Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934)
Lev Vygotsky was born in Belarus in 1896 and died of tuberculosis in 1934. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1917 and wrote a number of books between 1925 and 1934. His studies and writings on psychology cover a wide range of topics and issues and he is well known for his contributions to educational theory and psychology. He is often referred to as the “Mozart of Psychology”. His focus was on the impact of society and culture on development.
Vygotsky’s Developmental Theory: An Introduction
Please watch a short introductory video by clicking here
Vygotsky viewed the use of language as one of the most essential aspects of development. Speech starts out as individual words, usually representing objects (cat, horse, car) and progresses through egocentric speech, which is dialog the child carries on out loud with himself and others, and leads to inner speech, or thought. Vygotsky’s theory proposes that learning language structures the child’s thought patterns.
Vygotsky also believed that development cannot be separated from culture. Vygotskian theory states that the tools and climate of our culture determine how we develop. For example, children raised with TV and video games will develop differently than children raised in an area without electricity. For Vygotsky, “the hand creates the mind” and our interactions with the people and objects around us and with language shape who we become. Adults, or more advanced learners, pass their knowledge and expertise to the next generation. As the children grow, their perceptions in turn affect the culture in which they live and they pass this on to their children and the cycle continues.
A Few Specifics of Vygotskian Theory
1. To understand development, one must always look at the “child-in-context”. Vygotsky studied children interacting with peers or adults, not what they did alone. Both the immediate culture (the classroom, the activity, the household or village) and the broader culture (the country, ethnic origin, religion practiced, world climate) are important to understand why children develop the way they do. Vygotsky would say that social interaction is not something that happens to us, but something in which we are an active participant.
2. To help children develop, we should teach to the “Zone of Proximal Development”. This zone is the area of achievement between what a child can accomplish independently and what a child can be led to accomplish with prompting or help from an adult (or a more advanced student). Using the ZPD is something that many caregivers do naturally when playing with young children. To see an example, click here.
3. Every mental activity actually happens twice – once when it happens as an interaction between the child and the adult and once when it is individually thought by the child. The interaction between the two people is referred to as “intermental” and the individual processing of the interaction cognitively, or alone, is referred to as “intramental”.
4. The tools available to the child within his or her cultural context impact intellectual functioning. Vygotsky refers to psychological tools such as language, art, and numeracy, as well as technical tools such as a plow, calculators or computers. Vygotsky viewed language as the most important psychological tool.
Applications of Vygotsky’s Theory to Education
“Vygotsky believed that there are three active elements needed to ensure learning takes place, active learners, active teachers and an active social environment in which they come together.
An opponent of traditional education where learners are passive recipients of bodies of knowledge and their teacher’s experiences Vygotsky argued that we are our own teachers, claiming, “From a scientific point of view, strictly speaking you cannot educate anyone else.” He believed that learning is an internal process, which takes place through our perceptions and interpretations of the experiences we have in the real world. Therefore, the personal experiences of the learner are paramount in education (Oscarsson, 2001). Vygotsky used the metaphor of teachers as railway tracks whose purpose was to enable the railway carriages (learners) to travel freely and independently in the direction of their own movement.” … click here to read more
1. Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
Click here for video on ZPD
Click here for video on scaffolding
Teaching to the ZPD creates a certain style of learning environment. It requires teachers to determine what the child is capable of independently and to build on this prior knowledge through a process called scaffolding. Scaffolding involves presenting a problem slightly above the child’s current ability and providing the support for the child to work through the problem. The teacher gives hints and prompts to help the child develop the skills needed to be able to work through the problem independently. The “teacher” may be the teacher, a parent, or any other person who is more competent than the student. The style of assessment for this tends towards a more dynamic approach – assessing how the student has improved over time and assessing what the student is capable of in the future, rather than the current level of knowledge. For example, a teacher might pose a difficult problem and grade the student on how far they got or on the number of prompts needed to succeed, rather than on whether the final answer is right or wrong.
2. Cognitive Development (intermental vs intramental)
Helping a child talk through a problem (intermental activity) allows the child to process the problem on a social level. This provides hints and prompts. At the same time, the child must also think through the problem (intramental) as they are listening and processing. This internalizes the problem. This internalization of the social interaction and the inner speech that follows helps the child develop their own problem solving skills. Teaching students how to use “inner speech” – at any level – is much like teaching metacognition. It helps them understand how to process a problem and gives them a variety of skills or tools for attacking the problem.
3. Psychological and Technical Tools and their Impact on Education
The tools that are available to a culture impact the social context and presentation of education. For example, having only slates available to write on in a classroom creates a certain social environment and approach to teaching. This is significantly different to a culture where laptop computers are available to each student and work is submitted and responded to electronically. The tools, both psychological and technical, that we use in our classroom create a culture of learning. This cannot be separated from what the student learns and is as much a part of what they learn as the specific facts in the curriculum.
Summary
The following quote from this website nicely summarizes Vygotsky’s views on development:
“Human development is a socio-genetic process carried out in the social activities of children with adults: education “generates” and leads development which is the result of social learning through the internalization of culture and social relationships. Development is not a straight path of quantitative gains and accumulations, but a series of qualitative, dialectic transformations, a complex process of integration and disintegration. Each stage is characterized by a particular organization of psychological activity. Culture is acquired through interiorization of social signs, starting with language. The essence and uniqueness of human behavior resides in its mediation by material instruments and social signs/language.”
Discussion Questions
(The discussion questions for all of the theorists are listed together on the Discussion Questions page of this blog, along with instructions)
- Vygotsky believed that the tools of a culture affect the development of its children. How have the tools we use in education, such as technology, affected how our students have developed?
- Do you see teaching to the Zone of Proximal Development as an effective way to teach? Is it something you already use? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this teaching method?
- Vygotsky said that ” To force everybody into the same mold represents the greatest of all the delusions of pedagogics. The fundamental prerequisite of pedagogics inevitably demands an element of individualization, that is, conscious and rigorous determination of the individualized goals of education for each particular student.” (Vygotsky, 1926) Do you agree or disagree? Is this a practical goal in public education? Is this a practical goal for online education?
References and Further Reading:
Miller, P.H. (2002). Theories of Developmental Psychology, 4th Ed. (pp. 367-396; Vygotsky’s Socio-Cultural Approach). New York: Worth.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/ – Archive of original works
http://vygotsky.afraid.org/#VygotskyPedagogy – Comprehensive website on the “Mozart of Psychology”
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/50171/6215m8a.htm – Vygotsky in a Nutshell
http://www.bgcenter.com/disability.htm – Vygotsky’s paradigm for special education
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/vygotsky.htm
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=634376752589779456#
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=634376752589779456#docid=36813446619688577
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=634376752589779456#docid=-3815787007710444990