Vygotsky

• Perhaps Vygotsky's most important contribution concerns the inter-relationship of language development and thought. This concept, explored in Vygotsky's book Thinking and Speaking, establishes the explicit and profound connection between speech (both silent inner speech and oral language), and the development of mental concepts and cognitive awareness (metacognition).



• It should be noted that Vygotsky described inner speech as being qualitatively different than normal (external) speech. Although Vygotsky believed inner speech to develop from external speech via a gradual process of internalization, with younger children only really able to "think out loud", he claimed that in its mature form it would be unintelligible to anyone except the thinker and would not resemble spoken language as we know it (in particular, being greatly compressed).



• Hence, thought itself develops socially.
  The infant learns the meaning of signs through interaction with her mother. She learns that pointing can be a tool and that pointing can be accompanied by cries and gurgles to express what she wants. Through this activity with her caregivers she learns that sounds are signs with which to conduct social interaction and soon the child begins to ask for the names of objects.
  



• Language starts as a tool external to the child used for social interaction. As she grows into her second year, the child uses this tool to guide her own activities in a kind of self-talk or "thinking out loud". Initially, self-talk is still very much a tool of social interaction, tapering away to negligible levels when the child is alone or with deaf children that cannot hear her. Gradually, however, self-talk is used more as a tool for self-directed and self-regulating behavior.



• Around the time the child starts school, her self-talk is no longer present, not because it has disappeared but rather because speaking has been appropriated and internalized. Self-talk "develops along a rising not a declining, curve; it goes through an evolution, not an involution. In the end, it becomes inner speech” (Vygotsky, 1987). Inner speech develops through its differentiation from social speech.
  



• Speaking has thus developed along two lines, the line of social communication and the line of inner speech, by which the child mediates and regulates her activity through her thoughts which in turn are mediated by the semiotics (the meaningful signs) of inner speech. This is not to say that thinking cannot take place without language, but rather that it is mediated by it and thus develops to a much higher level of sophistication. Just as the birthday cake as a sign provides much deeper meaning than its physical properties allow, inner speech as signs provides much deeper meaning than the lower psychological functions would otherwise allow.
  



• Inner speech is not comparable in form to external speech. External speech is the process of turning thought into words. Inner speech is the opposite, it is the conversion of speech into inward thought. Inner speech for example contains predicates only. Subjects are superfluous. Words too are used much more economically. One word in inner speech may be so replete with sense to the individual that it would take many words to express it in external speech.
• Here we propose an innovative approach to children's learning, one that integrates the transmission, constructivism, and social constructivism models by having teachers present some of the fundamental concepts involved in astronomy education at the elementary level. On the surface the approach looks like this:
  transmission - teacher...
  tells a story with astronomy content
  constructivism - students...
  listen
  ask questions
  make meaning of the story
  conceptualize the astronomical content
  construct an understanding of the implications of the astronomy to the story
  learn the story
  
• social constructivism - students...
  retell the story
  Upon closer examination of this cyclical sequence, one can see that students become engaged in various cognitive processes. For a constructivist example, children integrate a story's plot with the implications of the astronomical events and with the presence of similar phenomena in their own world. They elaborate on the science in the story and on the story itself. And finally they differentiate the plot from the science.
  When a student is ready to tell the story, she must have not only learned the story but also all of its component parts-the characters, setting, plot, and the principles of astronomy that are integral to it. In educational circles, it is widely believed that the best way to test if someone really knows something is to have her teach it. The retelling of a story and preserving its internal structures is such a test.

http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/42/story2.html