從維高斯基的社會文化論　談博物館兒童探索空間之設置規劃

To Set up Children's Discovery Room in Museums from the Viewpoint of Vygotsky's Social-Cultural Theory

曾瑞蓮

《科技博物》 4卷6期 (2000/11) Pp. 18-30

https://doi.org/10.6432/TMR.200011.0018

並列摘要

Lev S. Vygotsky is the Russian psychologist. Thirty years after his death that his works were translated into English, immediately drawing wide attention from the world of psychology. Vygotsky and Piaget are now recognized as outstanding pioneers in Cognitive Development Psychology during the second half of the 20th century.
Vygotsky's theories opened up new windows into the world of the social and cultural lives of children. Where Vygotsky differed from Piaget was that the former was concerned not with the process of intellectual development but rather with the origins of recognition. He postulated a new model of recognition, proposing that learning and recognition are a manifestation of social acculturation while individual thinking patterns or intellectual skills are naturally developed through experience gained while growing up in a social culture. This way of advocating recognition has been applied in the area of education in museums in the last few years, stirring up considerable debate and leading museum planners to wonder whether the layout of their buildings and displays might generate some kind of debate and inspire visitors to enjoy the experience while making new discoveries. This would make the museum more than a place to present knowledge, indeed a place for audience to create their new knowledge.
Although both Vygotsky and Piaget were constructive theorists, Piaget advocated individual constructivism with its so-called internal cognition process for children. The idea of assimilation was used widely to explain the development of biological levels in the cognition process for children, with no room for social cultural constructivism. Vygotsky, on the other hand, was a social constructivist for whom the internal process originated in the levels of social culture and developed in parallel in the individual.
Piaget's cognitive constructivism has been used in children's museums ever since the late 1 960s. While Vygotskys ideas have attracted a great deal of attention and concern in the world of modern psychology, it is also very important for museums which place a premium on presenting a variety of cultures and an environment in which children are free to grow and develop. This article uses Vygotsky's social culture theory as a key point for consideration in laying out the children's discovery room in a museum, and the 'World of Webs', one subject of discovery room for parents and children is used as a case study.
In Vygotsky's social culture scheme, cognitive social origins and the contents of social culture, working models influence the intellectual development of children and social interaction helps to spur intellectual development. These kinds of ideas mean that museums must be careful to provide complete, professional content in their education-related programs, and they also need to keep in mind the special characteristics of various levels in social cultures and social groups.
The principles of language as intermediate symbolic tools and of ideal development (ZPD) have also served as valuable concepts in the planning of discovery spaces for children in museums and in carrying out displays and activities.
ZPD offers dynamic, interactive and flexible models for learning and further confirms the role that adults play in children's learning process. Thus the materials and equipment used in the Children's Discovery Space are designed to have significant content, but they are also intended to initiate and encourage a 'dialogue' with the child. Another important aspect is that any ability the child brings with him or her should also be used as an effective structure on which to build.