012). As discussed with reference to both Bowlby (‘internal working model’) and Bourdieu (‘embodiment’), these concepts of ‘internalisation’ and ‘self-regulation’ that are key to a Socio-cultural perspective (Ellis, 2012) can be

readily accommodated and explicated within a Bio-ecological Framework.

Experience becomes incorporated into the ‘person’ characteristics of the child, and thus, in a process of mutual influence and reciprocity, influences the direction of future development. In fact, there are echoes of Bronfenbrenner’s notion of ‘process’ in this oft-quoted segment by Vygotsky (1981):

Any function in the child’s cultural development appears twice, or on two planes. First it appears on the social plane, then on the psychological plane. First it appears between people as an interpsychological category, and then within the child as an intrapsychological category… It goes without saying that internalization transforms the process itself and changes its structures and functions. Social relations or relations among people genetically underlie all higher functions and their relationships (p.163).

It is worth noting that the language used by both Vygotsky (1981) and

Bronfenbrenner and Morris (2006) is similar, in that the characteristics of the ‘person’ appear twice in the Bio-ecological Model - first as one of the components influencing the form, power, content and direction of ‘proximal processes’, and then again as ‘developmental outcomes’, or qualities of the developing ‘person’ which emerge later as a result of the

influence of development. This is somewhat different to Vygotsky’s conceptualisation of culture appearing first outside the child and then within as it becomes internalised – in fact Bronfenbrenner and Vygotsky appear to envisage the flow from the interpersonal to the intrapersonal in opposite directions; for Bronfenbrenner the starting point is the child, whose

characteristics determine how he or she engages with the culture, whereas for Vygotsky the starting point is the culture, whose characteristics determine the formation of the mind of the child. Nevertheless, the processes described by each are notably similar with regard to incorporation of external experiences into the internal life of the child, and it could be argued that in a circular process, debates about the starting point matter little.

For Socio-cultural theorists, language is key to such internalisation, as social speech becomes inner speech with children’s development, thus shifting the direction

of activity from external control to internal control and self-regulation. For example, Wertsch (1985) showed how children developed self-mediation through private speech as they moved from reliance on verbal instruction from parents to complete a puzzle, to verbally instructing themselves. Thus, the Socio-cultural notion of ‘private speech’ could be one mechanism by which the external becomes internal as postulated

by Bio-ecological theory.

Ellis (2012) also identifies Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of the Zone of Proximal

ZPD) development as another key element of Socio-cultural Theory. ZPD suggests that children can achieve to a higher level in interaction with a ‘more expert other’ than in isolation. This ‘more expert other’ is usually an adult but may be a peer, and ZPD hypothesises that cognitive development results when a child learns through problem-solving experiences shared with someone else. This concept is supported by extensive empirical work on the benefits of cooperative learning, or learning in the context of relationships with others (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2013; Johnson and Johnson, 1990; 1999; O’Toole, 2014; Slavin, 1995). In terms of understanding how ‘proximal processes’ work, Vygotsky’s (1978) ideas of the social formation of the mind through

the mechanism of culture indicate that not only are our understandings dependent on our personal construct systems, but also on the construct systems inherent within cultures. This is consistent with the Bio-ecological emphasis on the influence of the macro-system on individual functioning.

The concept of ZPD underlies several important pedagogical approaches in recent years. Many of these approaches draw on the related Vygotskian notion of ‘scaffolding’ (Wood, Bruner and Ross, 1976) whereby the educator acts as mediator

of learning through social interaction and creating contexts for learning within the child’s zone of proximal development, gradually withdrawing support as the child

becomes more self-regulated. For example, formative assessment or ‘assessment for learning’ (Wiliam, Lee, Harrison and Black, 2004) is premised on the idea that we should assess what children are capable of with adult support (‘potential

development’ in Vygotskian terms) rather than their current performance or ‘actual development’. Through a Bio-ecological lens, this again reflects the use of

relationships and ‘process’ to support learning and development.

Ellis (2012) indicates that the concept of ‘scaffolding’ has to some extent

fallen out of favour in the literature in recent years, as it is seen as something that the adult ‘does’ to the child, and in fact, the more up-to-date conceptualisations based around dialogic discourse identified by Ellis such as ‘collaborative dialogue’ (Swain, 2000) and ‘instructional conversation (Tharp and Gallimore, 1988) are even more

consistent with a Bio-ecological interpretation of the bi-directionality of ‘process’. They emphasise intersubjectivity and relationships in which the adult and the child

with ZPD is reciprocity between learner and mediator. “ZPD is premised on the view that development has both a social and a psychological dimension” (Ellis, 2012, p.

532), as is the Bio-ecological Model, and both Socio-cultural Theory and the Bio- ecological Model are two of the few accounts of human development that go beyond traditional dichotomies of ‘nature vs nurture’ to investigate how the social and the

psychological interact to direct outcomes.

Therefore, it is arguable that rather than framing childhood from either a Developmental or a Socio-cultural perspective, the Bio-ecological Model provides a framework through which to synthesise these traditionally polarised perspectives, as

recommended by Tzuo, Yang and Wright (2011). In fact, Woodhead’s (1999, p. 5) call for a move away from “standardisation” and towards “the experience of children in families, schools and other settings… [encompassing] the possibilities for childhood past, present and future” finds an echoing response in the Bio-ecological concepts of ‘process’, ‘person’, ‘context’ and ‘time’.