Child Development Theories and Examples

Collaboration Not Conservation

As noted in the introduction to this section, history shows that it has been quite difficult to maintain a balanced view of the role of social interaction in cognitive development. Many seem to think of the problem according to the scheme of a "conservation" equation: Child's Contribution + Social Contribution = A Constant Amount of Knowledge. Given this scheme, the laws of algebra demand that if the child's contribution goes up the social contribution must go down, and vice versa. Any theorist who focuses on one factor is led by the scheme to downplay the other. But the scheme itself is plainly inappropriate. Not only is the amount of knowledge not conserved, but the evidence indicates that social factors contribute most when embedded within the child's own ongoing efforts at mastery. As Bullock (1983) noted when proposing the convergence rate hierarchy, higher cognitive potentials seem to arise with specific new types of social interaction. By emphasizing the concept of guided reinvention, we hope to have made it difficult for investigators to continue thinking in terms of the conservation scheme.
Because this treatment stands on the shoulders of Vygotsky's pioneering work and because the next section is devoted to the topic of literacy, it is fitting to round off this section with Vygotsky's (1934/1978:117-118) prescient remarks about the need for embedded teaching of literacy:
Reading and writing must be something the child needs. Here we have the most vivid example of the basic contradiction that appears in the teaching of writing not only in Montessori's school but in most other schools as well, namely, that writing is taught as a motor skill and not as a complex cultural activity .... Writing should be meaningful for children .... an intrinsic need should be aroused in them, and... writing should be incorporated into a task that is necessary and relevant for life. Only then can we be certain that it will develop not as a matter of hand and finger habits but as a really new and complex form of speech.