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Vygotsky

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Lev Vygotsky

The Sociocultural Approach

Welcome to the section of Lev Vygotsky. Below are 4 sections (Key Terms, Culture, Egocentric Speech, and Zone of Proximal Development). There are two activities (one in Culture and one in ZPD).

Section 1: Key Terms [Woolfolk et al (2000), Miller (2002)]

Sociocultural Theory: emphasizes role in deveolpment of cooperative dialogues between children and more knowledgeable members of society. Children learn the culture of their community (ways of thinking and behaving) through these interactions.

Private Speech: Children's self-talk, which guides their thinking and actions. Eventually these verbalizations are internalized as silent inner speech.

Cognitive Self-Instruction: Approach in which students "talk themselves through" a learning task.

Scaffolding: suport for learning and problem solving. The support could be clues, reminders, encouragement, breaking the problem down into steps, providing an example, or aything else that allows the student to grow in independence as a learner (this term comes from Bruner).

Assisted Learning: providing strategic help in the initial stages of learning, gradually diminishing as students gain independence.

Zone of Proximal Development: the distance between a child's "actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving"and teh higher level of "potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygotsky, quoted in Miller, 2002).

Section 2: Background on Lev Vygotsky & His Thoughts on Culture

From your readings, you already know that Lev Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist and a major spokesperson for his sociocultural theory. He was only 38 when he died but his works about language, culture, and cognitive development have greatly influenced our world (and in the field of education). Vygotsky suggested that cognitive development depended on interactions between people and with the tools that the culture provides for individuals to support thinking. As a result, children's knowledge, ideas, attitudes, and values are able to develop when they interact with others.

Vygotsky believed that technical tools and psychological tools play a very important role in cognitive development. As you can see from above, some of the technical tools are the ones that we use to control nature (axes, plows, etc.). The more interesting tools are the psychological tools which include the language system, counting system, writing, diagrams, maps, signs and codes. Vygotsky believed that symbolic tools such as language help boost our cognitive thinking and support our learning.

More interestingly, Vygotsky also focused on how culture plays a part in our learning. He believed that a child's culture is shaped by what and how a child learns about the world. You have already read some examples in the readings (p. 378 in Miller). Now is your chance to experience this concept of how we learn through "culture" in the following activity.

Activity: Experiencing Culture

The game is based on Gary Paulsen's stories on the theme of "Survival". In this game, you will need to match the pictures to help the main character escape the camp and also to survive in the wilderness. This is a matching game intended for a young age group.

White Fox Survival Game

What we would want you to experience, however, is the cultural ideas behind the pictures and the matching. What assumptions do make when you choose to match certain cards together? When you played for the first time, how did you KNOW that certain cards will match? Try to imagine a different setting, environment, culture... do you think individuals from this new environment will be as successful in this game?

Please post your answers to: Symposium – 64B – Developmental Approaches: Experiencing Culture.

A Review:

According to Vygotsky, it is important to understand culture, as it incorporates physical and historical influences. Culture is a group's response to its physical ecology, which biases toward certain forms of economic activity, and shapes al levels of contexts (Miller, 2002, p. 375). At any one point in history, a culture is both a product of its own history and a provider of settings that shape children's development and the future of the culture. For examples on what a culture consists of, look at the bottom of page 374 in Miller (2002).

Section 3: Egocentric Speech: A Comparison between Piaget and Vygotsky

When Piaget dismissed the private speech as useless to children, Vygotsky believed that this stage in children is important in cognitive development. Vygotsky felt that this egocentric speech was important as it guides our behaviour and thoughts. Unlike Piaget, who believes that this speech will eventually fade away (and later accepts the notion that it does not entirely disappear), Vygotsky suggests that this speech just becomes internalized into inner speech (we just "think" these guiding words rather than speaking them aloud).

A Comparison of Egocentric Speech

Piaget

Vygotsky

v Both emphasized internalization of interaction between a child and the world

v Recognize that children talk to themselves as they play.

v Views these mutterings and babbling as an important role in cognitive development.

v This is an example that young children cannot see the world through the eyes of others. They talk only about what matters to them, without taking into account the needs or interests of their listeners. He believes this kind of speech is useless to children.

v This is an example of children communicating with themselves to guide their behaviour and thinking to problem solve.

v He believes that this egocentric speech will fade away.

v He believes that this egocentric speech will later on become inner speech. The children just learn to “think”. He also believes that private speech increases with the difficulty of the task.

Another big thing that Vygotsky focused on was the interactions between child and adult (or an older child) on the intermental and the intramental planes. He suggests that the intermental activity (interaction between people) is primary and the intramental activity (interaction within a person) is secondary.

Vygotsky believes that this inner speech is fundamental to our cognitive processes - we use it to direct our attention, solve problems, plan, form concept, and gain self-control (haven't you ever thought to yourself, when you are looking at some very tasty dessert: - "no, don't eat that, it's not good for you...you don't need another one...?" - this probably came from past experience where mom or dad or another older person had told you that eating junk food was bad for you!).

Implications for Teaching:

Cognitive Self-Instruction Approach: you can teach students to self-talk or, in more academic terms, to use cognitive self-instruction. This is where students talk themselves through a learning task. What are some tasks that you see students talking through? The first one that pops into my mind is math, where the students tell themselves to "carry the 1" in addition, or muttering calculus formulas under their breath during the exam.

Assistance or Scaffolding: This is when an older adult or peer supports the child while they build a firm understanding that will eventually allow them to solve the problem on their own.

Here is a fun version of Scaffolding:

Section 4: Zone of Proximal Development

The last section briefly discussed scaffolding, and this fits right in with Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). ZPD is an area where the child cannot solve the problem alone but can successfully solve it under the guidance or in collaboration with an adult or a more advanced peer – this is where real learning is possible (Woolfolk, 2000, p. 47).

Assessment: Vygotsky focuses on the dynamic assessment where the potential developmental levels are being assessed rather than the child’s actual level. Instead of testing for what the child already knows, dynamic assessment tries to identify the zone of proximal development by asking the child to solve a problem, then giving prompts, hints, and clues to see how the child learns, adapts, and uses the guidance. The teacher observes and notes how much support is needed to determine how much help and what level of support is necessary. Afterwards, this information is applied to plan learning tasks, peer tutoring, assignments, and so on (Woolfolk, 2000, p. 47).

In addition, Rogoff (Miller, 2002) also reminds us that the zone of proximal development does not need to be explicit with the intention to teach. Learning can be done from a distance (not just in face-to-face situations). Learning does not have to be verbal either. Examples of supporting the child in the zone are: guided participation, apprenticeship, collaboration, encouragement to try new skills, using prompts, modeling, using leading questions (and the list goes on and on).

Here’s an example that combines culture and the zone of proximal development. The following video contains an example of ZPD using Guitar Hero as an example (the game is a new phenomenon that has received much popularity in the recent years – along with Rock Band!):

Now, it’s your turn.

As teachers, we are always trying to support our students at the beginning of a new task or topic by providing models, prompts, coaching, and feedback. Sometimes we also provide students with tools such as organizational strategies, research tools, and language tools (dictionaries or assess to the Internet). As the students grow more competent, we tend to give them less support and more opportunities for independent work and eventually some challenging work as well.

This next activity just simply asks you to reflect and share with us a time where you consciously used scaffolding or worked with the “zone of proximal development” in mind when teaching (this does not necessarily have to be classroom based either).

Please post your discussion in: Symposium – 64B – Developmental Approaches – “Working in the Zone”

Try to use the terms we have discussed in this presentation when describing your scenario (you can scroll back up to the top for the key terms).

References:

Miller, P. H. (2002). Theories of Developmental Psychology, 4th Ed. (pp. 367-407; Vygotsky's Socio-Cultural Approach). New York: Worth.

Woolfolk, A. E., Winne, P. H., & Perry, N. E. (2000). Educational Psychology, Canadian Edition. (pp. 42-48; Cognitive Develoment and Language). Scarborough: Allyn and Bacon Canada.

Other useful resources:

http://www.igs.net/~cmorris/vygotsky-files.html (includes biographical information, descriptions of ZPD, and the sociocultural approach developed by Vygotsky)