mbc stuff

All the civilising things which were once considered women’s work in pioneering society, because by large women were unable to travel and learn...

Franklin’s view of manhood and the bush legend
My Brilliant Career is often read as the tale of a woman finding her (romantic) voice against the odds (the reality of bush life): a reading popularised by Gillian Armstrong's 1979 film

Novel suggests that the central character Harold, and men more generally, seem incapable of true passions because it might mean giving up control.
- If Harold can not give into passion freely than he can never excite Sybylla. Similarly for Franklin, men are trapped within masculinity, reaping the benefits of power but are afraid of giving up control.
From today’s perspective this book seems to have appeared on the scene at exactly the right time. It was federation year, women all over Australia were about to get the vote and many ‘brilliant careers’ were expected from young women of Franklin’s generation.
Initially greeted with praise and affection, it brought its young author both fame and embarrassment, for it was read as an autobiography. For many years it was out of print, with Franklin refusing to republish. Her will, when she died in 1954, prevented it from being republished for a further 10 years. Nevertheless, since it reappeared in 1965 it has been continuously available. This is a rare occurrence for an Australian title, even one that is now considered one of the ‘books that made us’ (Weekend Australian, August 1995)

Gillian Armstrong’s film of Miles Franklin’s novel remains remarkable true to the spirit of the original which, almost unbelievably, considering the modernity of its sentiments and the ebullient confidence of its tone, was written by a young woman of 16 and first published in 1901.

The story centres on Sybylla Melvyn, a young woman living with her parents on a remote farm in the bush...... She dreams of living a more intellectually and culturally rewarding life in the arts, and is writing a ‘memoir’. When she goes to stay on her grandmother’s estate at Caddagat things improve somewhat, and she is courted by Frank Hawden, a rather idiotic English immigrant, and Harry Beecham, a young landowner. She is attracted to the latter, and is then faced with the choice of trying to pursue a ‘brilliant career’ or getting married.

The real importance of both novel and film lies in their acute description of a young woman’s feelings at a transitional moment in her life.
Carmen Callil, author and the founder of the independent publishing house, Virago Press, aptly noted,
“ Miles Franklin was decades ahead of her time, and My Brilliant Career was written for an audience not yet born. For the character of Sybylla Melvyn, Mile rankling created a character who mouths with incredible charm but deadly accuracy of the fears, conflicts and torments of every girl, with an understanding usually associated with writers of the 1960s and 70s” .

All the main qualities admired in the book have been triumphantly retained by the film, which it might be added, also manages to exclude some of the original’s slightly less attractive qualities, such as its nationalism (which it shared with many of its literary contemporaries), and a certain tendency to let ebullience and exuberance overflow into gush and overly self- conscious romanticism. The dialogue, too has been considerably updated and ‘de-literacised’ ; but the sentiments expressed by Sybylla are very much those that animate her in the novel.

As with many women who make films, much is made of the values portrayed in Armstrong’s work and their relevance to current feminist theories (thus often ignoring her working practice or aesthetic choices). Armstrong’s films are character studies, with human interaction and personal journey at the heart of the narrative. So with this as her springboard.....
The conflict between career, creativity and marriage is a developing theme in Armstrong’s work and MBC is merely her first commentary on it. MBC describes the conflict between relationship and career. It is a story of unrequited love, restrained passion and friendship between men and women, which i believe the heart of all Armstrong films. Sybylla can never marry Harry, anymore than Jo could marry Laurie. And Lucinda is fated to lose Oscar with no more than a kiss between them. [Little Women (1994), Oscar and Lucinda (1997)]
My Brilliant Career makes the best of a variety of stunning Australian landscapes but demonstrates its real beauty and clout as an inward journey into the soulscape of an artist determined to dance alone to the music of her own special muse.

Sybylla - as a teenage girl who dreams of transcending her rural background to become a cultivated, independent woman

Armstrong upset her critics when Sybylla refused to marry harry, despite several proposals from him. Even Geater Union (the company who distributed and exhibited the film) were worried that the female audience would be dissatisfied. So Armstrong added the line at the end with Sybylla saying “I am so near loving you”, which implied some sort of ambiguity..............

Sybylla is plain, defiantly outspoken and determined to be an accomplished musician, actress or writer rather than humble outback farmer’s wife. So her poor family dispatches her to rich Grandma Bossier (Aileen Britton) and Aunt Helen (Wendy Hughes), and later neighbouring Aunt Gussie (Patricia Kennedy), in the hope of quieting her ambition, or at least instilling some propriety.A staunch opponent of a premature marriage, and rejecter of pompous suitor Frank Hawden (Robert Grubb), Sybylla finds herself in the novel position of falling in love with her grandmother’s neighbour, Harry Beecham (Sam Neill). Beecham is one of the few men of his station not to be galled by her presumptuous behaviour and Sybylla must soon choose between married life and pursuing her vaguely formulated career.

The book is direct, tough, amusing though laced with a bitter-sweet irony, and with a wild freedom about it. And director Gillian Armstrong has managed to include all those aspects in her 1979 movie- aided of course with a superb cats and crew.

However, we need to consider that My Brilliant Career’s main crew- director, producer, screenwriter and production designer- were all women intensely dedicated to creating a cinematic version of the 1901 novel by the revered Australian author and feminist Miles Franklin.
Their rendition successfully let most of the original intact while adding their own, contemporary layers of nuance. Indeed the rich interplay of innuendo that results from a character who simultaneously speaks to both past and present is the film’s most significant feature.

Sybylla Melvyn, the aspirant careerist of the title, is an 'uppity woman.' Her high spirits, her attitudes towards marriage, equality, and careerism, and her tomboyish actions mark her historically as an independent New Woman. The film's handling of certain motifs, while remaining faithful to a portrayal of life circa 1900, encourages viewers to see Sybylla as sharing traits and concerns with the activist woman of the 1970's. Armstrong uses cinema's visual power, for instance, to suggest the timeless influence social forces exercise in controlling women's lives. When Sybylla appears under a mosquito netting, her face covered by a grotesque and all too modern appearing facial treatment, playfully gesturing like a cat, all women can relate to the entrapping tyranny exercised by the pressure women feel to make themselves beautiful. The unforgettable pillow fight between Harry and Sybylla is an incident that in Victorian terms illustrates inappropriate, but innocent, tomboyish behavior. The manner in which this sequence is photographed and played out by the actors, however, clearly reveals pent-up sexual tensions erupting into a friendly battle of the sexes. And feminists of the Seventies derived vicarious delight from the fact that Sybylla was forward enough to strike the first blow and determined enough to land the last one.
At the end of the film Sybylla becomes a true, self-possessed heroine by setting aside the childish worldview she held at the beginning--the exasperating pronouncements, the unpredictable, often contradictory actions, her spoiled brat behavior. Thanks to the humanistic education she gained during her "walkabout" among family situations of differing levels of privilege, class, and wealth, she has matured into her determination to remain single and have a career. When she refused Harry Beecham's first proposal, it was out of egotistic, youthful bravado. When she definitively declines him, it is from the strength of her self-knowledge.
Sybylla's decision comes from a maturity carefully prepared over the course of the film.

Even so, the note Armstrong adds at the end that Sybylla's book, My Brilliant Career, was published in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1901 is a device that contrives to reassure and convince disappointed viewers that Sybylla's career as a writer turned out positively and was not just another immature, girlish whim. And, furthermore, that it really was acceptable to say no to marriage.

Miles Franklin published her famous novel MBC in 1901. It was later adapted into a film and released to rave reviews in 1979 under the direction of Gillian Armstrong. The story focused on a young bush girl who wants more than a husband, a farm and a brood of kids. The key figure is Sybylla, played by the young Judy Davis.
Sybella is a poor farm girl, who wants nothing more than to be writer. That single desire drives the story of her struggle. It is a struggle against a powerful set of conventions- gender, class; as most of the key figures around Sybella want her to mature, marry and settle down. Sybella too on some level is drawn to the idea-represented by the handsome, kind and wealthy figure of harry Beecham of ‘Five-Bob-Downs’. Harry played by Sam Neill, is the rather hard-to-resist love interest.
But resist she does, and tis is where the film is unusual. Much of the story is about Sybylla’s resistance, the outward defiance and the inner, emotional struggle that ends up in her heartbreaking choice- she knocks her suitor back. She chooses her way.
The film spawned a heap of commentary; loads of praise and buckets of criticimsms. Many argued about what the film was saying about women, female character, freedom and choice. And many of the key concerns raised by the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s were concentrated in the film.

MBC had made a sharp break from traditional portrayals of bush heroines in earlier Australian films. During the 1920’s, Australian bush heroines were depicted as ale to ride and shoot, brand cattle and even rescue the men. (eg. A Girl of the Bush - 1920).
Similar to Hollywood films starring Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn, Armstrong depicted her female protagonist as a woman ‘in control of events’. But unlike that of Sybylla, these spirited and independent heroines still ended up in the arms of the male lead in the movies final scenes.
Not so in MYC, with Sybylla saying ‘no’ to Harry in words that make one thing clear- she will not abandon her talents and give up her dream. As she says:
“The last thing I want is to be a wife out in the bush, having a baby every year. Maybe I’m ambitious, selfish. But I can’t lose myself in somebody else’s life when i haven’t lived my own”.


Director Gillian Armstrong had her own take on the story... she argued that Sybylla was passionately attracted to Harry but he wasn’t the right person for her.

In adapting a novel, the screenwriter is always faced with difficult choices: what to include/exclude, how to compensate for necessary excisions, how to conflate characters and incidents, how to show what the writer tells. Underlying these decisions are the contrasting circumstances of reading and watching. It is worth reminding ourselves - and our students - that a novel will take many hours to read; that unless we are impelled to stay up all night to finish it, the novel will be read in chunks, over a period of days or weeks; that reading is an intimate experience, usually undertaken in private; and that the reader is always at liberty to re-read, to skip, to jump ahead and generally to control the experience. The experience of watching a film, on the other hand, is concentrated into two or three hours at most; it takes place on a single, uninterrupted occasionand the viewer is a captive audience, with no choice but to follow the relentless progress of the action on the screen.
Literature Matters 32: Film and Literature - Two Ways of Telling

by Alan Pulverness

_____________________________________________________________________

My Brilliant Career tells the story of Sybylla Melvyn, one of the great heroines of Australian literature and fi lm. Sybylla is a passionate, headstrong woman who articulates her discontent with the narrow paths set out for women in the 1890s. Despite poverty and hardship, isolation and the rigid expectations of her society, Sybylla is determined to resist the tempting but stifl ing security of marriage and to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. Above all else, she refuses to be owned, and it is her independence of spirit and mind that makes her story both moving and inspirational.

The text has much to say about the inequities of marriage, the solace offered by art, and the workings of class and gender in Australian society. It also offers a re-working of myths about our bush landscape. Beyond that, My Brilliant Career is, on several levels, a testament
to the courage and conviction of Australian women artists.


In 1965, Margaret Fink stumbled on Miles Franklin’s book. She describes herself at the time as ‘half way through a breeding decade in a lace prison of marriage’. Fink found inspiration in Sybylla, and she dedicated herself to becoming a producer who might one day bring the story to the screen. On the set of The Removalists (Tom Jeffrey, 1975), her first feature as producer, she was impressed by the young props assistant, Gillian Armstrong, and thought that perhaps she had found someone who could help her realize her dream.
My Brilliant Career was to become her first feature fi lm as director, and the first Australian feature fi lm to be directed by a woman in fi fty years.

Fink’s faith in the power of Miles Franklin’s novel was rewarded and the fi lm was a tremendous success, both critically and commercially. (winning six out of nine nominated AFI awards in 1979)

Every shot of Sybylla conveys some information about her character and builds our understanding of her. She is a dynamic fi gure, often presented in movement: consider, for example, the two scenes in which she dances, the pillow fi ght, and the scene in which
she literally rocks Harry’s boat. This is a woman who doesn’t walk, she strides.
We see her swinging, running and climbing, all of which serve to convey a sense of her strength and vitality. There is nothing meek or demure about her; as Harry’s Aunt Gussie says, all the young women who have been to Five Bob seem insipid by comparison. For
all her girlish, artistic pretensions, she is a direct and forthright person. Uncle Jay Jay delights in her breathtaking disregard for social conventions and her wonderful unpredictability, while elegant Aunt Helen and Grandmother Bossier exchange nervous glances:
‘the only trouble is, you don’t know what she’ll do next’.

Halfway through the fi lm, there is a moment that captures a sense of Sybylla’s vigour, a quality of alive-ness, a mix of sensuality and abandon. In long shot, we see Frank
Hawden approach her with a posy of fl owers. In affected accent, Sybylla exclaims, ‘How terribly kind!’. Frank scuttles off and she tosses the fl owers into the pond. A close-up on the
water reveals a few spots of rain. Dropping the book she had been reading, and shedding hat, glove and parasol—part of Aunt Helen’s regime to train her wild niece in the arts of feminine vanity—Sybylla launches herself into the sudden downpour, crying ecstatically, ‘Rain!’. She turns in circles, arms aloft, face upturned to the sky, rejoicing in the drops of rain which herald the end of a long, hard drought. Sybylla’s boundless energy is as much a
defining attribute as her passion for all that is elevated and artistic. This scene also gestures towards Sybylla’s place in the landscape, an almost unmediated sense of connection and belonging.

The parched, dusty farm at Possum Gully, with its relentless work rhythms and endless toil, estranges Sybylla from the ‘world of art, music, literature, culture and elegance’ that she aspires to join. But it has also freed her from middle-class conservative ideals of femininity,
decorum and propriety, that one imagines would have suffocated her wildness of spirit. At Possum Gully, she is not subject to the tyrannies of colonial femininity: keeping one’s
complexion unblemished is a luxury not afforded by the labours of farm life.

All the activities we see Sybylla’s hands performing, for example: writing, playing piano,
chopping wood, milking a cow, pulling a calf from the mud, caning one of the McSwat children, whipping Harry, pillow-fi ghting, writing ‘Miss’ on the McSwats’ blackboard, driving
a carriage.
What effect does all this action have on our impression of Sybylla?
Consider the ways in which it casts her as a dynamic, active, capable person.


In the novel, Sybylla observes, ‘Marriage to me appeared the most horribly tied-down and unfair-to-woman experience going’ (p.31). How is marriage represented in the fi lm? Consider Sybylla’s Aunt Helen, who says, ‘Marriage gives us respectability’. She married for love, but was abandoned by her husband for another woman. She tells Sybylla that she’s ashamed of her situation. Sybylla queries, ‘Why should you be ashamed?’ Also consider Sybylla’s own mother, once beautiful, but now so careworn by a life of hardship, endless toil and children, Sybylla doesn’t even recognize a photo of her as a young woman. She too
married for love.

In the book, Franklin writes oh Harry, ‘He offered me everything— but control’, p.223. Consider statements from the fi lm such as: ‘I can’t lose myself in somebody else’s life when I haven’t lived my own yet’; ‘I don’t want to be a wife living in the bush, having a baby every year’; ‘I don’t want to be part of anyone’.)

Letters are an important device in the fi lm, furthering the plot and also subtly underlining the ways in which Sybylla, as a young, single woman, lacks control over her own destiny.
Grandmother Bossier’s invitation to Caddagat releases her from her mother’s plans to secure her work as a servant, and her mother’s letter to Grandmother Bossier informs
Sybylla of the arrangement for her to work at the McSwats.


Geoffrey Barker, reviewing My Brilliant Career in 1979 for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, criticized the film: ‘its feminist points a touch too obtrusively’.

Sybylla’s hair, which connotes wildness, unruliness, and yet Harry’s Aunt Gussie describes it as her greatest asset

the image of Sybylla and Aunt Gussie in the bird sanctuary

The varied landscapes captured in My Brilliant Career by the talented cinematographer,
Donald McAlpine, have a powerful presence. This is a fi lm in which the setting could be considered to have the force of another character. The very fi rst words we hear are: ‘Possum Gully, Australia, 1897’, signalling the ways in which place will be an important theme.
As Brian McFarlane states: ‘[M]uch of the fi lm’s meaning is made in the impact of the changing scenes on Sybylla; in the tensions created between her and the place she finds herself’ (Cinema Papers).
Syb and landscape: Armstrong interprets it as ambivalent and highly charged: oppressive,
in that it separates her from the elegant life of art and music that her soul craves; but also a source of inspiration for her writing

The film conflates the identities of Miles Franklin and Sybylla Melvyn, so that the book Sybylla writes in the fi lm appears to be My Brilliant Career.
Over our last view of her, a title provides information about the novel’s publication.
Why do you think the film-makers might have chosen to blur the distinction between the real-life novelist and her fictitious creation? Does this blurring in some way validate Sybylla’s decision to pursue a life of art at the expense of marriage with Harry?



Austen undertones
Margaret Fink explains in commentary, ‘ the reason i am making this film is because she said no’ – radical at the time


Role of music – setting
The idea of writing a book (see written notes) often forgotten, always in the tree with cats
Birdcage image – metaphor for trapped woman, trapped by the confinements of gender
Pillow fight - courtship
Depiction of outback – social status
Harsh and severe landscape, vs. Culture and civilising city
Pub - seen from perspective of woman
Ugliness
Character portrayal – face + hands, costume, hair (consider solitary plait similar of franklin)
Whose story is it?
Smacked bottom?
Role of letters
Miscenscene – dinner table vs. Possum gully
The kiss – for cinematic pleasures
Feminist undertones
Ugly Duckling often the heroine (look at other aussie films – Muriel’s wedding)
Modernising and adapting original for targeted audience
The need to establish enough back story, so we still like judy davis character... is she able to convince the audience of her decision – critics debated

“ Uncle first said he was glad to see I had the spirit of an Australian, and then threatened to put my nose above my chin if I failed to behave properly. Grannie remarked that I might have the spirit of an Australian, but I had by no means the manners of a lady.... (128) “
The democratic 'Australian' ('my organ of veneration must be flatter than a pancake', 5) is thus opposed to the romance role of aristocratic 'lady'. This is the role Grannie, the owner of Caddagat, prefers, greeting Sybylla as 'some grand relative honouring them with a visit' (50) on her arrival. But Sybylla cannot remain so self-controlled. Her vigorous behaviour bursts through decorum -- it is uncontrollable --just as the realist mode bursts into romance in her narrative.

NETWORKED LEARNING - LECTURE 1

What is WEB 2.0?

Web 2.0
It is essentially an increasing range of software that supports a variety of technologies for open and collaborative communication, learning and creativity.

(For further information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0)

It requires:

1. a platform
2. social networking
3. read/write web
4. social software
5. gathering and sorting

IT BRINGS WHAT YOU WANT TO YOU, YOU ARE CREATING THE WORLD YOU WANT

(For further information http://www.digitalchalkie.com/)

NETWORKED LEARNING - LECTURE ONE

THE BUZZWORD WEB 2.0

Web 1.0 is getting information from the web

Web 2.0 is constructing knowledge collaboratively on the web

Web 2.0 is the heart and soul of inline education eg. podcasts, ajax, mash-up, wiki

Web 2.0 is putting the "we" in "web"

Web 2.0 ... 'the living web'

(For further information, visit expert Andy Budd) http://www.andybudd.com/presentations/dcontruct05/)

Web 1.0
Personal Websites
Britannica Online
Content Management Systems
Directories (Taxonomy)
Screen Scraping

Web 2.0
Blogs
Wikipedia
Wikis
Tagging (“Folksonomy”)
Web Services

(For further information, visit Tim O'Reilly)

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

GUIDED LEARNING FOR UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESS OF PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT

This support document has been designed to help teachers understand key aspects of the new English Years 7–10 Syllabus and to provide guidance for implementation. The document shows how these aspects can be incorporated in teaching and learning programs, and how these programs are underpinned by the principles of assessment for learning that aim to support students in their learning.
The document provides advice about constructing a program that will cover the scope of English for a stage. It sets out a process for planning and sequencing units of work and developing teaching and learning activities

I was able to find the Programming information for my Major area of study: ENGLISH by searching the Board of Studies Website www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au, in the syllabus documents Icon, then clicked on the advice on programming and assessment..

ENGLISH SYLLABUS: GOALS, OUTCOMES AND OBJECTIVES

Aim / Goals
The aim of English in Years 7 to 10 is to enable students to use, understand, appreciate, reflect on and enjoy the English language in a variety of texts and to shape meaning in ways that are imaginative, interpretive, critical and powerful.

Outcomes
A student:

1. responds to and composes increasingly sophisticated and sustained texts for understanding, interpretation, critical analysis and pleasure
2. uses and critically assesses a range of processes for responding and composing
3. selects, uses, describes and explains how different technologies affect and shape meaning
4. selects and uses language forms and features, and structures of texts according to different purposes, audiences and contexts, and describes and explains their effects on meaning
5. transfers understanding of language concepts into new and different contexts
6. experiments with different ways of imaginatively and interpretively transforming experience, information and ideas into texts
7. thinks critically and interpretively using information, ideas and increasingly complex arguments to respond to and compose texts in a range of contexts
8. investigates the relationships between and among texts
9. demonstrates understanding of the ways texts reflect personal and public worlds
10. questions, challenges and evaluates cultural assumptions in texts and their effects on meaning
11. uses, reflects on, assesses and adapts their individual and collaborative skills for learning with increasing independence and effectiveness.

Objectives
Skills, knowledge and understanding
Through responding to and composing a wide range of texts in context and through close study of texts, students will develop skills, knowledge and understanding in order to:
· speak, listen, read, write, view and represent *
· use language and communicate appropriately and effectively
· think in ways that are imaginative, interpretive and critical
· express themselves and their relationships with others and the world
· learn and reflect on their learning through their study of English.

Values and attitude
Students will value and appreciate:
· the importance of the English language as a key to learning
· the power of language to explore and express views of themselves, others and the world
· the power of effective communication using the language modes of speaking, listening, reading, writing, viewing and representing
· the role of language in developing positive interaction and cooperation with others
· the diversity and aesthetics of language through literary and other texts
· the independence gained from thinking imaginatively, interpretively and critically
· the power of language to express the personal, social, cultural, ethical, moral, spiritual and aesthetic dimensions of human experiences.


**********************************************
I have found the content for English at Stage 5 is based on the relationships between language and meaning. Meaning is shaped through the processes of responding to and composing texts.

Students’ skills, knowledge and understanding are developed through:
· responding to texts across the required range of texts
· composing texts across the variety of types and contexts described in the content.

The content for Stage 5 takes account of students’ developmental growth as their views of the world broaden from the personal to the public.
This syllabus uses some terms in specific ways to describe complex processes and concepts


The GOALS act as rather broad and general descriptions of the long term aims of a whole curriculum.

The OUTCOMES decsribe characteristics, behaviours or understandings in the learner which have significance.

The OBJECTIVES describe the desired changes in the learner in such a way that one can tell whether or not they have been achieved. The objectives describe what the student is to do, and the expected student learning.

PIAGET + THEORY

What is the essence of Piaget's theory?

Simply stated, Piaget stresses concept development before speech. (whereas Vygotsky urges the use of speech to develop concepts) piaget describes four qualitively different periods or stages of intellectual growth, which we pass through.

Piaget’s "genetic epistemology" showed through a study of child development how concepts and cognitive capacities are developed in a person through human activity in the course of individual growth

The four development stages are described in Piaget's theory as:

Sensorimotor stage: from birth to age 2 years (children experience the world through movement and senses and learn object permanence)

Preoperational stage: from ages 2 to 7 (acquisition of motor skills and language)

Concrete operational stage: from ages 7 to 11 (children begin to think logically about concrete events)
Formal operational stage: after age 11 (development of abstract reasoning).

For further information -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget

According to Piaget these stages can not be skipped, although some researchers disagree with this. But Piaget does say that the time schedule for passing through the stages can be facilitated by experience. Piaget also notes that there is no guarantee that an individual will pass through all the stages. In most cases (not all) it takes formal instruction in high school and college to break into the highest stage.

For further information -> http://www.csun.edu/~vcoao0el/de361/de361s121_folder/img026.gif

VYGOTSKY + THEORY

What is the essence of Vygotsky's theory?

The major theme of Vygotsky's theoretical framework is that SOCIAL INTERACTION plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition.

Vygotsky (1978) states: "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals." (p57).

A second aspect of Vygotsky's theory is the idea that the potential for cognitive development depends upon the "ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT" (ZPD): a level of development attained when children engage in social behavior. Full development of the ZPD depends upon full social interaction. The range of skill that can be developed with adult guidance or peer collaboration exceeds what can be attained alone.

For further information -> http://tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html

Principles:

1. Cognitive development is limited to a certain range at any given age.

2. Full cognitive development requires social interaction.

GLASSER + MOTIVATORS

What does Glasser suggests motivates students to learn?

Choice Theory posits that behavior is central to our existence and is driven by five genetically driven needs:

Survival (food, clothing, shelter, breathing, personal safety and others)
Belonging/connecting/love
Power
Freedom
Fun

Choice Theory posits the existence of a "Quality World" in which, starting at birth and continuing throughout our lives, we place those things that we highly value: primarily the people who are important to us, things we prize, and systems of belief, i.e. religion, cultural values, etc.

Glasser also posits a "Comparing Place" in which we compare the world we experience with our Quality World. We behave to achieve as best we can a real world experience consonant with our Quality World.

Behavior ("Total Behavior" in Glasser's terms) is made up of these four components:

acting
thinking
feeling
physiology

Glasser suggests that we have considerable control or choice over the first two of these, and little ability to directly choose the latter two. As these four components are closely intertwined, the choices we make in our thinking and acting greatly affect our feeling and physiology.