Source: “Vygotsky in the Classroom.” YouTube. YouTube. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

Teachers will naturally use Vygotsky theory as they choose age appropriate tasks for their students. Teachers must be within their students Zone of Proximal Development and use strategies like scaffolding to ensure that students can cope with new concepts and ideas. As demonstrated in the above video, teachers should determine the level where their students are currently learning and make adjustments as needed to ensure that assigned tasks fit this range.

Another video example  –

Source:   Success in the Classroom: The Vygotsky Way. (n.d.). Retrieved November 8, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_71gzfuUig

Vygotsky’s work has been acknowledged in various strategies and techniques used across classrooms of all levels. Strategies such as reciprocal teaching (Kozulin, 2004, 4), peer collaboration and apprenticeships are a few well known general strategies. Gredler (2011) and Smargorinsky (2007) warn that Vygotsky and his work are often misused when erroneously applied in the classroom. Few educators will have fully immersed themselves in the complete theory due to time restraints. Popular items extracted from the work may inadvertently get it wrong, especially “when only fragments of a few concepts attract attention, and the limited information becomes popular. Researchers and practitioners begin to make inferences and extrapolations from the limited information.. (114)”.

Technology and Vygotsky

Cicconi (2013) states that Web 2.0 has shifted the role of MKO (more knowledgeable other) from the teacher and some students to the entire class. Not only is Web 2.0 more inclusive, it exemplifes two main ideas that Vygotsky focuses on socialization and collaboration. The move from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 has created educational opportunities which are no longer directed one way but rather “enables users to interact with internet content and internet users (58)”.

References

Cicconi, M. (2014).  Vygotsky meets technology: A reinvention of collaboration in the early childhood mathematics classroom. Early Childhood Education Journal, 42, 57-65.

Gredler, M. (2012). Understanding Vygotsky for the classroom: Is it too late? Educational Psychology Review, 24, 113-131.

Kozulin, A.  ( 2004). Vygotsky’s theory in the classroom: Introduction.  European Journal of Psychology of Education, 19(1), 3-7.

Smagorinsky, P.  (2007). Vygotsky and the social dynamics of classrooms. The English Journal (97)2 , 61-66.