PSYCHOGENESIS OF WRITING

Researchers and teachers Emilia Ferreiro and Ana Teberosky develop a set of
research on the initiation into writing of boys and girls during the years 1975 to
1978 in the Argentine school context. The results of these studies were collected in
The text The writing systems in the child's development, published for the first time in
1979 and since then, it has had a remarkable significance regarding the subject of
initial writing learning.

Objectives: To question the teaching practices derived from traditional models and
examine the conceptions obtained from the theory of the psychogenesis of writing. Apply
the theory of the psychogenesis of writing at the center of practices.

Context of the creation of the theory of the psychogenesis of writing.

Ferreiro earned a doctorate at the Center for Genetic Epistemology directed by Piaget,
University of Geneva. She returned from Switzerland and began research with children in 1973.
from schools coming from low-income sectors in Buenos Aires. The book is published
in Mexico in 1979. This book compiles the research conducted in Buenos Aires between
1973 and 76.

Aspects that the book involves:

- Epistemological reading of Piaget's theory, different from what circulated in the

psychology degrees at that time.
Development of concepts in genetic psychology in the field of
reading and writing. (not addressed in Piagetian studies) Based on the method
Piagetian.
Frames his understanding of school failure in a broader perspective,
involving aspects such as inequality and conditions of poverty, rendered invisible
at that moment.

The conception of the child as an active subject who raises questions and strategies of
learning of written language, long before their entry into formal education. Thus
as the recognition of the "scribble" as a first attempt at writing.
Important observation: CHILDREN HAVE THEIR OWN METHODOLOGY TO
LEARN.

When Ferreiro returns to Argentina in 1971, she intended to create a series of

comparative studies in psycholinguistics, was interested in syntactic constructions and
how they were learned. He was interested in understanding more the reasons for school failure
initial.

Ferreiro began to observe classes in marginalized areas of the city of Buenos Aires and he
found that a huge number of language exchanges were related to the
writing. Piaget taught him a boy is a knowing subject, that a boy is someone
that seeks to understand the world around him, that formulates hypotheses, that receives information,
but she receives it in her own way because it depends on the assimilative schemas she has
to interpret that information. Then she said: well, let's see if we find the
Piagetian child in the field of written language...

The research group was formed in 1973. The members were Ana Teberosky,
Alicia Lenzi, Susana Fernández, Ana María Kaufman, and Liliana Tolchinsky.

They worked in primary schools and kindergartens in marginalized areas of the city of Buenos Aires.
Aires.

Regarding the methodology followed by the Argentine researchers, the aspects that are worth
it is worth highlighting the following: the selected population consisted of children and
girls between 4 and 6 years old, with the exception that the 6-year-old boys attended the
first grade, while those of the other two ages attended kindergarten. The
researchers emphasize that the educational reality of Argentina at that time,
The teaching of reading and writing began in the first grade. The technique
it was inspired by the Piagetian clinical method. Situations were created
structured but flexible experiments, which consisted of isolating the child in another
a room different from the classroom, to present situations of interpretation of the code
alphabetical and graphic production. Each of these situations implies interaction
between the subject and the object (in this case, written language). These dialogues with the
researchers took place at least three times during the school year: one
at the beginning, another in the middle, and the last one at the end of the class period; with a duration

approximately each interview lasted between 20 and 30 minutes. The purpose of this was to explore the
children's knowledge regarding reading and writing activities. As far as the ...
the research was being developed by intervening various variables: social condition,
age, schooling non-schooling, which allowed at the end of the study to total a sum of
108 children, between first grade and kindergarten

The research conducted, which had to be interrupted first due to lack of official support and
then because the researchers had to leave the country due to political persecution,
produced with the publication of the text three years later, an important questioning of
the current perspectives. This effect can be seen in both the practices of teachers and
psychologists linked to the educational field, as well as in the theoretical considerations about the

mechanisms that enable learning and in the conceptualizations and readings about the
school failure.

...we started to systematically find that those kids who failed in school
time and again, they were kids who were learning what the school taught, that is to say, everyone
Those kids who repeated knew perfectly well all the lyrics, they knew perfectly.
"Well, the relationship with sounds and they could neither read nor write" (Kaufman in Aspis & Horta,

2015).

The research required the preparation of specific situations, as the tests

usual, which valued the child's maturation for literacy, were not useful to the
objectives of this work, in which the child is encouraged to engage in writing and the
reading "as he sees them" and the problems he poses (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1979,
p. 38).

From these situations, it was about establishing a dialogue, following the clinical method.
by Piaget. During these individual interviews with the children, the responses were recorded.
and each subject was evaluated in the entire series of tasks, in the school or kindergarten they attended.

A semi-longitudinal follow-up was conducted over one year with 30 children from
lower class social medium,” from a first-grade school in a peripheral neighborhood of the great
Buenos Aires, a 'miserable villa' (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1979, p.43).
The families were made up of unskilled workers or temporary laborers. The methods of
the teaching of the teachers was the same. The results made it clear that the children
they arrive in first grade with a whole series of hypotheses about writing, which begin
around 4 years old. In this period, they were with a group of children in a school of the
villa, when "for reasons beyond our control" says Ferreiro (Ferreiro & Teberosky,
1979, p.46), they had to abandon that sample. The new coup d'état in 1976 was aimed at
consequence that the group would stop working and that each of them would take different paths

different, exiling themselves abroad.

Key points revealed by the research:

Writing as a cultural object

Learning is like the child's relationship with that object they are trying to assimilate.

The child as a knowing subject before being an object of different teaching methods.

A very important (too important) number of children fail when they are introduced
to initial literacy. We intend to demonstrate that learning to read,
understood as the questioning about the nature, function, and value of this object
cultural what writing is, begins much earlier than the school imagines, and proceeds
through unexpected means. That in addition to the methods, the manuals, the resources
didactic, there is a subject that seeks to acquire knowledge, that poses problems and
tries to solve them following its own methodology. (…) A subject that the psychology of the
reading and writing has been forgotten, in the pursuit of seeking specific aptitudes, particular skills,
or a poorly defined maturity achieved.

THE COGNIZANT SUBJECT IN A NEW FIELD

In the 70s, there was a conception of learning: The principle from which it originates
part of it is that there is a "maturation" for learning The child must have skills
specifics that can be measured through observable behaviors.
Description of the child considered 'normal', must meet requirements to access the
education. Psychology establishes the list of skills or abilities necessary for
learning to read and write (the lists from psychological literature offer the same variables):
lateralización espacial, discriminación visual, discriminación auditiva, coordinación
visomotor, good articulation, etc.

These same variables were used for a school classification (implicit or explicit).
They also served as a response to the phenomenon of school failure. The cause of failure
Schooling was attributed to the maturational, the biological.

When we consider the psychological literature dedicated to establishing the list of aptitudes or
necessary skills to learn to read and write, we continuously see the emergence of the
same variables: spatial lateralization, visual discrimination, auditory discrimination
visuomotor coordination, good articulation, etc. From the work that tries to synthesize those
Partial investigations give rise to a rather curious vision (for example, Mialaret, 1975):
all those factors correlate positively with good language learning
writing. To put it in simple terms: if a child is well lateralized, if their balance
emotional is appropriate, if they have a good visual and auditory discrimination, if their quotient
intellectual is normal, if its articulation is also adequate... then it is also
likely to learn to read and write without difficulties (Ibidem: 28).

Between a conception of the learning subject as a receiver of knowledge

received from outside, and the conception of this very subject as a producer of
knowledge, there is an abyssal difference. This is the difference that separates the conceptions
conductists of the Piagetian conception” (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1979, p.36).

Something we have sought in vain in this literature is the subject itself: the subject
cognoscente, the subject who seeks to acquire knowledge, the subject that Piaget's theory tells us about.

has taught to discover. What does this mean? The subject we know through the
Piaget's theory is a subject that actively tries to understand the world around him, and
to resolve the questions that this world poses to him (Ibidem: 28).

A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON LEARNING ABOUT THE

READING AND WRITING

a child who actively tries to understand the nature of the language being spoken to him
around" (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1979, p.22)

Ferreiro conceives this - Writing understood as a cultural object.

Children who are learning to read and write have their own ideas about reading and
the writing completely different from what teaching methods usually try to address
to implant.

The guiding objectives of the studies developed by these researchers were:

1. "trying to explain the processes and the ways through which the child arrives at
learn to read and write

2. 'present the interpretation of the process, from the perspective of the subject who learns'
(Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1988: 13).

These objectives responded to a very specific educational context, formed

fundamentally due to a greater inclination or interest in teaching processes that
due to the learning processes, resulting in an unjust prominence of
teacher. The outstanding importance of the teacher for that decade of the 1970s reduced
notably the active participation of the learner to a minimal list of conditions, more
physical and cognitive.

Radical turn Reading and writing as an object to learn and not as an object to teach.
This changes the questions about the methods and the position of the teacher. The teacher is no longer
It will be someone who induces the process, applying the most effective method. Now it is understood the

reading and writing process in a different way: Errors can be seen and worked on
as partial constructions, which allow for approximations to achievements
later, points of arrival and not of departure. (The most important thing is not where you start from)
(but to where it leads). Errors must be perceived by the teacher as constructions
partials that allow the child to approach later achievements in terms of reading -
writing. What Emilia Ferreiro proposes is not a method of teaching. The field of
education depends heavily on the methods, therefore, contradictions arose in the
interpretation and application of the developments by Emilia Ferreiro and were understood and
applied in the classroom as teaching methods. But what Ferreiro proposes is not a
teaching method. Because she changed the focus, she changed the approach, what matters
for her, it is not the teacher and the method that will be applied, but the knowing subject, the subject
what he learns and the learning process and the methodologies that he himself uses to learn.
Another factor, derived from the previous one, that led the researchers to set those objectives.
The research was the dispute between teaching methods. Traditionally, since the
pedagogical perspective, the problem of learning to read and write has been
posed as a methodological question. Educators' concern has been
oriented towards the search for the 'best' or 'most effective' of them, thus giving rise to a
controversy surrounding two fundamental types of methods: synthetic, which start from
elements smaller than the word, and analytical, that stem from the word or larger units
(Ibidem: 17). Synthetic methods are integrated by alphabetical methods,
syllabic, phonic and psychophonic; in the analytical methods we find the methods of the
word, total word, generative word, of the phrase and of the sentence (to delve into
this classification see Braslavsky, 2005). Despite the variety of these methods and the
insurmountable differences that experts in the field such as Braslavsky (2005) have wanted
present, Ferreiro and Teberosky (1988) present only one difference as significant and
transcendent between synthetic and analytical methods. This lies in the type of strategy
perceptive implementation. Those of the first type emphasize the auditory, while those
seconds, visually. The supremacy of the teacher and the overestimation of the methods of
the teaching of written language led researchers Ferreiro and Teberosky to
reflect on the unjust absence of the subject that learns and the cognitive processes that
this triggers to generate such learning. This stance in the educational context
Argentine and Latin American raises in the authors the formulation of hypotheses with the
which initiate the study process. These hypotheses focus on the child, not as a being
that passively waits for external reinforcement to give a conditioned response and
mechanics; but as a subject that 'actively tries to understand the nature of
language that is spoken around you, and that, trying to understand it, formulates hypotheses,
look for regularities, tests its anticipations, and forges its own grammar (that
it is not a simple copy of the adult model, but an original creation)" (Ibidem: 22).

This critique of the Argentine educational context led Ferreiro and Teberosky (1988) to the
formulation of the purpose of your research: "to establish a clear distinction between the
steps that a method proposes, and what actually occurs 'in the mind' of the subject
30).
From this purpose, the following research questions arise:

What are the learning processes of the individual who learns written language?
To what extent is the idea of going through the rituals of the ma sustainable?
me – mi – mo – mu to learn to read?
What is the justification for starting with mechanical calculation of the
phoneme/grapheme correspondences to proceed later, and only later, to a
comprehension of written text?
Is this concept of initiation into reading and writing justifiable?
a blind initiation (that is, without the presence of intelligent thought) to the
transcription of graphemes into phonemes?

These questions allowed for a reconsideration of the general research objectives.

mentioned in previous paragraphs, in the following specific objectives:

a) identify the cognitive processes underlying the acquisition of writing

b) understand the nature of children's hypotheses

c) discover the type of specific knowledge that the child has when starting to learn
school" (Ibid: 38).

The development of these objectives was based on Piaget's theory about processes.
cognitive processes that the subject generates to know and understand the world.

The purpose of the study by Ferreiro and Teberosky is to address the gap left by
the methods of teaching writing.

Regulatory principles of that study focus on correcting the errors generated by such
methods, especially the synthetic ones, depravedly applied at that historical moment.
These principles postulate:

1. Do not identify reading with decryption.

2. Do not identify writing with a copy of a model.

3. Not identifying progress in the conceptualization with advances in the deciphering or in the
accuracy of the copy.
CONCLUSIONS

Among the achievements of the Psychogenesis of Writing, the following can be counted:

The conception of the child as an active subject who raises questions and
strategies for learning written language.
The conception that the child learns written language much earlier than their
entry into formal education. Before this research, it was believed that the start in
written language only began when the child entered the school system
The recognition of the 'scribble' as a first attempt at writing. The
significance of 'doodle' as unconventional writing necessary for the
transition of the child towards the learning of conventional writing.
The overcoming of the know / do not know how to read and write dichotomy. The recognition of
the learning of written language as a constructive process allowed understanding
many mistakes as necessary situations to generate subsequent apprehension
of the writing.
The overcoming, at least at a theoretical level, of traditional methods of
teaching of written language.