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Review
How Children Think and Learn (Understanding Children's
Worlds Series)
Blackwell Publishing, 1988 (second edition:
1997)
Author: David Wood
Review by Donald Clark, CEO, Epic Group plc
First published in 1988 this book was reprinted and updated in
1999, and has been reprinted every year since. It's been very influential
and although it is presented as a textbook overview of theory in
child development and learning, it is really a social constructivist
tract. Vygotsky is hauled in at every possible moment, even when
he has little to say on a particular subject.
Wood's editor gives the game away in the preface when he uses
the phrase 'within his social constructivist framework'. This is
no objective overview, neither is it a book on psychology. It's
really a Vygotsky-led mixture of psychology and sociology. Now if,
like me, you regard the oft-quoted but little read Vygotsky as a
theorist whose thoughts on language belong to the first and not
the second half of the last century, you're likely to find this
book rather annoying. For the social constructivist, it's a joy.
Having got my gripe out of the way, let's turn to what's good
about the book. First, it's well written. This is no small achievement
in books on educational theory. Second, it has some excellent chapters
(not all).
Chapter 1 on 'Images of childhood and their reflection in teaching'
is transparently Vygotskian. It's full of the need for social interaction
and the importance of children learning from each other. But there's
a gem in here. Did you know that some cultures don't have the verb
'to teach'. We often forget the recent and non-universal nature
of our schools system. The section on language as internalised action
and speech is, to my mind completely out of date and the Vygotskian
view that social conditions determine learning take us full circle
back to a form of sociological behaviourism.
Chapter 2 starts with 'The impact of Vygotskyian thinking' and
takes us through the usual ideas about how language shapes thinking
and the way we think about the world. For a really brilliant rebuttal
read Stephen Pinker's critique of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in
How The Mind Works p 57, and for a counterblast to social constructivist
thinking, read Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate. It's as if the
real world of academic linguistics and psychology doesn't really
exist for Vygotskian theorists.
The next two chapters are fair summaries and critiques of Piaget
but it is in Chapter 5 that things get worrying. Here the crazy
theories of Basil Bernstein are trotted out. He's the guy who almost
single handedly reduced educational theory to a relativist jumble
of sixties nonsense. At least Chomsky is brought into the discussion,
but the chapter ends with no real synthesis of Piaget and Chomsky.
Curiously Vygotsky isn't mentioned in this chapter, despite the
title of his major work being Thought and Language.
From Chapter 7 onwards the book takes a sudden turn for the better.
I was really taken by his descriptions of literacy and numeracy
in children and the problems which teachers encounter. Here he's
lucid and practical. On maths, he describes how a child has to move
from ordinal to cardinal numbers and how each stage of abstraction
need bridging between the language of mathematics and the formal
abstract signs that maths uses. It's a pity that so few teachers
practice the clear recommendations that have emerged from Japan
and Russia on these issues. Although this book is for professionals
these two chapters are excellent introductions on how to help your
child read and get to grips with mathematics.
Finally, in the last chapter, one of the updated sections of the
book deals with technology and education. This is of little use,
quoting the usual dull obsession teachers had with LOGO. The computer
games revolution seems to have passed him by and no attempt is made
to look at how technology has revolutionised learning. His observations
are out of date and ignore the simple fact that the internet is
the largest learning resource on the planet. Really a text for Vygotsky
fans, with a poor starter and dessert, but excellent middle course.
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