The Sociocultural theory of Vygotsky Is an emerging theory in psychology that looks at the important contributions that society makes to individual development. This theory highlights the interaction between the development of people and the culture in which they live. It suggests that human learning is largely a social process.
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Soviet psychologist and founder of the theory of cultural and social development in humans. It is considered one of the Most influential psychologists in history .
Its main work took place in the Area of evolutionary psychology And has served as the basis for many subsequent research and theories regarding cognitive development in the last decades, particularly about what is known as Vigotsky's sociocultural theory .
The importance of the social context
Theories of Vygotsky Emphasize the fundamental role of social interaction in the development of cognition, because it firmly believed that the community plays a central role in the process of"giving meaning."
Contrary to Piaget , Which stated that the development of children must necessarily precede their learning, Vygotsky argues that learning is a universal and necessary aspect of the process of culturally organized development, specifically in terms of human psychological function.
In other words, social learning comes before development.
Vygotsky developed a sociocultural approach to cognitive growth. His theories were created more or less at the same time as Jean Piaget , The Swiss epistemologist.
Vygotsky's problem is that he began to make his own from the age of 20 and died at the age of 38, so that his theories are incomplete. In addition, some of his writings are still being translated from Russian.
According to Vygotsky, individual development can not be understood without the social and cultural context in which one is immersed. The higher mental processes of the individual (critical thinking, decision making, reasoning) have their origin in social processes.
The effects of culture: tools of intellectual adaptation
Like Piaget, Vygotsky argued that children are born with the basic materials and skills for intellectual development.
Vygotsky speaks of"elemental mental functions": attention, sensation, perception and memory. Through interaction with the sociocultural environment, these mental functions evolve into more sophisticated and effective mental strategies and processes, which Vygotsky calls"higher mental functions."
For example, memory in young children is limited by biological factors. However, culture determines the type of memory strategy we develop.
In our culture we usually learn to take notes to help our memory, but in pre-literary societies other strategies have to be used, such as tying knots on a string to remember a particular number or repeating aloud what we wanted to remember.
Vygotsky refers to tools of intellectual adaptation to describe strategies that allow children to use basic mental functions more effectively and more adaptively, which are culturally determined.
This psychologist firmly believed that Cognitive functions Are affected by the beliefs, values and tools of intellectual adaptation of the culture in which each person develops. Thus, these adaptation tools vary from one culture to another.
Social influences on cognitive development
Vygotsky, like Piaget, believed that young children are curious and are actively involved in their own learning and in the discovery and development of new schemes of understanding.
However, Vygotsky put more emphasis on social contributions to the development process, while Piaget emphasized the discovery initiated by the child himself.
According to Vygotsky, much of the learning of children occurs through social interaction with a tutor. This tutor is the one who models children's behaviors and gives them verbal instructions. This is known as"cooperative dialogue"or"collaborative dialogue".
The child seeks to understand the actions or instructions provided by the tutor (usually the parents or teacher) and then internalize the information, using it to guide or regulate their own actions.
Let's take the example of a girl who is put before her first puzzle. If left alone, the girl will perform poorly in completing the puzzle.
Her father sits down with her and describes or demonstrates some basic strategies, such as finding all the pieces on the edges and corners, and gives the girl a couple of pieces to put together, encouraging her when she does it well.
As the girl becomes more competent in the task of completing a puzzle, the father allows her to work more independently. According to Vygotsky, this type of social interaction involving collaborative or cooperative dialogue promotes cognitive development.
Next development area
An important concept in Vygotsky's sociocultural theory is the so-called Zone of proximal development (ZPD), which has been defined as:
"The distance between the actual level of development determined by the ability to independently solve the problem and the level of potential development determined by solving a problem under the guidance of an adult or in collaboration with another more capable partner."
Lev Vygotsky views peer interaction as an effective way to develop skills and strategies. It suggests that teachers should use learning exercises in which the less competent children are developed with the help of the most skilled students in the Zone of Next Development.
When a student is in the Next Development Zone of a given task, if he is provided with the appropriate assistance, the child will feel the impulse enough to get the job done.
The ZPD has become, in literature, synonymous with the term scaffolding. However, it is important to know that Vygotsky never used this term in his writings, since it was introduced by Wood in 1976.
Wood's theory of scaffolding asserts that in a teaching-learning interaction, the action of the teacher is inversely related to the learner's level of competence; That is, the more difficult the task for the learner, the more actions the learner will need.
The adjustment of the interventions of the one who teaches and monitors the difficulties of the learner seems to be a decisive element in the acquisition and construction of knowledge.
The concept of scaffolding is a metaphor that refers to the use of scaffolding by the teacher; As the knowledge is being built and the tasks can be performed better, the scaffold is removed and then the apprentice will be able to complete the task alone.
It is important to note that the terms"cooperative learning","scaffolding"and"guided learning"are used in the literature as having the same meaning.
An example of a Zone of Near Development
Laura has entered university this semester and has decided to sign up for an introductory tennis course. Your class consists of learning and practicing a different shot every week.
The weeks go by and she and the other students in the class learn to do a setback appropriately. During the week in which they must learn to give right blows, the monitor realizes that Laura is very frustrated because all her right blows go to the net or away from the baseline.
The monitor examines its preparation and rotation. He realizes that his posture is perfect is prepared soon, turns the torso properly and hits the ball precisely at the correct height.
However, he realizes that he picks up the racket the same way he would if he were doing a setback, so he shows him how to reposition his hand to make a right hand, emphasizing that he should keep the index finger parallel to the racket.
The monitor models a good movement to show it to Laura and then the help and assist in changing the way to grab the racket. With a little practice, Laura learns to do it to perfection.
In this case, Laura was in the zone of proximal development to make a right blow with success. She was doing everything else correctly, just needed some support, training and scaffolding from someone who knew more than she did to help her get it right.
When he was provided with such assistance, he was able to achieve his goal. If they are provided with adequate support at the right times, the rest of the students will also be able to accomplish tasks that would otherwise be too difficult for them.
Evidence from Vygotsky's theories
Lisa Freund is an evolutionary psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist who tested in 1990 Vygotsky's theories. To this end, I study In which a group of children had to decide which furniture to place in specific areas of a doll house.
Some children were allowed to play with their mothers in a similar situation before attempting to perform the task themselves (zone of proximal development), while others were allowed to work alone from the beginning.
The latter is known as"learning by discovery,"a term introduced by Piaget to define the idea that children learn more and better by actively exploring and doing things alone. After the first attempt, both groups of children made a second attempt alone.
Freund found that those children who had previously worked with their mothers, that is, those who had locked in the area of proximal development, showed a great improvement comparing their first attempt in the task with the second.
Children who had worked alone from the beginning had worse results on the job. The conclusion of this study is that guided learning within the zone of proximal development led to a better resolution of the task than learning by discovery.
Vygotsky and language
Vygotsky believed that language develops from social interactions, with the goal of communicating. He saw language as the best tool of human beings, a way of communicating with the outside world. According to Vygotsky, language has two critical roles in cognitive development:
- It is the primary means by which adults transmit information to children.
- Language itself becomes a very powerful intellectual adaptation tool.
Vygotsky differentiates between three forms of language:
- Social speech , Which is the external communication used to talk to others (typical at the age of two).
- The private speech (Typical at the age of three), which is directed at oneself and has an intellectual function.
- Internal speech , Which is a less audible private speech and has a self-regulating function (typical at the age of seven).
For Vygotsky, thought and language are two systems initially separated from the beginning of life, which emerge to unite around three years of age.
At this point, speech and thought become interdependent: thought becomes verbal and speech becomes representational. When this occurs, children's monologues are internalized to become internal speech. The internalization of language is important, as it leads to cognitive development.
Vygotsky was the first psychologist to document the importance of private speech, considering it as the point of transition between social speech and internal speech, the moment in development in which language and thought come together to constitute verbal thought.
In this way, private speech, from Vygotsky's point of view, is the earliest manifestation of inner speech. Without a doubt, private speech is more similar (in its form and function) to internal speech than social speech.
Criticisms of Vygotsky's work
Vygotsky's work has not received the same level of intense scrutiny as that received from Piaget, partly because of the enormous amount of time to be spent translating his work from the Russian.
Likewise, the sociocultural perspective of this Russian psychologist does not provide as many specific hypotheses as can be as well as Piaget's theories, making his refutation difficult if not impossible.
Perhaps the main criticisms of Vygotsky's work have to do with the assumption that his theories are relevant in all cultures. AND It is possible that the scaffolding is not used in the same way in all cultures, or that it is not equally useful in all of them.