SOCIOCULTURAL

CONSTRUCTIVISM
 If Piagaet’s view of learning and
language acquisition is centered
on the children’s changes of
logical thinking through four
stages based on maturation and
experience, Vygotsky’s view is
centered on the role of culture and
social and adults in the
environment.
 Vygotsky even argued that
children’s speech is a major tool
in their development of thinking.

Lev Vygotsky proposed a

sociocultural model of human
which is cognitive, development
commonly known as social or
cooperative learning.
 Vygotsky emphasizes the
importance of private speech, children
talking to themselves, for turning
shared knowledge into personal
knowledge.

Vygotsky also proposed that

children incorporate the speech of
others and use that speech to help
themselves solve some problem.
 The most important contribution
of Vygotsky’s theory is an emphasis
on the sociocultural nature of
learning (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch,
1986). He explained that every
individual has zone of proximal
development
 (ZDP) the gap between actual
ability (AA), something that
learners can do their own and
potential ability (PA) something
that they can do with help and
supervision (scaffold).
 Vygotsky’s refers to scaffolding as the
assistance that is provided by more
competent peers or adults which means
providing a child with a great support
during early stages of learning and then
diminishing support and having the child
take on increasing responsibility as soon
as he or she is able (Slavin, 1997).
 Tasks within the zone of proximal
development are those that a child cannot yet
do alone but could do with the assistance of
more competent peers or adult.
The zone of proximal development describes
tasks that a child has not yet learned but is
capable of learning at a given time.
 Vyotsky further believed that higher
mental functioning usually exists in
conversation and collaboration among
individuals before it exists within
individual (Slavin, 1997).
Slavin (1997) derives some implications
of Vygotskian theory in teaching-learning
process to support children’s language
acquisition and development.
• Set up a desirable and interesting
cooperative learning arrangements
among groups of students with
differing levels of ability.
• Plan cooperative learning activities
with groups of children at different
levels who can help each other learn.
• Give emphasis on scaffolding with
students taking more and more
responsibilities for their own learning.

• Plan instruction to provide practice at

the upper levels of the zone of proximal
development for individual children or
for groups of children.
• Provide hints and prompts at
different levels to scaffold children’s
learning at varying degrees of
complexity.