NR Nakkula & Toshalis Understanding Youth annotations

Chapter 1:"The Construction of Adolescence"

Important concepts:

Theorhetical Imagination: involves youth using prior knowledge obtained from multiple sources and applying it to an idea of what might be (their future). No tabula rassa here, students always come to high school with outside knowledge.

Construction of Adolescence: the process of youth building who they are and building the unique world they live in.

Lev Vygotsky's Interpsychological Development: in order for teachers to do their job effectively, there must be a "mind bridge" linking students' and teachers' minds.
Vygotsky's Scaffolding: structures/specific strategies that help students move up in their development. New learning is built off of old learning and how it is organized.
Vygotsky's ZPD: Zone of Proximal Development, is the relationship between what a student can learn/do on his own versus what the student needs assistance in order to accomplish. The most learning occurs when students are stretched to their outer most level of ZPD. Teachers have to get to know their students through the mind bridge so that they can figure out how much a student should be challenged.

Interpersonal Development: how students learn to "become healthy social beings."

Reciprocal Transformation: personal development that occurs between student-teacher interactions. Students grow as a consequence of what they learn through social interactions w/ teachers/peers. Teachers grow as a consequence of what they learn from their interactions with their students. Idea of coauthorship.

Favorite quote from chapter 1: "The fragility of this relationship (between Antwon & Ms. Petersen) and either the peril or possibility tied to its outcomes highlight how vital it is that educators understand their work as a co-constructive, reciprocally transformative process." p15