Theory 2: Lev Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development
The second theory we’ll look at is Lev Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development. This should help to provide a different view of cognitive development than the one proposed by Jean Piaget.
Who was Lev Vygotsky?
Lev Vygotsky was a psychologist that lived between 1896 – 1934 in a region of the Soviet Union known today as Belarus.
Early on, his focus was on law, graduating with a degree in law from the Moscow State University in 1917, but he soon shifted his focus towards psychology. He published work on many different topics in this field, including completing a dissertation on the psychology of art, but his most well-regarded concepts come from his exploration of developmental psychology – how our minds grow and develop.
A key principle Vygotsky held was that in order to understand how the mind works, it’s essential to start from the very beginning – infants and children.
What did Vygotsky propose?
Vygotsky suggested that cognitive development comes from the community and cultural contexts that children experience.
While Piaget, proposed the concept of having 4 set stages that children will go through, Vygotsky rejected such a notion, and instead suggested that cognitive development is strongly linked to social learning, i.g. input from others.
The Zone of Proximal Development
Vygotsky believed that learning happens when children are working within what he calls their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The zone of proximal development describes tasks that a child has not yet learned but is currently capable of learning.
An example of this could be seen with a child that’s currently able to read and pronounce each of the letters in the alphabet. With some help from an adult, the child could start to read certain basic words. These could include words such as “cat”, “dog”, “house” if an adult was to help them in the beginning.
Reading a whole book straight away would be outside the current realm of possibility for this learner, but once they get comfortable with reading those initial words, their Zone of Proximal Development will expand, and they’ll develop further.
Scaffolding
A key idea derived from Vygotsky’s notion of social learning is that of scaffolding.
Scaffolding is the assistance provided by more competent peers or adults.
An example can be seen with an adult helping to stabilise a child on their newly-purchased bicycle. The adult knows that the child is capble of learning how to cycle on their own, but needs some support for the first few attempts. After they’ve learned how to balance the bicycle, the adult will remove their hands and allow the child to cycle independantly without the need for support.
Vygotsky suggests that teachers must provide the necessary scaffolding in developing and accelerating learners’ ability to think for themselves and to take responsibility for their learning.
Scaffolding is a necessary part of the building process, but the critical feature is that once the building has finished, the scaffolding is removed. Relating this to education, this suggests that the teacher supports learning but also encourages the development of students as independent learners, capable of thinking for themselves and standing on their own.
Teachers can provide scaffolding in a variety of ways, e.g., by asking questions, by prompting and probing, by providing reminders, by giving clear step-by-step instructions, and by providing demonstrations (modeling).
Scaffolding is not only provided by the teacher. Small groups of peers can provide scaffolding for each other. This emphasizes Vygotsky’s point that learning is a social as well as an individual activity. Such peer-provided scaffolding can be especially motivating and meaningful. Collaborative learning helps students to develop more advanced problem-solving skills, as learners talk about the issues involved with each other, as well as with the teacher.
Vygotsky suggests that if the teacher is to provide appropriate scaffolding to fit the learner’s ZPD, then this also requires attention to the social basis of learning.
In “social constructivist” learning, the community (e.g., learners, parents, teachers, other adults both in and out of school) is essential as they help to provide this wider base to support learning in certain directions.