What Comes First: Meaning or the Word?

The most fundamental question is whether the child learns a word to describe a category or class he has already created mentally as a result of his manipulations of the world around him, or whether the existence of a word forces the child to create new cognitive categories. This may seem like a highly abstract argument, but it touches on the fundamental issue of the relationship between language and thought. Does the child learn to represent objects to himself because he now has language, or ...

 How Rules Make Games Pleasurable and Encourage Self-Regul...

Picture a child poised excitedly at the starting line of a footrace, ready to run down the track, breathlessly awaiting the starting signal. Rather than giving in to her intense desire to leap from the starting line, she waits for the signal that the race has begun. What's going on here? Why does our player anxiously hold back when she really desires to run? Developmental psychologist L. S. Vygotsky notes that "Play continually creates demands on the child to act against immediate impulse, i...

 Classroom as Gamespace

A gamespace is a uniquely coded and constructed place where players are expected to act before being any good at what they’re doing; they’re spaces inherently founded on the notion of risk taking. The process of building a classroom that functions as a gamespace should start with the teacher being committed to democratic learning processes that place the student at the center of his or her learning and development. Likewise, it casts the teacher as the constructor or designer of the games...