Child Development Theories and Examples

The Effects Of Schooling And Other Literate Practices

One of the most promising new directions for cognitive-developmental research concerns the cognitive effects of literacy and formal schooling (Cole and Brunet, 1971; Cole and Griffin, 1980; Goody, 1977; Luria, 1976; Olson, 1976; Ong, 1982; Scribner and Cole, 1981; Vygotsky 1934/1978). This new area has live roots in anthropology, educational theory, historiography, philosophy, linguistics, and developmental and cross-cultural psychology. These roots give the area both a singular vitality and a special promise for promoting communication among relatively isolated academic disciplines (Ong, 1982). Moreover, literacy and schooling relate closely to the emphasis on the interaction between child and environment in cognitive development. The effects of literacy and schooling seem to arise from the environmental supports they provide for advanced cognitive functioning. To understand cognitive development in the child in school, scientists and educators need to understand how the teaching of literacy and schooling relates to the child's natural learning processes and how literacy and schooling affect the child's mind.
Our treatment of literacy effects necessarily begins with the problem of definition, because there are many literacies and each may have distinctive cognitive-developmental effects. The range of literate practices is analyzed in terms of how each functions in mental life. This analysis leads to the specification of appropriate methods for assessing the cognitive effects of literate practices. The approach presented here represents what seems to be an emerging consensus about literacy and schooling.

Defining Literacy

What are the cognitive effects of literacy? According to recent research (Goody, 1977; Scribner and Cole, 1981), answering this question in a scientifically useful manner requires careful specification of what is meant by literacy. All literacies involve both (1) one or more conventionalized systems for external representation of ideas and (2) a set of cultural practices that use the systems. Literacies include all conventionalized representational systems, not just alphabetic writing. Any cognitive consequences can be expected to be determined jointly by the specific nature of a representational system and its associated practices. As a reminder of these points, we use the words literate practices rather than literacy.
Table 3-4 presents some literate practices that span a range from simple labeling (practice 1) to scientific theory construction (practice 9). To illustrate the vastness of this span, we discuss two extreme cases of literate practices: the use of a limited writing system by some men in West Africa and the use of multiple representational systems by modem scientists. The vast differences between these two cases suggest enormous differences in their cognitive consequences.