ABSTRACT
From a sociocultural perspective neither education in general nor teaching in particular is about the transmission of specific bodies of knowledge and skills. Wells (2002) argues that education “is about the development of understanding and the formation of minds” or, more precisely, “the development of a mind to learn” (p. 2). A sociocultural perspective offers an alternative to both the traditional teacher-centered transmission view of teaching and the unstructured student-centered discovery learning view of teaching. Because a sociocultural perspective recognizes the inherent connections between teaching, learning, and development, instruction may best be characterized as integrating a student-centered approach with deliberate teaching. Moreover, the focus of attention, from a sociocultural perspective, is not on the teacher or the students, or both, but on the character and quality of the activities they are engaged in together, the resources they are using to engage in those activities, and what is being accomplished by engaging in those activities. Ultimately, teaching has the potential to lead development when it creates opportunities for the individual to master new psychological tools (true concepts). In other words, when teaching creates opportunities in which learners can participate in activities that provide them with direct experiences in the use of new psychological tools, and in ways that make the evolving histories and functions of these tools explicit, such tools have the potential to advance cognitive development.
