VYGOTSKY’SCHARESS

SOCIO-CULTURAL
JOY D. DELA CRUZ, EdD
THEORY
Course Facilitator
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 VYGOTSKY’SCHARESS
SOCIO-CULTURAL
JOY D. DELA CRUZ, EdD
THEORY
Course Facilitator
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 01
“What a child can do in cooperation
today, tomorrow she/he will be able
to do alone.”
- Lev Vygotsky
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 02
Social interaction plays a very important role
in cognitive development. Individual
development could not be understood without
looking into that social and cultural context
within which development happens.
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 02
Scaffolding is Vygotsky’s term for the
appropriate assistance given by the teacher to
assist the learner accomplish a task.
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 Social Influences on Cognitive
Development
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Vygotsky believes that young children are curious
and actively involved in their own learning and
the discovery and development of new
understandings/schema. However, Vygotsky
placed more emphasis on social contributions to
the process of development, whereas Piaget
emphasized self-initiated discovery.
According to Vygotsky much important learning by
the child occurs through social interaction with a
skillful tutor. The tutor may model behaviors
and/or provide verbal instructions for the child.
Vygotsky refers to this as cooperative or
collaborative dialogue.
 The child seeks to understand the actions or
instructions provided by the tutor (often the
parent or teacher) then internalizes the
information, using it to guide or regulate their
own performance.
Shaffer gives the example of a young girl who is given her
first jigsaw. Alone, she performs poorly in attempting to
solve the puzzle. The father then sits with her and
describes or demonstrates some basic strategies, such as
finding all the corner/edge pieces and provides a couple of
pieces for the child to put together herself and offers
encouragement when she does so.
As the child becomes more competent, the father allows the
child to work more independently. According to Vygotsky,
this type of social interaction involving cooperative or
collaborative dialogue promotes cognitive development.
In order to gain an understanding of Vygotsky's theories on
cognitive development, one must understand two of the
main principles of Vygotsky's work: the More
Knowledgeable Other (MKO) and the Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD).
 More Knowledgeable Other
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The more knowledgeable other (MKO) is somewhat self-
explanatory; it refers to someone who has a better
understanding or a higher ability level than the learner,
with respect to a particular task, process, or concept.
Although the implication is that the MKO is a teacher or an
older adult, this is not necessarily the case. Many times, a
child's peers or an adult's children may be the individuals
with more knowledge or experience.
For example, who is more likely to know more about the
newest teenage music groups, how to win at the most
recent PlayStation game, or how to correctly perform the
newest dance craze - a child or their parents?
 In fact, the MKO need not be a person at all. Some
companies, to support employees in their learning process,
are now using electronic performance support systems.
 Electronic tutors have also been used in educational
settings to facilitate and guide students through the
learning process. The key to MKOs is that they must have
(or be programmed with) more knowledge about the topic
being learned than the learner does.
 Zone of Proximal Development
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 The concept of the More
Knowledgeable Other is integrally
related to the second important
principle of Vygotsky's work, the Zone
of Proximal Development. This is an
important concept that relates to the
difference between what a child can
achieve independently and what a
child can achieve with guidance and
encouragement from a skilled partner.
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 For example, the child could not solve
the jigsaw puzzle (in the example
above) by itself and would have taken
a long time to do so (if at all), but was
able to solve it following interaction
with the father, and has developed
competence at this skill that will be
applied to future jigsaws.
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 Vygotsky (1978) sees the Zone of
Proximal Development as the area
where the most sensitive instruction
or guidance should be given - allowing
the child to develop skills they will
then use on their own - developing
higher mental functions.
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 Vygotsky also views interaction with
peers as an effective way of developing
skills and strategies. He suggests that
teachers use cooperative learning
exercises where less competent
children develop with help from more
skillful peers - within the zone of
proximal development.
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 Vygotsky
and Language
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 Vygotsky believed that language develops
from social interactions, for communication
purposes. Vygotsky viewed language as man’s
greatest tool, a means for communicating
with the outside world.
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 According to Vygotsky (1962) language plays
two critical roles in cognitive development:

1. It is the main means by which adults

transmit information to children.

2. Language itself becomes a very powerful

tool of intellectual adaptation.
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 Vygotsky (1987) differentiates between three
forms of language: social speech which is
external communication used to talk to others
(typical from the age of two); private speech
(typical from the age of three) which is
directed to the self and serves an intellectual
function;
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 and finally private speech goes underground,
diminishing in audibility as it takes on a self-
regulating function and is transformed into
silent inner speech (typical from the age of
seven).
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 For Vygotsky, thought and language are
initially separate systems from the beginning
of life, merging at around three years of age.
At this point speech and thought become
interdependent: thought becomes verbal,
speech becomes representational. When this
happens, children's monologues internalized
to become inner speech. The internalization of
language is important as it drives cognitive
development.
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 'Inner speech is not the interiour aspect of
external speech - it is a function in itself. It
still remains speech, i.e., thought connected
with words. But while in external speech
thought is embodied in words, in inner speech
words dies as they bring forth thought. Inner
speech is to a large extent thinking in pure
meanings.' (Vygotsky, 1962: p. 149)
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 Vygotsky (1987) was the first psychologist to
document the importance of private speech. He
considered private speech as the transition
point between social and inner speech, the
moment in development where language and
thought unite to constitute verbal thinking.
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 Thus private speech, in Vygotsky's view, was
the earliest manifestation of inner speech.
Indeed, private speech is more similar (in its
form and function) to inner speech than social
speech.
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 Private speech is 'typically defined, in contrast
to social speech, as speech addressed to the
self (not to others) for the purpose of self-
regulation (rather than communication).'
(Diaz, 1992, p.62)
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 Unlike inner speech which is covert (i.e.,
hidden), private speech is overt. In contrast to
Piaget’s (1959) notion of private speech
representing a developmental dead-end,
Vygotsky (1934, 1987) viewed private speech
as:
'A revolution in development which is triggered
when preverbal thought and preintellectual
language come together to create
fundamentally new forms of mental
functioning.' (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005
: p. 1).
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 In addition to disagreeing on the functional
significance of private speech, Vygotsky and
Piaget also offered opposing views on the
developmental course of private speech and
the environmental circumstances in which it
occurs most often (Berk & Garvin, 1984).
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 SCAFFODLING
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 Scaffolding is an instructional
technique in which a teacher
provides individualized support by
incrementally improving a
learner’s ability to build on prior
knowledge. Scaffolding can be
used in a variety of content areas
and across age and grade levels.

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 Within education, the social
learning theory of Vygotsky is
generally credited with providing
theoretical basis for the practice,
where he describes the Zone of
Proximal Development (ZPD).

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 Scaffolding provide special type of
help that assists learners move
towards new concepts, skills, or
understandings. Actually,
Vygotsky himself never mentioned
the term of scaffolding.

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 It was first introduce by Jerome
Bruner, David Wood, and Gail Ross
(1976) while applying Vygotsky's
concept of Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD) to various
educational contexts.

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 Vygotsky defined scaffolding
instruction as the “role of teachers
and others in supporting the
learners development and
providing support structures to get
to that next stage or level”
(Raymond, 2000)

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 Teachers provide scaffolds so that
the learner can accomplish certain
tasks they would otherwise not be
able to accomplish on their own
(Bransford, Brown, & Cocking,
2000)

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 The goal of the educator is for the
student to become an
independent learner and problem
solver (Hartman, 2002)

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Classroom Applications
 A contemporary educational application of
Vygotsky's theories is "reciprocal teaching," used to
improve students' ability to learn from text. In this
method, teachers and students collaborate in
learning and practicing four key skills: summarizing,
questioning, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher's
role in the process is reduced over time.
 Also, Vygotsky theory of cognitive development on
learners is relevant to instructional concepts such as
"scaffolding" and "apprenticeship," in which a
teacher or more advanced peer helps to structure or
arrange a task so that a novice can work on it
successfully.
 Vygotsky's theories also feed into the current
interest in collaborative learning, suggesting that
group members should have different levels of
ability so more advanced peers can help less
advanced members operate within their ZPD.
Thank you!
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