Vygotsky's theory

Vygotsky's theory

1. A01

   • Emphasised importance of social cognition, context and culture and language and ZPD and Scaffolding to cognitive development
     • For social interaction, Vygotsky said children are enabled to see adults and older children using problem solving skills and cognitve tools and to internalise these mental skills to learn and think.
     • Language is an important feature. He said simple to complex thinking is made possible by language. Vygotsky said that young children talk to themselves in monologues, commenting on their actions as they are playing. They will also talk to themselves when carrying out different tasks. Language itself becomes internalised at around age 7 and this allows the child to preform complex reasoning tasks. This is known as an inner voice which he called intellectual speech. Inner speech is used to regulate, plan and think and is the basis of higher mental functions. Vygotsky said mental abilities on two planes socially with other people then intellectually.
     • context and culture is important to cogntive development. It is important to consider the culture children interact with which can affect how far or fast their mental tools develop. The context children interact in can be important factor in children's cognitive development
     • ZPD: defined as the distance between the child's current developmental level, measured by the tasks they were able to achieve on their own ability when helped by another person, peer or adult who was more knowledgeable or experienced than themselves.
     • Scaffolding: refers to support or help given to the child by a more knowledgeable adult/peer whilt working in the ZPD. Mental scaffolding supports the child on a new task. It can be removed at a later stage when the child can stand alone.

2. A02-Wood and Maddleton's study

   • Asked twelve mothers to teach their own 4 year old children how to put together a jigsaw puzzle so that they could do it on their own.
     • The mother-child teaching sessions were recorded on video and the tapes were then analysed. There was five types of scaffolding offered by the mothers: general suggestions, specific verbal instructions, indicating materials, preparing for assembly, physical demostrations.
       • The findings were that the most successful mothers as teachers were those who adjusted the help they offered subtly depending on the child's actions. These mothers would offer more direct help moving up a level wen children were struggling but would back off and move down a level when their child managed on their own
   • A03 Wood and Maddleton's study
     • Study provides rich, detailed data about the methods, naturally used by mothers when playing with their young children
     • The use of video allows the play session to be watched many times by researchers. Although the sampele is small, researchers working within this type of framework are less concerned with representative samples and generalising.
     • Data from observations of this nature is qualitative. Researchers need to code their observations into different catagories. However an etihcal issue with this study is that it took place with mothers present in their childrens own homes. The expeirence was unlikely ot be stressful for the children.

3. A02

   • AO2 Nune
     • Nune studied the importance of social interaction, context and culture. He found that despite having almost no formal schooling, children who work on the streets in certain cultures have well developed math skills. This supports Vygotsky's theory as it shows they may develop at different rate in different cultures and it shows that cognitive development is down to social interaction, and not age
   • AO2 Pratt et al
     • supporting evidence for scaffolding: found that some variations in children's preformances was actually dependant on how sucessful the help from parents was. This study supports Vygotsky as it shows social interaction and help from others plays the largest part in child's cognitive development.

4. IDA'S

   • Purely based on the nurture side of the argument. Vygotsky focuses on the impact that others and the environment have on cognitive development, especially how an individual interacts with those. It doesn't take into account nature side of the argument for example the effects of biology and genes have on cognitive development as a child grows up and Piaget's idea that cognitive development progresses depending on age. This questions the validity of Vygotsky's theory
   • It is not culture bias. This is because one of the main parts of his theory is based on the effect of culture on the child's cogntive development. Furthermore, Nume's study to support Vygotsky takes into account cultural differences. This increases the validity of Vygotsky's theory as it is not limited to only western cultures like Piaget's theory is.

5. A03 Compared to Piaget's theory

   • One similarity between the two theories is that they both have significant influences on education.
   • The differences between the two theories is that the main emphasis of Vygotsky's theory is on social interaction (nurture) whereas Piaget's theory concentrates on the stages of development linked to age (nature). Furthermore, other examples of the differences between the theories are the infuences of language. Both theories analysed together may produce a sound explanation of how a child cognitively develops.