Restructuring heterogeneous classes for cognitive development: Social interactive perspective

An educational application derived from the social constructivism view base d largely on the theories of Vygotsky (1962, 1978) and Piaget (1926), was t ried in order to improve cognitive development of children studying in a he terogeneous class. A path analysis based on the study of 1017 pupils, 8- to 11-year-olds, studying in 36 classrooms, shows that complex learning techn iques are related to cognitive development, especially of lower level child ren. The process requires that the teacher take a "developer'' role encoura ging the students to interact verbally in order to solve the learning tasks . The improvement seems to be based entirely on the students' on-task verba l interaction, but that was instigated by the developer teacher's role and impeded by supervisory role.