Schooling and the Development of Verbal Thinking: Tshivenda-Speaking Children's Reasoning and Classification Skills

Abstract

The article examines rural South African primary school learners' performance on classification and generalisation tasks to demonstrate the connection between verbal forms of thinking and the socio-cultural activities in which, and through which, verbal thinking develops. The study explored the relationship between learning and development and the specific linguistic practices and sociocultural activities in which learners' development takes place to demonstrate the functioning of heterogeneous thought processes employed by learners during problem solving activities. The results suggest that different ways of thinking and concept development are rooted in and shaped by the forms of sociocultural activities and discourse modes in which learners participate. The specific finding on the peculiar differentiation of abstract-categorical mode of reasoning; informed by TshiVenda discourse modes of thinking, emphasizing abstract but functional class relations, has important implications on how formal knowledge and classroom learning activities for these learners are to be organized.