Lev Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist and a pioneer in the field of social and cognitive development. This article reviews his theory of how children learn.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Child Development
For Lev Vygotsky, the role of language and culture was central to his theory, focusing on the role of nurture. Behavior (partly directed by inherited traits) changes the child’s experiences and their perceptions of those experiences.
Sociocultural Perspective on Development
Vygotsky’s theory helped spur sociocultural perspective, which holds that culture and society are important for promoting cognitive development.
For example, in a Spanish classroom in New York, native speakers of Spanish whose accent is from the Dominican Republic may come into conflict with Castilian Spanish a teacher learns from university study. It is then the teacher’s task to explain the value of learning Castilian Spanish while maintaining tolerance of multiple accents. In doing so, she is promoting the cognitive development of her early adolescents by helping them to understand multiple viewpoints.
How Internal Procedures Become Independent
Vygotsky’s theories describe how complex internal mental procedures (such as physics computations) begin first as social processes, which become increasingly internalized with independence.
Students in Ken Gillam’s class (from the “Learning Classroom” series) first work in groups with ramps, cars, and stopwatches; after they dialogue to create the results, they then can visualize this process independently when confronted with a physics computation on paper.
Role of Self Talk in Guiding Learning
Another area of Vygotsky’s work details how a student’s self talk serves to direct and guide their progress through difficult and unfamiliar materials, as adults have previously guided them. Michelene Chi has demonstrated that the quality of students’ self talk is a predictor of their success in a new field of study.
Contemporary Criticism of Piaget
Vygotsky has been criticized for defining developmental stages only in very general forms, so that his predictions are very difficult to “test, verify, disprove . . . there is a lack of precision and inattention to details.” Vygotsky’s work is often general enough to be unfalsifiable.
Practical Applications of Vygotsky’s Work
Vygotsky’s work is most famously applied to scaffolding, which is “guidance or structure provided by more competent individuals that enables children to perform tasks within their zone of proximal development.” In Faye McClaine’s classroom (in the “Learning Classroom” series), through her use of materials such as the children’s related personal experience, picture stories illustrating the concepts, and concrete representations of the concept, she creates a rich environment, scaffolding for the less competent students while stimulating the more competent students.
Vygotsky’s work can also be applied to the social construction of meaning, or mediated learning experience, in which adults help children to make sense of information through discussion. In Avram Barlow’s class (in the “Learning Classroom” series), his explanations of post-emancipation Jim Crow laws helped his students to understand the historical milieu, and the rationale behind oppressive policies beyond racism.
Vygotsky’s work describes a cultural context of development, in which culture shapes cognitive development. If a student loves the Latin American rhythms he hears at home, music may become his favorite activity, and his abilities in that domain can become quite advanced.
Zone of Proximal Development
Finally, Vygotsky’s work calls for the teacher to operate in the “Zone of Proximal Development,” the activities a child can perform with assistance from a peer or adult, but cannot perform independently. According to Roland Tharp, all teaching should occur within the zone, as “good teaching means constantly stretching to meet the needs of the child.”
Vygotsky's work can prove helpful to many teachers who often find their students attending more to each other than the lesson. That social energy can be harnessed to provide deeper learning of material.
Sources:
- Chi, M. T. H., Bassok, M., Lewis, M. W., Reimann, P., & Glaser, R. Self-explanations: How students study and use examples in learning to solve problems. Cognitive Science, 13(2), 145-182, 1989.
- Darling-Hammond, L. The Learning Classroom: Theory Into Practice [Video]. Detroit, MI: Detroit Public Television and Mort Crim Communications, 2003.
- McDevitt, T. M., & Ormond, J. E. Child development: Educating and working with adolescents. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2004.
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