THE EDUCATIONAL THEORISTS

Mark Feuring - March 28, 2010 Everyday, we as humans are surrounded by objects that we learn to deal with. Some objects that we live with are more complex than others. We are educated within a system, and hope to learn where we as humans can interface with objects that sustain our wants and needs. When speaking of a tool we have adapted toward a certain context, that object may be labeled an artifact. We in our human skin may abstract processes of reflection, and define those tools as objects outside ourselves, or tools inside an environment. Lev Vygotsky was a social constructivist, and he believed language built rules of scaffolding. He was Jewish in nationality and was educated on a college campus in Soviet Russia. He worked during the early 1900's and stressed the zone of proximal development, which was how learning was based around social activity. How we include those tools within our daily lives is important to the functions of the tool, and the person. As people we are born with patterns of tools around us, and as youth we are educated about our surroundings. Most young generations are educated in a school system, where we are taught languages of algebra, science, and literature. But, the question becomes where in human growth and development the idea of a tool becomes a waste of time in the facets of teaching education. Artifacts are easier to study because they are part of history. Theories in education may play a role in determining the space and time of those tools we use to manipulate our surroundings. The statement of fact is concerned with the language of defining process, and where, or how do we enlighten the process of education. We want to know where learning about objects becomes the relation to the cause and effect of adaptation to theory based learning. When one new tool is introduced to the abstracts of artifacts we as humans build our cognitive maps, and hope that our social literature will allow for fundamental growth of adaptation. For cognitive stimulus the adaptation of the mind becomes something outside us because the language of society is ever changing. Is the social context that Lev Vygotsky describes with the zone of proximal development where scaffolding takes place outside the reach of our mind? Jean Piaget was French and his literature was published during his time of the early 1900's. Piaget believed in cognitive growing stages where mapping coherent learning meant studying age and range of adaptation. Are the basic maps Piaget taught of learning curves or cognition inside our past experience? What might cause concern for education with the external realm of artifacts, or tools going to show us when to achieve the better mental map of building blocks? To be coherent in the processes defined by learning within a world that exists outside ourselves we are lucky to recognize emotions. We as humans have created a world of artifacts, and that world of the tool is how we as humans are defined. We humans carry more than emotions in our mind or a thumb on our hand. That hand that we as humans have enables us to correlate structure and change the environment around us. The details of how to use a tool are different in a multiple context for each person’s script, and use of that tool which carries a rational implication of action. The messages of the skin and how the mind is structured create external symbol systems. We recognize the symbols, and in our mind we create the context for the use of that object. The skin or epidermis is a human organ. With many parts of our body, and our hypothetical education we receive enable us to adapt and grow with our artifacts. Piaget and his cognitive constructivist theories might be thrilled how we as humans adapt with cognition to the smart devices of technology that are rapidly changing the context of our current world situation. Vygotsky might comment those devices are creating the world for the smart machines are external or social in manipulative methodology through human interaction. It has been mentioned, that Piaget taught us how to think about how children build knowledge through social actions. Lev Vygotsky showed us with his theories, that learning or understanding is social in origin. He was the social constructivist while Piaget was the cognitive constructivist. Vygotsky believed it was the action and the practice of such actions from previous human activities that built intellectual reason. We as humans meditate and facilitate what we learn from tools or artifacts in a rapid mannerism that allow us to adapt as a total species. There are theories that deal with the biological mind, the cognitive context, and the social arena. But, the ideas that most pertain to education are practice, and hands on development. Where these theories play little part in education is the manipulative ways we have in our conscious minds upon how to characteristically adapt to the unforeseen body, and mind approach. The details of using what could be known as a cognitive artifact or tool are within the context of environment. When our youth take to the world with new eyes the rapid onset of such ideas has to be overwhelming, but we as humans measure time. Mostly our theories show us only a small paradigm of how we move in our skin. Especially when adapting to thought processes, understanding of tool artifacts, and the origin of mental mapping do we perceive cognition. It is in our best interest to work socially, and adapt as a total species with our context as described in learning, not teaching. The human senses are just too well adapted for the world of interaction in both with tools, and other species of the environment we dwell in.