Vygotsky’s Theory
History & Critiques
| 1 BackgroundLev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist, the founder of an original holistic theory of human cultural and biosocial development commonly referred to as cultural-historical psychology, and leader of the Vygotsky Circle (Wikipedia). He studied Law in his university and had experienced through the Russian Socialist Revolution. Vygotsky never received formal training in psychology, but his interest in psychology may, in part have been stimulated by his literary concerns (Rosa and Montero, 1990). After Vygotsky attended the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress in Leningrad in 1924 and received an invitation to become a research fellow at the Psychological Institute in Moscow, he started to focus more on psychology research until he died of tuberculosis in 1934. Vygotsky lived only for 38 years, hence many of his thoughts had to be continued by his disciples. His theories and work were unfamiliar to the West until it was published in 1962. According to recent studies, Vygotsky is the most popular Russian psychologist in Russia and North America.Born: November 17, 1896, Orsha Died: June 11, 1934, Moscow Education: Moscow State University (1917). Shanyavskii People’s U.
2 The Foundation of Vygotsky’s Theory Lev Vygotsky(1896-1934) not only contributed his professional knowledge to the field of psychology but also largely and deeply influenced the fields of education, developmental psychology and children’s learning. He is the originator of the Social Development theory and below are the major themes of his theoretical framework.
In the development of cognition, Vygotsky emphasized that learning is mediated by society, history and culture; he also highlighted that social interaction plays a fundamental role during the process of cognition. He insisted that knowledge is co-constructed by individuals with their previous experience through a collaborative process of social interaction. In contrast to Jean Piaget’s concept of child development — development precedes learning, Vygotsky thought social learning precedes development.
Vygotsky explores the relations between language and thought. He thinks language and thought are originally developed from different tracks, and then evolved in parallel ways. He views the external speech as words that come before thought, the ” inner speech” which is described as “thinking in pure meanings.”
The MKO means anyone who has a better understanding or more competency than the learner. The MKO can be interpreted as being a skillful adult, a teacher, coach, or also be competent peers.
The ZPD is the distance between what a student can perform in problem solving independently and what a student can achieve with a skillful adult guidance, or with competent peers.
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Since Vygotsky’s social development theory is one part of constructivism known for Social Constructivism, let’s examine the difference among those main theories in learning:
3 Comparison
This comparison is among Social Constructivism & Behaviourism & Cognitivism & Constructivism:
| Property | Behaviourism | Cognitivism | Constructivism | Social constructivism |
| How Learning Occurs | Black box- observable behaviour main focus | Structured, Computational | Social, Meaning created by each learner (personal) | Social, interactive, collaborative |
| Influencing Factors | Nature of reward, punishment, stimuli | Existing Schema, Previous Experiences | Engagement, Participation, Social, Cultural | Negotiation, cultural, environmental, historical and interactive impacts |
| Role of Memory | Memory is the hardwiring of repeated experiences – where reward and punishment are most influential | Encoding, Storage, Retrieval | Prior Knowledge remixed to current context | Group members’ prior experiences in different contexts mixed with individual’s knowledge |
| How transfer occurs | Stimulus, Response | Duplicating knowledge constructs of “knower” | Socialization | Socialization & Collaboration & scaffolding |
| Types of Learning Best Explained | Task-Based learning | Reasoning, clear objectives, problem solving | Social, vague (“ill defined”) | Social, cultural and historical |
The chart above based on George Siemens’ Table 1. Learning Theories(Learning and Knowing in Networks: Changing roles for Educators and Designers p11, 2008), we added Vygosky’s social Constructivism on it for more comparison
4 Pros and Cons
Behaviourism, for a long time, has had a bigger reputation than its reality. With the changing attitudes, it has received plenty of criticism. In the former USSR, Vygotsky and his social-cultural-historical development psychology were much criticized during his lifetime and even after his death; however, today Vygotsky’s theory (social constructivism) is in its prime with the approval of many. But just like everything in the world, it is imperfect. On top of that, with the early passing of Vygotsky, his theory is not fully developed. Through the eyes of an educator, we will be assessing its employment of practicality. Let try to challenge Vygotsky’s point of view.
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think his theory is so widely praised in the Western society now after you read the information regarding him and his theory’s summary above? Does his theory fit into e-learning?
2. Vygotsky emphasizes ZPD for the learning of children with the help of skillful adults. Has he disregarded children’s own intrinsic motivation and diligence? How about children who learn from mistakes caused by self studying?
3. Vygotsky emphasizes that culture, history and environment have a great impact on learning. As students are what education revolves around, do their feelings of frustration and gratification not come into play in the process of learning?
4. Vygotsky did not set any age ranges for cognitive development stages like Piaget, therefore when we are using his theory of ZDP, how do we differentiate between the various groups of learners. How is possible that his theory can cater to the needs of all the people who have different personalities, ages, backgrounds and experience?
5. Being a teacher in a current classroom environment who experiences large class sizes and limited budget, what kind of problems are met for classroom management, curriculum and instruction designs while implementing Vygotsky’s theory of ZDP?
6. Vygotsky thinks that cultural influences play a dominant role in language and development without mentioning the biological factors. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
7. Under Vygotsky’s theories, are there any specific groups of students can not fit into this schema well? (for example: those who enjoy self studying, or quiet ones, or inactive ones or the ones who don’t want to have challenges)
8. Could group polarization happen?
Please feel free to choose a question you’d like to answer.
References
1.wikipedia (2012, November). Retrieved November 13th, 2012 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky
2.Learning Theories Knowledgebase (2012, November). Social Development Theory(Vygotsky) at Learning-Theories.com. Retrieved November 14th, 2012 from http://www.learning-theories.com/vygotskys-social-learning-theory.html
3.Youtube (2010) Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J195QMny_4&feature=related
4. George Siemens(2008) Learning and Knowing in Networks: Changing roles for Educators and Designers Retrieved November 12th, 2012 from http://itforum.coe.uga.edu/Paper105/Siemens.pdf (p11)
5. Rosa and Montero (1990) The historical context of Vygotsky’s work: A sociohistorical approach. In L. C. Moll (Ed.), Vygotsky and education: Instructional implications of sociohistorical psychology (pp. 59-88). Cambridge University Press
6. YouTube(2010) Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX8lRh1u5iE&feature=related
7. YouTube (2012) Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=0BX2ynEqLL4&NR=1
In any stage theory there are students who do not fit the criteria. How learning is situated in the class coupled with the distributed cognition creates a scenario that overcomes some of these elements. Social economic status and family dynamics in conjunction with cultural heritage, may become obstacles in allowing students to participate in a social constructivist classroom. Education, as it currently sits and the history of grades also plays a role in the focus on individual achievement.
That’s a great point about grading drawing the focus back to individual achievement. I often feel that when I mark group projects I still am looking at individual contribution and understanding. Does anyone else feel similar pressure when assigning group work?
I assign a lot of group work, but I always give individual marks. Sometimes it is a challenge, but because I work with adults they are a bit more self aware and aware of one another’s contributions. We must put the focus on individual achievement but also individual work within the group framework. Groups are important, as frustrating as they can be, because in life students are going to have to survive working with others.
I find the Russian history angle fascinating and compelling. Experiencing Mother Russia’s great upheaval, being silenced by Stalin – how could these social factors not help but influence Vygotsky and his theory? The internet is more diaphanous, harder to identify and quantify than Russian society so I wonder what Vygotsky would have said about that. At least the Stalins of the world cannot hold sway in a globalized world – can they?
Would Stalin want to be considered the ultimate MKO for Russia?
Group polarization is bound to happen along so many lines (i.e. poverty, cultural differences, introvert/extrovert, cool/uncool) but to be guarded against. Social constructivist activities might be just what we need to make the comfortable uncomfortable – when learning best happens.
Hi Catherine,
I completely agree with you. It was his background in the Soviet Union that helped to develop his theory of social constructivism. Just like what you have said, the internet is diaphanous so even some of the most enclosed nations have access to the outside world. Through the internet, people are not so easily isolated by the government, and that is what makes social constructivism easier to implement.
1. Why do you think his theory is so widely praised in Western society now after you read the information regarding him and his theory’s summary above? Does his theory fit into e-learning?
Vygotsky’s theory was widely praised in Western society because it matched the society’s norms well. In Western society, teachers and educators work closely and actively together because interaction and collaboration are highly valued. Western children are also encouraged to be individualistic, and are expected to express their own opinions and expressions. However, in Eastern cultures such as Japan, students passively listen to teachers transmitting information and interaction barely exists between teachers and students because of the importance of the teacher’s authority. I assume teachers have a certain level of the authority in Western society as well, but how students respect their teacher is different in two societies. It is not about what is right and what is wrong, but it is just different.
Yes his theory fits into e-Learning if students work actively, interactively, and collaboratively because it leads students to good learning and understanding through the process of questioning and reasoning with classmates, just exactly like what we are doing this week!
Shu
Hi Shu,
We both have the experience of education in Asia and the West so I believe we can feel the drastic difference among the systems. Often times, I think, if we can extract the benefits of each system and integrate it that would be great! I agree with how social constructivism is a good match with e-learning as long as students are actively collaborative. I think it will not work as efficiently for high school students as there are those who are less motivated. This requires teachers to do some careful planning ahead of time.
Hi Martin,
Yes, you are right. We look at this through other perspectives so that we can pick out the problems of popular theories because there are indeed students who are not suited to such curricula. In a real setting, we ought to meet the needs of each student. Fortunately, once we find the problem, we can use technology to design appropriate curricula and instructions that cater to different students’ needs. We can also resolve this problem through distributed cognition. All in all, whether how great a theory is, a teacher must understand the dynamics of a class before he implements the theory. Thanks.
Being a teacher in a current classroom environment who experiences large class sizes and limited budget, what kind of problems are met for classroom management, curriculum and instruction designs while implementing Vygotsky’s theory of ZDP?
I agree with what Martin said in the comment section above. I also believe that Vygotsky’s ZPD is important in education, but it does not include all students. As the world becomes much more smaller due to the development and evolution of the Internet and technologies, we educators not only consider students in Western society but also those who are from other countries. Due to globalization, we have been exposed to many different cultures. For education, teachers need to consider so many things, such as students’ different cultural backgrounds, family backgrounds, geographical locations (where they grew up and where they are currently living, etc.), how they learn things, and students with special needs.
For example, many schools are suffering from the shortage of special education teachers and support workers. Moreover, due to large class size, one teacher cannot help those students who need support and more attention (e.g. those who learn things at a different pace, students with special needs, etc.) than others.
Sometimes schools only have limited budget so they cannot support all teachers with enough equipment (e.g. computers and other technological tools).
Deb
Hi Deb,
Thanks for your response. We both have had experience in both the East and West so in the multicultural country of Canada, we are able to better understand the different contexts of students and their needs. The current system of the schools, especially public schools, that have budget restraints and class size problems, the teachers’ desires to improve learning outcomes are hard to fulfill. This is certainly frustrating. I think that using social constructivism to help students interact and collaborate is a nice approach.
1. Historically the role of the classroom has been to turn out workers in factories. Learning bells, routines, monotony.
It probably took so many years to come forward because spending more time socializing and working with peers was the opposite of constructive for so many years in our traditional systems.
As creativity, communication, exploration and inquiry become more valued, so too do the theories of Vygotsky.
8. I don’t know why, but the question of group polarization was very interesting.
Ultimately YES! We are always in need of fresh blood and new experiences and new interactions. In many studies, the average person will make quite significant changes 5-7 times in their careers. Are we driven to avoid polarization? I firmly believe we are. We are lucky in education because it is quite easy to change grades, materials, schools. For others, this change can not take place near as easily.
Great questions!!!
Hi Ryan,
I think you make very valid points! Meeting new people and being in new situations can definitely drive us away from group polarization. Also, education is certainly easier to manipulate compared to other fields of profession. I appreciate your feedback!