11.2 vygotskys theory of development 🧡

Define zone of proximal development

The gap between a child’s current level of development and what they can potentially do with the help from an expert

How is a childs current level of development defined

Defined by the cognitive tasks they can perform unaided

Define scaffolding

The process of helping a learner cross the zone of proximal development. The level of help declines as the learner crosses the zone

Who was vygotsky

A Russian psychology, influenced by piagets work

What did vgotsky believe about cognitive development

• its a social process, learning from more experienced others

• Saw language as very important in cognitive development

Define intermental and intramental

In learning knowledge is first intermental (between the more and less expert individuals), then intramental (within the mind of the less expert individual)

Why are there Cultural differences of cognitive abilities

• children pick up the mental ‘tools’ from their physical, social and work environments of their culture

• So not all children have equal development

What do children gain when they cross the zone of proximal development

• learn more facts

• Acquire more advanced reasoning abilities

Who did research on scaffolding

• wood and Middleton

• Observed 20 women teaching their children to build a tower

• The most successful at teaching were those that were scaffolding

What did Wood suggest (scaffolding)

As a learner crosses the zone of proximal development, the level of help declines from level 5 to level 1

What are the 5 levels of help

5. Demonstration

4. Preparation for child, introduced to task

3. Indication of materials

2. Specific verbal instruction

1. General prompts

What did Van Keer find

• classes that were taught using whole class teaching plus peer tutoring were compared to those without peer tutoring

• Existing classes were allocated to each condition (natural experiment)

• Found peer tutoring improved learning

Evaluation - support for the zone of proximal development

• Roazzi and Bryant, gave young children the task of estimating the number of sweets in a box

• In one condition they worked alone, in another they had help from an older child

• They improved with the help of others

Evaluation - support for scaffolding

• Conner and Cross used a longitudinal study to observe children engaging in a problem solving task with the help of their mothers

• Found over time that the mothers didn’t need to intervene and help as much

Real world application

• learning in schools should be done through group work, peer tutoring and teaching assistants

• Hilde Van Keer found that students that were tutored by older students, in addition to in class teaching, progressed further in reading

• Alborz found that teaching assistants improve the rate of learning

• Counterpoint — may not be universal, in china they have large classes and learn with lecture style teaching and still learn effectively. So role of scaffolding may be overestimated

Evaluation - Vgotsky vs Piaget

• Vgotsky proposed that learning with a more experienced other can enhance learning

• But if this was true we would expect all children to pick up similar skills/ mental representations. Piaget and Howe found each child had different mental representations abiut the objects that moved down the slope