Communication and Generalization

“We have found the key to the problem of developmental instruction in primary school age. The key is the content of the instruction. If we want instruction in elementary school to be continuously developing, we must first attend to the scientific nature of the content [emphasis added—G.Z.],” wrote D.B. El’konin in 1974, summing up the results of a fifteen-year experimental study of the age cabilities of primary schoolchildren [1]. These experiments showed that the introduction of young schoolchildren to the foundations of the sciences and the development of a system of theoretical concepts are a) possible and b) open to the potential for a radical restructuring of the entire character of the child’s development and to the emergence of theoretical thinking and the reflection that underlies it — the central mental neoformation of primary school age. The systemic and symbolic–model nature of theoretical knowledge distinguish the content of school instruction [obuchenie] from the mass of cultural content that children assimilate before entering school. It is clear that qualitatively new content requires qualitatively new forms of assimilation. The initial form of mastering any cultural content is collaboration between the child and an adult. The relationship between the form and content of the collaboration was aphoristically formulated by L.S. Vygotsky: “A new type of generalization requires a new type of communication” [2]. This work is devoted to deciphering and concretizing Vygotsky’s elegant formula, considering only one question in detail: what specific learning collaboration between a child and an adult is necessary for the assimilation of new — theoretical — knowledge and the child’s transition to a new — theoretical — method of generalization? In order to meaningfully define learning collaboration, which should first appear in primary school age, it should be distinguished from the previous preschool, pre-educational forms of child–adult collaboration. What forms of interaction with an adult does the child who has arrived at school already have; why is the entire arsenal of preschool means and methods of collaboration insufficient to master the educational content? This chapter will be devoted to