Developmental scale of skill levels 

Contexts in source publication

Context 1

... that supports the emergence of a third tier, representations . In this new tier she can create symbolic understandings about her world that substitute for the sensorimotor experience. A striking ability that emerges in this tier is the ability to use words to represent actions (e.g., walking, drinking, laugh, cry, etc.). The pattern of encompassing and building upon earlier achievements repeats itself again in early adolescence when children becomes developmentally ready to use representations to create a fourth tier of understanding– abstractions . Figure 2 illustrates the cascade of skills growing in complexity beginning with the second tier (sometimes called the sensorimotor tier). [Insert Figure 2 here] When students enter school they are developmentally ready to create and organize understandings in the third tier (i.e., representations); however, having reached this developmental milestone does not insure that they will understand the representations they encounter in school. Because skills are context specific, the transfer of representations from teachers and books to students is often a difficult and unsuccessful process (Salomon and Perkins 1989; Pea 1993; Nardi 1996). “Skills are not automatically or easily generalized or integrated. Consequently, even when people have skills appropriate for a task, they frequently fail to use the skills and thereby function below the level required by the task” (Fischer, Bullock et al. 1993) (pg. 92). In order to help students develop more complex skills, teachers not only need to recognize where students begin their learning process (i.e., their actual developmental level), but also understand that the nature and degree of support they offer plays an important role in the skills students use as contexts change. A closer inspection of the representational tier and the types of representations Eve (and students like her) creates, reveals smaller incremental levels of development or understanding that increase in sophistication within the tier. Within each tier there are four intermediate levels, which provide a finer grain view of development or understanding. Each level is a more complex structure (and therefore a new skill) that demonstrates further coordination and integration of earlier levels. In the representational tier the four levels are single representations, mappings of representations, systems of representations, and systems of systems. Additionally, the last level of a tier is unique in that it supports the qualitatively new way of knowing ...

Context 2

... that supports the emergence of a third tier, representations . In this new tier she can create symbolic understandings about her world that substitute for the sensorimotor experience. A striking ability that emerges in this tier is the ability to use words to represent actions (e.g., walking, drinking, laugh, cry, etc.). The pattern of encompassing and building upon earlier achievements repeats itself again in early adolescence when children becomes developmentally ready to use representations to create a fourth tier of understanding– abstractions . Figure 2 illustrates the cascade of skills growing in complexity beginning with the second tier (sometimes called the sensorimotor tier). [Insert Figure 2 here] When students enter school they are developmentally ready to create and organize understandings in the third tier (i.e., representations); however, having reached this developmental milestone does not insure that they will understand the representations they encounter in school. Because skills are context specific, the transfer of representations from teachers and books to students is often a difficult and unsuccessful process (Salomon and Perkins 1989; Pea 1993; Nardi 1996). “Skills are not automatically or easily generalized or integrated. Consequently, even when people have skills appropriate for a task, they frequently fail to use the skills and thereby function below the level required by the task” (Fischer, Bullock et al. 1993) (pg. 92). In order to help students develop more complex skills, teachers not only need to recognize where students begin their learning process (i.e., their actual developmental level), but also understand that the nature and degree of support they offer plays an important role in the skills students use as contexts change. A closer inspection of the representational tier and the types of representations Eve (and students like her) creates, reveals smaller incremental levels of development or understanding that increase in sophistication within the tier. Within each tier there are four intermediate levels, which provide a finer grain view of development or understanding. Each level is a more complex structure (and therefore a new skill) that demonstrates further coordination and integration of earlier levels. In the representational tier the four levels are single representations, mappings of representations, systems of representations, and systems of systems. Additionally, the last level of a tier is unique in that it supports the qualitatively new way of knowing ...

Context 3

... the beginning of the next tier and thus creates the first level of the new tier (Fischer and Bidell 2006). Thus by combining the four tiers and the four levels within each tier the developmental framework can be portrayed as a 13-level developmental scale. (Note that the total number of levels is 13 instead of 16, because the last level of each tier is also the first level of the next tier. Furthermore the levels of interest in this chapter and in school learning in general begin with the first level of the action tier- See Figure 2.) Although the 13 levels that emerge over 30 years of maturation mark developmental milestones, they do not emerge in a continuous, uninterrupted metronomic march from one level to the next. While the metaphor of a staircase for development and its associated analogy of progress, as in climbing up the stairs, are common (Case 1991), both are misleading. Even though the trend in development is toward increased complexity over the long term, in the short-term progress is more unpredictable (for example when confronting a new problem) and often looks more like one step up and two steps back. This observed discontinuity in progress was previously thought to be the result of error in the tools used to measure change, but when studied through dynamic models the noticeable instability appears to be one of the prominent properties of progress (Fischer and Bidell, 2006; Van Geert 1994; Thelen and Smith 1998). Ultimately maturity in the long term (and support in the short term) contributes to individuals operating at “higher” and thus more complex levels (using the stairs metaphor); however, a more nuanced view of development requires looking more closely at the discontinuities in shorter time frames such as during problem solving. At this level of analysis, the spurts and discontinuities observed in the short term highlight a prominent phenomenon when observing growth in both behavioral and neurological terms. In terms of behavior, progress is sensitive to context (to include support and/or scaffolding). In terms of brain growth, we see the same influence of a dynamic environment on the progress the brain makes in supporting the emergence of more complex skills. As just highlighted, a central phenomenon when observing growth (both behaviorally and neurologically) is the presence of discontinuities. Behaviorally, discontinuities ...