Reintroducing “development” into theories of the acquisition and growth of early literacy: developmental science approaches and the cultural-historical perspective of L. S. Vygotsky

This chapter contrasts the differences between computational “retrospective” models of early writing achievement whose elements represent static states of being and “prospective” models based upon the principles of developmental science and a process-relational-developmental framework which characterizes early writing performances always in the process of “becoming.” The chapter highlights these differences using examples from Spanish-speaking and Chinese/English emergent bilinguals to illustrate the various patterns of writing development captured in a Piagetian/Vygotskian-inspired early writing assessment. The children's simultaneous display of multiple conceptualizations of the notational system in Spanish, English, and Chinese is interpreted as reflecting aspects of Siegler's “overlapping waves theory” and Piaget's “optimizing equilibration.”