Who is Vygotsky?
- Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist writing in the 1920s and 1930s, who was influenced by Piaget’s work
- most importantly they agreed that children reasoning abilities develop in a particular sequence, and that such abilities are qualitatively different at different ages, with a child typically capable of particular logic at particular ages
- the major difference is that Vygotsky saw cognitive development as a social process of learning from more experienced others
- Vygotsky also saw language as important
What are the cultural differences in cognitive abilities?
- if reasoning abilities are acquired from the more experienced individuals with whom a child has contact, it follows that the child will acquire the reasoning abilities of those particular people
- this means that there may be cultural differences in cognitive development, with children picking up the mental tools that are most important for life within their physical , social and work environment
What is the zone of proximal development?
- he said ZPD is the gap between a Childs current level of development and what they can potentially understand after interaction with more expert others -expert assistance allows a child to cross the ZPD and understand as much of a subject or situation as they are capable
- as children are still to some extent limited by their developmental stage
- he believed that higher mental functions, like formal reasoning could only be acquired through interaction with more advanced others
What is scaffolding?
- scaffolding refers to all the kinds of help adults and more advanced peers give a child to help them to cross the zone of proximal development
- Vygotsky actually did not focus much on this process so most of what we know about scaffolding is from psychologists influenced by his theory, such as from the Vygotsky-burner model which identified five aspects to scaffolding which are general ways in which an adult can help a child better understand and perform a task
How can you better engage a child in a task?
- Recruitment: engaging the Childs interest in the task
- reduction of degrees of freedom: focusing the child on the task and where to start with solving it
- direction maintenance: encouraging the child in order to help them stay motivated and continue trying to complete the task
- marking critical features: highlighting the most important parts of the task
- Demonstration: showing the child how to do aspects of the task
What is an example of scaffolding?
- Helping a child draw
- level 1: general prompts: mother says now draw something
- level 2:preparation for child: mother says how about the green crayon
- level 3: indication of materials: mother points to crayons
- level 4:preparation for child: mother helps child grasp crayon
- level 5:demondstration: mother draws an object with crayons
What are the stages of engagement?
- recruitment
- reduce degrees of freedom
- direction maintenance
- marking critical features
- demonstration
How does supporting evidence for the zone of proximal development support Vygotsky’s theory?
- roazzi and Bryant gave 4-5 year old children the task of estimating the number of sweets in a box
- in one condition the children worked alone and in another they worked with the help of an older child
- most children working alone failed to give a good estimate, most 4-5 year olds receiving this kind of help successfully mastered the task
- this shows there there is a gap between the level of reasoning a child can achieve on their own and what they can achieve with help from a more expert other
How does supporting evidence for the idea of scaffolding support Vygotsky’s theory?
-Conner and Cross’s study involved a longitude study following up 45 children, observing them engaged in problem solving tasks with the help of mothers at 16, 26, 44 and 54 months
Distinctive changes in help were observed over time; mothers used less and less direct intervention and more hints and prompts as children gained experience as they also increasingly offered help when it was needed rather than constantly
-this shows that the level of help given by the expert partner declines during the process of learning
How do applications in education support Vygotsky’s theory?
- social interaction has been included in learning, through group work, peer tutoring and individual adult assistance from teachers and teaching assistants, has been used to scaffold children through their zones of proximal development
- van keer and Pierre Verhaeghe found that 7-year olds tutored by 10-year olds, in addition to their whole-class teaching, progressed further in reading than controls who just had standard whole-class teaching
What are the evaluation points of Vygotsky’s theory?
+4-5 year olds were asked to estimate the number of sweets in a box most children with expert help could complete the task, those without couldn’t showing the ZPD exists
+longitudinal study of children’s learning found that children required less help from their mothers over time showing showing scaffolding occurs
+applications in education
-individual differences some children prefer working alone and some prefer social interaction depending on personality and information processing style
how are individual differenced a weakness of Vygotsky’s theory?
- like Piaget Vygotsky assumed that the process of learning are largely the same in all children
- this does not take account of individual differences
- some children learn best during social interaction but this may not be true for everyone
- personality and style of information processing may have powerful effects on what sort of activities and what sort of help works for different chidlren
