We are sailing deep into the theoretical sea of PREP. Without knowing the ropes, our sailing will be endless and the journey indeterminate. It is, therefore, essential to discuss the four roots, the three philosophies, two examples, and the overarching spirit of PREP
Let us consolidate the sources of inspiration, the roots that sustain PREP, as discussed in the previous section. Three of the roots—early stimulation, strategy training, and ZPD have been described earlier. What has not been described is the aptitude x treatment interaction. Teachers and academic therapists instinctively feel that they should take advantage of the child’s special aptitudes and design their instructional program accordingly.
In the case of PREP, we recommend that the child’s strengths and weaknesses in cognitive processes be determined first. Then, by exposing the child to a set of tasks that can be attempted either simultaneously or successively, he/she is left free to use whatever strategies are most comfortable. The tasks are designed in such a way that the child is encouraged to try out strategies, see how they work, and be flexible enough to change the strategies for a successful resolution of the task. Children do not have to be aware of exactly what strategy they are using at any given moment; they can instead covertly change from one strategy to another as they are exposed to the various tasks in the program.
The three philosophies guide us to a better understanding of the roots of PREP. The first philosophy is microgenetic, that is, observing in small ways how change in behavior occurs as the child is going through a learning experience. We should not forget that for the child remediation is, after all, a learning experience and it is important to know not only when changes in behavior may take place, but how the changes happen.
The same child changes his or her behavior while performing a task from time to time, even within the same training session. The child’s strategies shift and blend. The conditions that produce change in strategies reside in the child at least as much as in the task itself.
Children have many strategies available to them while doing a task and these strategies are in competition with each other. The competition can be resolved with practice as the child learns to attempt the task in the way most suited to his or her background and temperament. “Micro” means small and “genetic” is the birth or the beginning of a change. So rather than looking at the big changes noticed at the end of the solution to a task, we recommend following some authorities in this area, who recommend that small changes in the child’s activities be observed and recorded to learn more about his/her approach to the task.
Strategies are plans and, therefore, observation regarding change, in small ways, allows us to look through a window into the planning process of the child. “In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be.” For our purposes we may replace beauties with changes, and life with learning.
The second philosophy that will help us understand PREP originates with Vygotsky, who made two very thoughtful suggestions. One has to do with disability of any kind, not only reading disability. Disability is not a defect; it is rather an opportunity to be creative. The idea that a child with a learning disability or cognitive deficit only compensates for that deficit reinforces the tendency of the teacher to believe that the child has to be like a so-called normal child in all respects.
Thus, according to Vygotsky, disability should not be regarded as a negative label. The disabled person already has a handicap; society and culture need not increase the burden by looking at the individual as being in some way inferior to the so-called normal person. The second important opinion of Vygotsky concerns learning itself. Learning always occurs in a sociocultural setting and having originated from that setting, the learned behavior influences that sociocultural environment.
Thus a dialectical relationship exists between the two. Individuals with reading difficulties may come from a nonliterate culture, an environment in which books, magazines, and reading are not positively encouraged. Rather than encouraging such individuals to feel that they lack something, which contributes to low self-esteem, the PREP program gently orients them to the culture of literacy (Vygotsky, 1978). The final philosophical orientation of PREP is focused on reorganization and substitution.
A particular cognitive process may be defective, or the child may be lacking the ability to process information in a sequence. This does not mean that we should, in frustration, give up on the child. The message from Luria (1973) and others who have worked on neurologically impaired patients’ rehabilitation is that opportunities for substituting the defective process and replacing it with a process that is intact, such as simultaneous processing and planning, should provide the appropriate philosophical orientation for remediation. The emphasis is not on what is absent, but on what is intact.
The Three Philosophies of PREP
Microgenetic: Children have a variety of strategies; improvement is observed in small changes; strategies are transferred across tasks.
Sociocultural: Disability gives an opportunity to he creative; learning happens in the sociocultural environment of children—Vygotsky.
Rehabilitation: Focus on what is intact, not on what is lacking; use substitution and reorganization.
So where does that leave us in regard to the old question—should we teach to strengthen, or to remove the weakness? The answer, as always, is both. Teaching to strengthen takes advantage of our knowledge of the deficient functions in the child and thus helps the child to substitute, replace, and reorganize. In this way the child is motivated to learn new strategies. If successive processing is weak, the child takes advantage of his/her strengths in the other processes, such as planning and simultaneous processing.
Indeed, minute observation of children who are poor in successive processing shows that when they are engaged in PREP tasks that ordinarily require successive processing, they can sometimes cope with them quite adequately. Such children are sometimes able to get around the difficulty in sequencing by chunking the chain of objects or letters into groups of two or three, similar to bite-size units, which they can then handle simultaneously.
Each task in the PREP program has a global and a bridging component, that is, two examples. The global component shows the way to be followed in reading and spelling-related learning. The global task lays down the purpose of the training task, and creates the right conditions for the child to be curious and to be surprised. Psychologists say that the global task enables the child to understand what is required by letting him or her transfer the whole action to a mental representation.
Encouraging the child to talk his or her way through, doing the task and paying attention to his or her self-talk, can provide insights into how the child is transforming the activity to a mental representation.
Three Teaching Approaches
Trial and Error
The teacher shows the learner the end product of the task.
The learner is sent away to solve the problem, with little or no assistance.
Follow the Leader
The teacher informs the learner of the desired outcome of the task.
The stages of the task are given in the order in which they must be executed. The stages and necessary actions are discussed with the learner.
The teacher demonstrates the task slowly to the learner.
The learner attempts the task using the prescribed strategies.
Cognitive Education
The teacher facilitates learning in collaboration with the learner through cognitive stimulation and motivation.
The learner formulates and uses his or her own strategies to complete the task.
First the child might say aloud, “Oh, I need to do this, not that, because that didn’t work last time. What the heck! Let me try. If it doesn’t work, I’ll try a different way.” This external speech is later replaced by internal speech, where the child is secretly, as it were, speaking to himself or herself. The global tasks are interesting and easy, make the child confident, and ensure success in the bridging tasks that follow. There are no external rewards and punishments. When the child fails to accomplish the task in a certain way, thereis an opportunity to search for a new solution. The motivation here is internal, that is, it comes from within the child. PREP has only one uniting spirit (Gal’perin, 1982).
By using PREP with children or adults, we are trying to improve their cognitive functioning. The entire approach of PREP can be broadly described as cognitive education or educating the individual in the business of knowing. Sometimes this goes a step further, to educating the individual in learning how to know and how to acquire knowledge.
Now that we know the ropes, the rest falls into its place and the sailing is smooth.
Note: Further readings for those interested—Gal’perin (1982), Kuhn (1995), Luria (1963), Siegler and Crowley (1991), and Stein (1988).