Restructuring heterogeneous classes for cognitive development: Social interactive perspective

Authors: Ben-Ari R.¹; Kedem-Friedrich P.²

Source: Instructional Science, Volume 28, Number 2, March 2000 , pp. 153-167(15)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

An educational application derived from the social constructivism view based largely on the theories of Vygotsky (1962, 1978) and Piaget (1926), was tried in order to improve cognitive development of children studying in a heterogeneous class. A path analysis based on the study of 1017 pupils, 8- to 11-year-olds, studying in 36 classrooms, shows that complex learning techniques are related to cognitive development, especially of lower level children. The process requires that the teacher take a ``developer'' role encouraging the students to interact verbally in order to solve the learning tasks. The improvement seems to be based entirely on the students' on-task verbal interaction, but that was instigated by the developer teacher's role and impeded by supervisory role.

Keywords: on-task social interaction; cognitive development; complex instruction; heterogeneous class

Language: English

Document Type: Regular paper

Affiliations: 1: Department of Psychology, Institute for the Advancement of Social Integration in the Schools, Bar-Ilan University, 52900 Ramat-Gan, Israel, e-mail: benari@mail.biu.ac.il (author for correspondence) 2: Department of Psychology, Institute for the Advancement of Social Integration in the Schools, Bar-Ilan University, 52900 Ramat-Gan, Israel

Publication date: 2000-03-01