# data[].attributes.body
1.      This is an article that helps teachers know how they can help students become lifelong learners.

2.      I like that this article explicitly states the four core skills of lifelong learners. The article also shows specific ways things that teachers can help students develop these skills. It talks about how teachers are mentors and guides to students. I agree with this. All of our students are capable of doing great things and we are there to help them see this.

3.      I can promote a growth mindset in my policies and instruction. I can help students take ownership of their learning through choice and project-based learning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Whether it's going to graduate school, taking up a new hobby or simply picking up a book, life is filled with opportunities to keep learning. As teachers, we're passionate about the process and benefits that continued education provides. And it's important that we help our students develop their own passion for learning.

To help your students become lifelong learners, here's how to promote more problem solving, excitement and independence in classrooms of any grade.

Understanding Lifelong Learners

The first step in promoting lifelong learners is to understand the traits lifelong learners possess. That way, teachers can focus on helping students cultivate this particular skill set.

According to The American Board, lifelong learners possess four core skills:

The ability to conduct research.

The ability to evaluate information.

The ability to synthesize that information.

The ability to effectively communicate what has been learned.

Lifelong learners are independent people, so it's important for teachers to go beyond teaching and serve as mentor. When you support exploration and encourage curiosity, rather than always providing answers and giving instruction, students learn to become more independent.

Sebastien Turbot, curator and director of global programs at Qatar Foundation's World Innovation Summit for Education, says that instead of spoon-feeding information, teachers should serve as a guide, helping students find their own paths. This includes always being present and providing feedback when needed but maintaining a certain distance from the tasks at hand.

Real World Problems

Lifelong learners also possess the ability to engage with and tackle real world problems. From volunteering at a nonprofit to participating in fundraisers for charity, lifelong learners are people who want to make their mark on the world.

To develop these skills in children, presenting them with real world challenges in the classroom is good place to start. Education and career strategist Candace Alstad-Davies suggests discussing current events and issues across the globe. Bringing in guest speakers and going on field trips can further elevate the impact of current events lessons, challenging students to explore new opinions and mindsets beyond the ones they or their families may have.

Another approach to solving real world problems involves planning and creating something tangible. Specifically, Learning for a Sustainable Future recommends incorporating lessons that involve creating something useful and familiar. Think of lessons like making yogurt in Chemistry class or learning how to grow plants in Biology. These kinds of lessons elevate learning beyond the classroom and help students understand the excitement and importance of learning.

You can also give students freedom to evaluate one another's participation in a group project. Middle school teacher Lisa Spangler says that in her class, students are given a rubric for their group grade, with a total number of points. The students are then asked to divvy up their total grade based on each student's participation. If there's debate about a group member's level of participation, students are invited to engage in healthy conversation. This helps all students, regardless of how much they participated, take responsibility for their work.

Promote Learning Ownership

Lifelong learners are also proud owners of their ability to think about and solve problems independently. When you can promote learning ownership in the classroom, you cultivate the confidence needed to continue learning from both failures and successes throughout life. The easiest way to do this is to provide choices in the classroom.

MiddleWeb explains that students should have a choice about how they demonstrate their understanding of a text or lesson. After reading a book, for example, students can have the choice to complete a book report, a poster, a diorama or another creative work. MIT 's Teaching + Learning Lab says that this also helps students learn how they like to express their knowledge best. When students learn about things in a context that makes sense to them, they can better articulate it in their own words. In turn, this gives them a chance to feel proud of their work.

The flipped classroom model, where students learn outside the classroom via video and complete homework within it, also helps promote these skills. A key aspect of flipped learning that promotes lifelong learning is self-grading. When students grade and evaluate their own work, they're much more closely tied to their personal performance. Kim Haynes at Teach Hub writes that when students ask themselves questions like, "what did I learn today?" and "what am I still curious about?" they become more responsible for their own learning.

Emphasize Active Learning over Grading

We've talked before about how many teachers are straying away from traditional grading. But could grading also be detrimental to lifelong learning? Mark Enser, head of geography at Heathfield Community College in the UK, explains the role of grading in lifelong learning. He says that with so much pressure to achieve high marks and reach certain benchmarks, learning becomes more of a chore that is less enjoyable.

When a culture shifts from a focus on data and grading to a focus on excellence, students have more freedom to engage with their work in their own way and collaborate with others.

This process of learning is what architect Philip Riedel, a principal at NAC Architecture, calls active learning: "involving students in doing things and thinking about the things they are doing." Active learning promotes collaboration and creative learning between students, helping them develop teamwork and communication skills. And when students are given time and space to solve problems on their own, they'll be more likely to tackle problems throughout life. In turn, this will make them more engaged in learning new things and taking risks, even when it's scary and unknown.

Project-Based Learning

Project-based learning is a kind of active learning that helps students collaborate through hands-on challenges. According to The Smart Fox by Method Schools, project-based learning presents students with multi-step problems that slowly increase in complexity, requiring more collaboration as the project progresses.

As a result, students learn how to research, master trial and error and practice deductive reasoning. These are all skills that lifelong learners possess, and adding more project-based lessons to your classroom can help these skills become second nature.

Show Positive Examples

Students also develop a passion for lifelong learning from seeing positive examples displayed by adults other than teachers. Meadville-Tribune reporter Lori Drumm tells the story of a 98-year-old who reads to children at school. By learning from a much older person, the students see first-hand that engaging in discussions and reading books is something that people of all ages do. They learn to admire a zest for learning and intellectualism at any age.

Turn Mistakes into Opportunities

When it comes to taking risks, lifelong learners aren't afraid to fail. Lee Watanabe Crockett, the creative force behind the Solution Fluency Activity Planner, a tool for educators, says teachers should view student mistakes as opportunities.

When you see a student make a mistake, your reaction should not be disciplinary. Ask questions and get the student to ponder why that outcome happened, and what might come of another approach. Ask students questions about your own mistakes too, setting a positive example of what lifelong learning looks like. When students have the freedom to fail, they'll be more likely to try new things and learn from them; it's a skill that will serve them throughout their lives.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Developing Passionate Learners: A Skill That Will Change Students Lives

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Whether it's going to graduate school, taking up a new hobby or simply picking up a book, life is filled with opportunities to keep learning. As teachers, we're passionate about the process and benefits that continued education provides. And it's important that we help our students develop their own passion for learning.

# data[].attributes.body
1.      This is an article about how teachers can bring play into a high school classroom.

2.      I love the idea that older students need play just as much as younger students. I think it helps relieve some of the stress and pressure that school often brings. It promotes exploration and a growth mindset.

3.      I will plan make-believe into my assignments. I can plan free choice time, giving students a variety of options to choose from. I will give time to students to just explore for explorations sake.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Bring Playfulness to High School Students | KQED

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Play is often the domain of young children, but as those kids become teens, learning playfully maintains its importance, especially as academics and competitive sports take over.

# data[].attributes.body
1.      This is an article that defines what a community asset is, how to identify community assets, and what we can do with community assets.

2.      I think that connecting the students to their community in the classroom is important as part of being a culturally sustaining educator. But sometimes it can be hard to really know how to do that. I like that this article helps with identifying community assets and how they are important.

3.      I could work with students to identify assets in their communities. I can then work with students to do projects that involve the community. I can plan research papers, or interview assignments to help students identify their community assets.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Learn how to identify community assets and resources, and how to engage them in the community change effort.

What is a community asset?

Why should you identify community assets?

Who should identify community assets?

When should you identify community assets?

How do you identify community assets?

Mapping community assets

Using the community assets you have identified

Many community organizations focus on the needs or deficits of the community. Every community has needs and deficits that ought to be attended to.

But it is also possible to focus on assets and strengths -- emphasizing what the community does have, not what it doesn't. Those assets and strengths can be used to meet those same community needs; they can improve community life.

To draw upon a community's assets, we first have to find out what they are. So in this section, we will focus on identifying community assets and resources. We'll also show how they can be harnessed to meet community needs and to strengthen the community as a whole.

What is a community asset?

Our definition is broad. A community asset (or community resource, a very similar term) is anything that can be used to improve the quality of community life. And this means:

It can be a person -- Residents can be empowered to realize and use their abilities to build and transform the community. The stay-at-home mom or dad who organizes a playgroup. The informal neighborhood leader. The firefighter who risks his life to keep the community safe. These are all community assets.

It can be a physical structure or place -- a school, hospital, church, library, recreation center, social club. It could be a town landmark or symbol. It might also be an unused building that could house a community hospice, or a second floor room ideal for community meetings. Or it might be a public place that already belongs to the community -- a park, a wetland, or other open space.

It can be a community service that makes life better for some or all community members - public transportation, early childhood education center, community recycling facilities, cultural organization.

It can be a business that provides jobs and supports the local economy.

You and everyone else in the community are potential community assets. Everyone has some skills or talents, and everyone can provide knowledge about the community, connections to the people they know, and the kind of support that every effort needs - making phone calls, stuffing envelopes, giving people information, moving equipment or supplies - whatever needs doing. This suggests that everyone in the community can be a force for community improvement if only we knew what their assets were, and could put them to use.

One student of communities, John McKnight, has noted:
"Every single person has capacities, abilities and gifts. Living a good life depends on whether those capacities can be used, abilities expressed and gifts given."

Why should you identify community assets?

They can be used as a foundation for community improvement.

External resources (e.g., federal and state money) or grants may not be available. Therefore, the resources for change must come from within each community.

Identifying and mobilizing community assets enables community residents to gain control over their lives.

Improvement efforts are more effective, and longer-lasting, when community members dedicate their time and talents to changes they desire.

You can't fully understand the community without identifying its assets. Knowing the community's strengths makes it easier to understand what kinds of programs or initiatives might be possible to address the community's needs.

When efforts are planned on the strengths of the community, people are likely to feel more positive about them, and to believe they can succeed. It's a lot easier to gain community support for an effort that emphasizes the positive - "We have the resources within our community to deal with this, and we can do it!" - than one that stresses how large a problem is and how difficult it is to solve.

Who should identify community assets?

Community members of all stripes and from all sectors should be involved in identifying assets. One reason here is the commitment to participatory process that you'll find in most Community Tool Box sections. An even more important one, however, is that community members from a broad range of groups and populations are far more likely to identify assets that may not be apparent to everyone. The community's perception of what constitutes an asset or a resource is at least as legitimate as the "standard" list of institutions and people with specific skills.

A number of garbage-strewn, overgrown empty lots in a neighborhood can be seen as an eyesore and a neighborhood shame. But those lots can also be seen as open space that can be turned into playgrounds, pocket parks, and farmers' markets with volunteer labor that in itself provides a neighborhood community-building opportunity. Community perception is crucial, because seeing something as an asset can make it possible to use it as one.

When should we identify community assets?

Every day. But here are some situations when it's especially desirable to do so:

When you are conducting a community assessment and need to find assets to mobilize to address community needs.

When the community includes talented and experienced citizens whose skills are valuable but underutilized.

When you can't provide traditional services, even if you wanted to, and are looking for other ways to build up the community.

When you want to encourage residents to take pride in and responsibility for local concerns and improvements.

When you want to strengthen existing relationships and build new ones that will promote successful community development in the future.

How do you identify community assets?

The techniques for identifying community assets aren't very hard. You don't need a lot of special training or expertise to do the job well.

Before you begin, though, you do need to answer some important questions. You can do this yourself, in the privacy of your own home. But we recommend strongly do so before you start. Here they are:
What is the size of the community you're concerned with?
An entire county? Town? Neighborhood? Housing development?

The bigger the community, the more work is involved - and you might need and probably different study methods for a large community than for a small one.
What people are available to do the work?
An individual? A small group of people? A larger organization? If you're starting out alone, it makes sense to reach out to others, get them excited about the project, and recruit them to work with you. (Unless your community is very small, identifying all or most of its assets is a big job for one person).
How much time do you have for the task or how much time can you allow?
Tonight? A week? A month? As much time as it takes?

The more time you have, the more assets you will be able to uncover.
What financial resources, if any, can you count on to support the work?
If available, resources for copying or printing and to support human resources (time) can be helpful.
What do you want to do with the results?
Will they be posted in an online directory? Contacted about an opportunity to take action? If so, what action, and how?

What comes next?

There are different approaches to identifying community assets. Each can be valid and useful. Which approach is right for you? The answer will depend in large part on your answers to the starting questions above. So, once again, answer them before you start.

But below are two basic approaches you could use in your own community. They complement each other. One of them focuses on the assets of groups -- specifically, associations, organizations, and institutions. The other focuses on individual people.

Identifying the assets of groups

The central task here is to take an inventory of all the groups (associations, organizations, and institutions) that exist in your community. You want to make a list. But how do you figure out what goes on the list in the first place? Some suggestions follow:
Start the list with what you know. Write down anything that comes to mind. You can always correct your list later.
You can do this work by yourself; but it might be more useful and fun to work with others. Are there other people who could join you and make this a group project?

This is a great project for students or interns.
These can include:

United Way's 211 Information and Referral System contains information on non-profit organizations for many communities.

Community websites. Many cities and towns have their own websites, as do other community agencies. These can not only give you information about community resources, but also give you the names of people you can contact who might know a great deal more.

The yellow pages

Town directories, published for your community alone.

Lists of businesses, probably available from the chamber of commerce.

Lists of organizations and institutions that are not generally published. For example, your local newspaper may have its own unpublished list that it could make available to you.

Bulletin boards. Physical or virtual bulletin boards, and community-calendar type listings.

Your friends and colleagues. They may know about other lists available. And even if they don't, they may know of groups, organizations, and community assets that are not on anybody else's lists.

Refine and revise your list.
You can also break your list down in several different ways: alphabetically, geographically, by function, etc.

You now have an inventory of groups and group assets in your community -- the associations, organizations, and institutions that are a fundamental part of community life and that can be used for community improvement. That's an important step.
But what do you do now?

It's possible to put these assets on a map. For more information on how to do this, see the heading on Mapping Community Assets, coming up.

It's now desirable to think about how your list (or map) of assets could be used. See the heading on Using Community Assets, toward the end of this section.

Identifying the assets of individuals

Compiling a list of key groups is one approach for identifying community assets. Another approach is to compile the assets of individuals. This can be challenging, because:

There are many more people than groups. To survey large numbers of people will take a lot of time.

We often don't know people's assets unless we ask them. Their abilities and talents are often unknown. When listing organizations, you often immediately know what that group is about. But we probably won't know what individuals' talents and skills are until we ask them. That takes more time.

For both these reasons, identifying individual assets often takes place over a smaller community area such as a neighborhood.

But many of the above suggestions still apply. Here's how identifying individual community assets could be done in practice:
Answer the 5 "starting questions" previously given.
This step is the same as for studying the assets of groups.
Decide on the geographic area you want to cover.
Do you want to focus on a specific neighborhood or community? Or do you want a broad sampling of the community? Keep in mind the time and resources you have available as you make your decision.
Decide on how many people you are going to ask within that area.
Everyone? A certain fixed percentage? As many as you can find? Resolve this question in advance.
Draft some questions you want to ask that will get you the information you need.
Are you interested in skills, ("I can play the piano"), or interests ("I'd love to learn")?

If it is skills, what kind of skills -- academic, artistic, athletic, interpersonal, manual, office, organizing, parenting, vocational...? Human beings have many talents, and you probably want to narrow down your search, at least a little.

If interests, what kind as well? These too come in many and varied types.
Keep in mind:

Why am I collecting this information?

What do I want to use it for?

Design a method by which these questions can be asked.
Each method has its pros and cons.
Try out your questions on a sample group.
Based on their answers and their suggestions, you will probably want to make revisions. That's a good idea, and a natural part of the process. Professional surveyors do the same thing, many times over.
Collect your data.
You've now got a territory to cover, some good questions that meet your needs, and a method for getting the answers. Good work. Now it's time to put your plan into practice and collect your data.

An added bonus: When you ask people about their talents and abilities, that can also help encourage people to share them with others. So your survey may not only be identifying assets, but also promoting their use.

Once you have collected asset information, it's often especially helpful to put it on a map. Maps are good visual aids: seeing the data right in front of you often increases your insight and understanding. There are several ways to go about this:

One mapping method is to find a large street map of your community, with few other markings. (Your local Planning Department may help here, or you can probably print one out from Google Maps or some other similar site.) Then just mark with a dot, tag, or push-pin (maybe color-coded by type) the geographic location of the groups and organizations you have found. The patterns that emerge may surprise you. You may see, for example, that certain locations have different numbers or types of associations. Those areas where few associations exist may be good targets for community development later on.

This type of mapping can also be done by computer. Software programs are available to help you do this. These programs are more flexible and sophisticated than paper-and-pushpin mapping, for with them you can create "overlays," visually placing one category of map over another, and changing these visual patterns with the push of a button.

It's also possible to diagram your resources on a non-literal map, but one which can more clearly show the linkages among different categories of assets.

There are a number of ways of making a non-literal map. One common one is to start with an inner circle that lists physical spaces - buildings, parks, lakes, plazas - that can be used by the community or provide community services and functions. The next circle out lists community institutions - hospitals, schools and universities, libraries, etc. A circle around that second circle might include organizations connected to those institutions or doing related work. (An adult literacy program might be formally or informally tied to educational institutions, to the library, or to major employers, for example.) The next circle out might list services, the next informal groups, and the last individuals (either specific people or the types of skills and interests you are fairly sure you'll find in the community.) Lines might be drawn between these assets to show how they're connected, or to show how they're connected to the group or individuals making the map.

Other non-literal map methods might involve pictures, a photographic record, even small models of buildings and public spaces. The method really doesn't matter as much as the goal of plotting the community's assets in a way that makes it clear how they might interconnect, and how they can be combined to meet needs or enhance community life.

Using the community assets you have identified

Whether or not you map your assets, the next and most important step is to make sure the assets you have identified get used. There is value just in expanding your own personal awareness of what exists in your community, but by sharing your results, you can also expand the awareness of others.

The real value and payoff of identifying assets is in actions that will improve your community. You want to put your assets to work for you. If you have personal assets, such as savings, you probably don't want to hide them under a mattress. The same applies to the assets in your community. How can we maximize their return?
We'll itemize just a few possibilities below. Think about which might fit best for you, and what your own next steps might be:

Community assets can be the basis for asset-based planning. Planning for community development and interventions can be based on what the community has to work with, and can include strengthening current assets and developing new ones as well as addressing problems. (John McKnight and John "Jody" Kretzmann, known as the founders of the asset-based planning movement, are also the founders and co-Directors of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University, one of the Chicago area's community assets.)

You can publish the assets identified - on a town or separate website, in a community newsletter, in a community service section in the local newspaper, to name just three possibilities - and make them available to all community members. In doing so, you will stimulate public asset knowledge and use.

You can target a particular neighborhood or other area for development, on the basis of the asset patterns you have found.

You can use your knowledge of assets to tackle a new community project -- because now you may have more resources to work on that project than you originally thought.

You can find new ways to bring groups and organizations together, to learn about each other's assets -- and perhaps to work collaboratively on projects such as the one above.

You can publicize these assets, and attract new businesses and other opportunities to your community. In both this example and the ones just above, you are using existing assets to create new ones. (This is what makes community work exciting!)

You can create a school curriculum to teach local students about these assets, thus enriching their knowledge of the community and building community pride.

You can consider creating a "community coordinator," (or some other title), someone who would deal with assets every day. The coordinator's new job would be to find the right assets in the community to respond to any request or community concern. Would this position pay for itself?

You (or the new coordinator) can keep records how assets are used in the community, and use those records to generate ideas for improving asset exchange.

You can set up structured programs for asset exchange, which can range from individual skill swaps to institutional cost-sharing.

Community assets keep getting reviewed, perhaps on a regular basis. New assets are always coming on the scene; it's good to keep up to date on them. By so doing, the whole asset-identification process can become a regular part of community life.

Community assets should be reviewed on a regular basis. Asset identification should be a regular part of community life, so that community assets can be taken advantage of when they're needed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Section 8. Identifying Community Assets and Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn how to identify community assets and resources, and how to engage them in the community change effort. What is a community asset? Why should you identify community assets? Who should identify community assets? When should you identify community assets? How do you identify community assets?

# data[].attributes.headline
Implementing Social and Emotional Learning

# data[].attributes.subject
Implementing Social and Emotional Learning

# data[].attributes.body
1.      This is an article that explains how important SEL is for students and ways schools can start implementing it.

2.      I think that helping a student grow into a well-rounded individual means that we need to teach them skills that can help them be successful in the future. That includes more than just science, English, math, etc. This article shows how whole schools can be involved in helping students with this. But I also like how this article talks about connecting SEL to what students are learning so it doesn’t become confusing.

3.      I will periodically check-in with my students. I will give them opportunities to practice Social and emotional skills. I will teach them strategies for managing stress, being motivated, and more.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Implement Social and Emotional Learning at Your School

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To implement SEL at your school, use these seven activities to help students build self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making.

# data[].attributes.body
1.      This is an article by Abraham Maslow where he explains his theory of human motivation and the hierarchy of needs.

2.      I find Maslow’s theory important because it shows that people are influenced by many things in their lives, and that can affect their motivation. I have seen how when I have some of the physical needs unmet, I am unable to put as much effort into school. This will be important to remember as a teacher and to help where I can to make sure students’ needs are met.

3.      I will find ways to make sure students feel sake in my classroom with the physical and emotional environment. I will provide love and belonging and work to create a social, and caring classroom community. I will work to challenge my students intellectually.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
(Return to Classics index)

A Theory of Human Motivation

A. H. Maslow (1943)
Originally Published in Psychological Review, 50, 370-396.

[p. 370] I. INTRODUCTION

In a previous paper ( 13) various propositions were presented which would have to be included in any theory of human motivation that could lay claim to being definitive. These conclusions may be briefly summarized as follows:

1. The integrated wholeness of the organism must be one of the foundation stones of motivation theory.
2. The hunger drive (or any other physiological drive) was rejected as a centering point or model for a definitive theory of motivation. Any drive that is somatically based and localizable was shown to be atypical rather than typical in human motivation.

3. Such a theory should stress and center itself upon ultimate or basic goals rather than partial or superficial ones, upon ends rather than means to these ends. Such a stress would imply a more central place for unconscious than for conscious motivations.

4. There are usually available various cultural paths to the same goal. Therefore conscious, specific, local-cultural desires are not as fundamental in motivation theory as the more basic, unconscious goals.

5. Any motivated behavior, either preparatory or consummatory, must be understood to be a channel through which many basic needs may be simultaneously expressed or satisfied. Typically an act has more than one motivation.

6. Practically all organismic states are to be understood as motivated and as motivating.

7. Human needs arrange themselves in hierarchies of pre-potency. That is to say, the appearance of one need usually rests on the prior satisfaction of another, more pre-potent need. Man is a perpetually wanting animal. Also no need or drive can be treated as if it were isolated or discrete; every drive is related to the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of other drives.

8. Lists of drives will get us nowhere for various theoretical and practical reasons. Furthermore any classification of motivations [p. 371] must deal with the problem of levels of specificity or generalization the motives to be classified.

9. Classifications of motivations must be based upon goals rather than upon instigating drives or motivated behavior.

10. Motivation theory should be human-centered rather than animal-centered.

11. The situation or the field in which the organism reacts must be taken into account but the field alone can rarely serve as an exclusive explanation for behavior. Furthermore the field itself must be interpreted in terms of the organism. Field theory cannot be a substitute for motivation theory.

12. Not only the integration of the organism must be taken into account, but also the possibility of isolated, specific, partial or segmental reactions. It has since become necessary to add to these another affirmation.

13. Motivation theory is not synonymous with behavior theory. The motivations are only one class of determinants of behavior. While behavior is almost always motivated, it is also almost always biologically, culturally and situationally determined as well.

The present paper is an attempt to formulate a positive theory of motivation which will satisfy these theoretical demands and at the same time conform to the known facts, clinical and observational as well as experimental. It derives most directly, however, from clinical experience. This theory is, I think, in the functionalist tradition of James and Dewey, and is fused with the holism of Wertheimer ( 19), Goldstein (6), and Gestalt Psychology, and with the dynamicism of Freud (4) and Adler (1). This fusion or synthesis may arbitrarily be called a 'general-dynamic' theory.
It is far easier to perceive and to criticize the aspects in motivation theory than to remedy them. Mostly this is because of the very serious lack of sound data in this area. I conceive this lack of sound facts to be due primarily to the absence of a valid theory of motivation. The present theory then must be considered to be a suggested program or framework for future research and must stand or fall, not so much on facts available or evidence presented, as upon researches to be done, researches suggested perhaps, by the questions raised in this paper.[p. 372]

II. THE BASIC NEEDS

The 'physiological' needs. -- The needs that are usually taken as the starting point for motivation theory are the so-called physiological drives. Two recent lines of research make it necessary to revise our customary notions about these needs, first, the development of the concept of homeostasis, and second, the finding that appetites (preferential choices among foods) are a fairly efficient indication of actual needs or lacks in the body.

Homeostasis refers to the body's automatic efforts to maintain a constant, normal state of the blood stream. Cannon (2) has described this process for (1) the water content of the blood, (2) salt content, (3) sugar content, (4) protein content, (5) fat content, (6) calcium content, (7) oxygen content, (8) constant hydrogen-ion level (acid-base balance) and (9) constant temperature of the blood. Obviously this list can be extended to include other minerals, the hormones, vitamins, etc.

Young in a recent article ( 21) has summarized the work on appetite in its relation to body needs. If the body lacks some chemical, the individual will tend to develop a specific appetite or partial hunger for that food element.

Thus it seems impossible as well as useless to make any list of fundamental physiological needs for they can come to almost any number one might wish, depending on the degree of specificity of description. We can not identify all physiological needs as homeostatic. That sexual desire, sleepiness, sheer activity and maternal behavior in animals, are homeostatic, has not yet been demonstrated. Furthermore, this list would not include the various sensory pleasures (tastes, smells, tickling, stroking) which are probably physiological and which may become the goals of motivated behavior.

In a previous paper ( 13) it has been pointed out that these physiological drives or needs are to be considered unusual rather than typical because they are isolable, and because they are localizable somatically. That is to say, they are relatively independent of each other, of other motivations [p. 373] and of the organism as a whole, and secondly, in many cases, it is possible to demonstrate a localized, underlying somatic base for the drive. This is true less generally than has been thought (exceptions are fatigue, sleepiness, maternal responses) but it is still true in the classic instances of hunger, sex, and thirst.

It should be pointed out again that any of the physiological needs and the consummatory behavior involved with them serve as channels for all sorts of other needs as well. That is to say, the person who thinks he is hungry may actually be seeking more for comfort, or dependence, than for vitamins or proteins. Conversely, it is possible to satisfy the hunger need in part by other activities such as drinking water or smoking cigarettes. In other words, relatively isolable as these physiological needs are, they are not completely so.

Undoubtedly these physiological needs are the most pre-potent of all needs. What this means specifically is, that in the human being who is missing everything in life in an extreme fashion, it is most likely that the major motivation would be the physiological needs rather than any others. A person who is lacking food, safety, love, and esteem would most probably hunger for food more strongly than for anything else.

If all the needs are unsatisfied, and the organism is then dominated by the physiological needs, all other needs may become simply non-existent or be pushed into the background. It is then fair to characterize the whole organism by saying simply that it is hungry, for consciousness is almost completely preempted by hunger. All capacities are put into the service of hunger-satisfaction, and the organization of these capacities is almost entirely determined by the one purpose of satisfying hunger. The receptors and effectors, the intelligence, memory, habits, all may now be defined simply as hunger-gratifying tools. Capacities that are not useful for this purpose lie dormant, or are pushed into the background. The urge to write poetry, the desire to acquire an automobile, the interest in American history, the desire for a new pair of shoes are, in the extreme case, forgotten or become of sec-[p.374]ondary importance. For the man who is extremely and dangerously hungry, no other interests exist but food. He dreams food, he remembers food, he thinks about food, he emotes only about food, he perceives only food and he wants only food. The more subtle determinants that ordinarily fuse with the physiological drives in organizing even feeding, drinking or sexual behavior, may now be so completely overwhelmed as to allow us to speak at this time (but only at this time) of pure hunger drive and behavior, with the one unqualified aim of relief.

Another peculiar characteristic of the human organism when it is dominated by a certain need is that the whole philosophy of the future tends also to change. For our chronically and extremely hungry man, Utopia can be defined very simply as a place where there is plenty of food. He tends to think that, if only he is guaranteed food for the rest of his life, he will be perfectly happy and will never want anything more. Life itself tends to be defined in terms of eating. Anything else will be defined as unimportant. Freedom, love, community feeling, respect, philosophy, may all be waved aside as fripperies which are useless since they fail to fill the stomach. Such a man may fairly be said to live by bread alone.

It cannot possibly be denied that such things are true but their generality can be denied. Emergency conditions are, almost by definition, rare in the normally functioning peaceful society. That this truism can be forgotten is due mainly to two reasons. First, rats have few motivations other than physiological ones, and since so much of the research upon motivation has been made with these animals, it is easy to carry the rat-picture over to the human being. Secondly, it is too often not realized that culture itself is an adaptive tool, one of whose main functions is to make the physiological emergencies come less and less often. In most of the known societies, chronic extreme hunger of the emergency type is rare, rather than common. In any case, this is still true in the United States. The average American citizen is experiencing appetite rather than hunger when he says "I am [p. 375] hungry." He is apt to experience sheer life-and-death hunger only by accident and then only a few times through his entire life.

Obviously a good way to obscure the 'higher' motivations, and to get a lopsided view of human capacities and human nature, is to make the organism extremely and chronically hungry or thirsty. Anyone who attempts to make an emergency picture into a typical one, and who will measure all of man's goals and desires by his behavior during extreme physiological deprivation is certainly being blind to many things. It is quite true that man lives by bread alone -- when there is no bread. But what happens to man's desires when there is plenty of bread and when his belly is chronically filled?

At once other (and 'higher') needs emerge and these, rather than physiological hungers, dominate the organism. And when these in turn are satisfied, again new (and still 'higher') needs emerge and so on. This is what we mean by saying that the basic human needs are organized into a hierarchy of relative prepotency.

One main implication of this phrasing is that gratification becomes as important a concept as deprivation in motivation theory, for it releases the organism from the domination of a relatively more physiological need, permitting thereby the emergence of other more social goals. The physiological needs, along with their partial goals, when chronically gratified cease to exist as active determinants or organizers of behavior. They now exist only in a potential fashion in the sense that they may emerge again to dominate the organism if they are thwarted. But a want that is satisfied is no longer a want. The organism is dominated and its behavior organized only by unsatisfied needs. If hunger is satisfied, it becomes unimportant in the current dynamics of the individual.

This statement is somewhat qualified by a hypothesis to be discussed more fully later, namely that it is precisely those individuals in whom a certain need has always been satisfied who are best equipped to tolerate deprivation of that need in the future, and that furthermore, those who have been de-[p. 376]prived in the past will react differently to current satisfactions than the one who has never been deprived.

The safety needs. -- If the physiological needs are relatively well gratified, there then emerges a new set of needs, which we may categorize roughly as the safety needs. All that has been said of the physiological needs is equally true, although in lesser degree, of these desires. The organism may equally well be wholly dominated by them. They may serve as the almost exclusive organizers of behavior, recruiting all the capacities of the organism in their service, and we may then fairly describe the whole organism as a safety-seeking mechanism. Again we may say of the receptors, the effectors, of the intellect and the other capacities that they are primarily safety-seeking tools. Again, as in the hungry man, we find that the dominating goal is a strong determinant not only of his current world-outlook and philosophy but also of his philosophy of the future. Practically everything looks less important than safety, (even sometimes the physiological needs which being satisfied, are now underestimated). A man, in this state, if it is extreme enough and chronic enough, may be characterized as living almost for safety alone.

Although in this paper we are interested primarily in the needs of the adult, we can approach an understanding of his safety needs perhaps more efficiently by observation of infants and children, in whom these needs are much more simple and obvious. One reason for the clearer appearance of the threat or danger reaction in infants, is that they do not inhibit this reaction at all, whereas adults in our society have been taught to inhibit it at all costs. Thus even when adults do feel their safety to be threatened we may not be able to see this on the surface. Infants will react in a total fashion and as if they were endangered, if they are disturbed or dropped suddenly, startled by loud noises, flashing light, or other unusual sensory stimulation, by rough handling, by general loss of support in the mother's arms, or by inadequate support.[ 1][p. 377]

In infants we can also see a much more direct reaction to bodily illnesses of various kinds. Sometimes these illnesses seem to be immediately and per se threatening and seem to make the child feel unsafe. For instance, vomiting, colic or other sharp pains seem to make the child look at the whole world in a different way. At such a moment of pain, it may be postulated that, for the child, the appearance of the whole world suddenly changes from sunniness to darkness, so to speak, and becomes a place in which anything at all might happen, in which previously stable things have suddenly become unstable. Thus a child who because of some bad food is taken ill may, for a day or two, develop fear, nightmares, and a need for protection and reassurance never seen in him before his illness.

Another indication of the child's need for safety is his preference for some kind of undisrupted routine or rhythm. He seems to want a predictable, orderly world. For instance, injustice, unfairness, or inconsistency in the parents seems to make a child feel anxious and unsafe. This attitude may be not so much because of the injustice per se or any particular pains involved, but rather because this treatment threatens to make the world look unreliable, or unsafe, or unpredictable. Young children seem to thrive better under a system which has at least a skeletal outline of rigidity, In which there is a schedule of a kind, some sort of routine, something that can be counted upon, not only for the present but also far into the future. Perhaps one could express this more accurately by saying that the child needs an organized world rather than an unorganized or unstructured one.

The central role of the parents and the normal family setup are indisputable. Quarreling, physical assault, separation, divorce or death within the family may be particularly terrifying. Also parental outbursts of rage or threats of punishment directed to the child, calling him names, speaking to him harshly, shaking him, handling him roughly, or actual [p. 378] physical punishment sometimes elicit such total panic and terror in the child that we must assume more is involved than the physical pain alone. While it is true that in some children this terror may represent also a fear of loss of parental love, it can also occur in completely rejected children, who seem to cling to the hating parents more for sheer safety and protection than because of hope of love.

Confronting the average child with new, unfamiliar, strange, unmanageable stimuli or situations will too frequently elicit the danger or terror reaction, as for example, getting lost or even being separated from the parents for a short time, being confronted with new faces, new situations or new tasks, the sight of strange, unfamiliar or uncontrollable objects, illness or death. Particularly at such times, the child's frantic clinging to his parents is eloquent testimony to their role as protectors (quite apart from their roles as food-givers and love-givers).

From these and similar observations, we may generalize and say that the average child in our society generally prefers a safe, orderly, predictable, organized world, which he can count, on, and in which unexpected, unmanageable or other dangerous things do not happen, and in which, in any case, he has all-powerful parents who protect and shield him from harm.

That these reactions may so easily be observed in children is in a way a proof of the fact that children in our society, feel too unsafe (or, in a word, are badly brought up). Children who are reared in an unthreatening, loving family do not ordinarily react as we have described above ( 17). In such children the danger reactions are apt to come mostly to objects or situations that adults too would consider dangerous.[ 2]

The healthy, normal, fortunate adult in our culture is largely satisfied in his safety needs. The peaceful, smoothly [p. 379] running, 'good' society ordinarily makes its members feel safe enough from wild animals, extremes of temperature, criminals, assault and murder, tyranny, etc. Therefore, in a very real sense, he no longer has any safety needs as active motivators. Just as a sated man no longer feels hungry, a safe man no longer feels endangered. If we wish to see these needs directly and clearly we must turn to neurotic or near-neurotic individuals, and to the economic and social underdogs. In between these extremes, we can perceive the expressions of safety needs only in such phenomena as, for instance, the common preference for a job with tenure and protection, the desire for a savings account, and for insurance of various kinds (medical, dental, unemployment, disability, old age).

Other broader aspects of the attempt to seek safety and stability in the world are seen in the very common preference for familiar rather than unfamiliar things, or for the known rather than the unknown. The tendency to have some religion or world-philosophy that organizes the universe and the men in it into some sort of satisfactorily coherent, meaningful whole is also in part motivated by safety-seeking. Here too we may list science and philosophy in general as partially motivated by the safety needs (we shall see later that there are also other motivations to scientific, philosophical or religious endeavor).

Otherwise the need for safety is seen as an active and dominant mobilizer of the organism's resources only in emergencies, e. g., war, disease, natural catastrophes, crime waves, societal disorganization, neurosis, brain injury, chronically bad situation.

Some neurotic adults in our society are, in many ways, like the unsafe child in their desire for safety, although in the former it takes on a somewhat special appearance. Their reaction is often to unknown, psychological dangers in a world that is perceived to be hostile, overwhelming and threatening. Such a person behaves as if a great catastrophe were almost always impending, i.e., he is usually responding as if to an emergency. His safety needs often find specific [p. 380] expression in a search for a protector, or a stronger person on whom he may depend, or perhaps, a Fuehrer.

The neurotic individual may be described in a slightly different way with some usefulness as a grown-up person who retains his childish attitudes toward the world. That is to say, a neurotic adult may be said to behave 'as if' he were actually afraid of a spanking, or of his mother's disapproval, or of being abandoned by his parents, or having his food taken away from him. It is as if his childish attitudes of fear and threat reaction to a dangerous world had gone underground, and untouched by the growing up and learning processes, were now ready to be called out by any stimulus that would make a child feel endangered and threatened.[ 3]

The neurosis in which the search for safety takes its dearest form is in the compulsive-obsessive neurosis. Compulsive-obsessives try frantically to order and stabilize the world so that no unmanageable, unexpected or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear ( 14); They hedge themselves about with all sorts of ceremonials, rules and formulas so that every possible contingency may be provided for and so that no new contingencies may appear. They are much like the brain injured cases, described by Goldstein ( 6), who manage to maintain their equilibrium by avoiding everything unfamiliar and strange and by ordering their restricted world in such a neat, disciplined, orderly fashion that everything in the world can be counted upon. They try to arrange the world so that anything unexpected (dangers) cannot possibly occur. If, through no fault of their own, something unexpected does occur, they go into a panic reaction as if this unexpected occurrence constituted a grave danger. What we can see only as a none-too-strong preference in the healthy person, e. g., preference for the familiar, becomes a life-and-death. necessity in abnormal cases.

The love needs. -- If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, then there will emerge the love and affection and belongingness needs, and the whole cycle [p. 381] already described will repeat itself with this new center. Now the person will feel keenly, as never before, the absence of friends, or a sweetheart, or a wife, or children. He will hunger for affectionate relations with people in general, namely, for a place in his group, and he will strive with great intensity to achieve this goal. He will want to attain such a place more than anything else in the world and may even forget that once, when he was hungry, he sneered at love.

In our society the thwarting of these needs is the most commonly found core in cases of maladjustment and more severe psychopathology. Love and affection, as well as their possible expression in sexuality, are generally looked upon with ambivalence and are customarily hedged about with many restrictions and inhibitions. Practically all theorists of psychopathology have stressed thwarting of the love needs as basic in the picture of maladjustment. Many clinical studies have therefore been made of this need and we know more about it perhaps than any of the other needs except the physiological ones ( 14).

One thing that must be stressed at this point is that love is not synonymous with sex. Sex may be studied as a purely physiological need. Ordinarily sexual behavior is multi-determined, that is to say, determined not only by sexual but also by other needs, chief among which are the love and affection needs. Also not to be overlooked is the fact that the love needs involve both giving and receiving love.[ 4]

The esteem needs. -- All people in our society (with a few pathological exceptions) have a need or desire for a stable, firmly based, (usually) high evaluation of themselves, for self-respect, or self-esteem, and for the esteem of others. By firmly based self-esteem, we mean that which is soundly based upon real capacity, achievement and respect from others. These needs may be classified into two subsidiary sets. These are, first, the desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for confidence in the face of the world, and for independence and freedom.[ 5] Secondly, we have what [p. 382] we may call the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people), recognition, attention, importance or appreciation.[ 6] These needs have been relatively stressed by Alfred Adler and his followers, and have been relatively neglected by Freud and the psychoanalysts. More and more today however there is appearing widespread appreciation of their central importance.

Satisfaction of the self-esteem need leads to feelings of self-confidence, worth, strength, capability and adequacy of being useful and necessary in the world. But thwarting of these needs produces feelings of inferiority, of weakness and of helplessness. These feelings in turn give rise to either basic discouragement or else compensatory or neurotic trends. An appreciation of the necessity of basic self-confidence and an understanding of how helpless people are without it, can be easily gained from a study of severe traumatic neurosis ( 8).[ 7]

The need for self-actualization. -- Even if all these needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization.

This term, first coined by Kurt Goldstein, is being used in this paper in a much more specific and limited fashion. It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.[p. 383]

The specific form that these needs will take will of course vary greatly from person to person. In one individual it may take the form of the desire to be an ideal mother, in another it may be expressed athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or in inventions. It is not necessarily a creative urge although in people who have any capacities for creation it will take this form.

The clear emergence of these needs rests upon prior satisfaction of the physiological, safety, love and esteem needs. We shall call people who are satisfied in these needs, basically satisfied people, and it is from these that we may expect the fullest (and healthiest) creativeness.[ 8] Since, in our society, basically satisfied people are the exception, we do not know much about self-actualization, either experimentally or clinically. It remains a challenging problem for research.

The preconditions for the basic need satisfactions. -- There are certain conditions which are immediate prerequisites for the basic need satisfactions. Danger to these is reacted to almost as if it were a direct danger to the basic needs themselves. Such conditions as freedom to speak, freedom to do what one wishes so long as no harm is done to others, freedom to express one's self, freedom to investigate and seek for information, freedom to defend one's self, justice, fairness, honesty, orderliness in the group are examples of such preconditions for basic need satisfactions. Thwarting in these freedoms will be reacted to with a threat or emergency response. These conditions are not ends in themselves but they are almost so since they are so closely related to the basic needs, which are apparently the only ends in themselves. These conditions are defended because without them the basic satisfactions are quite impossible, or at least, very severely endangered.[p. 384]

If we remember that the cognitive capacities (perceptual, intellectual, learning) are a set of adjustive tools, which have, among other functions, that of satisfaction of our basic needs, then it is clear that any danger to them, any deprivation or blocking of their free use, must also be indirectly threatening to the basic needs themselves. Such a statement is a partial solution of the general problems of curiosity, the search for knowledge, truth and wisdom, and the ever-persistent urge to solve the cosmic mysteries.

We must therefore introduce another hypothesis and speak of degrees of closeness to the basic needs, for we have already pointed out that any conscious desires (partial goals) are more or less important as they are more or less close to the basic needs. The same statement may be made for various behavior acts. An act is psychologically important if it contributes directly to satisfaction of basic needs. The less directly it so contributes, or the weaker this contribution is, the less important this act must be conceived to be from the point of view of dynamic psychology. A similar statement may be made for the various defense or coping mechanisms. Some are very directly related to the protection or attainment of the basic needs, others are only weakly and distantly related. Indeed if we wished, we could speak of more basic and less basic defense mechanisms, and then affirm that danger to the more basic defenses is more threatening than danger to less basic defenses (always remembering that this is so only because of their relationship to the basic needs).

The desires to know and to understand. -- So far, we have mentioned the cognitive needs only in passing. Acquiring knowledge and systematizing the universe have been considered as, in part, techniques for the achievement of basic safety in the world, or, for the intelligent man, expressions of self-actualization. Also freedom of inquiry and expression have been discussed as preconditions of satisfactions of the basic needs. True though these formulations may be, they do not constitute definitive answers to the question as to the motivation role of curiosity, learning, philosophizing, experimenting, etc. They are, at best, no more than partial answers.[p. 385]

This question is especially difficult because we know so little about the facts. Curiosity, exploration, desire for the facts, desire to know may certainly be observed easily enough. The fact that they often are pursued even at great cost to the individual's safety is an earnest of the partial character of our previous discussion. In addition, the writer must admit that, though he has sufficient clinical evidence to postulate the desire to know as a very strong drive in intelligent people, no data are available for unintelligent people. It may then be largely a function of relatively high intelligence. Rather tentatively, then, and largely in the hope of stimulating discussion and research, we shall postulate a basic desire to know, to be aware of reality, to get the facts, to satisfy curiosity, or as Wertheimer phrases it, to see rather than to be blind.

This postulation, however, is not enough. Even after we know, we are impelled to know more and more minutely and microscopically on the one hand, and on the other, more and more extensively in the direction of a world philosophy, religion, etc. The facts that we acquire, if they are isolated or atomistic, inevitably get theorized about, and either analyzed or organized or both. This process has been phrased by some as the search for 'meaning.' We shall then postulate a desire to understand, to systematize, to organize, to analyze, to look for relations and meanings.

Once these desires are accepted for discussion, we see that they too form themselves into a small hierarchy in which the desire to know is prepotent over the desire to understand. All the characteristics of a hierarchy of prepotency that we have described above, seem to hold for this one as well.

We must guard ourselves against the too easy tendency to separate these desires from the basic needs we have discussed above, i.e., to make a sharp dichotomy between 'cognitive' and 'conative' needs. The desire to know and to understand are themselves conative, i.e., have a striving character, and are as much personality needs as the 'basic needs' we have already discussed ( 19).[p. 386]

III. FURTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BASIC NEEDS

The degree of fixity of the hierarchy of basic needs. -- We have spoken so far as if this hierarchy were a fixed order but actually it is not nearly as rigid as we may have implied. It is true that most of the people with whom we have worked have seemed to have these basic needs in about the order that has been indicated. However, there have been a number of exceptions.

(1) There are some people in whom, for instance, self-esteem seems to be more important than love. This most common reversal in the hierarchy is usually due to the development of the notion that the person who is most likely to be loved is a strong or powerful person, one who inspires respect or fear, and who is self confident or aggressive. Therefore such people who lack love and seek it, may try hard to put on a front of aggressive, confident behavior. But essentially they seek high self-esteem and its behavior expressions more as a means-to-an-end than for its own sake; they seek self-assertion for the sake of love rather than for self-esteem itself.

(2) There are other, apparently innately creative people in whom the drive to creativeness seems to be more important than any other counter-determinant. Their creativeness might appear not as self-actualization released by basic satisfaction, but in spite of lack of basic satisfaction.

(3) In certain people the level of aspiration may be permanently deadened or lowered. That is to say, the less pre-potent goals may simply be lost, and may disappear forever, so that the person who has experienced life at a very low level, i. e., chronic unemployment, may continue to be satisfied for the rest of his life if only he can get enough food.

(4) The so-called 'psychopathic personality' is another example of permanent loss of the love needs. These are people who, according to the best data available ( 9), have been starved for love in the earliest months of their lives and have simply lost forever the desire and the ability to give and to receive affection (as animals lose sucking or pecking reflexes that are not exercised soon enough after birth).[p. 387]

(5) Another cause of reversal of the hierarchy is that when a need has been satisfied for a long time, this need may be underevaluated. People who have never experienced chronic hunger are apt to underestimate its effects and to look upon food as a rather unimportant thing. If they are dominated by a higher need, this higher need will seem to be the most important of all. It then becomes possible, and indeed does actually happen, that they may, for the sake of this higher need, put themselves into the position of being deprived in a more basic need. We may expect that after a long-time deprivation of the more basic need there will be a tendency to reevaluate both needs so that the more pre-potent need will actually become consciously prepotent for the individual who may have given it up very lightly. Thus, a man who has given up his job rather than lose his self-respect, and who then starves for six months or so, may be willing to take his job back even at the price of losing his a self-respect.

(6) Another partial explanation of apparent reversals is seen in the fact that we have been talking about the hierarchy of prepotency in terms of consciously felt wants or desires rather than of behavior. Looking at behavior itself may give us the wrong impression. What we have claimed is that the person will want the more basic of two needs when deprived in both. There is no necessary implication here that he will act upon his desires. Let us say again that there are many determinants of behavior other than the needs and desires.

(7) Perhaps more important than all these exceptions are the ones that involve ideals, high social standards, high values and the like. With such values people become martyrs; they give up everything for the sake of a particular ideal, or value. These people may be understood, at least in part, by reference to one basic concept (or hypothesis) which may be called 'increased frustration-tolerance through early gratification'. People who have been satisfied in their basic needs throughout their lives, particularly in their earlier years, seem to develop exceptional power to withstand present or future thwarting of these needs simply because they have strong,[p. 388] healthy character structure as a result of basic satisfaction. They are the 'strong' people who can easily weather disagreement or opposition, who can swim against the stream of public opinion and who can stand up for the truth at great personal cost. It is just the ones who have loved and been well loved, and who have had many deep friendships who can hold out against hatred, rejection or persecution.

I say all this in spite of the fact that there is a certain amount of sheer habituation which is also involved in any full discussion of frustration tolerance. For instance, it is likely that those persons who have been accustomed to relative starvation for a long time, are partially enabled thereby to withstand food deprivation. What sort of balance must be made between these two tendencies, of habituation on the one hand, and of past satisfaction breeding present frustration tolerance on the other hand, remains to be worked out by further research. Meanwhile we may assume that they are both operative, side by side, since they do not contradict each other, In respect to this phenomenon of increased frustration tolerance, it seems probable that the most important gratifications come in the first two years of life. That is to say, people who have been made secure and strong in the earliest years, tend to remain secure and strong thereafter in the face of whatever threatens.

Degree of relative satisfaction. -- So far, our theoretical discussion may have given the impression that these five sets of needs are somehow in a step-wise, all-or-none relationships to each other. We have spoken in such terms as the following: "If one need is satisfied, then another emerges." This statement might give the false impression that a need must be satisfied 100 per cent before the next need emerges. In actual fact, most members of our society who are normal, are partially satisfied in all their basic needs and partially unsatisfied in all their basic needs at the same time. A more realistic description of the hierarchy would be in terms of decreasing percentages of satisfaction as we go up the hierarchy of prepotency, For instance, if I may assign arbitrary figures for the sake of illustration, it is as if the average citizen [p. 389] is satisfied perhaps 85 per cent in his physiological needs, 70 per cent in his safety needs, 50 per cent in his love needs, 40 per cent in his self-esteem needs, and 10 per cent in his self-actualization needs.

As for the concept of emergence of a new need after satisfaction of the prepotent need, this emergence is not a sudden, saltatory phenomenon but rather a gradual emergence by slow degrees from nothingness. For instance, if prepotent need A is satisfied only 10 per cent: then need B may not be visible at all. However, as this need A becomes satisfied 25 per cent, need B may emerge 5 per cent, as need A becomes satisfied 75 per cent need B may emerge go per cent, and so on.

Unconscious character of needs. -- These needs are neither necessarily conscious nor unconscious. On the whole, however, in the average person, they are more often unconscious rather than conscious. It is not necessary at this point to overhaul the tremendous mass of evidence which indicates the crucial importance of unconscious motivation. It would by now be expected, on a priori grounds alone, that unconscious motivations would on the whole be rather more important than the conscious motivations. What we have called the basic needs are very often largely unconscious although they may, with suitable techniques, and with sophisticated people become conscious.

Cultural specificity and generality of needs. -- This classification of basic needs makes some attempt to take account of the relative unity behind the superficial differences in specific desires from one culture to another. Certainly in any particular culture an individual's conscious motivational content will usually be extremely different from the conscious motivational content of an individual in another society. However, it is the common experience of anthropologists that people, even in different societies, are much more alike than we would think from our first contact with them, and that as we know them better we seem to find more and more of this commonness, We then recognize the most startling differences to be superficial rather than basic, e. g., differences in style of hair-dress, clothes, tastes in food, etc. Our classification of basic [p. 390] needs is in part an attempt to account for this unity behind the apparent diversity from culture to culture. No claim is made that it is ultimate or universal for all cultures. The claim is made only that it is relatively more ultimate, more universal, more basic, than the superficial conscious desires from culture to culture, and makes a somewhat closer approach to common-human characteristics, Basic needs are more common-human than superficial desires or behaviors.

Multiple motivations of behavior. -- These needs must be understood not to be exclusive or single determiners of certain kinds of behavior. An example may be found in any behavior that seems to be physiologically motivated, such as eating, or sexual play or the like. The clinical psychologists have long since found that any behavior may be a channel through which flow various determinants. Or to say it in another way, most behavior is multi-motivated. Within the sphere of motivational determinants any behavior tends to be determined by several or all of the basic needs simultaneously rather than by only one of them. The latter would be more an exception than the former. Eating may be partially for the sake of filling the stomach, and partially for the sake of comfort and amelioration of other needs. One may make love not only for pure sexual release, but also to convince one's self of one's masculinity, or to make a conquest, to feel powerful, or to win more basic affection. As an illustration, I may point out that it would be possible (theoretically if not practically) to analyze a single act of an individual and see in it the expression of his physiological needs, his safety needs, his love needs, his esteem needs and self-actualization. This contrasts sharply with the more naive brand of trait psychology in which one trait or one motive accounts for a certain kind of act, i. e., an aggressive act is traced solely to a trait of aggressiveness.

Multiple determinants of behavior. -- Not all behavior is determined by the basic needs. We might even say that not all behavior is motivated. There are many determinants of behavior other than motives.[ 9] For instance, one other im-[p. 391]portant class of determinants is the so-called 'field' determinants. Theoretically, at least, behavior may be determined completely by the field, or even by specific isolated external stimuli, as in association of ideas, or certain conditioned reflexes. If in response to the stimulus word 'table' I immediately perceive a memory image of a table, this response certainly has nothing to do with my basic needs.

Secondly, we may call attention again to the concept of 'degree of closeness to the basic needs' or 'degree of motivation.' Some behavior is highly motivated, other behavior is only weakly motivated. Some is not motivated at all (but all behavior is determined).

Another important point [ 10] is that there is a basic difference between expressive behavior and coping behavior (functional striving, purposive goal seeking). An expressive behavior does not try to do anything; it is simply a reflection of the personality. A stupid man behaves stupidly, not because he wants to, or tries to, or is motivated to, but simply because he is what he is. The same is true when I speak in a bass voice rather than tenor or soprano. The random movements of a healthy child, the smile on the face of a happy man even when he is alone, the springiness of the healthy man's walk, and the erectness of his carriage are other examples of expressive, non-functional behavior. Also the style in which a man carries out almost all his behavior, motivated as well as unmotivated, is often expressive.

We may then ask, is all behavior expressive or reflective of the character structure? The answer is 'No.' Rote, habitual, automatized, or conventional behavior may or may not be expressive. The same is true for most 'stimulus-bound' behaviors. It is finally necessary to stress that expressiveness of behavior, and goal-directedness of behavior are not mutually exclusive categories. Average behavior is usually both.

Goals as centering principle in motivation theory. -- It will be observed that the basic principle in our classification has [p. 392] been neither the instigation nor the motivated behavior but rather the functions, effects, purposes, or goals of the behavior. It has been proven sufficiently by various people that this is the most suitable point for centering in any motivation theory.[ 11]

Animal- and human-centering. -- This theory starts with the human being rather than any lower and presumably 'simpler' animal. Too many of the findings that have been made in animals have been proven to be true for animals but not for the human being. There is no reason whatsoever why we should start with animals in order to study human motivation. The logic or rather illogic behind this general fallacy of 'pseudo-simplicity' has been exposed often enough by philosophers and logicians as well as by scientists in each of the various fields. It is no more necessary to study animals before one can study man than it is to study mathematics before one can study geology or psychology or biology.

We may also reject the old, naive, behaviorism which assumed that it was somehow necessary, or at least more 'scientific' to judge human beings by animal standards. One consequence of this belief was that the whole notion of purpose and goal was excluded from motivational psychology simply because one could not ask a white rat about his purposes. Tolman ( 18) has long since proven in animal studies themselves that this exclusion was not necessary.

Motivation and the theory of psychopathogenesis. -- The conscious motivational content of everyday life has, according to the foregoing, been conceived to be relatively important or unimportant accordingly as it is more or less closely related to the basic goals. A desire for an ice cream cone might actually be an indirect expression of a desire for love. If it is, then this desire for the ice cream cone becomes extremely important motivation. If however the ice cream is simply something to cool the mouth with, or a casual appetitive reaction, then the desire is relatively unimportant. Everyday conscious desires are to be regarded as symptoms, as [p. 393] surface indicators of more basic needs. If we were to take these superficial desires at their face value me would find ourselves in a state of complete confusion which could never be resolved, since we would be dealing seriously with symptoms rather than with what lay behind the symptoms.

Thwarting of unimportant desires produces no psychopathological results; thwarting of a basically important need does produce such results. Any theory of psychopathogenesis must then be based on a sound theory of motivation. A conflict or a frustration is not necessarily pathogenic. It becomes so only when it threatens or thwarts the basic needs, or partial needs that are closely related to the basic needs ( 10).

The role of gratified needs. -- It has been pointed out above several times that our needs usually emerge only when more prepotent needs have been gratified. Thus gratification has an important role in motivation theory. Apart from this, however, needs cease to play an active determining or organizing role as soon as they are gratified.

What this means is that, e. g., a basically satisfied person no longer has the needs for esteem, love, safety, etc. The only sense in which he might be said to have them is in the almost metaphysical sense that a sated man has hunger, or a filled bottle has emptiness. If we are interested in what actually motivates us, and not in what has, will, or might motivate us, then a satisfied need is not a motivator. It must be considered for all practical purposes simply not to exist, to have disappeared. This point should be emphasized because it has been either overlooked or contradicted in every theory of motivation I know.[ 12] The perfectly healthy, normal, fortunate man has no sex needs or hunger needs, or needs for safety, or for love, or for prestige, or self-esteem, except in stray moments of quickly passing threat. If we were to say otherwise, we should also have to aver that every man had all the pathological reflexes, e. g., Babinski, etc., because if his nervous system were damaged, these would appear.

It is such considerations as these that suggest the bold [p. 394] postulation that a man who is thwarted in any of his basic needs may fairly be envisaged simply as a sick man. This is a fair parallel to our designation as 'sick' of the man who lacks vitamins or minerals. Who is to say that a lack of love is less important than a lack of vitamins? Since we know the pathogenic effects of love starvation, who is to say that we are invoking value-questions in an unscientific or illegitimate way, any more than the physician does who diagnoses and treats pellagra or scurvy? If I were permitted this usage, I should then say simply that a healthy man is primarily motivated by his needs to develop and actualize his fullest potentialities and capacities. If a man has any other basic needs in any active, chronic sense, then he is simply an unhealthy man. He is as surely sick as if he had suddenly developed a strong salt-hunger or calcium hunger.[ 13]

If this statement seems unusual or paradoxical the reader may be assured that this is only one among many such paradoxes that will appear as we revise our ways of looking at man's deeper motivations. When we ask what man wants of life, we deal with his very essence.

(1) There are at least five sets of goals, which we may call basic needs. These are briefly physiological, safety, love, 'esteem, and self-actualization. In addition, we are motivated by the desire to achieve or maintain the various conditions upon which these basic satisfactions rest and by certain more intellectual desires.

(2) These basic goals are related to each other, being arranged in a hierarchy of prepotency. This means that the most prepotent goal will monopolize consciousness and will tend of itself to organize the recruitment of the various capacities of the organism. The less prepotent needs are [p. 395] minimized, even forgotten or denied. But when a need is fairly well satisfied, the next prepotent ('higher') need emerges, in turn to dominate the conscious life and to serve as the center of organization of behavior, since gratified needs are not active motivators.

Thus man is a perpetually wanting animal. Ordinarily the satisfaction of these wants is not altogether mutually exclusive, but only tends to be. The average member of our society is most often partially satisfied and partially unsatisfied in all of his wants. The hierarchy principle is usually empirically observed in terms of increasing percentages of non-satisfaction as we go up the hierarchy. Reversals of the average order of the hierarchy are sometimes observed. Also it has been observed that an individual may permanently lose the higher wants in the hierarchy under special conditions. There are not only ordinarily multiple motivations for usual behavior, but in addition many determinants other than motives.

(3) Any thwarting or possibility of thwarting of these basic human goals, or danger to the defenses which protect them, or to the conditions upon which they rest, is considered to be a psychological threat. With a few exceptions, all psychopathology may be partially traced to such threats. A basically thwarted man may actually be defined as a 'sick' man, if we wish.

(4) It is such basic threats which bring about the general emergency reactions.

(5) Certain other basic problems have not been dealt with because of limitations of space. Among these are ( a) the problem of values in any definitive motivation theory, ( b) the relation between appetites, desires, needs and what is 'good' for the organism, ( c) the etiology of the basic needs and their possible derivation in early childhood, ( d) redefinition of motivational concepts, i. e., drive, desire, wish, need, goal, ( e) implication of our theory for hedonistic theory, ( f) the nature of the uncompleted act, of success and failure, and of aspiration-level, ( g) the role of association, habit and conditioning, ( h) relation to the [p. 396] theory of inter-personal relations, ( i) implications for psychotherapy, ( j) implication for theory of society, (k) the theory of selfishness, ( l) the relation between needs and cultural patterns, ( m) the relation between this theory and Alport's theory of functional autonomy. These as well as certain other less important questions must be considered as motivation theory attempts to become definitive.

[1] As the child grows up, sheer knowledge and familiarity as well as better motor development make these 'dangers' less and less dangerous and more and more manageable. Throughout life it may be said that one of the main conative functions of education is this neutralizing of apparent dangers through knowledge, e. g., I am not afraid of thunder because I know something about it.

[2] A 'test battery' for safety might be confronting the child with a small exploding firecracker, or with a bewhiskered face; having the mother leave the room, putting him upon a high ladder, a hypodermic injection, having a mouse crawl up to him, etc. Of course I cannot seriously recommend the deliberate use of such 'tests' for they might very well harm the child being tested. But these and similar situations come up by the score in the child's ordinary day-to-day living and may be observed. There is no reason why those stimuli should not be used with, far example, young chimpanzees.

[3] Not all neurotic individuals feel unsafe. Neurosis may have at its core a thwarting of the affection and esteem needs in a person who is generally safe.

[4] For further details see ( 12) and ( 16, Chap. 5).

[5] Whether or not this particular desire is universal we do not know. The crucial question, especially important today, is "Will men who are enslaved and dominated inevitably feel dissatisfied and rebellious?" We may assume on the basis of commonly known clinical data that a man who has known true freedom (not paid for by giving up safety and security but rather built on the basis of adequate safety and security) will not willingly or easily allow his freedom to be taken away from him. But we do not know that this is true for the person born into slavery. The events of the next decade should give us our answer. See discussion of this problem in ( 5).

[6] Perhaps the desire for prestige and respect from others is subsidiary to the desire for self-esteem or confidence in oneself. Observation of children seems to indicate that this is so, but clinical data give no clear support for such a conclusion.

[7] For more extensive discussion of normal self-esteem, as well as for reports of various researches, see ( 11).

[8] Clearly creative behavior, like painting, is like any other behavior in having multiple, determinants. It may be seen in 'innately creative' people whether they are satisfied or not, happy or unhappy, hungry or sated. Also it is clear that creative activity may be compensatory, ameliorative or purely economic. It is my impression (as yet unconfirmed) that it is possible to distinguish the artistic and intellectual products of basically satisfied people from those of basically unsatisfied people by inspection alone. In any case, here too we must distinguish, in a dynamic fashion, the overt behavior itself from its various motivations or purposes.

[9] I am aware that many psychologists md psychoanalysts use the term 'motivated' and 'determined' synonymously, e. g., Freud. But I consider this an obfuscating usage. Sharp distinctions are necessary for clarity of thought, and precision in experimentation.

[10] To be discussed fully in a subsequent publication.

[11] The interested reader is referred to the very excellent discussion of this point in Murray's Explorations in Personality ( 15).

[12] Note that acceptance of this theory necessitates basic revision of the Freudian theory.

[13] If we were to use the word 'sick' in this way, we should then also have to face squarely the relations of man to his society. One clear implication of our definition would be that (1) since a man is to be called sick who is basically thwarted, and (2) since such basic thwarting is made possible ultimately only by forces outside the individual, then (3) sickness in the individual must come ultimately from sickness in the society. The 'good' or healthy society would then be defined as one that permitted man's highest purposes to emerge by satisfying all his prepotent basic needs.

1. ADLER, A. Social interest. London: Faber & Faber, 1938.

2. CANNON, W. B. Wisdom of the body. New York: Norton, 1932.

3. FREUD, A. The ego and the mechanisms of defense. London: Hogarth, 1937.

4. FREUD, S. New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. New York: Norton, 1933.

5. FROMM, E. Escape from freedom. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1941.

6. GOLDSTEIN, K. The organism. New York: American Book Co., 1939.

7. HORNEY, K. The neurotic personality of our time. New York: Norton, 1937.

8. KARDINER, A. The traumatic neuroses of war. New York: Hoeber, 1941.

9. LEVY, D. M. Primary affect hunger. Amer. J. Psychiat., 1937, 94, 643-652.

10. MASLOW, A. H. Conflict, frustration, and the theory of threat. J. abnorm. (soc.) Psychol., 1943, 38, 81-86.

11. ----------. Dominance, personality and social behavior in women. J. soc. Psychol., 1939, 10, 3-39.

12. ----------. The dynamics of psychological security-insecurity. Character & Pers., 1942, 10, 331-344.

13. ----------. A preface to motivation theory. Psychosomatic Med., 1943, 5, 85-92.

14. ----------. & MITTLEMANN, B. Principles of abnormal psychology. New York: Harper & Bros., 1941.

15. MURRAY, H. A., et al. Explorations in Personality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1938.

16. PLANT, J. Personality and the cultural pattern. New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1937.

17. SHIRLEY, M. Children's adjustments to a strange situation. J. abrnorm. (soc.) Psychol., 1942, 37, 201-217.

18. TOLMAN, E. C. Purposive behavior in animals and men. New York: Century, 1932.

19. WERTHEIMER, M. Unpublished lectures at the New School for Social Research.

20. YOUNG, P. T. Motivation of behavior. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1936.

21. ----------. The experimental analysis of appetite. Psychol. Bull., 1941, 38, 129-164.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Classics in the History of Psychology -- A. H. Maslow (1943) A Theory of Human Motivation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
(Return to Classics index) A Theory of Human Motivation A. H. Maslow (1943) Originally Published in Psychological Review, 50, 370-396. [p. 370] I. INTRODUCTION In a previous paper ( 13) various propositions were presented which would have to be included in any theory of human motivation that could lay claim to being definitive.

# data[].attributes.body
1.      This is an article with an overview of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive development.

2.      Vygotsky explains how students have a level that they can do things on their own but as we find their ZPD we can help them stretch and achieve more than they could before. I like the idea of being a teacher and being a more knowledgeable other who is there guiding student until they are able to do the new skill on their own. It helps me feel like I have an important role to play but I am also helping the students to do more and more until they can be independent.

3.      I will incorporate scaffolding in my planning of lessons. Then as students grasp the skills more, I can also plan on how I will incrementally takeaway the scaffolding.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Vygotsky's Theory

The work of Lev Vygotsky (1934, 1978) has become the foundation of much research and theory in cognitive development over the past several decades, particularly what has become known as sociocultural theory.

Vygotsky's theory comprises concepts such as culture-specific tools, private speech, and the zone of proximal development.

Vygotsky believed cognitive development is influenced by cultural and social factors. He emphasized the role of social interaction in the development of mental abilities e.g., speech and reasoning in children.

Vygotsky strongly believed that community plays a central role in the process of "making meaning."

Cognitive development is a socially mediated process in which children acquire cultural values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society.

The more knowledgeable other (MKO) is someone who has a higher level of ability or greater understanding than the learner regarding a particular task, process, or concept.

The MKO can be a teacher, parent, coach, or even a peer who provides guidance and modeling to enable the child to learn skills within their zone of proximal development (the gap between what a child can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance).

The interactions with more knowledgeable others significantly increase not only the quantity of information and the number of skills a child develops, but also affects the development of higher-order mental functions such as formal reasoning. Vygotsky argued that higher mental abilities could only develop through interaction with more advanced others.

According to Vygotsky, adults in society foster children's cognitive development by engaging them in challenging and meaningful activities. Adults convey to children how their culture interprets and responds to the world.

They show the meaning they attach to objects, events, and experiences. They provide the child with what to think (the knowledge) and how to think (the processes, the tools to think with).

Vygotsky's theory encourages collaborative and cooperative learning between children and teachers or peers. Scaffolding and reciprocal teaching are effective educational strategies based on Vygotsky's ideas.

Scaffolding involves the teacher providing support structures to help students master skills just beyond their current level. In reciprocal teaching, teachers and students take turns leading discussions using strategies like summarizing and clarifying. Both scaffolding and reciprocal teaching emphasize the shared construction of knowledge, in line with Vygotsky's views.

Vygotsky highlighted the importance of language in cognitive development. Inner speech is used for mental reasoning, and external speech is used to converse with others.

These operations occur separately. Indeed, before age two, a child employs words socially; they possess no internal language.

Once thought and language merge, however, the social language is internalized and assists the child with their reasoning. Thus, the social environment is ingrained within the child's learning.

Effects of Culture

Vygotsky emphasized the role of the social environment in the child's cognitive development.

Vygotsky claimed that infants are born with the basic abilities for intellectual development called "elementary mental functions" (Piaget focuses on motor reflexes and sensory abilities). These develop throughout the first two years of life due to direct environmental contact.

Elementary mental functions include -

Eventually, through interaction within the sociocultural environment, these are developed into more sophisticated and effective mental processes, which Vygotsky refers to as "higher mental functions."

Tools of intellectual adaptation

Each culture provides its children with tools of intellectual adaptation that allow them to use basic mental functions more effectively/adaptively.

Tools of intellectual adaptation is Vygotsky's term for methods of thinking and problem-solving strategies that children internalize through social interactions with the more knowledgeable members of society.

For example, memory in young children is limited by biological factors. However, culture determines the type of memory strategy we develop.

For example, in Western culture, children learn note-taking to aid memory, but in pre-literate societies, other strategies must be developed, such as tying knots in a string to remember, carrying pebbles, or repeating the names of ancestors until large numbers can be repeated.

Vygotsky, therefore, sees cognitive functions, even those carried out alone, as affected by the beliefs, values, and tools of intellectual adaptation of the culture in which a person develops and, therefore, socio-culturally determined.

Therefore, intellectual adaptation tools vary from culture to culture - as in the memory example.

Social Influences on Cognitive Development

Like Piaget, Vygotsky believes that young children are curious and actively involved in their own learning and discovering and developing new understandings/schema.

However, Vygotsky emphasized social contributions to the development process, whereas Piaget emphasized self-initiated discovery.

According to Vygotsky (1978), much important learning by the child occurs through social interaction with a skillful tutor. The tutor may model behaviors and/or provide verbal instructions for the child.

Vygotsky refers to this as cooperative or collaborative dialogue. The child seeks to understand the actions or instructions provided by the tutor (often the parent or teacher) and then internalizes the information, using it to guide or regulate their performance.

Shaffer (1996) gives the example of a young girl given her first jigsaw. Alone, she performs poorly in attempting to solve the puzzle. The father then sits with her and describes or demonstrates some basic strategies, such as finding all the corner/edge pieces, and provides a couple of pieces for the child to put together herself, and offers encouragement when she does so.

As the child becomes more competent, the father allows the child to work more independently. According to Vygotsky, this social interaction involving cooperative or collaborative dialogue promotes cognitive development.

To understand Vygotsky's theories on cognitive development, one must understand two of the main principles of Vygotsky's work: the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).

More Knowledgeable Other

The more knowledgeable other (MKO) is somewhat self-explanatory; it refers to someone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, concerning a particular task, process, or concept.

Although the implication is that the MKO is a teacher or an older adult, this is not necessarily the case. Often, a child's peers or an adult's children may be the individuals with more knowledge or experience.

For example, who is more likely to know more about the newest teenage music groups, how to win at the most recent PlayStation game, or how to correctly perform the newest dance craze - a child or their parents?

In fact, the MKO need not be a person at all. To support employees in their learning process, some companies are now using electronic performance support systems.

Electronic tutors have also been used in educational settings to facilitate and guide students through learning. The key to MKOs is that they must have (or be programmed with) more knowledge about the topic being learned than the learner does.

Zone of Proximal Development

The concept of the more knowledgeable other relates to the second important principle of Vygotsky's work, the zone of proximal development.

This important concept relates to the difference between what a child can achieve independently and what a child can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner.

Vygotsky consequently focuses much more closely on social interaction as an aid to learning, arguing that, left alone, children will develop - but not to their full potential.

He refers to the gap between actual and potential learning as the zone of proximal development (ZPD) - and argues that it is only through collaboration with adults and other learners that this gap can be bridged.

The zone of proximal development is the gap between the level of actual development, what the child can do on his own, and the level of potential development, what a child can do with the assistance of more advanced and competent individuals.

Social interaction, therefore, supports the child's cognitive development in the ZPD, leading to a higher level of reasoning. It is generally believed that social dialogues have two important features.

The first is intersubjectivity, where two individuals who might have different understandings of a task, arrive at a shared understanding by adjusting to the perspective of the other.

The second feature is referred to as scaffolding. Adults may begin with direct instruction, but as children's mastery of a task increases, so the adult tends to withdraw their own contributions in recognition of the child's increasing success.

For example, the child could not solve the jigsaw puzzle (in the example above) by itself and would have taken a long time to do so (if at all), but was able to solve it following interaction with the father, and has developed competence at this skill that will be applied to future jigsaws.

ZPD is the zone where instruction is the most beneficial, as it is when the task is just beyond the individual's capabilities. To learn, we must be presented with tasks just out of our ability range. Challenging tasks promote maximum cognitive growth.

As a result of shared dialogues with more knowledgeable others, who provide hints, instructions, and encouragement, the child can internalize the 'how to do it' part of the task as part of their inner or private speech. The child can then use this on later occasions when they tackle a similar task on their own.

Vygotsky (1978) sees the Zone of Proximal Development as the area where the most sensitive instruction or guidance should be given - allowing the child to develop skills they will then use on their own - developing higher mental functions.

Vygotsky also views peer interaction as an effective way of developing skills and strategies. He suggests that teachers use cooperative learning exercises where less competent children develop with help from more skillful peers - within the zone of proximal development.

Evidence for Vygotsky and the ZPD

Freund (1990) conducted a study in which children had to decide which items of furniture should be placed in particular areas of a doll's house.

Some children were allowed to play with their mother in a similar situation before they attempted it alone (zone of proximal development) while others were allowed to work on this by themselves (Piaget's discovery learning).

Freund found that those who had previously worked with their mother (ZPD) showed the greatest improvement compared with their first attempt at the task.

The conclusion is that guided learning within the ZPD led to greater understanding/performance than working alone (discovery learning).

Vygotsky and Language

Vygotsky believed that language develops from social interactions for communication purposes. Vygotsky viewed language as man's greatest tool for communicating with the outside world.

According to Vygotsky (1962), language plays two critical roles in cognitive development:

1. It is the main means by which adults transmit information to children.

2. Language itself becomes a very powerful tool for intellectual adaptation.

Vygotsky (1987) differentiates between three forms of language:

1. Social speech, which is external communication used to talk to others (typical from the age of two);

2. Private speech (typical from the age of three) which is directed to the self and serves an intellectual function;

3. Private speech goes underground, diminishing in audibility as it takes on a self-regulating function and is transformed into silent inner speech (typical from the age of seven).

For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three years of age.

At this point, speech and thought become interdependent: thought becomes verbal, and speech becomes representational.

As children develop mental representation, particularly the skill of language, they start to communicate with themselves in much the same way as they would communicate with others.

When this happens, children's monologues are internalized to become inner speech. The internalization of language is important as it drives cognitive development.

"Inner speech is not the interiour aspect of external speech - it is a function in itself. It still remains speech, i.e., thought connected with words.

But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words dies as they bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings."
(Vygotsky, 1962: p. 149)

Private Speech

Vygotsky (1987) was the first psychologist to document the importance of private speech.

He considered private speech as the transition point between social and inner speech, the moment in development where language and thought unite to constitute verbal thinking.

Thus, in Vygotsky's view, private speech was the earliest manifestation of inner speech. Indeed, private speech is more similar (in form and function) to inner speech than social speech.

Private speech is "typically defined, in contrast to social speech, as speech addressed to the self (not to others) for the purpose of self-regulation (rather than communication)."
(Diaz, 1992, p.62)

Private speech is overt, audible, and observable, often seen in children who talk to themselves while problem-solving.

Conversely, inner speech is covert or hidden because it happens internally. It is the silent, internal dialogue that adults often engage in while thinking or problem-solving.

In contrast to Piaget's (1959) notion of private speech representing a developmental dead-end, Vygotsky (1934, 1987) viewed private speech as:

"A revolution in development which is triggered when preverbal thought and preintellectual language come together to create fundamentally new forms of mental functioning." (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005: p. 1)

In addition to disagreeing on the functional significance of private speech, Vygotsky and Piaget also offered opposing views on the developmental course of private speech and the environmental circumstances in which it occurs most often (Berk & Garvin, 1984).

Through private speech, children collaborate with themselves, in the same way a more knowledgeable other (e.g., adults) collaborate with them to achieve a given function.

Vygotsky sees "private speech" as a means for children to plan activities and strategies, aiding their development. Private speech is the use of language for self-regulation of behavior.

Therefore, language accelerates thinking/understanding ( Jerome Bruner also views language in this way). Vygotsky believed that children who engage in large amounts of private speech are more socially competent than children who do not use it extensively.

Vygotsky (1987) notes that private speech does not merely accompany a child's activity but acts as a tool the developing child uses to facilitate cognitive processes, such as overcoming task obstacles, and enhancing imagination, thinking, and conscious awareness.

Children use private speech most often during intermediate difficulty tasks because they attempt to self-regulate by verbally planning and organizing their thoughts (Winsler et al., 2007).

The frequency and content of private speech correlate with behavior or performance. For example, private speech appears functionally related to cognitive performance: It appears at times of difficulty with a task.

For example, tasks related to executive function (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005), problem-solving tasks (Behrend et al., 1992), and schoolwork in both language (Berk & Landau, 1993), and mathematics (Ostad & Sorensen, 2007).

Berk (1986) provided empirical support for the notion of private speech. She found that most private speech exhibited by children serves to describe or guide the child's actions.

Berk also discovered that children engaged in private speech more often when working alone on challenging tasks and when their teacher was not immediately available to help them.

Furthermore, Berk also found that private speech develops similarly in all children regardless of cultural background.

There is also evidence (Behrend et al., 1992) that those children who displayed the characteristic whispering and lip movements associated with private speech when faced with a difficult task were generally more attentive and successful than their 'quieter' classmates.

Vygotsky (1987) proposed that private speech is a product of an individual's social environment. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that there exist high positive correlations between rates of social interaction and private speech in children.

Children raised in cognitively and linguistically stimulating environments (situations more frequently observed in higher socioeconomic status families) start using and internalizing private speech faster than children from less privileged backgrounds.

Indeed, children raised in environments characterized by low verbal and social exchanges exhibit delays in private speech development.

Children's use of private speech diminishes as they grow older and follows a curvilinear trend. This is due to changes in ontogenetic development whereby children can internalize language (through inner speech) to self-regulate their behavior (Vygotsky, 1987).

For example, research has shown that children's private speech usually peaks at 3-4 years of age, decreases at 6-7, and gradually fades out to be mostly internalized by age 10 (Diaz, 1992).

Vygotsky proposed that private speech diminishes and disappears with age not because it becomes socialized, as Piaget suggested, but because it goes underground to constitute inner speech or verbal thought" (Frauenglass & Diaz, 1985).

Educational Implications

Vygotsky's approach to child development is a form of social constructivism, based on the idea that cognitive functions are the products of social interactions.

Social constructivism posits that knowledge is constructed and learning occurs through social interactions within a cultural and historical context.

Vygotsky emphasized the collaborative nature of learning by constructing knowledge through social negotiation. He rejected the assumption made by Piaget that it was possible to separate learning from its social context.

Vygotsky believed everything is learned on two levels. First, through interaction with others, then integrated into the individual's mental structure.

Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological).

This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.
(Vygotsky, 1978, p.57)

Teaching styles grounded in constructivism represent a deliberate shift from traditional, didactic, memory-oriented transmission models (Cannella & Reiff, 1994) to a more student-centered approach.

Traditionally, schools have failed to foster environments where students actively participate in their own and their peers' education. Vygotsky's theory, however, calls for both the teacher and students to assume non-traditional roles as they engage in collaborative learning.

Rather than having a teacher impose their understanding onto students for future recitation, the teacher should co-create meaning with students in a manner that allows learners to take ownership (Hausfather, 1996).

For instance, a student and teacher might start a task with varying levels of expertise and understanding. As they adapt to each other's perspective, the teacher must articulate their insights in a way that the student can comprehend, leading the student to a fuller understanding of the task or concept.

The student can then internalize the task's operational aspect ("how to do it") into their inner speech or private dialogue. Vygotsky referred to this reciprocal understanding and adjustment process as intersubjectivity."

ZPD

Because Vygotsky asserts that cognitive change occurs within the zone of proximal development, instruction would be designed to reach a developmental level just above the student's current developmental level.

Vygotsky proclaims, "learning which is oriented toward developmental levels that have already been reached is ineffective from the viewpoint of the child's overall development. It does not aim for a new stage of the developmental process but rather lags behind this process" (Vygotsky, 1978).

Appropriation is necessary for cognitive development within the zone of proximal development. Individuals participating in peer collaboration or guided teacher instruction must share the same focus to access the zone of proximal development.

"Joint attention and shared problem solving is needed to create a process of cognitive, social, and emotional interchange" (Hausfather,1996).

Furthermore, it is essential that the partners be on different developmental levels and the higher-level partner be aware of the lower's level. If this does not occur or one partner dominates, the interaction is less successful (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather, 1996).

Vygotsky's theories also feed into the current interest in collaborative learning, suggesting that group members should have different levels of ability so more advanced peers can help less advanced members operate within their ZPD.

Scaffolding and reciprocal teaching are effective strategies to access the zone of proximal development.

Reciprocal Teaching

A contemporary educational application of Vygotsky's theory is "reciprocal teaching," used to improve students" ability to learn from text.

In this method, teachers and students collaborate in learning and practicing four key skills: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher's role in the process is reduced over time.

Reciprocal teaching allows for the creation of a dialogue between students and teachers. This two-way communication becomes an instructional strategy by encouraging students to go beyond answering questions and engage in the discourse (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather, 1996).

A study conducted by Brown and Palincsar (1989) demonstrated the Vygotskian approach with reciprocal teaching methods in their successful program to teach reading strategies.

The teacher and students alternated turns leading small group discussions on a reading. After modeling four reading strategies, students began to assume the teaching role.

The results showed significant gains over other instructional strategies (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather,1996).

Cognitively Guided Instruction is another strategy to implement Vygotsky's theory. This strategy involves the teacher and students exploring math problems and then sharing their problem-solving strategies in an open dialogue (Hausfather,1996).

Based on Vygotsky's theory, the physical classroom would provide clustered desks or tables and workspace for peer instruction, collaboration, and small-group instruction. Learning becomes a reciprocal experience for the students and teacher.

Like the environment, the instructional design of the material to be learned would be structured to promote and encourage student interaction and collaboration. Thus the classroom becomes a community of learning.

Scaffolding

Also, Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development on learners is relevant to instructional concepts such as "scaffolding" and "apprenticeship," in which a teacher or more advanced peer helps to structure or arrange a task so that a novice can work on it successfully.

A teacher's role is to identify each individual's current level of development and provide them with opportunities to cross their ZPD.

A crucial element in this process is the use of what later became known as scaffolding; the way in which the teacher provides students with frameworks and experiences which encourage them to extend their existing schemata and incorporate new skills, competencies, and understandings.

Scaffolding describes the conditions that support the child's learning, to move from what they already know to new knowledge and abilities.

Scaffolding requires the teacher to allow students to extend their current skills and knowledge.

During scaffolding, the support offered by an adult (or more knowledgeable other) gradually decreases as the child becomes more skilled in the task.

As the adult withdraws their help, the child assumes more of the strategic planning and eventually gains competence to master similar problems without a teacher's aid or a more knowledgeable peer.

It is important to note that this is more than simply instruction; learning experiences must be presented in such a way as to actively challenge existing mental structures and provide frameworks for learning.

Five ways in which an adult can "scaffold" a child's learning:

1. Engaging the child's interest

2. Maintaining the child's interest in the task e.g., avoiding distraction and providing clear instructions on how to start the task.

3. Keeping the child's frustration under control e.g., by supportive interactions, adapting instructions according to where the child is struggling.

4. Emphasizing the important features of the task

5. Demonstrating the task: showing the child how to do the task in simple, clear steps.

As the child progresses through the ZPD, the necessary scaffolding level declines from 5 to 1.

The teacher must engage students' interests, simplify tasks to be manageable, and motivate students to pursue the instructional goal.

In addition, the teacher must look for discrepancies between students" efforts and the solution, control for frustration and risk, and model an idealized version of the act (Hausfather, 1996).

Challenges to Traditional Teaching Methods

Vygotsky's social development theory challenges traditional teaching methods. Historically, schools have been organized around recitation teaching.

The teacher disseminates knowledge to be memorized by the students, who in turn recite the information to the teacher (Hausfather,1996).

However, the studies described above offer empirical evidence that learning based on the social development theory facilitates cognitive development over other instructional strategies.

The structure of our schools does not reflect the rapid changes our society is experiencing. The introduction and integration of computer technology in society has tremendously increased the opportunities for social interaction.

Therefore, the social context for learning is transforming as well. Whereas collaboration and peer instruction were once only possible in shared physical space, learning relationships can now be formed from distances through cyberspace.

Computer technology is a cultural tool that students can use to meditate and internalize their learning. Recent research suggests changing the learning contexts with technology is a powerful learning activity (Crawford, 1996).

If schools continue to resist structural change, students will be ill-prepared for the world they will live.

Critical Evaluation

Vygotsky's work has not received the same level of intense scrutiny that Piaget's has, partly due to the time-consuming process of translating Vygotsky's work from Russian.

Also, Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective does not provide as many specific hypotheses to test as Piaget's theory, making refutation difficult, if not impossible.

Perhaps the main criticism of Vygotsky's work concerns the assumption that it is relevant to all cultures. Rogoff (1990) dismisses the idea that Vygotsky's ideas are culturally universal and instead states that scaffolding- heavily dependent on verbal instruction - may not be equally useful in all cultures for all types of learning.

Indeed, in some instances, observation and practice may be more effective ways of learning certain skills.

There is much emphasis on social interaction and culture, but many other aspects of development are neglected, such as the importance of emotional factors, e.g., the joys of success and the disappointments and frustration of failure act as motivation for learning.

Vygotsky overemphasized socio-cultural factors at the expense of biological influences on cognitive development. This theory cannot explain why cross-cultural studies show that the stages of development (except the formal operational stage) occur in the same order in all cultures suggesting that cognitive development is a product of a biological process of maturation.

Vygotky's theory has been applied successfully to education. Scaffolding has been shown to be an effective way of teaching (Freund, 1990), and based on this theory, teachers are trained to guide children from what they can do to the next step in their learning through careful scaffolding.

Collaborative work is also used in the classroom, mixing children of different levels of ability to make use of reciprocal / peer teaching.

Vygotsky vs. Piaget

Unlike Piaget's notion that children's cognitive development must necessarily precede their learning, Vygotsky argued, "learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human psychological function" (1978, p. 90). In other words, social learning precedes (i.e., come before) development.

Vygotsky's theory differs from that of Piaget in several important ways:

Vygotsky places more emphasis on culture affecting cognitive development.

Unlike Piaget, who emphasized universal cognitive change (i.e., all children would go through the same sequence of cognitive development regardless of their cultural experiences), Vygotsky leads us to expect variable development depending on cultural diversity.

This contradicts Piaget's view of universal stages of development (Vygotsky does not refer to stages like Piaget does).

Hence, Vygotsky assumes cognitive development varies across cultures, whereas Piaget states cognitive development is mostly universal across cultures.

Vygotsky places considerably more emphasis on social factors contributing to cognitive development.

1. Vygotsky states the importance of cultural and social context for learning. Cognitive development stems from social interactions from guided learning within the zone of proximal development as children and their partners co-construct knowledge.
In contrast, Piaget maintains that cognitive development stems largely from independent explorations in which children construct knowledge.

2. For Vygotsky, the environment in which children grow up will influence how they think and what they think about.
The importance of scaffolding and language may differ for all cultures. Rogoff (1990) emphasizes the importance of observation and practice in pre-industrial societies (e.g., learning to use a canoe among Micronesian Islanders).

Vygotsky places more (and different) emphasis on the role of language in cognitive development.

According to Piaget, language depends on thought for its development (i.e., thought comes before language). For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three years of age, producing verbal thought (inner speech).

In Piaget's theory, egocentric (or private) speech gradually disappears as children develop truly social speech, in which they monitor and adapt what they say to others.

Vygotsky disagreed with this view, arguing that as language helps children to think about and control their behavior, it is an important foundation for complex cognitive skills.

As children age, this self-directed speech becomes silent (or private) speech, referring to the inner dialogues we have with ourselves as we plan and carry out activities.

For Vygotsky, cognitive development results from an internalization of language.

According to Vygotsky, adults are an important source of cognitive development.

Adults transmit their culture's tools of intellectual adaptation that children internalize.

In contrast, Piaget emphasizes the importance of peers, as peer interaction promotes social perspective-taking.

Behrend, D.A., Rosengren, K.S., & Perlmutter, M. (1992). The relation between private speech and parental interactive style. In R.M. Diaz & L.E. Berk (Eds.), Private speech: From social interaction to self-regulation (pp. 85-100). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Berk, L. E. (1986). Relationship of elementary school children's private speech to behavioral accompaniment to task, attention, and task performance. Developmental Psychology, 22(5), 671.

Berk, L. & Garvin, R. (1984). Development of private speech among low-income Appalachian children. Developmental Psychology, 20(2), 271-286.

Berk, L. E., & Landau, S. (1993). Private speech of learning-disabled and normally achieving children in classroom academic and laboratory contexts. Child Development, 64, 556-571.

Cannella, G. S., & Reiff, J. C. (1994). Individual constructivist teacher education: Teachers as empowered learners. Teacher education quarterly, 27-38.

Crawford, K. (1996) Vygotskian approaches to human development in the information era. Educational Studies in Mathematics, (31),43-62.

Diaz, R. M., & Berk, L. E. (1992). Private speech: From social interaction to self-regulation. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Driscoll, M. P. (1994). Psychology of Learning for Instruction. Needham, Ma: Allyn && Bacon.

Frauenglass, M. & Diaz, R. (1985). Self-regulatory functions of children's private speech: A critical analysis of recent challenges to Vygotsky's theory. Developmental Psychology, 21(2), 357-364.

Fernyhough, C., & Fradley, E. (2005). Private speech on an executive task: Relations with task difficulty and task performance. Cognitive Development, 20, 103-120.

Freund, L. S. (1990). Maternal regulation of children's problem-solving behavior and its impact on children's performance. Child Development, 61, 113-126.

Hausfather, S. J. (1996). Vygotsky and Schooling: Creating a Social Contest for learning. Action in Teacher Education, (18),1-10.

Ostad, S. A., & Sorensen, P. M. (2007). Private speech and strategy-use patterns: Bidirectional comparisons of children with and without mathematical difficulties in a developmental perspective. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 40, 2-14.

Piaget, J. (1959). The language and thought of the child (Vol. 5) . Psychology Press.

Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. Oxford university press.

Saettler, P. (1990). The Evolution of American Educational Technology . Egnlewood, Co: Libraries Unlimited.

Schaffer, R. (1996) . Social development. Oxford: Blackwell.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In R.W. Rieber & A.S. Carton (Eds.), The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky, Volume 1: Problems of general psychology (pp. 39-285). New York: Plenum Press. (Original work published 1934.)

Winsler, A., Abar, B., Feder, M. A., Schunn, C. D., & Rubio, D. A. (2007). Private speech and executive functioning among high-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 1617-1635.

Wertsch, J. V., Sohmer, R. (1995). Vygotsky on learning and development. Human Development, (38), 332-37.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lev Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory Of Cognitive Development

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lev Vygotsky's theory of child development, known as the sociocultural theory, emphasizes the importance of social interaction and cultural context in learning and cognitive development. Vygotsky proposed the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which is the gap between what a child can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance from a more knowledgeable person.

# data[].attributes.headline
Assimilation and Accomodation of Knowledge

# data[].attributes.subject
Assimilation and Accomodation of Knowledge

# data[].attributes.body
1.      This is an article that compares and contrasts the assimilation of knowledge versus the accommodation of knowledge.

2.      I think these ideas are important to remember as we help students encounter new information. They need to fit it somewhere within their schema. This article is helpful because it gives ideas for how to incorporate “schema-friendly” teaching.

3.      I think building on students’ prior experiences will be helpful for students to see how they can fit new info into their existing schema. The article also mentions diversifying teaching which I think is something I will do to help students see how the new information can fit in different ways.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
by Terry Heick

Learning is a natural response to encountering something new.

Within Jean Piaget's theories on cognitive development are related ideas on how children process knowledge. Piaget was interested in how children organize 'data' and settled on two fundamental responses stimuli: assimilation of knowledge, and accommodation of knowledge.

Assimilation of knowledge occurs when a learner encounters a new idea, and must 'fit' that idea into what they already know. Think of this as filling existing containers.

Accommodation of knowledge is more substantial, requiring the learner to reshape those containers.

You can think of these containers as 'schema.' Schema are fluid and constantly evolving vessels students use to process what they see, read, and feel. The following from the University of Puget Sound is a simple example clarifying the difference between assimilation and accommodation of knowledge.

"When a child learns the word for dog, they start to call all four-legged animals dogs. This is assimilation. People around them will say, no, that's not a dog, it's a cat. The schema for dog then gets modified to restrict it to only certain four-legged animals. That is accommodation.

"Assimilation is like adding air into a balloon. You just keep blowing it up. It gets bigger and bigger. For example, a two year old's schema of a tree is "green and big with bark" - over time the child adds information (some trees lose their leaves, some trees have names, we use a tree at Christmas, etc.) - Your balloon just gets full of more information that fits neatly with what you know and adds onto it.

Accommodation is when you have to turn your round balloon into the shape of a poodle. This new balloon 'animal' is a radical shift in your schema (or balloon shape)....Now that they are in college in the redwood forest, we have conceptualization (schema) of trees as a source of political warfare, a commodity, a source of income for some people, we know that people sit and live in trees to save them; in other words, trees are economic, political, and social vehicles. This complete change in the schema involves a lot of cognitive energy, or accommodation, a shift in our schema."
Background Knowledge
Students come to the classroom with an incredibly diverse set of experiences. This isn't just a matter of content knowledge or reading levels either. Students adapt their own thinking-both in process and in form-in response to the kinds of input they've been exposed to.

A childhood of ranging, divergent thinking that varies in depth, form, and tone can provide a 'schema' that more readily accepts new ideas, or has provided the student with an increased sense of self-efficacy in making the effort to do so. This sort of divergence doesn't have to be academic, either. Experience is experience.

Piaget thought of these as processes-assimilating and accommodating knowledge-as both interactive (one affecting the other) and capable of overlapping. When a child encounters stimuli without assimilating or accommodating it-or without being capable of assimilating or accommodating it-they will fail to "understand." Whatever new idea they encountered will either have to be further parsed and analyzed, or discarded.

So for you as a teacher, what does this imply?
6 Tips For Schema-Friendly Teaching 1. Know the basics
Know that schema can be thought of as templates or vessels students use to organize knowledge.

Know the difference between assimilating knowledge and accommodating knowledge.

Know that the latter is more difficult than the former.

And know that what's happening at the cognitive level will be different for every student because their schema is nuanced and unique.
2. It's cultural
It's also a matter of culture. Students with access to WiFi at home will have a much greater opportunity for 'broadband schema'-that is, the kind of schema that is diverse, digital, and at times random and nonsensical. The same with students raised on farms, in the city, in single-parent homes, and so on.

Schema is cultural because we're human.
3. Diversify your teaching strategies
This all suggests diversity. One size fits all doesn't fit anyone even at the brain level.
4. Encourage self-direction
Students will naturally seek out ideas that either align with their own (which isn't necessarily good), or may be less alarmed to encounter competing thoughts on their own terms when learning on their own.
5. Don't project what-and how-you understand on students
It's tempting to project your own understanding and preferences onto students as well. What 'makes sense' to you is powerful, and it can be hard to get around that no matter how much you recognize it intellectually. But it's based on your own schema, scale, and timeline.

Learning is different for everyone.
6. Practice, practice, practice
Allow students to encounter ideas over and over again from a variety of perspectives, using different 'vessels.' This also suggests spiraling big ideas in your curriculum. Being exposed to academic standards only a few times in limited number or forms limits a student's ability to effectively reform said data into useful schema.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Assimilation vs Accommodation Of Knowledge

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
by Terry Heick Learning is a natural response to encountering something new. Within Jean Piaget's theories on cognitive development are related ideas on how children process knowledge. Piaget was interested in how children organize 'data' and settled on two fundamental responses stimuli: assimilation of knowledge, and accommodation of knowledge.

# data[].attributes.body
1.      This is a YouTube video that explains validity, reliability, and practicality.

2.      While this video is teaching these aspects in terms of exercise and physical assessment, I find it useful because it gives concrete examples of what these terms mean.  These are important in the classroom because when they are present, they ensure that students are being assessed fairly and accurately. It eliminates unnecessary roadblocks for student achievement.

3.      As I am making assessments, I will measure my assessments against these terms to see if my assessment is fairly testing a student’s abilities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Validity || Reliability || Practicality - What's the difference !?

# data[].attributes.body
1.      This is an article with an overview of Bandura’s Social Learning Theory.

2.      This theory shows that there is a social element of learning. I have seen that through my experience this is true, and I find we can learn from those around us and also be teachers to those we interact with.

3.      I will create a classroom community where cooperation and discussion are focused on.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What are the 4 stages of social learning theory?

The social learning theory proposes that individuals learn through observation, imitation, and reinforcement. According to the theory, there are four stages of social learning:

1. Attention: In this stage, individuals must first pay attention to the behavior they are observing. This requires focus and concentration on the model's behavior.

2. Retention: In this stage, individuals must remember the behavior they observed. This involves cognitive processing and memory storage.

3. Reproduction: In this stage, individuals attempt to reproduce the behavior they observe. This may involve practicing and refining the behavior until it can be performed accurately.

4. Motivation: In this stage, individuals must have a reason or motivation to perform the behavior. This may involve reinforcement, punishment, social approval, disapproval, or other incentives.

What is the main idea of social learning theory?

Social Learning Theory, proposed by Albert Bandura, posits that people learn through observing, imitating, and modeling others' behavior. This theory posits that we can acquire new behaviors and knowledge by watching others, a process known as vicarious learning.

Bandura emphasized the importance of cognitive processes in learning, which set his theory apart from traditional behaviorism.

He proposed that individuals have beliefs and expectations that influence their actions and can think about the links between their behavior and its consequences.

Why is social learning theory important?

Social learning theory helps us understand how our environment and the people around us shape our behavior. It helps explain how individuals develop new skills and behaviors by paying attention to the behavior of others and then trying to reproduce that behavior themselves.

It is an important theory for psychologists, educators, and anyone interested in human behavior and development.

Who is Albert Bandura?

Albert Bandura was a prominent Canadian-American psychologist known for his work in social learning theory and the concept of self-efficacy.

His groundbreaking research on observational learning, through experiments such as the Bobo Doll experiment, shifted the focus of psychological theory from behaviorism to cognitive processes.

Bandura's work significantly influenced the understanding of how individuals learn within social contexts.

Albert Bandura is best known for his contributions to the field of psychology, particularly in the areas of social learning theory, self-efficacy, and aggression. He is considered one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century.

Bandura's work has significantly impacted our understanding of human behavior and has informed fields such as education, psychology, and social work.

References

Ahn, J. N., Hu, D., & Vega, M. (2020). "Do as I do, not as I say": Using social learning theory to unpack the impact of role models on students' outcomes in education. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 14(2), e12517.

Bagès, C., Verniers, C., & Martinot, D. (2016). Virtues of a hardworking role model to improve girls' mathematics performance. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 40(1), 55-64

Bandura, A. Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through the imitation of aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 575-582

Bandura, A. (1965). Behavioral modification through modeling procedures. In L. Krasner & L. P. Ullman (Eds.), Research in behavior modification. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Bandura, A. (1969). Principles of behavior modification. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Bandura, A. (1971). Social learning theory. New York: General Learning Press.

Bandura, A. (1972). Modeling theory: Some traditions, trends, and disputes. In R. D. Parke (Ed.), Recent trends in social learning theory (pp. 35-61). New York: Academic Press.

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Bennett, S., Farrington, D. P., & Huesmann, L. R. (2005). Explaining gender differences in crime and violence: The importance of social cognitive skills. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 10(3), 263-288.

Cheryan, S., Siy, J. O., Vichayapai, M., Drury, B. J., & Kim, S. (2011). Do female and male role models who embody STEM stereotypes hinder women's anticipated success in STEM? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(6), 656-664.

Dasgupta, N. (2011). Ingroup experts and peers as social vaccines who inoculate the self-concept: The stereotype inoculation model. Psychological Inquiry, 22(4), 231-246.

Deaton, S. (2015). Social learning theory in the age of social media: Implications for educational practitioners. Journal of Educational Technology, 12(1), 1-6.

Fryling, M. J., Johnston, C., & Hayes, L. J. (2011). Understanding observational learning: An interbehavioral approach. The Analysis of verbal behavior, 27, 191-203.

Grusec, J. E. (1994). Social learning theory and developmental psychology: The legacies of Robert R. Sears and Albert Bandura.

Huesmann, L. R., & Kirwil, L. (2007). . Cambridge University Press.

Lin-Siegler, X., Ahn, J. N., Chen, J., Fang, F. F. A., & Luna-Lucero, M. (2016). Even Einstein struggled: Effects of learning about great scientists' struggles on high school students' motivation to learn science. Journal of Educational Psychology, 108(3), 314-328.

Lockwood, P., & Kunda, Z. (1997). Superstars and me: Predicting the impact of role models on the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(1), 91-103.

Marx, D. M., & Ko, S. J. (2012). Superstars "like" me: The effect of role model similarity on performance under threat. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42(7), 807-812.

Nabavi, R. T. (2012). Bandura's social learning theory & social cognitive learning theory. Theory of Developmental Psychology, 1(1), 1-24.

Overskeid, G. (2018). Do we need the environment to explain operant behavior?. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 302037.

Rosenthal, L., Levy, S. R., London, B., Lobel, M., & Bazile, C. (2013). In pursuit of the MD: The impact of role models, identity compatibility, and belonging among undergraduate women. Sex Roles, 68(7-8), 464-473.

Schunk, D. H. (2012). Learning theories an educational perspective (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Stout, J. G., Dasgupta, N., Hunsinger, M., & McManus, M. A. (2011). STEMing the tide: Using ingroup experts to inoculate women's self-concept in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(2), 255-270

Weiner, B. (1979). A theory of motivation for some classroom experiences. Journal of Educational Psychology, 71(1), 3-25.

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

Saul Mcleod, PhD
Educator, Researcher

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, Ph.D., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years experience of working in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory In Psychology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Social Learning Theory, proposed by Albert Bandura, posits that people learn through observing, imitating, and modeling others' behavior. This theory posits that we can acquire new behaviors and knowledge by watching others, a process known as vicarious learning.

# data[].attributes.body
1.      This is an overview of the Constructivism theory.

2.      I find the theory of constructivism impactful because I think it shows that students are not dumb and do have experience that we can build on to help them learn. This theory also makes sense to me from what I’ve seen with how I learn.

3.      I will plan learning that builds on what students know and is based on connections. I will need to get to know students and meet them where they are.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Constructivism Learning Theory & Philosophy of Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Constructivism is a learning theory that emphasizes the active role of learners in building their own understanding. Rather than passively receiving information, learners reflect on their experiences, create mental representations, and incorporate new knowledge into