Vygotsky’s Theory of Learning

⁠

Lev Vygotsky

⁠

Vygotsky⁠

takes a different approach to Piaget’s idea that development precedes learning.

Instead, he reckons that

social learning⁠

is an integral part of cognitive development and it is culture, not developmental Stage that underlies cognitive development. Because of that, he argues that learning varies across cultures rather than being a universal process driven by the kind of structures and processes put forward by Piaget.

Zone of Proximal Development

He makes a big deal of the idea of the

Zone of Proximal Development⁠

in which children and those they are learning from co-construct knowledge. Therefore, the social environment in which children learn has a massive impact on how they think and what they think about.

They also differ in how they view language. For Piaget, thought drives language but for Vygotsky, language and thought become intertwined at about 3 years and become a sort of internal dialogue for understanding the world.

And where do they get that from? Their social environment of course, which contains all the cognitive/linguistic skills and tools to understand the world.

⁠

Vygotsky⁠

talks about Elementary Mental Functions, by which he means the basic cognitive processes of Attention, Sensation, Perception and Memory.

By using those basic tools in interactions with their sociocultural environment, children sort of improve them using whatever their culture provides to do so. In the case of Memory, for example, Western cultures tend towards note-taking, mind-maps or mnemonics whereas other cultures may use different Memory tools like storytelling.

In this way, a cultural variation of learning can be described quite nicely.

What are crucial in this learning theory are the ideas of Scaffolding, the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO). Here’s how all that works:

More Knowledgeable Other

The

MKO⁠

can be (but doesn’t have to be) a person who literally knows more than the child. Working collaboratively, the child and the MKO operate in the ZPD, which is the bit of learning that the child can’t do on their own.

As the child develops, the ZPD gets bigger because they can do more on their own and the process of enlarging the ZPD is called

Scaffolding⁠

Vygotsky Scaffolding

Knowing where that scaffold should be set is massively important and it’s the MKO’s job to do that so that the child can work independently AND learn collaboratively.

For Vygotsky, language is at the heart of all this because a) it’s the primary means by which the MKO and the child communicate ideas and b) internalising it is enormously powerful in cementing understanding about the world.

That internalisation of speech becomes Private Speech (the child’s “inner voice”) and is distinct from Social Speech, which occurs between people.

Over time, Social Speech becomes Private Speech and Hey Presto! That’s Learning because the child is now collaborating with themselves!

The bottom line here is that the richer the sociocultural environment, the more tools will be available to the child in the ZPD and the more Social Speech they will internalise as Private Speech. It doesn’t take a genius to work out, therefore, that the learning environment and interactions are everything.

Scaffolding is also an integral part of

Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction⁠

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