Sociocultural Psychology

The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the analysis of a basic problem that is central in both Vygotsky's and Scribner's work, namely, that of how educational practice becomes reflected in children's general psychological functioning. This problem is related to the more epistemological problem of how societal practice effects qualitative change in the higher intellectual functioning of humans. The study presented here is a qualitative study of the effect of Developmental Teaching on a child's skill acquisition and general psychic development.

Developmental Teaching is an approach based on the epistemology of the cultural-historical or sociohistorical school in psychology inspired by Markova, Davydov, and Lompscher (Markova 1978–79; Davydov 1982, 1988; Lompscher 1984). It is also inspired by Jerome Bruner's curriculum, Man a Course of Study. Developmental Teaching, however, transcends both these approaches on several essential points: by introducing a “double move” in instruction, by working directly with goal formation as a phase of instruction, and by using children's cooperation to facilitate their acquisition of knowledge and skill in the subject matter.

Developmental Teaching was carried out as part of a three-year intervention project in biology, geography, and history in a Danish elementary school.

A microstudy of one child's skill acquisition and general psychic development is presented in order to trace the learning process in detail. The teaching process has been the focus of earlier reports of the project (Hedegaard 1988, 1990a, 1990b, Hedegaard and Sigersted 1992). Specifically, the focus of the analysis will be a child's development of motivation, social interaction, theoretical knowledge, and thinking skills.