Socio-Cultural Development

Vygotsky

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 Objectives
• Theory/theorist background
• Identify socio-cultural influences on development
– Social and cultural factors that affect children’s development
• Describe Vygotsky’s theory of social constructivism
– Social sources of individual thinking
• Identify the role of language and private speech
• Define the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
– Apply this concept
• Define scaffolding
– Apply this concept
• Identify educational implications of Vygotsky’s perspective
• Compare and contrast the perspectives of Piaget and Vygotsky
 Socio-cultural influences
• Two backgrounds:  Adult-child
– Children growing up in a interactions
Western middle-class society  Play
– Children growing up in a  Education
village or tribal culture  Responsibilities

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 Socio-cultural influences
Western middle-class society Village and/or tribal culture
Children typically excluded from taking Children spend their days in contact
part in adult work, which is generally with, or participating in, adult work.
outside of home.
In early childhood, parent interactions In early childhood, children start to
focus on preparing the child to succeed assume mature responsibilities.
at school.
Adult-child conversations and play Parents have little need to rely on
enhance language, literacy and other conversation or play to teach children.
school related knowledge.
Schools given the role of equipping Children receive little or no schooling.
children with the skills they will need to
become competent workers.

(Gaskins 1999; Morelli, Rogoff & Angelillo 2003)

 Lev Vygotsky 1896-1934
• A Russian psychologist and educator
– Born 1896 (same year as Piaget)
– Jewish middle class family
– Privately tutored
• Graduated Moscow State University 1917
– Taught literature and psychology for seven years
– Post-World War revolutionary Russia Google images

– Over 100 books and articles

• Theory not known among English-speaking educators until 1960s when
works were translated
– Few scholarly works published during his lifetime
– Shortly after his death Vygotsky’s work was banned in the Soviet
Union for more than twenty years
 Socio-cultural theory
Emphasises…

• Sociocultural forces
– The situation of a child’s development and learning
• Crucial roles played by parents, teachers, peers and the
community
– Interactions occurring between children and their environments
• Mediation
– Human and symbolic intermediaries between the learner and
the material to be learned
• Psychological tools
– Symbolic systems internalised by learners to become their inner
cognitive tools
 Social constructivism
• Complex mental processes begin as social activities
– Dialogue promotes cognitive development
– Children incorporate the ways that adults and others talk
about and interpret the world into their own ways of
thinking
– Through their interactions with children adults transmit
their society’s values and skills to the next generation
... thus influencing the course of future development

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 Cultural apprentices
• Knowledge is constructed in a social
context
• Learners as active participants
• Children are ‘apprentices’ of their
culture
– Fishing/hunting cultures pass on
ecological knowledge
– Trading cultures pass on skills in
mathematics
– Smiths and tradesmen pass on the skills
of their work
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 Students, teachers and knowledge
• How is knowledge passed on in Australian, German and
Japanese classrooms? How do they differ?
• In a Japanese classroom there are students and there is
knowledge and the teacher serves as a mediator between
them.*
• In a German classroom there are also students and
knowledge, but teachers perceive this knowledge as their
property to dispense to students as they think best.*
• In the Australian classroom we again have teachers and
students and knowledge…
– What is their relationship in this context?
• Delivery of knowledge - by ‘expert’ teachers?
• Co-construction of knowledge?
• Student discovery of knowledge?

*Stiegler & Hiebert 1999, cited in Kozulin et al.2003 Vygotsky’s educational theory in cultural context
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 Socio-cultural influences on
cognition and learning
• Human cognition and learning as social and cultural rather
than individual phenomena
• Explored relationships between
– Language and thought
– Instruction and development
– Everyday and academic concept formation
• The nature of knowledge in the classroom
– Children defined by their age and IQ versus culturally and
socially situated learners
– Teachers as:
• Role model?
• Source of knowledge?
• Mediator of knowledge?

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 Cultural tools
• Allow people in a society to communicate, think, solve
problems, create knowledge
• These tools (type and quality) influence the pattern and rate
of development
• Real tools
– Printing press
– Computer
– Internet
• Symbolic tools
(psychological)
– Language
– Signs
– Codes

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 Language
• Social instrument
– Language development broadens participation
• Cognitive tool
– Dialogues transformed into higher cognitive processes

 Thought and language are interdependent

• self-talk
• children talk to themselves out loud
• inner speech private speech
• children talk to themselves mentally
• language transformed into inner verbal thought

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 Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
• Children can perform more challenging tasks when assisted
• Challenging tasks promote maximum cognitive growth

• Actual developmental level

– Extent to which the child can perform tasks independently
• Level of potential development
– Extent to which the child can perform tasks with assistance

• The range of tasks a child cannot yet do on their own, but can do
with the help of others is known as the Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD)
• To help a child move through the ZPD, assistance is provided by
scaffolding
 Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
“...what we call the Zone of Proximal
Beyond reach
Development...is a distance between at present
the actual developmental level
determined by individual problem
solving and the level of development ZPD
as determined through problem
solving under guidance or in
collaboration with more capable
peers” (Vygotsky 1978, p.86).
Child’s current
achievement

Within the ZPD are those skills or tasks too

difficult for a child to master on his or her own;
but that can be done with guidance and
encouragement from a knowledgeable person
Vygotsky, L 1978, Mind in society: The Development of Higher Mental Processes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
 Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Tasks the child Tasks the child

Tasks the child is capable of cannot
can complete completing with complete even
independently help and guidance with help
(scaffolding)

Can do with help Cannot do yet

Can do alone
Within ZPD Beyond ZPD
 Scaffolding
• Assistance provided by more
competent peers or adults to
enable the task to be done
successfully
• Scaffolded instruction allows the
learner to move through the ZPD
• Modelling; feedback; instruction;
questioning; encouragement; task
structuring; chunking; breaking the
problem down
• Scaffolding is gradually withdrawn
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 Putting it all together: Language + ZPD + Scaffolding
Actual Zone of proximal development Potential
development (ZPD) development
Student Adult – then joint Self
responsibility responsibility responsibility
What student Scaffolding Transition from other Assistance Internalisation,
can do on Assistance from more assistance to self- provided by automatisation
his/her own capable others: assistance the self
unassisted teacher, adults, peers
Clues; reminders; examples; modelling;
encouragement; breaking problem down
Social speech
Adult uses language Adult and student share
to model process language and activity
Self-talk Inner speech - Private speech
Student uses for Silent dialogue Internalised and
himself/herself the student transformed to
language that adults has with self: inner verbal
use to regulate conscious thought:
behaviour: mental activity self-regulation
self-control
 Teaching implications
• Students need many opportunities to learn with a teacher and with
more-skilled peers
• Work within the zone of proximal development
– Establish a level of difficulty
• Challenging, but not too difficult
• May mean differentiating learning experiences
– Evaluate independent performance
• Provide scaffolding
– Scaffolded instruction
– Assisted performance
• Teacher or more capable peer
– Cooperative learning
• Incorporate language and self-instruction in teaching
– Model language use when completing tasks
– ‘Think’ out loud
• Regularly monitor and assess students’ independent performance
 Summary of key principles and concepts
• Learners are:
– Active participants
– Self-regulated
• Social interaction is necessary
– Cooperative dialogues
between children and more
knowledgeable members of
society
– Vital roles of parents,
teachers, peers in cognitive
development
• Culture is transmitted to the
next generation
– Values, beliefs, customs, and
skills of a social group
– Children apprentices of their
culture
• Complex mental processes
begin as social activities.
• Thought and language become
increasingly interdependent
– self-talk
• children talk to themselves out loud
– inner speech and private speech
• children talk to themselves mentally
• Children can perform more challenging
tasks when assisted by more
competent individuals
– Actual developmental level
• child can perform tasks
independently
– Potential development
• child can perform tasks with
assistance
– Zone of Proximal Development
– Scaffolding
• Challenging tasks promote maximum
cognitive growth
 Criticisms

• Has the role of language in thinking been overemphasised?

– Verbal interactions are not the only means through which children learn.
– What about children who are deaf?
• What of cultures where schooling and literacy are not
emphasised?
• What about biological contributions to children’s cognition?
• Can facilitators be ‘too’ helpful in some cases?
– Such as when a parent becomes too overbearing and controlling.
• Do children become lazy and expect help when they might have
done something on their own?
• Vagueness around the concept of ZPD
– Is the width the same across all areas of learning?
– Does it vary with time of day?
 Strengths
• Recognises social and cultural influences
– Supporting current belief that it is important to evaluate contextual
factors in children's development and learning.
• Recognises that societal, cultural and historical factors will
lead to differences in problem solving and cognitive
development.
• Research based on observations of children from Western
industrialised societies has generally supported Piaget’s ideas,
whereas tudies of children growing up in other societies and
cultures have been more consistent with Vygotsky’s views.
 A brief comparison:
Piaget
Sociocultural context Little emphasis
Constructivism Cognitive constructivist
Stages Strong emphasis on stages of
development
Key processes in Equilibration; schema;
development & adaptation; assimilation;
learning accommodation
Role of language Minimal –
Language provides labels for
children’s experiences
(egocentric speech)
Teaching implications Support children to explore
their world and discover
knowledge
Vygotsky
Strong emphasis
Social constructivist
No general stages of
development proposed
Zone of proximal development;
scaffolding; language/dialogue;
tools of the culture
Major –
Language plays a powerful role
in shaping thought
Establish opportunities for
children to learn with the
teacher and more skilled peers