Vygotsky

Vygotsky

1. Development

   • Vygotsky places more emphasis on culture affecting cognitive development. This contradicts Piaget's view of universal stages and content of development (Vygotsky does not refer to stages in the way that Piaget does). Hence Vygotsky assumes cognitive development varies across cultures, whereas Piaget states cognitive development is mostly universal across cultures.

2. How did Vygotsky see children?

   • The child as social
     • Language provides the child with a new tool, opens up new opportunities for doing things and for organising information through the use of words as symbols.
     • The child is an active learner in a world full of other people. Those people play important roles in helping children to learn, bringing objects and ideas to their attention.

3. Zone of proximal development

   • Vygotsky used the idea of the ZPD to give a new meaning to intelligence. Rather than measuring intelligence by what a child can do alone, He suggested that intelligence was better measured by what a child can do with skilled help
   • The zone of proximal development refers to the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner. Thus, the term “proximal” refers to those skills that the learner is “close” to mastering.
   • Vygotsky believed that when a student is in the zone of proximal development for a particular task, providing the appropriate assistance will give the student enough of a "boost" to achieve the task.

4. Sociocultural theory

   • Learning to do things and learning to think are both helped by interacting with an adult. Vygotsky saw the child as first doing things in a social context, with other people and language helping in various ways, and gradually shifting away from reliance on others to independent action and thinking. This shift from thinking aloud and talking through, what is being done, to thinking inside the head, is called internalisation. It is not just a transfer but also a transformation; being able to think about something is qualitatively different from being able to do it. In the internalizing process, the interpersonal, joint talk, and joint activity, later become intrapersonal, mental action by one individual.

5. Private speech

   • Young children can often be heard talking to themselves and organising themselves as they carry out tasks or play, in what is called private speech. As children get older they speak less and less aloud and differentiate between social speech for others and inner speech. Piaget interpreted this as Egocentric Speech,, however, Vygotsky believed that children talk to themselves in order to solve problems or clarify thoughts.