Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

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6.3 An ethnographic approach to Teacher Education

6.3.1 Language, cognition and culture

An approach to teacher education that could respond adequately to the
issues presented above, would need:

- a theory of ontogenesis capable of articulating language and cognition
in the developing child with the cultural construction of knowledge in
a developing society;

- a theory of education capable of explaining the commonalities and
differences of home and school learning within the above framework;

- a model of teacher education enabling teachers to Integrate cultural
assumptions and innovation in education.

Vygotsky's theory of human development appears to offer an adequate
explanation of the role of language and culture in the development of
the uniquely human forms of higher mental processes: mediational means
(tools and signs) provide the mechanisms for sociocultural change while
transforming the nature of cognition itself (see 2.3). Kany aspects of
Vygotsky's theory are in need of revision In light of subsequent advances
in social sciences (they are identified and discussed in Vertsch,1985b).
The core of his approach, however, remains valid and particularly useful
for an Integrated approach to communication, learning and educational
change, largely because Vygotsky was not constrained by artificial
disciplinary boundaries. A communicative approach to language teaching,
an Interactionist view of language development, schema theories of
cognition, linguistic theories of discourse and ethnomethodology, all
would find Vygotsky's general genetic law of cultural development (see
page 44) a necessary precondition; the concept of 'Intersubjectlvity'
(Rommetveit,1978) is an example of a notion that is shared in all those
areas and in tune with Vygotsky's approach. Conversely, Vygotsky's

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