Keywords: Psychology, education, Vygotsky, child development

Title: Awakening Children's Minds

Author/Artist: Laura Berk

Publisher: OUP

Media: Book

Reviewer: Irene Kappes
The focus of this book is on child-development from 0 to 8 years old, and as the title suggests, how parents and teachers can contribute to this.

Laura Berk is Professor of Psychology at Illinois State University and this accessible book is written from the perspective of parents and education in the United States. Berk presents American parents as lost without a parenting manual and confused by the many conflicting views and theories offered in existing publications. The irony of this is that she has made yet another contribution to the pot, but presumably parents are meant to see this one as the definitive. Apart from a couple of pages in the first chapter, she doesn't examine the different theories that have contributed to approaches to child development. She does take every opportunity to slag off Judith Rich Harris and her book The Nurture Assumption, practically labelling her as a genetic determinist, which I thought was a bit over the top. Don't, however, be put off by all this. This is an extremely interesting, rigorously evidenced, well-written and thought-provoking book, which should be read not only by parents and educators, but by all education bureaucrats and government ministers with responsibility for education.

Chapter one is called A New View of Child Development, but basically introduces the sociocultural theory of the Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky was researching and writing in the twenties and thirties, but his writings did not reach the West until the mid fifties and were not translated into English until the sixties. Berk says that his ideas were embraced by many American psychologists and educators in the eighties. All this just goes to show how long it can take new ideas to filter down to practice, especially when aided by a little political censorship. As a parent and someone who is involved in education, I find Vygotsky's theory empowering and that it confirms much of my own experiences of working with people with learning disabilities. (I believe we have spent far too much time trying to label and pigeon-hole people using restricting and outdated notions of what intelligence is.) Berk outlines Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development. In a nutshell this refers to the difference between what a child already knows and understands, and the understanding the child is ready to achieve with the right sort of intervention. The parent or educator intervenes by "scaffolding" the child's learning. The metaphor comes from viewing the child as a building under active construction. Berk says: -
The adult provides a dynamic, flexible scaffold - or framework - that assists the child in mastering new competencies. To promote development, the adult varies his or her assistance to fit the child's changing level of performance with the goal of keeping the child in the 'zone.'
In this way the adult keeps the child focused on what is achievable, avoiding the disempowering effect of constant failure. Questions are used, and appropriate tasks are set, which offer challenge, but do not make impossible demands. The tasks and questions are then adjusted as the child progresses.

Berk goes on to look at the important processes taking place in pre-school children, which she indicates are necessary to lay the foundations/acquire the skills for learning at a later age. She examines children's play and shows how parents can assist their child's development through 'scaffolding'. She states very clearly that, children who miss out on this essential stage of development are hindered in their progress in formal learning in school. This is a poignant point, given the recent moves in this country to formalise and standardise education and introduce testing at a young age. It is also a word of warning to parents who try to push their children to learn to read etc. at a very young age. Of course, many good educationalists have expressed these concerns, which the government has duly ignored.

The examples of good practice, in certain American schools, that are described in the book are particularly inspiring although even the most innovative and creative approaches are still very much geared to the existing school curriculum and focus ultimately on achievement in academic subjects. I think this is the main area in which the book falls down for me. It doesn't challenge the value system that places academic subjects above other forms of learning and intelligence. It is more concerned with how to enable individuals to succeed in the existing culture. But it does look at fostering creativity, and the processes described have much to offer whatever the focus. And, of course, Vygotsky was concerned with the development of cognitive processes through language and literacy.

I would certainly recommend this book to anyone interested in education, child-development and/or parenting.

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