Teaching Social Competence

Parents and teachers can help teach social competence first by demonstrating it themselves. Second, by displaying faith in the child’s ability to achieve. Third, by explaining the existence and nature of the tools available to the child for the purposes of developing social competence (the ability to coordinate affect, cognition, and behavior). It is important that the expectations of patents and teachers for a child’s development of social competence be age appropriate.

Shall social competence have a different definition for each developmental stage? Certainly, the application of the definition requires addressing individual efficacy; it is important that children not be expected to perform beyond their developmental capacity. In that respect, social competence must be defined in terms of developmental achievement, but this task has been imposed upon us by the artificial stage demarcations that have arisen out of an intellectual construct that may have no more utility than a metaphor to help us, the observer to understand phenomena. Those demarcations may well be analogous to latitude and longitude lines drawn upon a globe. Developmental social competence underneath these lines of demarcation just might be a seamless spectrum. Far more important is a multi-dimensional criterion for assessment of social competence.

Research Validity

nternal validity is the result of an experiment being crafted in such a manner that the outcome of the experiment matches its teleology. That is to say it in fact does what it purports. In order to have internal validity the experiment must demonstrate that it was the variable manipulation and not some other extraneous cause that brought about the effect. External validity is the ability of the experimental results to be extrapolated to the general population or to another sample group.

Threats to validity are important considerations when designing studies because first the most effective response to validity threats is in the original design, specifically the design of the sampling procedure. The choice of participants must be made in such a manner as to maximize the similarity both between groups and between the groups and the population at large in order to minimize the threats to validity. There should be similarity between groups to increase internal validity; similarity between both groups and the general population to increase external validity.

Because studies take place over time the elapse of time itself can be a confounding variable especially in the study of children wherein the elapse of even a small amount of time can effect drastic changes in the operating parameters of the subjects. Also because experiments take place over time, attrition is a threat to validity not only mortality proper, but attrition due to relocation and simple dropout. These changes in the selected groups may alter the parameters carefully chosen at the beginning of the study.

During the time interval between the beginning and conclusion of a study, events may occur outside of the experiment which have a confounding effect even if irrelevant to the study. For example, a study of seasonal affective disorder in New York City conducted from August through December of 2001 might have confounded results through no fault of the study design. Outside influences can also threaten external validity, wherein a subset of a group receives an experience that enhances or detracts from the experimental treatment. Whereas the threat to internal validity is to the attribution of cause, the threat to external validity is to generalizability.

Naturally occurring developmental changes to the sample population may also introduce confounding causes. Activities of the sample population outside of the experiment may also have an adverse effect on the end result for example; a new exercise or diet fad amongst the general population may spoil the results of a concurrent weight loss study.

Pretesting may sensitize participants to not only the content of the instrumentation but also to the process of testing. Improved scores on tests may reflect improvement on what is being measured but it may merely measure the aspect of practice makes perfect. Test-pretest sensitivity is a threat to internal validity that threatens external validity as well in that the experiment repeated without the pretest may yield different results not attributable to any other factors in the repetition thereby adversely affecting generalizability.

When the administration or scoring of a test is inconsistent, the interpretation of the results has no sound basis. Validity can not only be affected by the interpretation of the statistics, but also by the statistical model itself. While regression toward the mean may be ameliorated by dropping outliers out of the equation, it is a trifle naïf to assume that the choice of the use of the mean or the median has no effect on the analysis of the data. Also the experimenters themselves may have a deleterious effect on results, whether in the administration of the test or by unintended non-verbal cues of the tester. The threat to external validity labeled reactive arrangement is also known as the “Hawthorne effect” which has been explained as an effect of participants being aware of the experiment. However there is a simpler explanation. Elton Mayo’s observations were of worker productivity at a factory (Bell, Paul A., Green, Thomas C., Fisher, Jeffery D., Baum, Andrew 2001). Anyone who has worked on a production line would be able to explain the increase in productivity when an experimenter changed the independent variable not so much as the result of condition changes but as a result of worker fatigue having a smaller effect on worker productivity when the worker is under supervisory or other observation. It is also trifle naïf to assume that observation has no effect upon the thing observed.

Lev Vygotsky

Vygotsky’s theories are often criticized out of a misapprehension of his concepts in their contextual setting. He was a showpiece of Soviet science. Living and working in a totalitarian régime, he had to pay far more than lip service to Marxist dogma. However the fact that Marxist doctrine forms the foundation for Vygotsky’s thought does not in and of itself disqualify his theories. It is the economic theory of value that does not pass the acid test of empirical experience in the realm of time. Vygotsky’s theories were specific to human development and he describes them in a manner analogous to dialectical materialism. Specifically, the dialecticalism which was the Hegelian foundation for the thought that Marx took in a Materialistic direction away from the Absolute Spirit of Hegel.

He introduces a dichotomy between the satisfaction of developmental hurdles by the individual and the race as to methodology. For example, the conceptual contextual background to dialectical materialism is that of the evolution of social structure in history leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat as a culmination similar to the culmination of physical evolutionary forces in the human species. This goes beyond mere phylogeny and ontogeny. In accordance with the Marxist theory of history there is an element of social development to Vygotsky’s theories. This forms a background to the foreground of individual development. This dialogue between phylogeny and ontogeny can be described in geometrical terms as there are multiple dimensions. There is an epistemological dimension, an active dimension, and more. In activity there are the implementation of tool usage and its development through practice. Signs are transmitters of meaning, but what is meaning? It is by communication that existential aloneness is transformed into meaning. It is the dialectical exchange between the individual and society.

Joseph Campbell speaks of social roles as masks in his lecture series, “Mythos”. He indicates a possibility of minimal relation between the inner and outer selves.

Once again, the meaning is found (in Marxist theory) in the dialogue. Activity consists of spectrums of development in four stages. The practice of tool usage begins with the use of the hands to insert items in one’s mouth and continues unto the construction of complicated machines.

Motivation has an additional fifth step that consists in the discrimination between ends and means. This step is primary because ends and means are the pathway to action.

There is only one demarcation for the spectrum between internal and external development because there must be a developmental foundation laid before interaction between them can occur.

The delta vectors for these values are different for history than for the child. First, Marxist theory of social evolution through history is an unsupported presupposition made in advance of empirical data. But there are also similarities such as long term interactions between levels. Interactionism is an integral part of dialectical Materialism but both individual and social development begins with tool usage. We have no soft tissue fossil evidence of laryngeal development, so we have no idea when vocal communication entered the social development of our ancestors, but it is not unreasonable to assume that the employment of hand axes preceded communication except for communication the construction techniques necessary for building a stone hand axe by example. But in the child there is no doubt that the vocal manipulation of the environment precedes the digital.

Beyond the most basic examples of stimulus-response association and cut and try techniques, deliberative judgments concerning concrete relations and tool usage as a means toward an end describe a progression away from Interactionism. Thinking in terms of concepts in the absence of sensory input whereby cultural values are internalized, and rational analysis employing mathematical and logical operations are the systems on mentation that describe us as humans and the gulf between us and beasts. The chimpanzee, who employs a stick even one of constructed length to get at a bananna, does so in a flash of insight and not by any synthetic or analytic judgments. It is human thought that transcends empirical tranactionalism.

The distinctiveness of human cognition was attributed by Vygotsky to cultural history, but this is a reflection of the Marxist theoretical environment in which he operated. To state that the analysis by dialectical materialism upon human history discovers a difference between animal behavior and human in terms of the adaptability and development of animals and the adaptability and historical development adds nothing to the equation beyond humans develop through history and animals do not because humans have culture and animals do not. The difference between synthetic and analytical judgments is essential to understanding this failing of Vygotsky’s. This statement beyond that of the species does not add anything in terms of descriptions of qualities of the predicate and while this may be criticized as a positive historical error of pettio principi, one must understand that for Vygotsky’s political and scientific overlords, Dialectical Materialism was an article of faith, and his position in society, was dependent upon developing a Marxist psychology in line with the Marxist philosophy of history, no self revelation of the Absolute Spirit culminating in human art, philosophy and religion allowed, the ultimate self-revelation of the Absolute Spirit was the development of the dictatorship of the Proletariat. Was he merely expressing the dialogue between his inner and outer self by employing active motivation to interact with his social environment?

References:

Killian, Melanie, Langer, Jonas Ed., 1998 Piaget Evolution and Development Lawrence Earlbaum and Assoc. Mahwah, New Jersey, and Killen, Melanie

Langford, Peter E., 2005 Vygotsky’s Developmental and Educational Psychology Psychology Press, Taylor and Francis Group, Hove and New York

John Dewey Human Nature and conduct

There is a positive and negative side to morals. In ethics it may be sufficient to do no harm, but morals go beyond mere avoidance of the contumely of society. This is the spiritual pride of the prodigal son’s elder brother. Claiming moral praiseworthiness only on the basis of an absence of blameworthiness is above all only another permutation of self-concern. Not being the cause of ill is not the same as creating a new good. Yet there are some who do not break their arm when patting themselves on the back based upon not being a killer or bringing harm with the best of intentions. On the other hand, there are those whose exaltation of an ideal world wherein imperfection could be seen as an opportunity for real positive change instead of confirming evidence of the dichotomy between the ideal and actual and furthermore a confirmation of a neo-Platonic distinction between personal realities such as that theorized by Rene’ Descartes.

Indeed, the Cartesian solution for the mind-body problem leads some to give up real physical morality and ethics as a bad idea unattainable in a world not ideal, something only to be pursued within the individual consciousness. This aversion to the actual drags morality away form ethics; makes it something personal and not social. Something that is divorced from human interaction, something that is exclusively human inaction. All religions condemn this form do unto others . . . to practice compassion at all times to all creatures. Even Islam whose ideal is a religious society teaches that morality is a matter of social interaction.

Dewey elucidates two theories of social change, one wherein all social improvement is founded upon the preeminent change of individual character, and one for which improved morality “trickles down” from a primary change in social institutions. Each, in promoting its preferred theory of change, asserts the impossibility of the obverse. Each limits human individual freedom. One, by exalting it to exclusive ethereality, and the other by denying it completely. Shall a person contemplate their navel until it absorbs them, or shall society be condemned to follow some law of historical evolution or dialectical materialism into the new horizon? Some would deny this dilemma. Like Dewey these would point out that human behavior is the interaction between the individual and their surroundings. Environmental psychology for the natural surroundings and social psychology for group behavior. But is group behavior the same as interaction between the individual and social environment? We see that social change can stimulate individual change and individual change can stimulate social change but is this organic change that brings reform just as planned economies fail, planned social reform brings unintended consequences. One cannot merely do one thing.

Morals are a science of ends, means, and actions. Morality is not constrained to stasis as character alone. Morality is dynamic. Morality is a matter of intelligent design. It is teleological; involved with final causes. The forces of relativism confuse the actions of the individual, the interrelationship of the individual to the environment, and the individual themselves. The morality of an act is not the result of a changing environment, but the result of the individual’s choice of interaction with that environment.

Teaching children social competence

Parents and teachers can help teach social competence first by demonstrating it themselves. Second, by displaying faith in the child’s ability to achieve. Third, by explaining the existence and nature of the tools available to the child for the purposes of developing social competence (the ability to coordinate affect, cognition, and behavior). It is important that the expectations of patents and teachers for a child’s development of social competence be age appropriate.

Shall social competence have a different definition for each developmental stage? Certainly, the application of the definition requires addressing individual efficacy; it is important that children not be expected to perform beyond their developmental capacity. In that respect, social competence must be defined in terms of developmental achievement, but this task has been imposed upon us by the artificial stage demarcations that have arisen out of an intellectual construct that may have no more utility than a metaphor to help us, the observer to understand phenomena. Those demarcations may well be analogous to latitude and longitude lines drawn upon a globe. Developmental social competence underneath these lines of demarcation just might be a seamless spectrum. Far more important is a multi-dimensional criterion for assessment of social competence.