My teaching and mentoring is guided by the Neo-Vygotskian notions of guided participation, apprenticeship, scaffolding, the zone of proximal development (ZPD), and dynamic assessment. Also, I subscribe to a few key principles of motivation in education, as described below.

    Guided participation and apprenticeship refer to the idea that students learn best when they are engaged in the authentic practices of the culture of which they wish to become a part, and when their participation in such activities is carefully guided by an experienced mentor. In my graduate courses and in my research lab, such guided participation experiences are given to students as we engage jointly in scholarly discussion, oral presentation, critical reading and reviewing of research, discussion leading, scholarly writing, and collaborative research projects.

    Scaffolding refers to a particular pattern of assistance given by the mentor during joint activities with the student in which the mentor:

    a) carefully modifies the task demands on the student so that the task is at an
        appropriately challenging yet attainable level for the student,
    b) sensitively and dynamically withdraws their assistance during joint activities as the
        student is able to adopt more individual responsibility for carrying out  tasks,
    c) gradually transfers more and more responsibility from the mentor to the student as the
        student becomes more competent and a more fully participating member of the academic
        research community.

    In the culture of academic research, scholars rarely work alone. Most papers are collaborative with multiple authors. Similarly, graduate training in my lab is based on a model of collaboration with collaborative research activities being the norm both among the mentor and the student and among students. The ZPD refers to the gap between what students can do individually and what they can do in collaboration with other people, and suggests that a) students learn more in the context of joint collaboration than in individual exploration, and b) it is actually through collaborative activities with more competent members of the culture that individual psychological, cognitive, and skill development occurs.

    Dynamic assessment is an approach to evaluation based on the ZPD which insists that what is really interesting and predictive of future success is not what students can do in isolation (static functioning), but what they can do with some appropriate assistance or scaffolding (dynamic functioning). Therefore, assessment should involve a measurement of how responsive students are to instruction - how much they improve given assistance. One way in which dynamic assessment principles are manifested in my graduate courses is the "revise and resubmit" format used for course papers. Students first turn in their course paper, then I give detailed feedback to students on their papers, and then they revise the paper and turn in the paper again - not unlike the revision process commonly used by journal editors.

In terms of motivation, my courses are explicitly based on a mastery or learning motivational orientation, in contrast to a performance or ego-involved orientation.

Traditional performance or ego-based classrooms are those in which:

• The focus is on normative comparison (how well students compare to other students, grading on the curve, emphasis on salient public grades)
• Poor performance and/or failure are interpreted as an indication of students' permanent lack of ability
• Student self-concept is based on doing better than other students
• Emphasis is on student competition (helping someone else translates into lowering your own grade)
• Negative or constructive feedback from the instructor is avoided because it is interpreted as reflecting a lack of ability
• Risks and challenges are avoided for fear of failure
• Intelligence or competence is seen as being a fixed, genetically determined ability

• A focus on individual improvement and mastery of the material/skills over time (grades are not salient nor emphasized - no curve)
• Poor performance or failure is seen as an indication of poor use of strategies or lack of effort, and as an indication of how far the student has progressed so far toward the learning goal
• Student self-concept is based on personal improvement and mastery of the material/skills
• Emphasis is on cooperation and collaboration (helping another student translates into better learning and performance for all)
• Negative or constructive feedback from the instructor is desired as it reflects opportunities to learn
• Risks and challenges are embraced as they mean more learning will likely take place
• Intelligence and competence are seen as incremental and modifiable with experience and effort.

Back to Winsler's Web World

Back to Faculty in the Psychology Department

Back to the Psychology Department Home Page

Back to GMU's Home Page