Par Avion

Air MailA I R

MA I L

Vygotsky’s Theory ofCognitive

Development

Josephine Ann J. Necor, RN

Lev Vygotsky Born in Orsha, a part of the Russian

Empire (now known as Belarus) on 17th November 1896 and died at the very young age of 37 in 1934 from Tuberculosis

A pioneer of psychology; His extensive research into cognitive development has lead his theory to be one of the most important of it’s kind.

His main work was translated to English in 1962 and it had a major impact on other psychological research in similar fields.

Vygotsky believed that the adults in a society foster children’s cognitive development in an intentional and somewhat systematic manner.

Adult

Child

engage in meaningful and

challenging activities

help perform activities

successfully

Socio-cultural perspective

society and

culture

cognitive growth

communicated by either psychological (language, number, art) or technical (books, calculator) means.

Language is the most important tool for gaining social knowledge; the child can be taught this from other people via language.

Intelligence -“the capacity to learn from instruction”

THINKINGSOCIAL

KNOWLEDGEaffected by

MORE KNOWLEDGEABLE

OTHER (MKO)

BASICASSUMPTIONS

1. Complex mental processes begin

as social activities; as children

develop, they gradually

internalize these processes and

begin to use them independently.

Show students how you think as

you deal with academic tasks.

Children first talk about objects and events with adults and other knowledgeable individuals; in the process, they discover how the people around them think about those objects and events.

Dialogue -> COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

INTERNALIZATION - the process through which social activities evolve into mental activities.

2. Thought and language initially

develop independently of

each other; the two become

interdependent when children are about two years

old.

Encourage students to talk themselves through new and

difficult tasks.

Infants and young toddlers -Thought and language are separate functions. When language appears, it is first used primarily as a means of communication rather than a mechanism of thought.

Sometime around age two - thought and language become intertwined: Children begin to express their thoughts when they speak, and they begin to think in terms of words.

By talking to themselves, children learn to guide and direct their own behaviors through difficult tasks and complex maneuvers in much the same way that adults have previously guided them.

SELF-TALK

INNER SPEECH

3. Through both informal

conversations and formal schooling, adults convey to

children the ways in which their culture

interprets the world.

Show students how various academic

disciplines conceptualize the

world.

Adults share with children the language of their culture, including the specific concepts and terminology used in various academic disciplines.

Although Vygotsky, like Piaget, saw value in allowing children to make some discoveries themselves, he also saw value in having adults describe the discoveries of previous generations.

4. Children can perform more challenging

tasks when assisted by more advanced

and competent individuals.

Children’s two kinds of abilities that they likely to have at any particular point in their development:

Children can typically do more difficult things in collaboration with adults than they can do on their own.

ACTUAL DEVELOPMENTAL LEVEL

LEVEL OF POTENTIAL DEVELOPMENT

5. Challenging tasks promote maximum cognitive growth.

Have students collaborate with adults or other students when

they work on particularly challenging

assignments. 

Zone of proximal development (ZPD) - the range of tasks that children cannot yet perform independently, but can perform with the help and guidance of others.

Includes learning and problem-solving abilities that are just beginning to develop within a child – abilities that are in an immature, “embryonic” form.

Naturally, any child’s ZPD will change over time, as some tasks are mastered, other more complex ones will appear to provide more challenges.

CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS

OF VYGOTSKY’S IDEAS

Scaffolding

Adults and other more competent individuals provide some form of guidance or structure that enables students to perform tasks that are in their zone of proximal development.

Example:Woods and Middleton (1975) studied the influence of instruction with their experiment. They provided 3-4 year olds with a puzzle which was beyond their comprehension on their own. The mother then provided different levels of assistance for the child:

L1 – General verbal instruction (“Very good! Now try that again.”)L2 – Specific verbal instruction (“Get four big blocks”)L3 – Mother indicates material (“You need this block here”)L4 – Mother provides material and prepares it for assemblyL5 – Mother demonstrates the operation

Guided Participation

Giving students the assistance they need as they perform adult-like activities

Engage students in realistic adult tasks,

giving them the guidance they need

to be successful.

Apprenticeships A learner works intensively with an expert to

accomplish complex tasks that he or she could never do independently.

The expert provides considerable structure and guidance throughout the process, gradually removing scaffolding and giving the learner more responsibility as competence increases.

Cognitive Apprenticeship – a student learns not only how to perform a task but also how to think about a task.

Encourage the thought processes that experts use

when they engage in a complex task.

Peer Interaction

Working together rather than working alone; providing scaffolding for one another’s efforts; interactive approach

References

Ormrod, J. E. (2000). Educational Psychology: Developing Learners. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

http://psychohawks.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/theories-of-cognitive-development-lev-vygotsky/

THANK YOU!