Vygotsky's view of child development and education is an extension of his general approach to

the development of higher mental functions. Consistent with his definition of development as
socially determined, Vygotsky introduced a new relationship between education, learning, and
development. Vygotsky argued against the theorists who believed that child development occurs
spontaneously and is driven by the processes of maturation and cannot be affected by education.
Neither did he agree with those who claimed that instruction could alter development at any time
regardless of a child's age or capacities. Instead, he proposed a more complex and dynamic
relationship between learning and development that is determined by what he termed a child's
zone of proximal development (ZPD).

Vygotsky's theory is based on the idea that learning can lead development, and development can
lead learning, and this process takes place through a dynamic interrelationship. The ZPD is the
area between a learner's level of independent performance (often called developmental level) and
the level of assisted performance–what the child can do with support. Independent performance
is the best the learner can do without help, and assisted performance is the maximum the learner
can achieve with help. By observing assisted performance one can investigate a learner's
potential for current highest level of functioning. ZPD reveals the learner's potential and is
realized in interactions with knowledgeable others or in other supportive contexts (such as make-
believe play for preschool children). By providing assistance to learners within their ZPD we are
supporting their growth.

Through identification of a learner's ZPD, teachers find out what knowledge, skills, and
understandings have not yet surfaced for the learner but are on the edge of emergence. Teachers
also study ways to engage the learner in shared or co-operative learning experience through
participation in the learner's ZPD. This involves doing more than completing a task in a
combined fashion; it involves developing the learner's higher mental functions, such as the
ability to plan, evaluate, memorize, and reason. In How Children Think and Learn (1998), David
Wood points out: "By reminding children we are helping them to bring to mind and exploit those
aspects of their past experience that we (as experts) but not they (as novices) know to be relevant
to what they are currently trying to do" (p. 97).

http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1912/Developmental-Theory-VYGOTSKIAN-
THEORY.html
Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory

Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory is the work of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky
(1896-1934), who lived during Russian Revolution. Vygotsky’s work was largely unkown to the
West until it was published in 1962.

Vygotsky’s theory is one of the foundations of constructivism. It asserts three major themes:

Major themes:

1. Social interaction plays a fundamental role in the process of cognitive development. In

contrast to Jean Piaget’s understanding of child development (in which development
necessarily precedes learning), Vygotsky felt social learning precedes development. He
states: “Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the
social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological)
and then inside the child (intrapsychological).” (Vygotsky, 1978).
2. The More Knowledgeable Other (MKO). The MKO refers to anyone who has a better
understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, with respect to a particular task,
process, or concept. The MKO is normally thought of as being a teacher, coach, or older
adult, but the MKO could also be peers, a younger person, or even computers.
3. The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD is the distance between a student’s
ability to perform a task under adult guidance and/or with peer collaboration and the
student’s ability solving the problem independently. According to Vygotsky, learning
occurred in this zone.

Vygotsky focused on the connections between people and the sociocultural context in which they
act and interact in shared experiences (Crawford, 1996). According to Vygotsky, humans use
tools that develop from a culture, such as speech and writing, to mediate their social
environments. Initially children develop these tools to serve solely as social functions, ways to
communicate needs. Vygotsky believed that the internalization of these tools led to higher
thinking skills.

Applications of the Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory

Many schools have traditionally held a transmissionist or instructionist model in which a teacher
or lecturer ‘transmits’ information to students. In contrast, Vygotsky’s theory promotes learning
contexts in which students play an active role in learning. Roles of the teacher and student are
therefore shifted, as a teacher should collaborate with his or her students in order to help
facilitate meaning construction in students. Learning therefore becomes a reciprocal experience
for the students and teacher.

http://www.learning-theories.com/vygotskys-social-learning-theory.html
Vygotsky’s Theory of Child Development

For Lev Vygotsky, the role of language and culture was central to his theory, focusing on the
role of nurture. Behavior (partly directed by inherited traits) changes the child’s experiences and
their perceptions of those experiences.

Sociocultural Perspective on Development

Vygotsky’s theory helped spur sociocultural perspective, which holds that culture and society are
important for promoting cognitive development.

For example, in a Spanish classroom in New York, native speakers of Spanish whose accent is
from the Dominican Republic may come into conflict with Castilian Spanish a teacher learns
from university study. It is then the teacher’s task to explain the value of learning Castilian
Spanish while maintaining tolerance of multiple accents. In doing so, she is promoting the
cognitive development of her early adolescents by helping them to understand multiple
viewpoints.

How Internal Procedures Become Independent

Vygotsky’s theories describe how complex internal mental procedures (such as physics
computations) begin first as social processes, which become increasingly internalized with
independence.

Students in Ken Gillam’s class (from the “Learning Classroom” series) first work in groups with
ramps, cars, and stopwatches; after they dialogue to create the results, they then can visualize this
process independently when confronted with a physics computation on paper.

Role of Self Talk in Guiding Learning

Another area of Vygotsky’s work details how a student’s self talk serves to direct and guide their
progress through difficult and unfamiliar materials, as adults have previously guided them.
Michelene Chi has demonstrated that the quality of students’ self talk is a predictor of their
success in a new field of study.

Contemporary Criticism of Piaget

Vygotsky has been criticized for defining developmental stages only in very general forms, so
that his predictions are very difficult to “test, verify, disprove . . . there is a lack of precision and
inattention to details.” Vygotsky’s work is often general enough to be unfalsifiable.

Practical Applications of Vygotsky’s Work

Vygotsky’s work is most famously applied to scaffolding, which is “guidance or structure

provided by more competent individuals that enables children to perform tasks within their zone
of proximal development.” In Faye McClaine’s classroom (in the “Learning Classroom” series),
through her use of materials such as the children’s related personal experience, picture stories
illustrating the concepts, and concrete representations of the concept, she creates a rich
environment, scaffolding for the less competent students while stimulating the more competent
students.

Vygotsky’s work can also be applied to the social construction of meaning, or mediated learning
experience, in which adults help children to make sense of information through discussion. In
Avram Barlow’s class (in the “Learning Classroom” series), his explanations of post-
emancipation Jim Crow laws helped his students to understand the historical milieu, and the
rationale behind oppressive policies beyond racism.

Vygotsky’s work describes a cultural context of development, in which culture shapes cognitive
development. If a student loves the Latin American rhythms he hears at home, music may
become his favorite activity, and his abilities in that domain can become quite advanced.

Zone of Proximal Development

Finally, Vygotsky’s work calls for the teacher to operate in the “Zone of Proximal
Development,” the activities a child can perform with assistance from a peer or adult, but cannot
perform independently. According to Roland Tharp, all teaching should occur within the zone, as
“good teaching means constantly stretching to meet the needs of the child.”

Vygotsky's work can prove helpful to many teachers who often find their students attending
more to each other than the lesson. That social energy can be harnessed to provide deeper
learning of material.

Sources:

 Chi, M. T. H., Bassok, M., Lewis, M. W., Reimann, P., & Glaser, R. Self-explanations: How
students study and use examples in learning to solve problems. Cognitive Science, 13(2), 145-
182, 1989.
 Darling-Hammond, L. The Learning Classroom: Theory Into Practice [Video]. Detroit, MI: Detroit
Public Television and Mort Crim Communications, 2003.
 McDevitt, T. M., & Ormond, J. E. Child development: Educating and working with adolescents.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2004.

Fine Motor Development www.Therapro.com/Fine-Motor

AKO RA NI GI INCLUDE CAM KE WARA HAHAHA DI BTAW TNGALI MKAHELP GAMAY BUH HEHE

Vygotsky's Theory of Development

 child is an active creator of knowledge

 importance of interaction with social environment
 cultural differences
 language influences thought: private speech
 zone of proximal development
 scaffolding

A Perceptual-Control-Theory Critique of Vygotsky

 Questions and problems (Why)

o Why do children adapt to their culture?
o How can child development be understood as meeting the goals (purposes) of children
and adults?
 Perceptual Control Theory (I advocate, you critique)
o

Purpose and feedback *

 What is purposeful behavior? *

 Rubber-band demonstration of purposeful behavior
 phenomenon
 model
 implications
 Elementary control system

 Language use depends on perceptual feedback
 Different levels of feedback in speaking
 proprioceptive
 Why it's difficult to speak after dental anaesthesia
 auditory
 clarity
 pitch
 loudness
 Try speaking with food/spoon/cigarette in mouth, or
while keeping tongue pressed against upper or lower
teeth to show how we can adjust our motor output to
control sound input.
  reaction of listener
 Did he or she understand?
 007.4 "This feedback component allows the speaker to make constant
corrections so that ouput is as finely tuned as possible in terms of
conveying thoughts and accurately."
 Language behavior is purposeful
 All behavior depends on perceptual feedback


->Think-Pair-Share

o What do you find most confusing about the PCT framework for understanding
purposeful behavior?
o What criticisms do you have for the notion that all purposful behavior involves
controlling perceptions?
o Be prepared to share your partner's confusion and criticisms in class.


Demo: pole balancing

o have student volunteer to balance ski pole on end and observe what student perceptual
variables the student is controlling during the task
o what are lower-level goals?
o what are higher-level goals?

A Biologically-Based, Unified View of Child Development



Brief description

o Humans are born with knowledge, skills, abilities, and preferences (goals) that have
been shaped by natural selection
 physical comfort
 preference for sugar, fat and salt
 aversion to things and objects associated with sickness and death
 sex differences in mating strategies
 social contact
 acceptance and respect of others
o New goals (purposes) develop as the means to achieve these more basic goals
 Child example
 wants to eliminate hunger or pain
 wants to obtain assistance of parent
 wants to tell parent what is wrong
  wants to learn language
 Adult example
 wants to be attractive to other sex
 wants to have nice car/attractive clothes
 wants to get good-paying job to obtain these
 wants to get education to get good-paying job
o New skills and knowledge develop are motivated by goals, and depend on variation and
selection.
 variation: actions, ideas, values
 selection: requires feedback from physical and/or social environment
 knowledge gained via previous variation and selection constrains and aids new
variation and selection


Strengths

o Recognizes importance of human evolution

 human abilities as adaptations for survival and reproduction
 human desires/preferences as adaptations for survival and reproduction
o Recognizes that organisms do not react to their environments (the "behavioral
illusion"), instead they control their environments
o Recognizes how the development of new skills and knowledge is an active, creative,
evolutionary process that leads to new adaptations to the environment (physical and
social) in the form of useful skills, knowledge, and preferences
o Explains what is universal and what is culture-specific in development
 basic universal needs and preferences for food, shelter, resources, status, social
contact, sex
 skills, knowledge and preferences for meeting these needs depends on
opportunities provided by the physical and social environment
 Universal: need for carbohydrates, protein and fat
 Particular: diet
 rice in Asia
 corn in Latin America
 sorghum in Africa
 wheat in North America
 seal and whale meat in Arctic


Weaknesses

o not accepted by mainstream psychologists and educators

 ignorance or rejection of role of biological evolution in human behavior, skills
and preferences
 ignorance of rejection of the notion of within-organisms variation and selection
to account for human development and learning
  ignorance or rejection of idea that humans use behavior to control their
perceptions (environments); acceptance of "behavioral illusion" that
perceptions (stimuli, environment) cause behavior (responses)
o (students fill in valid criticisms here?)

http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/courses/edpsy313/notes/hh03.htm