Category: Lev Vygotsky Theory

The psychologist I received after taking the quiz was Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky developed the sociocultural theory where he believes we all learn aspects of our lives through interaction. I will be discussing the history of this theory as well as the way it can be applied in the classroom. Vygotsky (1978) states: ‘Each capacity in the kid’s social improvement shows up twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between individuals (inner psychological) and afterward inside the kid (intrapsychological). This applies similarly to deliberate consideration, legitimate memory, and the development of ideas. All the higher capacities start as genuine connections between people.’ Which is the significant topic of his fills in as expressed before that individuals learn by associating with other individuals.

Fifty years after his passing, Lev Semyonich Vygotsky pulled in the consideration of Western clinicians and teachers for his hypothesis of intellectual improvement. Rather than other intellectual points of view, Vygotsky concurred a focal job to culture and social communication in the advancement of complex reasoning. Furthermore, he upheld the investigation of youngsters’ unfurling advancement of psychological procedures and spearheaded an exploration strategy to achieve this reason. He likewise contributed plans to pedology (youngster study) and defectology (custom curriculum) that foreseen current perspectives. (Lev Vygotsky, 1896–1934) The most significant use of Vygotsky’s hypothesis to instruction is in his idea of a zone of proximal improvement. This idea is significant because educators can utilize it as a manual for a kid’s advancement. It enables an educator to realize what an understudy can accomplish using a go-between and in this manner empowers the instructor to enable the youngster to achieve that level independently from anyone else. A second significant part of Vygotsky’s hypothesis is the job of play in his hypothesis. As indicated by this point of view, instructors need to give youngsters, particularly small kids, numerous chances to play. Through play, and a creative mind a kid’s calculated capacities are extended. Vygotsky contended that play prompts improvement. ‘While imitating their elders in culturally patterned activities, children generate opportunities for intellectual development. Initially, their games are recollections and reenactments of real situations; but through the dynamics of their imagination and recognition of implicit rules governing the activities they have reproduced in their games, children achieve an elementary mastery of abstract thought.’

The Sociocultural Learning Theory likewise considers how students are affected by their friends, and how social situations sway their capacity to procure data. All things considered, educators who apply the Sociocultural Learning Theory in their instructional plan can likewise end up mindful of how students may legitimately affect each other, just as how social standards’ can impact a student’s learning conduct.

The way I would implement his ideas in the classroom is by having children work with each other. Having children sit in groups helps them bounce ideas off of each other to create a more creative way of thinking. Since every child is different with their upbringings and cultural aspects it would be interesting how children from different backgrounds work with each other to fabricate different ideas. Also, in the classroom, changing up the seating as well so the children are not always exposed to the same students every time. This would create a community in the classroom because the children have had a chance to introduce themselves to each other. The children would be able to socialize in class with one another to, as I said before, get that creativeness aspect, some children may not be as creative as others but constantly introducing them to different students, they can build on that creativeness together to achieve their goal.

In conclusion, I do like Vygotsky’s theory, it does suit the learning style I am trying to implement in the classroom. Trying to provide a creative space where children do not feel like they should be afraid of introducing themselves to one another. Children need to be exposed to these interactions or else it will be harder in the adult world to establish these connections.

Erik Erikson (1902 – 1994) was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst. He was one of Freud’s followers who expanded the picture of development at each stage. In his psychosocial theory, Erikson emphasized that in addition to mediating between id impulses and superego demands, the ego makes a positive contribution to development, acquiring attitudes and skills that make the individual an active, contributing member of society (Berk & Meyers, 2015). Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages included: Basic Trust vs. Mistrust (birth- 1 year), Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (1-3 year), Initiative vs. Guilt (3-6 years), Industry vs. Inferiority (6-11years), Identity vs. Role Confusion (Adolescence 13-19 years), Intimacy vs. Isolation (Early adulthood 20–39 years), Generativity vs. Stagnation (Middle Adulthood 40-59 years), and Integrity vs. Despair (Old age) (Berk & Meyers, 2015).

These theories have a significant impact on current practices in ECE. According to Erikson, at the first stage, children learn whether or not they can trust the world (Berk & Meyers, 2015). Children receive care from their caregivers to form trust, so the quality of the care is crucial in the forming of the child’s personality (Malone, Liu, Vaillant Rentz, & Waldinger, 2016). For this reason, caregivers need to attend to child’s needs quickly and be sensitive. For example, sometimes a baby gets some response from a caregiver by crying, so the caregiver needs to know the baby’s need while the baby is crying and respond fast. The baby may need food, changing diapers, or a warm cuddle. When a caregiver provides an appropriate response to a baby’s cries, a foundation of trust is built. When the baby’s needs are consistently satisfied, the baby will learn that he can trust the people who are caring for him. If these needs are not consistently met, the child will begin to mistrust the people around him or her. Children at the second stage want to decide for themselves, and they build a sense of control over themselves as well as some basic confidence in their own abilities (Berk & Meyers, 2015). Caregivers can provide opportunities for children to foster their independence by permitting children to make food, clothing, and toy choices and helping them stop worrying. Toilet training also takes on an important role; learning to control one’s body functions leads to a feeling of control and a sense of independence. In this stage, reassuring children and having faith in their abilities is important to the development of a sense of autonomy and confidence. The third stage occurs from ages 3 to 5. During this stage, children begin to affirm their power and control over the world by playing activities, completing tasks, and overcoming difficulties (Berk & Meyers, 2015). The main element is imagination. A sense of purpose develops when a child can envision something in her imagination and pursue it. These perceptions give kindergarten some idea. For instance, provide enough space for children to express their imagination by playing with natural materials and role-playing. Some daycares make circle time to read stories and sing a song that can stimulate children’s imagination. Hence, caregivers need to encourage exploration, help children make appropriate choices, provide opportunities and room to show their imagination and initiative.

Although Erikson’s theories have many influences and impacts on current practices in ECE, the first three stages are basic of all. Maria Montessori (1870-1952), a teacher and a doctor from Italy, is one of the forerunners of early childhood education. She established the Montessori educational method in 1907. It “aims at developing children’s senses, academic skills, practical life skills, and character- is the world’s oldest extant early childhood curriculum model and is used today by Montessori teachers throughout the world” (Lunenburg, 2000, p. 522). The Montessori educational methods were developed founded on five premises: “Respect for the child, The Absorbent Mind, The Sensitive period, The prepared environment, and Auto-education” (David, 2016). Each of the premises has greatly influenced the current practice of early childhood education.

Montessori believed that grownups fail to respect children because they give children information forcefully. According to Montessori, children should be given choices to make them learn independently. Children should learn by doing, rather than just receiving information. This hands-on learning experience motivates the child to learn (David, 2016). This “Respect for the child” premise supports Alberta’s Early Learning and Care Framework core concept of “the image of the child: a strong, resourceful, capable child—a mighty learner and citizen” (Makovichuk, Hewes, Lirette, & Thomas, 2014, p. 38). “The Absorbent Mind” is the sponge-like capacity of the child to absorb information from the environment. What they absorb depends on the type of environment they are exposed to (David, 2016). “The Sensitive period” is when the child is ready and interested to learn something at a certain time. During this period, teachers will “present demonstration lessons when a child shows readiness to advance in the sequence of self-correcting materials, in the areas of practical life, sensorial, mathematics, language, science and geography, and art and music” (Edwards, 2000). “The prepared environment” is the carefully arranged, pleasing surroundings and materials where children freely work by themselves or with a partner. Resources such as books and toys are of good quality and usually made from natural materials (David, 2016). Montessori designed educational materials that are still used to this day. The Montessori activities such as pouring, cleaning, and polishing in the practical life curriculum develop not only the child’s abilities to live independently, but also train the child’s motor control and eyehand coordination (Marshall, 2017). “Auto-education” is the children’s ability to teach themselves so that they can develop important life skills. This is possible within the prepared environment. The children will advance when they are ready, at their own pace (David, 2016).

In summary, the Montessori method is “designed to support the child’s intellectual, physical, emotional and social development through active exploration, choice, and independent learning” (Marshall, 2017, p.1). There are no grades given, and children are not competing with each other. This is contrary to traditional education, where the teacher is the main source of learning and information, and much emphasis is given on academics.

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was born on November 17, 1896, in Orsha, Russia. He died after a battle with tuberculosis at age 37. He began his career as an educator at the time of the Russian revolution. Vygotsky has become the foundation of research and theory in cognitive development over the past several decades. He was best known for his social development theory or sociocultural theory. He believed that social interaction plays an important role in the development of children’s learning. These interactions include those with parents, brothers and sisters, teachers, playmates, and classmates. Vygotsky noted that culture influences this process and he placed more emphasis on culture affecting cognitive development. He assumed cognitive development varies across cultures. Vygotsky placed considerably more emphasis on social factors contributing to cognitive development. He believed that the environment in which children grow up will influence how they think and what they think about. According to Vygotsky, adults such as parents and educators are an important source of cognitive development (McLeod, 2014).

Vygotsky’s beliefs about children and education influenced the current practices in Early Childhood Education by using scaffolding as a method of teaching. Vygotsky’s scaffolding is a teaching method that helps children learn more by working with more knowledgeable others such as parents and educators to achieve their learning goals. The theory behind scaffolding is that educators or parents supply children with the tools they need to learn, and then slowly withdraw their assistance as children can do more on their own (Berk & Winsler, 1995). The children learn more when collaborating with others who are more knowledgeable or have a wider range of skills than them. These knowledgeable others are the scaffolding who help the children expand their learning boundaries and learn more compared to learning independently. Scaffolding is providing the children with support and guidance while they are learning new skills. As the children learn the skills, the support as their abilities develop will be lessened until they can do the new skills on their own. For example, if a child is trying to do a puzzle for the first time, the educator can demonstrate how to do it, and as the child learns to do the puzzle, the educator can let the child do it on his own. In scaffolding, the educator can also make suggestions if the child is having difficulty. For example, if a child is having trouble completing a puzzle, the educator could offer partial solutions like making suggestions that might help solve the problem while still encouraging the child to solve the problem on his own. Vygotsky’s scaffolding is part of the education concept zone of proximal development. The zone of proximal development is the set of skills or knowledge a child can’t do on her own but can do with the help or guidance of skillful others.

Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development is significant because it helps teachers understand the children’s development, so they can help the children make achievements on their own.

Moreover, Vygotsky also emphasized the role of language in cognitive development. He believed that cognitive development results from an internalization of language. He also believed that thought and language are separate systems from the beginning of life. Furthermore, settings for learning and detailed information are considered in terms of social interactions to support realistic settings and children’s opportunities to explore, direct their own learning, and work in collaboration with other children under the support and guidance of the educator (McLeod, 2014).

L.S. Vygotsky began his analysis by reading the work of researchers like Wolfgang Kohler and Buhler, who sought to establish similarities between a child and an ape. Buhler’s experiments indicated that the activity of a young child before speaking is identical to an ape. Other psychologists, Guillaume, and Meyerson suggested that the ape’s behavior was parallel to that observed in people who were Speech impaired. These psychologists’ work focused on the practical activity of children at the age when they are beginning to speak. Vygotsky also focused his work on the activity of children at the age before Speech. However, his primary concern was to describe and specify the development of those forms of practical intelligence that were explicitly human. He concluded that before mastering his behavior, the child begins to master his surroundings with the help of Speech. In his research, Vygotsky found that in certain circumstances, it seems natural and necessary for children to speak. Speech not only accompanies practical activity but also plays a specific role in carrying out the activity. He concluded that Speech and action have a particular function in the history of the child’s development.

As he continued to compare Kohler’s work on the ape to children’s development, he began to look at perception and attention in child development. Kohler believed that apes bound by their receptive field have a greater extent than adult humans. Vygotsky believed that a child’s perception, because it is human, does not develop as a direct continuation and further perfection of the forms of animal perception. Vygotsky and his colleagues conducted different experiments, which led them to discover that labeling is the primary function of Speech used by young children. Labeling enables the child to choose a specific object to single it out from the entire situation he is perceiving. The child begins to see the world, his eyes, and his Speech. Speech becomes an essential part of a child’s cognitive development.

From their knowledge of Speech and perception, Vygotsky began the study of human memory. This study revealed that all the other functions built around memory in early childhood are one of the central psychological functions. His analysis suggested that memory, in many respects, determines thinking in a very young child. For the very young child to think is to remember. He felt that the essential characteristic of human behavior, in general, is that humans personally influence their relations with the environment. He also believes that internal reconstruction happens when a child’s development proceeds in a spiral passing through the same point of each new revolution while advancing to a higher level. In the initial phase, the reliance on external signs is crucial to a child’s effort. Take memorization, the late stages of a child’s behavior appear to be the same as the early stages of memorizing, which were characterized by a direct process. The very young child does not rely on external means. Instead, he uses a natural approach. On the other hand, the older child has begun to memorize more and better. The older student has somehow perfected and developed old methods of memorization.

As he studied a child’s development, he focused his attention on the relationship between learning and development. He felt that this relationship was unclear because of detailed research studies that resulted in a variety of errors. Vygotsky felt that the relationship between learning and development consisted of two separate issues. The first was the general relation between learning and development. The second was specific features of this relationship when children reach school age. That children’s learning begins long before they attend school. He went on to explain that school learning introduces something fundamentally new to a child’s development. It is well-known, and empirically the fact that learning should match in some manner with the child’s developmental level. The Zone of Proximal Development plays an essential role. It is the distance between the actual development level, as determined by independent problem solving, and the level of potential development. The Zone of proximal development defines those functions that have not yet matured but are in the process of maturation.

The influence of play on a child’s development creates demands on the child to act against immediate impulse. At every step, the child is faced with a conflict between the rules of the game and what he would do if he could suddenly act spontaneously. In the game, he acts counter to the way he wants to act. Play gives a child a new form of desire. Play for a very young child means that she plays without separating the ideal situation from the real one. For the school child, the play does not die away but permeates the attitude toward reality. It has its inner continuation in the school’s instruction and work.

As in a play, drawing representation of meaning initially arises as first-order symbolism. The first drawings arise from gestures of the pencil-equipped hand, and gesture constitutes the first representation of meaning. Later on, the graphic representation begins to denote some object. From Vygotsky’s point of view, it would be natural to transfer the teaching of writing to the preschool years. If younger children are capable of discovering the symbolic function of writing, then the teaching of writing should be the responsibility of preschool education. He made it clear that writing should be meaningful and intrinsic for children. Writing should be incorporated into a task that is necessary and relevant for life. In the same way, a child learns to speak, should be able to read and write. Reading and writing should become necessary for her in play. Vygotsky summed it up by saying that children should learn written language, not just the writing of letters.

Vygotsky’s studies looked at child development through different lenses. His work focused on a child’s development of Speech, perceptions, memory, signs, learning, and development, play, drawing representation, and writing. Walking through various pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten classrooms today, a lot of what Vygotsky discussed in his writings and research is in place in those classrooms. The role of play in early childhood gives us information about the child’s social-emotional learning. Today social-emotional learning is a curriculum in elementary schools.

Born in western Russia with a well-to-do and well-educated family. He had a personal interest in psychology and philosophy. He graduated at Moscow University in Law and later presented to the Russian Psychological Neural Congress and was invited to Join Moscow Psychology Institute. He worked on child development until he died of Tuberculosis at 37.

Lev Vygotsky was born in Orsha in a small town in the vicinity of Minsk Western Russia (now Belarus) in 1896. Vygotsky came from a well-to-do family and received his first education from private tutors raised in Gomel, He was lucky to obtain a place at the Moscow University(3 percent Jewish student quota), and because people with Jewish heritage were not allowed to be government officials, his choices were minimal. At the insistence of his parents, Vygotsky applied to the medical department, but after one month he switched to law. Vygotsky had a personal interest in psychology and philosophy. His sister Zinaida was to become a prominent linguist and it may have been her and their cousin who kept him well informed of all developments in linguistics and philology (The study of the structure, historical development, and relationships of a language or languages).

After finishing his university studies, he returned to his hometown of Gomel, and following the Revolution he was allowed to teach in State School. During the period of 1917 and 1924 little is known about his writings, he taught at various institutions and set up a small laboratory where he performed experiments on dominant reactions and respiration that provided the material for his talk on a reflexological and psychological investigation. He participated in the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress and was promptly invited to become a research fellow at the Psychological Institute in Moscow.

Meanwhile, his family was struck down by tuberculosis, and Vygotsky while nursing his brother contracted the disease himself. He recovered initially but for the rest of his life, he was plagued by multiple bouts of it. His living conditions deteriorated with his wife and two daughters living in one room of an overcrowded apartment. Together with his illness and enormous workload doctors told him he would be dead within a few months.

Vygotsky died in the early morning of June 11, 1934, of tuberculosis aged 37. He left behind a number of books, many articles, and drawers full of unpublished manuscripts. These were saved and protected by his family until after the ban on his work.

From about 1931 articles critical of his ideas started being published in the major psychology and pedagogy journals. Vygotsky’s writings were banned in the U.S.S.R. in 1936 for twenty years for ‘bourgeois thinking’ by Stalin. This charge originated from the fact that Vygotsky had incorporated ideas from European and American anthropologists, linguists, psychologists, and zoologists into his work. Stalin moved the country and scientific research away from the social progressivism that was at the heart of Vygotsky’s work. Vygotsky’s work on disabled education would also bring ire from the new Stalinist direction Soviet Russia was taken in.

“A disability in and of itself is not a tragedy. It is only the occasion to provoke a tragedy.” Gita L. Vygodskaya, “Vygotsky and Problems of Special Education,” Remedial and Special Education 20, no. 6 (November 1999): 330–32, doi:10.1177/074193259902000605.

This quote from Vygotsky from one of his Daughters books is a great example of how Vygotsky was looking at his work with an objective to empower even the disenfranchised to learn something which would end up too expensive for Stalinist Russia to continue to pursue further exacerbating Vygotsky’s fall from favor.

Vygotsky’s work was banned by Stalin after Vygotsky’s death. This was imposed from 1936-1956 a total of 20 years after which it was finally lifted.

This allowed his ideas to be re-examined as his family began publishing the works they had preserved prior to the ban.

Years after his death Vygotsky’s ideas are becoming well known in the scientific world. There have been concerns that some translations have been made with agendas and try to separate the socialist message and other cultural elements from the work promoting a handpicking of the most suitable pieces of practice to integrate without a larger cultural change.

“It is a practice which poses the tasks and is the supreme judge of theory.” Vygotsky, “The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology,” in Vygotsky, Collected Works, 388–89.

This quote suggests Vygotsky himself would be happy to see his theories informing practice even in a limited way as practitioners feel able to apply them.

His Social Constructivism Theory often runs parallel to Piaget’s Personal Constructivism. Vygotsky’s stress on the social and collaborative nature of learning, he is often considered to be the father of social constructivism, while Piaget is often classified as a father of personal (or cognitive) constructivism.

Vygotsky’s focus on child development looks at the social aspect of learning and how infants move from elementary mental functions such as Attention, Sensation, Perception, and Memory into the higher mental functions using social interactions and the use of communication.

Children are seen to move from the most basic social interactions, responding to stimuli or making imitating behaviours. Then progressing to ‘External Speech’ offers limited explicit communication and understanding from the communication of others.

While using these communication methods the child develops ‘Private Speech’ integrating the learning of language to shape and regulate their emotions and motivations. The child begins to talk itself through actions aloud and examine problems confirming its learning and reinforcing progress on how to handle different situations.

The highest form of speech in the Vygotskian theory is ‘Interior Speech’ or internal speech when the child is now at the point where their thoughts are in the form of words but do not need to be verbalized to be felt understood and processed by the child without speaking them aloud.

Vygotsky believes this development is a social process and will be encouraged and accelerated by positive interactions with More Knowledgeable Others (MKO).

For children growing up, MKO may be an adult but may also be a knowledgeable peer or sibling. Supporting the child’s development with constructive questioning and inquiry or demonstration and physical assistance. This support from MKO has become known as scaffolding. The use of this support should be reduced as the child becomes more familiar with a task allowing them to progress towards total independence.

This strategy of offering support to advance a child towards independence focusing on what the child was capable of building upon this and developing the areas where they were struggling was referred to as using the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

‘One of Vygotsky’s great accomplishments was outlining the trajectory of this cultural tool (speech) in individual development, from its beginnings in social interaction to its full internalization as a tool of verbal thought and volitional consciousness. We will follow him in this developmental path of communication, from nonverbal gestures to social speech to private speech to fully internalized, silent inner speech, commonly thought of as “the little voice inside your head.” ‘

https://isreview.org/issue/93/vygotskys-revolutionary-theory-psychological-development

Unfortunately, not all children develop at the same rate and despite Vygotsky being aware of this, there is little that CDW can harness to alter the approach for those who are struggling with language development as the approach is largely speech focused. It is presupposed that children will start to develop private speech at 3 so in the nursery, we can use a scaffolding style approach to encourage children’s development, but this will be very different for children with Additional Support Needs.

Vygotsky also understood and wrote on the value of play from a psychological perspective outlining that it allows children to create dialogue and develop experience resolving conflicts that they would normally find were above their own ability. Helping to reinforce the self-regulation of emotions and other learning.

Vygotsky also believed this process of learning using a ZPD continues when learning new skills until death.

A common criticism of this approach is that it lacks developmental milestones and requires a very good knowledge of the child to make sure you apply the ZPD appropriately and don’t alienate children by giving them too easy a task or something that is too difficult and frustrating for the child.

Vygotsky’s ideas often occur naturally in environments where there are mixed age/ability groups.

Both Adult practitioners and other children in a nursery environment are in a great place to take on the role of the MKO. Empowering children to share their knowledge with other children reinforces learning for both parties while also offering the MKO a chance to develop and consolidate their language making themselves understood to other children.

Encouraging the children to interact with each other in constructive ways helps development in all participants and promotes a higher level of engagement in activities.

Adults can promote this empowering of children by recognising and commending effort and prior learning and then expanding this into the ZPD with support.

This strategy can be employed in almost all nursery situations provided it is done with a co-constructive attitude keeping communication open and clear also offering physical support when it is obvious a child needs further intervention while remaining conscientious that the support is only what is needed in the short term to enable the child to move towards independence and that this support can be enhanced or decreased, in either direction as suits the child’s ability at any given time.

Encouraging language use and investigation is also one of the primary ways to help utilize the Vygotskian approach with open questions and inquiry supporting the child to understand these concepts and expand their vocabulary in a naturalistic way without any direct teaching time in a rigid style.

Children can enjoy self-led activities with Practitioners only joining in where they can add value and enhance learning. It is important this is done in a compassionate and empathetic manner understanding first what the child is engaged by and then building on this either through a communication or similar activity.

The Vygotskian approach doesn’t have a formal assessment as this was often seen as against the socialist and Leninist ideas of Vygotsky’s work but using a scaffolding approach when working with children will help us understand some of the child’s developmental behavior and from this, we can use the information to plan next steps.

For children with Additional Support Needs, practitioners should bear in mind that although the child may not be able to express themselves as well as others, they will also be supported by encouraging social interactions at the level they can engage/understand. It is very rare a child would prefer to play alone and if you can co-construct with any child they will often feel better emotionally and find the activity more engaging. Practitioners need to be careful not to isolate children with Additional Support Needs as the more able children who are social learners may pick up on this behavior and begin copying it too.

While children are given the space and time to self-direct in the nursery as much as possible we also have a duty of care and are responsible for encouraging children to reach certain learning objectives before the child moves on to nursery. Awareness of how our social interactions color the world view and goals of children can’t be undervalued and practitioners should provide positive role models and a supportive environment to enhance the lifelong learning goals of children and facilitate the exploration of these within the nursery setting.

While in the nursery setting there are several ways practitioners can deploy these theories and strategies for learning.

Developing independence is one of the end goals of the theory and this should be considered in all interactions, can the child manage themselves, or are they in a ZPD, How can I empower the child to ensure the minimum amount of support I can provide is given and the child takes away positive learning and consolidates their previous learning. Practitioners must be careful to only provide the necessary support to allow the child to complete the task as we don’t want children to remain dependent and allow us room to remove support further as they progress to full independence. Practitioners must also be responsive and aware that sometimes after growth or other external factors a child may have a setback and require more scaffolding to support them to reach their goal in the short term and to respond to this in a supportive co-constructive collaborative way.

In my short time working in the nursery setting I have found several occasions this theorist links directly to my own practice.

Working on children’s independence there are occasions where a child may struggle with zipping their jacket. The quick fix is to do this for them but with time and understanding, we can deploy Vygotskian theory to the interaction.

First, the child seeks attention, I will then ask them to explain the problem of encouraging their use of language. Then I will talk them through the challenges I see in the problem. ‘The Zipper’, ‘the flaps’, ‘the teeth’, ‘the handle’/’tog’, ‘the bit’ (where the zipper must connect to the other side of the jacket at the bottom). Then I explain that I will put the zip together and then the child can raise the rest of the zip; I will also remind them to be careful of the zip teeth getting caught in the flaps. Usually, this will allow the child to do there jacket themselves and the next time we are going outside I will look for the child to do more of the task independently and ask them relevant questions to consolidate the learning.

I also deploy a co-constructive approach while participating in crafts with children encouraging them to explore what they are most engaged by. Recently I had a child who was interested in drawing superheroes so we began by selecting the correct colors for the uniforms expanding the language to discuss the different shades of colors available in the pen pot. Then we discussed the poses allowing them an opportunity to physically demonstrate the poses they would like to draw. Then we began to discuss the body parts that make up the drawing, the number of legs/eyes/arms the character had and talking about if the limbs were thicker or narrower compared to the others which helped the child understand the relative size, numbers, and colors. We discussed the best way to hold the pen and he noticeably improved his pencil grip after a demonstration. Then when the child wanted to use weapons we discussed whether the character was good or bad and who he might use the weapons against. All of these elements bolster the child’s social learning and development promoting future independence and a positive collaborative outlook of the world.

Lev Vygotsky

1. Biography and Historical Context

Lev Vygotsky was born on November 17, 1896, in Orsha, Russia. His father was a bank clerk and founded a public library in the city of Gomel, where the whole family moved.

In 1914, Vygotsky joined the Medical Faculty of Moscow University, but after a while, he moved to the Faculty of Law and at the same time studied at the Faculty of History and Philology at the People’s University. He was intensely interested in philosophy, literature, and culture. As a brilliant student, he managed to complete his law degree even though he was a Jew, which in those days resulted in limited opportunities in the fields of study.

Vygotsky’s accomplishments are remarkable. He took part in the restructuring of the Psychological Institute of Moscow; set up research laboratories in the major cities of Russia; and founded what we call today – special education. He is the author of more than 180 papers, many of which are just now being published.

He proved to be a talented psychologist. In 1926 he published the book ‘Pedagogical Psychology’, which entirely focusing on the uniqueness of the child. He also established a new concept in psychology – cultural and historical. According to it, human behavior is closely analogous to various forms of culture, art, and language.

After the Civil War in 1922, a group of Russian scholars, including Vygotsky, dedicated all their efforts to building an entirely new society, focusing on education, illiteracy, dealing with it, cultural differences, art, science, etc.

The next thirty years were marked by the spread of Piaget’s theories and research, where little was known about Vygotsky – probably because his work was suppressed under Stalin’s regime.

In the 1930s, Vygotsky was constantly being accused of receding from Marxist teachings and ideas. He wrote his last dissertation – ‘Thinking and Speech’ in 1934. The ceaseless accusations, the complications of tuberculosis, which he had had since the age of 24, practically drained the psychologist.

Vygotsky died on June 11, 1934, from complications of the disease, in Moscow, Russia.

2. Theories

Vygotsky is seen as one of the most significant authors in many branches of modern Psychology, although during his time he did not receive as much recognition worldwide as Piaget, Skinner, or Pavlov.

One of Vygotsky’s main theories, associated with children’s development, is called the ‘Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). According to him, this is the missing piece between the available potential of children to act on their own and their abilities when assisted by their parents or more able peers. ZPD is a set of competence that a person can do with help, but still has difficulty performing on their own. The notion of ZPD emphasizes Vygotsky’s belief that social influence, especially receiving instructions from someone, is of great importance for children’s cognitive development. As children are given guidance, or directly shown how a certain task to be performed, they then set up the new information, gained from existing thought schemas. They use this information as guides on how to do these tasks and eventually learn to perform them independently. In literature, ZPD is often replaced by the term ‘scaffolding’. It is important to know, however, that Vygotsky never used this term in his works, as it was first mentioned by Wood, in 1976.

Another key element of Vygotsky’s theories is the influence of culture and society on children’s lives. Through participation in cultural events and the use of objects specific to their society, children learn what is important and what to expect when using certain behavior. Acquiring this knowledge affects their behavior, expectations, and thinking in the future. According to Vygotsky, most of the children’s education is carried out through social communication with a teacher. The teacher (a teacher, a parent, a neighbor, a more experienced peer, etc.) is the one who influences children’s behavior and gives them instructions. The latter try to assimilate those instructions and at some point, internalize the information. Vygotsky’s theories emphasize the fundamental role of social relations for the acquiring of knowledge.

Vygotsky believes that social learning comes before cognitive development and later becomes available through language and speech. Vygotsky distinguishes three forms of language:

• Social speech – which is the communication used to talk to other people (usually the speech of a two-year-old).
• Private speech (typical of a three-year-old) that is self-orientated and has an intellectual function.
• Internal speech – which is less heard than private speech and has a self-regulating function (typical of seven-year-old children).

For Vygotsky, thought and language is two systems, initially detached, that seem to consolidate around the age of three. At this stage, speech and thought become interdependent: thought becomes rhetorical, and speech becomes representative. When this happens, children’s monologues are internalized to become inner speech. Vygotsky claims that children talk to themselves to solve problems or clarify their thoughts. Thinking aloud eventually becomes a thought accompanied by inner speech. Speaking to oneself becomes a practice, engaged only when we are trying to learn or remember something. This inner speech is not as complex as the speech we use when speaking with other people. Vygotsky was the first psychologist to document the meaning of private speech, considering it an evolution of social and inner speeches – that moment in the development when language and thought form verbal thought.

Lev Vygotsky came up with the theory of development through play in early 1920. Today, nurseries and schools around the world apply his ideas with impressive success. The method includes role-playing games in a group, the main goal of which is to educate a child the ability to self-control, focus, and to concentrate. According to Vygotsky, in a game, as in life, there are rules. While in life a strict following of the rules is not possible, in a game it is, thus creating a zone of proximal development of the child. According to him, while playing, children behave in a way that is different from their daily behavior, and always beyond their average age. Children are constantly challenged through play and learn something new.

Vygotsky was also one of the first to suggest that children with disabilities be educated together with other, normally developing children. Provided that children with disabilities are in contact with other non-disabled peers, and observe their behavior, skills, and culture, they are more likely to adapt to them than if their contact and experience are limited. Moreover, contact only with other peers who also have disabilities will limit them and deprive them of the opportunity to develop their abilities.

3. Criticism

Vygotsky died young and even though he wrote hundreds of written works, they have not been entirely translated yet. Perhaps, the main criticisms of Vygotsky’s works are related to the assumption that his theories are applicable in all cultures. Researchers nowadays focus more on scaffolding and its non-universalism, somehow missing the fact that Vygotsky himself emphasized the uniqueness of each culture and its influence on cognitive development. Because he so much focuses on society, as crucial for development, some critics think that he neglects the individual and his/her possible, beyond society, advanced development – children geniuses, for instance. Another criticism is that Vygotsky is indifferent to children’s imagination when it comes to playing but focuses only on complying with rules as central to learning.

Perhaps, ‘lost in translation has something to do with the misunderstanding of his theories. Or, we are yet to reveal them in depth, as I have already mentioned that there is so much of his work that is still to be translated.

4. Vygotsky’s ideas in today’s practice

Lev Vygotsky’s theories are not less significant today. His ideas and understanding of the world, learning, and the influence of culture on people continue to guide us and bring understanding to the psychology of development and its mechanisms of action.

Vygotsky’s theoretical views are beneficial to nursing practice in general. There are at least three ways, for instance, in which cultural resources are transmitted – through imitation, through institutionalized learning, and through collaborative learning, with supportive learning being of paramount importance to educational practice. Scaffolding may not be Vygotsky’s idea but is probably the closest one to his own ideas. In modeling, co-constructing, and problem solving I also see Vygotsky’s ZPD. It is realized through the efforts of teachers to guide children in the learning process, to adapt learning materials according to the cognitive level, to encourage their critical thinking, and to introduce algorithms for completing difficult tasks. Children should also be encouraged to use their speech more effectively, to better organize their thought processes, and to solve the set learning tasks more easily. According to Vygotsky, dialogue and group discussions can also be useful, as they are proper means of increasing the effectiveness of learning. In my setting, we have group time and we never compromise with it or sacrifice it for another activity. It is important for us to have that opportunity to talk and listen to our children. It is a great way for them to express feelings and ideas, to communicate and share knowledge.

Play is what we focus on the most. It is an essential part of our practice and probably the most beneficial one. Play is an imaginary situation in which children have control over rules, feelings, and thoughts and adults are just spectators. A simple example I have read once is of a child that you want to stand still for a minute. If you simply ask it to do it, it probably will not do it. But if you ask it to stand still for a minute like a soldier – the child will most certainly do it with ease. Play gives new meaning – children can do things beyond their real-life capabilities. I cannot stress enough on the importance of play as part of the learning process and I do believe that it should be in the heart of nursery education.

According to Vygotsky, children learn from adults or more skilled peers through everyday interaction and imitation. He claims that imitation is not random, children do not copy absolutely every bit of our behavior. He says that children imitate something that they are in the process of learning now and fits in their zone of proximal development. Imitation is connected to modeling as a pedagogical strategy. That is probably the strategy I try to use the most in my own practice. A most recent example of it is with a boy from my nursery. I managed to model a sense of empathy and thought for the feelings of others, especially the vulnerable ones. It became possible through the interaction between him, an Autistic girl, and me. I used every opportunity to show him how hard it was for her to fit her own world in our reality. I supported her, and protected her when necessary, till a point when he started to be the one who supported and took care of her. I do believe modeling is the best way to teach. A child learns better from a person who expresses their feelings, joys, and fears behaves in a positive manner, shows kindness, and is empathetic, understanding, and supportive. Children do not simply imitate the latter’s behavior – they are more likely to try, and eventually manage, to adopt that same behavior as their own.

Bear in mind that I have just started my journey so my observations may be incomplete, and my small successes only huge in my perception, but I do believe that with time, and practice, comes perfection. Therefore, some more time is needed for the entire work of Vygotsky to be brought to our knowledge, and only then we will have the whole picture in front of us so we could evaluate it adequately.

Sources:

1. Dyer, JR (2002). Cognitive development. In N. Salkind (Ed.), Child Development (pp. 87-92). New York, NY: Macmillan Reference the USA
2. Goldhaber, DE (2002). Theories of development. In N. Salkind (Ed.), Child Development (pp. 413-416). New York, NY: Macmillan Reference the USA
3. Dyer, JR (2002). Vygotsky, Lev (1896 – 1934). In N. Salkind (Ed.), Child Development (pp. 428-429). New York, NY: Macmillan Reference the USA
4. McLeod, S. A. (2018, August 05). Lev Vygotsky. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html
5. Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary scientist – Newman, Fred and Holzman, Lois, 1993, Routledge https://www.learning-theories.org/doku.phpid=learning_theories%3Asocial_development_theory&fbclid=IwAR2cA9es6WuHDqOE9MFxN6cp1UPH9fIclj3T-oDtm21eFt5FxLK7yEJruW4
6. Riddle, E. M. Lev Vygotsky’s social development theory. 1999.
7. Social Development Theory (Vygotsky) at Learning Theories. Retrieved April 11, 2011.
8. https://www.massey.ac.nz/~wwpapajl/evolution/assign2/KarenR/Vygotsky.html?fbclid=IwAR0N6VizsuYz0tfvgWd5t4afHCiQZuSr05GZK33VYjRZ2L3WubNPu1eT7Yc
9. https://www.verywellmind.com/lev-vygotsky-biography-2795533
10. https://wiki2.org/en/Lev_Vygotsky
11. http://totallyhistory.com/lev-vygotsky/
12. https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/lev-vygotsky-5998.php

Lev Vygotsky’s Social Constructive theory of learning: Zone of Proximal Development and Scaffolding and their Classroom Application

Constructivism is a learning theory explaining how humans acquire knowledge and learn. It holds that humans construct their own knowledge from the experiences they have and that the meaning is influenced by the interaction of prior knowledge and new events (Elliot et al., 2000, p. 256). Constructivism may be categorised into two broad types namely Cognitive Constructivism from the basis of Jean Piaget’s cognitivism and Social Constructivism based on the work of Lev Vygotsky ( ). Cognitive constructivism holds that learning is individualistic which is relative to stages of cognitive development and cognitive development takes place with biological maturation and environmental interaction. ( ). On the other hand, social constructivism states that learning is collaborative and develops when an individual interacts with the culture and society ( ). Social constructivism, the work of Lev Vygotsky has become foundational to many researchers and educationists. Thus, this paper is presenting the theory of social constructivism including its origin, development, major concepts such as zone of proximal development and scaffolding, its principles and classroom application. (Duchesne, MNcMaugh, Bochner and Krause, Ed Psychology, 2013)

Vygotsky’s personal background, his social and intellectual context seemed to have shaped his theoretical views of development and learning. Born in Russia in 1896, Vygotsky was taught by a private tutor whose pedagogical approach of teaching him by engaging in extended critical inquiry must have influenced his thoughts of Vygotsky on social and cultural influence on learning (Verenikina, 2010). His theory emerged when psychologists and behavioural scientists were claiming that learning and development is an individual phenomena influenced by external motivation/stimuli and one’s stages of cognitive development. It became obvious that individuals possessed a natural way of learning. This individualistic theory received criticism with the emergence of “non-individualistic learning models” and the failure of individualistic theories. During such period Vygotsky suggested the importance of sociocultural elements in creating situations for children’s development and learning. Therefore, in his theory, he pointed out the significant roles of parents, peers, teachers and the community in shaping the interaction between the children and environment (Kozulin, Gindis, Ageyev, and Miller, 2003). As such his idea became influential in shaping the process of learning in Russia, the United States and Europe (Kozulin, Gindis, Ageyev, and Miller, 2003). His theory explains cognitive development and learning as social and cultural phenomena which are collaborative rather than individualistic unlike the theory of Piaget. He developed his ideas in many areas including child development theory and educational psychology. His works are related to the relationship between language and thoughts, and concept formation in daily lives and in an academic setting.

Vygotsky’s theoretical framework developed through three major phases in his analytic units and explanatory principles written between 1924 to 1934 (Minick, 2005, p. 32). His first analytic unit from 1925 to 1930 focused on mediating agents such as a sign, particularly the language used as a tool to shape individual behaviour which he called an “instrumental act” (Minick, 2005, p.32). During this phase, Vygotsky’s analysis was based on the theory of the stimulus-response approach in learning and behaviour. However, he argued that historically developed signs such as language forms stimulus that can influence behaviour. For that matter, such signs are used in mediating behaviour which is beyond the simple understanding of the stimulus-response phenomenon. He saw that the function of signs is to communicate that can shape behaviour through social interaction (Minick, 2005). The second development happened in 1930 where his focused shifted to the “psychological system”. He argued that the use of words as sign-stimulus forms a new “functional relationship between memory and speech” (Minick, 2005, p.33). In the third phase between 1933 to 1934, Vygotsky came up with an “explanatory principle” (p.33). His understanding of psychological development shifted from memory and speech to social interaction that an induvial participates in. He explained that psychological development occurs in relation to one’s actions and interactions in a social context.

Central to his work, Vygotsky introduced various terms that are crucial in understanding his theory in education. Some of them include mediation, higher mental function and psychological tools. According to Minick (2005, pp 35-36), Vygotsky viewed human mental function as a transition from a lower form of mental development to a higher form. The lower form of mental development is characterised by inherited, unmediated, involuntary and isolated. While higher mental function is acquired and mediated socially, particularly by speech, voluntary and exists as a link in a system to function broadly rather than as a single unit. Thus, Vygotsky provides that higher mental functions are social that can be developed in sociocultural settings through learning and they are subsequently organised and internalized (Minick, 2005, p. 37). It is evident from this explanation that the roles of more knowledgeable others such as parents, caregivers and teachers are crucial in developing higher mental functions of children by mediating thoughts using language and interaction. Another fundamental concept in Vygotsky’s theory is psychological tools. They are the “symbolic cultural artefacts—signs, symbols, texts, formulae, and most fundamentally, language—that enable humans to master psychological functions such as memory, perception, and attention in ways appropriate to one’s culture (Kozulin, 2001, p.1). Kozulin (2001), further argues that one of the cornerstones of Vygotsky’s theory is the idea of psychological tools, which allows the researchers, psychologists and educationists to examine cognitive development, classroom learning and multicultural differences. It may be interpreted that the concept of psychological tools would facilitate classroom teachers and education policymakers to design curricula and learning activities that develop higher mental functions by incorporating the psychological tools.

Zone of Proximal Development

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) as defined by Vygotsky is “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Schunk, 2012). The ZPD portrays the possible amount of learning by a student when proper instructional conditions are provided. According to Kozulin et al (2003, pp.3-4), although ZPD has gained popularity in the western world in the theory of education, it is poorly understood. It is because, ZPD is used in three different contexts; in the psychological developmental context, in applied context particularly in classroom assessment and learning and in everyday context as “space” the coincidence of theoretical concept and empirical concepts. It may be argued that understanding the ZPD in all contexts is essential but for educators, it may be essential to understand the implication of ZPD in an applied context.

The main reason for their introduction of the notion of the ZPD by Vygotsky was due to his dissatisfaction with two practical issues in educational psychology (Turuk, 2008). The first issue is assessing the child on intellectual abilities and the second is the evaluation of the instructional practices. He believes that testing should not be based only on the current level of a child’s achievement but it is more important to include the child’s potential development as well (Verenikina, 2010). He claimed that the actual level of development which is considered as the level of independent performance does not sufficiently describe development. It rather indicates “what is already developed or achieved, it is a ‘yesterday of development’. The level of assisted performance indicates what a person can achieve in future, what is developing (potential level, ‘tomorrow of development’, what a person ‘can be’)” (Verenikina, 2010). According to Cole & Cole (2001, cited by Verenikina, 2010), the term ‘proximal’ means ‘nearby’, indicating that the assistance provided goes slightly beyond learners’ current competence complementing and building on their existing abilities. It is largely a test of a student’s developmental readiness or intellectual level in a specific domain, and it shows how learning and development are related (Schunk, 2012).

In the ZPD, a teacher and a learner work together on a task that the learner could not perform independently because of the difficulty level. Also, it reflects the idea of collective activity, where according to Bruner (1984, cited by Schunk, 2012), those who know more or are more skilled share that knowledge and skill to accomplish a task with those who know less. According to Rogoff (1986, cited by Shunk, 2012), a good deal of guided participation is required when working in the ZPD and learners bring their own understandings of social interactions and construct meanings by integrating those understandings with their experiences in the context.

“For example assume that a teacher (Trudy) and a child (Laura) will work on a task (making a picture of mom, dad, and Laura doing something together at home). Laura brings to the task her understanding of what the people and the home look like and of the types of things they might work on, combined with her knowledge of how to draw and make pictures. Trudy brings the same understanding plus knowledge of the conditions necessary to work on various tasks. Suppose they decide to make a picture of the three working in the yard. Laura might draw a picture of dad cutting grass, mom trimming shrubs, and Laura raking the lawn. If Laura were to draw herself in front of dad, Trudy would explain that Laura must be behind dad to rake up the grass left behind by dad’s cutting. During the interaction, Laura modifies her beliefs about working in the yard based on her current understanding and on the new knowledge she constructs.” (Schunk, 2012).

Social Constructive Theory – Vygotsky’s approach

Vygotsky stated that the “human mind is constructed through a subject’s interactions with the world and is an attribute of the relationship between subject and object” (Verenikina, 2010). He finds a significant role in humans’ understanding of the world and of themselves. These roles are attributed as ‘tools’ (Turuk, 2008). Furthermore, Vygotsky advocates that humans do not act directly on the physical world without the intermediary of tools. These tools can be any artefacts, whether symbolic or signs, created by a human under specific cultural and historical conditions carrying with them the characteristics of the culture in question (Turuk, 2008).

Hence he argues that mental processes could only be understood if we understand the tools and signs that mediate them (Verenikina, 2010).

According to Vygotsky, a child is completely dependent on other people during the early stages as the sociocultural environment keeps on presenting the child with a variety of tasks and demands, engaging the child in his world (Turuk, 2008). Especially these people could be the parents who instruct the child on what to do, how to do it, as well as what not to do, initiating the child’s action. Parents, as representatives of the culture and the conduit through which the culture passes into the child, actualise these instructions primarily through language. Vygotsky further explains that children appropriate these cultural and social heritages by acquiring knowledge through contacts and interactions with people as the first step – referred to as the inner psychological plane, and then later assimilate and internalise this knowledge adding their own personal value to it – referred as intrapsychological plane (Turuk, 2008). This transition from social to personal property is not considered as a mere copy rather it is a transformation of what had been learnt through interaction, into personal values. In addition, Vygotsky claims that in schools also students are not copying the teachers’ capabilities but transforming what teachers offer them during the processes of appropriation (Turuk, 2008).

Vygotsky emphasised that children and adults are both active agents in the process of a child’s development. Cole & Cole (2001, as cited by Verenikina, 2010) mentions that the development, in this case, is co-constructed. When applied to teaching it means that both the teacher and a student are seen as active agents in children’s learning. The teacher’s intervention in children’s learning is necessary, but it is the quality of the teacher-learner interaction, which is seen as crucial in that learning (Tharp & Gallimore, 1998 cited by Verenikina, 2010).

The theory emphasizes the importance of what the learner brings to any learning situation as an active meaning-maker and problem-solver (Turuk, 2008). It acknowledges the dynamic nature of the interplay between teachers, learners and tasks and provides a view of learning as arising from interactions with others. Ellis (2000, as cited by Maturuk, 2008) states that Vygotsky’s theory assumes that learning arises not through interaction, but in interaction. Learners first succeed in performing a new task with the help of another person and then internalise this task so that they can perform it on their own. In this way, social interaction is advocated to mediate learning. According to Ellis, the theory goes further to say interactions that successfully mediate learning are those in which the learners scaffold the new tasks (Turuk, 2008). Table 1.1 below identifies the key points of the theory.

Key points in Vygotsky’s theory

• Social interactions are critical; knowledge is co-constructed between two or more people.
• Self-regulation is developed through internalization (developing an internal representation) of actions and mental operations that occur in social interactions.
• Human development occurs through the cultural transmission of tools (language, symbols).
• Language is the most critical tool. Language develops from social speech to private speech to covert (inner) speech.
• The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is the difference between what children can do on their own and what they can do with assistance from others. Interactions with adults and peers in the ZPD promote cognitive development.

Source: (Meece, 2002 cited by Schunk, 2012)

According to Vygotsky, ‘good learning’ occurs in the Zone of Proximal Development where he distinguishes between the children’s actual and potential levels of development.

Educational Applications of Social Constructivists Theory

Karpov & Haywood (1998) and Moll (2001) believe that Vygotsky’s ideas lend themselves to many educational applications marking the field of self-regulation as strongly influenced (Schunk, 2012). One of the applications reflecting Vygotsky’s theory is reciprocal teaching. It involves interactive dialogues between the teacher and a small group of students. At first, the teacher models the activities. After that teacher and students take turns being the teacher. During reading comprehension, if students learn to ask questions, then to determine their level of understanding, the teacher can include a question-asking strategy in the instructional sequence. Since students gradually develop skills, reciprocal teaching comprises the principle of social interaction and ZPD of the Vygotskian perspective (Schunk, 2012).

Peer collaboration is another area where Vygotsky’s ideas fit. Bruner (1984), and Ratner et al., (2002) states that it reflects the notion of collective activity (Schunk, 2012). The shared social interactions when peers work on tasks cooperatively serve an instructional function. This method is mainly used in learning mathematics, science, and language arts which attests to the recognized impact of the social environment during learning.

Another application of Vygotsky’s theory is apprenticeships as they occur in cultural institutions like schools and agencies which helps in transforming learners’ cognitive development. On the job, apprentices operate within a ZPD as mainly their works depend on tasks beyond their capabilities. Apprentices develop a shared understanding of important processes by working with experts and integrating this with their current understandings (Schunk, 2012).

1. Educational psychology: for learning and teaching
   1. Author: Duchesne, MNcMaugh, Bochner and Krause
   2. Additional Person Name: Duchesne, Sue,
   3. Pages: 1 online resource (640 pages)
   4. Chapter Number: 2
   5. Resource Notes:
   6. Description based upon print version of record.
   7. Publication Date:
   8. ©2013
   9. Edition: 4th ed.
   10. ISBN: 9780170218610
   11. OCLC Number: (MiAaPQ)EBC1990988
   12. Place of publication: South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia :
   13. Publisher: Cengage Learning Australia Pty Limited,
2. Liu, C., & Chen, C. (2010). Evolution Of Constructivism. Contemporary Issues In Education Research, 3(4), 63-66.
3. Schunk, D. (2012). Learning Theories An Educational Perspective (6th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
4. Turuk, M. (2008). The Relevnavce and Implications of Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory in the Second Language Classroom. ARECLS, 5, 244-262.
5. Verenikina, I. (2010). Vygotsky in Twenty-First-Century Research . Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications

The news event is a CNN interview with Brad Pitt (a well-renowned actor) with Christiane Amanpour, a journalist at CNN. The interview focuses on the perspectives of the actor on loneliness, masculinity, and his relationship with alcohol (CNN News, 2019). This interview comes at a time when the actor has faced some life challenges owing to some decisions he has made, which have had a role to play in his marriage breakdown with his ex-wife, Angelina Jolie. The divorce was a widely publicized affair, with their six children being caught in between. In this interview, Pitt attributes his upbringing and those of healthy children as having a significant influence on the decisions that children make later in life. He was not expected to show vulnerability at the risk of losing his masculinity, lessons from his childhood. He admits that his interaction with alcohol was because he was running from dealing with the reality of his life, which did not help him ultimately. This caused much loneliness in his life. He admits that he cannot fault his father for his decisions because possibly that is what his father learned, but he thanks him for the good things that have come to him in life (CNN News, 2019). He raises the concern of the societal expectations towards men, which do not give them any chance to become vulnerable to different challenges they may face, which affects children negatively. He identifies that becoming sober and being aware of some harmful tendencies he may have, which he identified and corrected to help in shaping him as a parent.

Background of the Behaviourist and Non-behaviourist Figures

Behaviorist Figure: John Watson

Conceptual History

John B. Watson is a widely recognized American psychologist who left a mark as the founder of the psychological school of Behaviourism. His work, research, and theories were prominent in the psychology field. Through this prominence, his impact is felt universally in terms of his knowledge input (Shute & Slee, 2015). Watson was born on January 9, 1878, in Traveler’s Rest, South Carolina. He became more widely recognized as John B. Watson particularly, in scholarly spheres. His parents were Emma Watson and Pickens Butler. His mother tried to steer him towards church since she hoped he would preach the Gospel when he grew up, causing her to expose John to ruthless religious training. Instead, these methods backfired since he ultimately felt hatred towards religion and, instead, recognized himself as an atheist.

On the other hand, John’s father had an alcohol addiction. He left Emma and John (at 13 years of age) to live with two new women. John experienced much poverty. As a result, his mother sold the family land (Tracy, Lamb & Ainsworth, 1976). They shifted to Greenville, South Carolina, where John became subjected to different people and began to adopt a different worldview from a psychologist’s perspective. He grew up studying psychology and influence the field significantly.

Significant Contributions

Watson established the school of behaviorist methodology contained within the psychology discipline, and he published his perspectives on his psychological theory in 1913. He published an article titled “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,” widely regarded as a manifesto on behaviorism (Bodrova & Leong, 2007). The article delineated behaviorism as an intentional branch of science, which would root its findings and theories on experimental research employing purely observable data. One objective of behaviorism is to comprehend how particular behavior emerges as a result of conditioning to outside stimuli. Additionally, Watson was not primarily concerned with cognition, introspection, thought, or other types of interior consciousness. He perceived it foolish to construe the internal workings of the mind and considered that psychologists should become concerned with only what was observable.

Watson utilized his views on all components of human behavior, including memory and language. He deemed language to be an “exploitative habit.” This term was intended to portray the human capacity to influence the sounds created by the larynx (Shute & Slee, 2015). Furthermore, he deemed all behavior (including language) to be the condition in this scenario through copying. He theorized that gradually, people learned to relate particular spoken words or sounds with specific shapes, situations, or objects on paper (words). Watson hypothesized that in the same manner that people discover to relate sounds with symbols or objects, so too did people discover to relate certain behaviors, feelings, and other elements with symbols, objects, and situations. His most recognized and influential work was his research on emotions. He was especially interested in acquiring knowledge of how emotions could be studied. He deemed that emotions were physical reactions to outside stimuli. He also considered that fear, love, and rage were all yet to be discovered at birth.

Significant Research

Watson was especially interested in acquiring more knowledge of fear. He paired an otherwise dull stimulus (a deafening bang), with the look of an equally non-threatening thing (a white rat). In the study, the sharp unpleasant sensation of deafening noise merged with the rat would generate a response of fear (Buckley, 1989). He studied this occurrence in the controversial and famous “Little Albert” study. He employed deafening sounds in the research in order to condition the baby to be afraid of white rabbits, rats, and other analogous stimuli. In another research study, he also discovered that such fears and anxieties could be untaught through subjection to the feared entity and learning new associations between stimuli. Furthermore, Watson deemed that the behaviorism principles could be utilized to mold babies into anything a parent, experimenter, or another individual might desire (Buckley, 1989).

Non-behaviorist Figure: Lev Vygotsky

Conceptual History

Lev Vygotsky is recognized as a seminal Russian psychologist who established his sociocultural theory. He deemed that social relations play a vital function in children’s learning. Using such social relations, children experience a continuous learning process. However, Vygotsky noted that culture deeply influences this process (Yasnitsky, 2018). Collaborative learning, guided learning, and imitation all play an essential function in his theory. Vygotsky was born on November 17, 1896. He went to Moscow State University, where he studied various topics such as philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and sociology. He later graduated with a law degree in 1917. Nevertheless, his formal research in psychology did not commence until 1924, during his college attendance at the Institute of Psychology, located in Moscow. He became a prolific writer who, within ten years, started researching topics like memory, attention, and language with the assistance of students, including Alexander Luria and Alexei Leontiev.

Significant Contributions

Vygotsky’s life ended abruptly on June 11, 1934, when he succumbed to tuberculosis at 37 years of age. He is regarded as a formative thinker in the discipline of psychology, and a more significant proportion of his work is still being explored and discovered at present. While he was a contemporary of Piaget, Freud, Pavlov, and Skinner, his work never achieved their degree of reputation during his lifetime (Yasnitsky, 2018). Part of the reason was that the Communist Party usually disparaged his work in Russia, making his work significantly unavailable to his obscurity. Regardless, his work exerted more influence from the time of his death, especially in the fields of educational and developmental psychology. In the 1970s, his work became well recognized in the west as fresh ideas and concepts were introduced in the disciplines of developmental and educational psychology (Bodrova & Leong, 2007). Ever since, Vygotsky’s works and theories have been construed and have become very weighty, especially in the education field.

Significant Research

Vygotsky’s considerable research involved the publishing of six books. The work focused on psychology topics for over a decade. His interests were moderately diverse but often focused on issues of child education and development. He also examined such topics as language development and the psychology of art (Veraksa & Veraksa, 2018). Vygotsky established the zone of proximal development, which he defined as “the distance between the real development intensities as ascertained by the level of possible development and independent problem solving as determined by problem-solving steered by adult guidance or in teamwork with more possible peers. Fundamentally, this zone is the bridge between what a child recognizes and what he is not aware of yet. The process of obtaining that information needs skills that a child cannot do independently or does not yet have, but can perform with the aid of a more conscious entity.

Another significant work is the sociocultural theory, where Vygotsky proposed that human development emerges from a dynamic relationship between society and individuals. Through this relationship, children learn slowly and continuously from teachers and parents. However, this learning can differ among cultures. It is noteworthy that Vygotsky’s theory stresses the dynamic form of this interaction (Zuckerman, 2007). According to this theory, society does not merely influence people; people also change their society.

Analyzing the Event from Both Perspectives

From Watson’s perspective, a child learns by observing his environment and the stimuli that condition his behavior. Watson’s behaviorism rebuffed the aspect of the unconscious and the natural mental state of an individual since it was not visible and was put through the subjective interpretation of a psychologist. For instance, Freud would request his patients to narrate their dreams. Then, he would construe the ideas and examine what they signified within the context of the individual’s life. Watson found this prominence on subjective interpretation and introspection to be very unhelpful and unscientific in comprehending behavior(Buckley, 1989). When analyzing this event from Watson’s perspective, the exposure of Brad Pitt to his home environment that involved a very critical and authoritarian father would cause him to become shaped by these factors into adulthood. As such, the perspective emphasizes that the environment a child is subjected to develops them into the adults they become.

His experiment with Little Albert showed that within the context of a trial, fear could be induced in an individual’s or child’s life using the most ordinary and boring things, but it would still achieve success. The emphasis on the environment may somehow explain the reason why when a child grows up in a disruptive home; they are more inclined to have the same types of homes in the future since they digest what they see, and manifest it in their behavior accordingly. In Pitt’s case, as is evident, observing his father’s alcoholism had an influence in his learning process as a coping mechanism, and he ultimately, resorted to alcohol and substance abuse in his adulthood (Shute & Slee, 2015). As such, for behaviorism, the developmental issues were critical. Unhealthy adult personalities emerged from habit systems brought forward from infancy.

Vygotsky’s perspective on this event takes the notion that social interaction plays a significant role in cognition development. He also believed that society plays a fundamental role in the course of “making meaning.” Dissimilar to Piaget’s idea that the development of children must necessarily precede their learning, Vygotsky disputed that “knowledge is a universal and necessary element of the process of creating culturally organized, especially human psychological function. This implies that social learning goes before development. Therefore, Vygotsky’s perspective agrees with Pitt’s thoughts about the role of his childhood in his development into adulthood (Yasnitsky, 2018). Vygotsky places significantly more prominence on social factors that add to an individual’s cognitive development. He stresses that a child’s cognitive development emerges from social relationships that are accompanied by guided learning inside the zone of proximal child development and the co-construct knowledge of their partners (Zaretskii, 2009).

Hence, the theoretical framework of Vygotsky and his work mainly revolves around social interaction and a child’s cognitive development. In this case, Vygotsky would assert that in his childhood, every function in Pitt’s cultural development occurred twice: primarily on the social level, and after, on the individual degree. This implies that fundamentally, it occurs between people then translated and manifested in the intrapsychic domain of the child (Zaretskii, 2009). He shows the learning process that occurs first through the interaction of the child and his environment and later, cognitively. Simply, interaction of Pitt with his background as a child involved the first people he encountered, who are his parents. The mode of communication and relations manifested between interaction with the parents, and any dysfunctionality was taken in cognitively progressively as he developed. Vygotsky offered the example of the action of pointing a finger. Primarily, this behavior starts as an insignificant grasping motion. Nevertheless, as people respond to the gesture, it is internalized as a movement that bears meaning. Notably, the gesture of pointing embodies an interpersonal link between people.

Comparing and Contrasting both Approaches relative to the News Event

The behaviorism approach adopted by Watson is a model of learning among humans and animals, which only concentrates on objectively visible behaviors and reduces the role of mental activities. This means that learning is only considered the attainment of new behavior. The fundamental notion of behaviorism is a conditioning, considered a universal learning process (Buckley, 1989). This means that when it comes to Watson’s view, Pitt’s learning and behaviors should be regarded as being just new information. Alternatively, Vygotsky’s school of thought is rooted in cognitivism, which focuses on the “brain.” This implies that the focus is on the processing and storage of information as very significant in the learning process. In his model, he identifies an internal knowledge structure as a schema (Yasnitsky, 2018). When a child creates a schema, new information is usually compared against the accessible cognitive structures identified as “schema.” The cognitive development and behavior formation of a child results from combining, extending, or changing the schema to accommodate new information. Information acquisition occurs in three phases. During the information acquisition, the individual is actively able to accommodate new information, which may be responsible for changing their behaviors (Bodrova & Leong, 2007).

In Watson’s behavioral perspective, the role of learners is passive. When introduced to an environment, the learner merely responds to stimuli. For instance, in Pitt’s case, being positioned in this form of an environment where he observed his parent’s behavior and learned from it was a passive process where he was not an active participant. As such, while he was present, the observed behavior was the stimuli he responded to, which then emerged in his adulthood after being practiced and internalized (Shute & Slee, 2015). On the other hand, Vygotsky perceives learners as individuals who process, amass, and recover information for later utilization. This allows the learner to create relations and to develop a knowledge set helpful for living. In this scenario, following the endurance of a hard childhood, Pitt processed different interactions, accumulated, and retrieved the information, which is currently being retrieved as a point of reference for learning the behaviors he has developed from childhood to adulthood (Zaretskii, 2009). He then used the information processing approach to convey and assimilate new information.

A similarity observed between the two approaches is that both Watson’s and Vygotsky’s models are their emphasize on the influence of social aspects on a child’s life on their maturity and adulthood development. In Watson’s case, he views the interactions of the child through his environment, as a source for observations that translate into new behavior. In the case of this news event, it can be assumed that from this perspective, Pitt would have acquired his behavior by observing some of his parents during childhood. The cognitive perspective adopted by Vygotsky largely embraces the element of social relationships more deeply compared to that of Watson. Vygotsky views the child as a dynamic explorer of their environment, where development can be perceived as a socially conveyed process (Bhoghossian, 2006). In this process, children attained skills and knowledge through their conversations with more experienced and skilled members of their community. Vygotsky insists on the support granted to children to help them with tasks that they are not able to do alone.

Recommendations from both Perspectives

From Watson’s perspective, to prevent Pitt’s situation, He should have been subjected to role models that focused on exposing him to and performing tasks that were instrumental to his growth and acquisition of new behavior. From this perspective, the role of the parents or society, which the child interacts with, is to provide the stimuli for the child to respond to and acquire new information that forms a behavior.

From Vygotsky’s cognitive perspective, the child should be exposed to social connections that are healthy to his or her cognitive development. This means that since the child uses the acquired schema of information to form new behavior while developing on the previously acquired information, the role of the society is to provide a healthy platform that allows interaction of the child with the environment in a healthy manner. As previously identified, a child is an active explorer within the environment instead of a passive learner. In this context, Vygotsky would recommend the creation of a good platform that motivated this interaction on a level that would promote positive development in Pitt’s life.