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similarities between Piaget and Vygotsky
-both agreed that children are active learners and believed that interaction with the world is important for children’s development
-both are considered constructivists
importance of socioculture
-thought that how we think is a function of the social and cultural world we grow up in
-children’s cognitive skills will be developed to handle the tasks and problems in their environment
instruction is the core of learning
-cognitive development occurs in situations where a child’s problem solving is guided by an adult
culture
-describes customs, beliefs and habits of particular people at a particular time and their collective intellectual, material, scientific and artistic achievements over historical time
socioculture
-how society, the social world of a child and the culture in which the child is living at that time may impact their development
impact of socioculture on development - play
-socioculture determines the type of practical activities we engage in and the things we learn
-children often imitate in play and this will affect the type of play-based activities children engage in
Morelli et al (2003) - play
observed toddlers in three different communities:
USA communities
the Efe people - foragers in the Congo
an indigenous Mayan group from Guatemala
-found that children from the Efe and Guatemalan communities imitated the work of adults in their play more so than children from the USA communities
impact of socioculture on development - problem solving
-socioculture determines the type of practical activity we engage in and the things we learn
-it influences how familiar we are with thinking and reasoning about certain problems or topics
Scribner & Cole (1978) - problem solving
-the Kpelle people of Liberia are not as good as USA participants at estimating length
-but are better at estimating quantities of rice → a daily activity for them
Luria (1979) - problem solving
-studied two groups of farmer in Uzbekistan:
traditional farmers living in small villages
farmers living in larger communities who had some formal schooling due to Marxist reforms
-showed them four pictures and asked the farmers to pick the three that went together
-farmers with formal schooling selected three images that go together as an abstract category (i.e., tools)
-farmers with no formal schooling made their decisions based on practical situations to problems relevant to the depicted objects
Chen, Mo & Honomichl (2004) - problem solving
-studied two groups of students:
USA students
Chinese students
-showed both groups two problems based on:
Western tale, Hansel and Gretel → the cave problem
Chinese tale, Weighing the Elephant → the statue problem
-USA students were better at solving the cave problem than Chinese students and used strategies from Hansel and Gretel
-Chinese students were better at solving the statue problem and used strategies from the Weighing the Elephant tale
impact of socioculture on development - language
-socioculture determines the languages we speak
-subtle differences in language can lead to noticeable differences in cognition
Gordon (2004) - language
-in two Amazonian languages, there are no words for numbers greater than 5
-individuals from this culture can solve maths problems easily when working with numbers less than 5
-if children from this culture learn a language with words for numbers above 5, they become better at solving maths problems with numbers above 5
Zuber et al (2009) - language
-in English, when expressing numbers verbally between 21 and 99 the decade is said before the units
-in German, the opposite is true e.g., when saying 47, will say ‘seven-forty’
-German-speaking children often have problems learning to convert spoken numbers to written numbers e.g., 74 instead of 47
self-speech and inner speech
-Vygotsky thought that children’s behaviour is:
controlled by adults instructions
private speech said out loud
internalised monologues at around 7 years
-transition of language from a tool for communication to a tool for thought
-self-speech is essential for children’s cognitive development
evidence for the importance of self-speech and inner speech
-children engage in more self-speech if a task is challenging, they are making mistakes or if they are confused about what to do (Berk, 1992)
-children who use speech when facing challenging tasks are more attentive and perform better on cognitive tasks than ‘quiet’ children (Behrend et al., 1992)
-children prevented from using inner speech perform more poorly on a planning task (Lidstone, Meins & Fernyhough, 2010)
the role of others in learning
-children’s cognition improves through interacting with other people
-especially those who are slightly more experienced or knowledgeable than the children themselves
the zone of proximal development
-the increase in development that a child can reach through assistance by a more competent person, compared to the development without this help
-Vygotsky believed children learned best when in this zone
Bruner (1983) - scaffolding
-children’s learning is enhanced when more competent people provide a framework that supports children’s thinking at a higher level than they could manage by themselves
-scaffolding is then adjusted as the child becomes more capable
scaffolding
-can be done by a teacher, parent or peer who assists the child by:
modelling an action
suggesting a strategy to solve a problem
restructuring the problem into parts that are more manageable to the child
-scaffolding makes children more capable of working at a higher level than they would without the support
-at first, extensive support may be needed but this reduces as the child becomes more capable
Wood (1976) - five aspects of scaffolding
recruitment → need to engage the child’s interest
reduction of degrees of freedom → reduce the number of acts that are needed to arrive at a solution
direction maintenance → need to maintain a child’s motivation
marking critical features → highlight important features of the problem
demonstration → model the solution or parts of the task to stimulate the child to imitate this
Behrend et al., 1992 (evidence for scaffolding)
-parents who provide a supportive learning environment have children who generate more private speech
-therefore, are more successful than children with a less supportive environment
Devine, Bignardi & Hughes., 2016 (evidence for scaffolding)
-parental scaffolding while children did a jigsaw puzzle predicted pre-schoolers’ academic attainment one year later
-it supported the development of high level cognitive skills such as working memory
Vygotskian classroom
-structured learning activities
-helpful hints carefully tailored to the child’s current abilities
-monitoring the learner’s progress and gradually turning over the activity to the learner
-collaborative learning exercises where students assist each other
Freund (1995) - application to education
-3-5 year olds
-asked to help a puppet decide which furnishings they should put up in a dollhouse
-split into two groups:
alone with corrective feedback from an experimenter
with their mother through guided learning
-then performed a final, more complex furniture sorting task
the children who had worked with their mothers performed better on the final task than those who worked alone
why does collaborative learning help?
-motivation is enhanced when working with another person (Johnson & Johnson, 1989)
-means the child has to explain their ideas, persuade and resolve conflicts, which requires them to examine their ideas and articulate them clearly
-increases self-speech which supports learning (Teasley, 1995)
but peers need to be competent and modify their behaviour for any less skilled peers, otherwise collaborative learning is not effective (Tudge, 1992)
Ratner, Foley & Gimpert (2002) - group learning and memory
-5 year olds
-asked to do the collaborative dollhouse exercise
-found that:
those in the collaborative condition incorrectly later thought that they had made certain actions when it was the adult → made attribution errors
this led to greater learning, those that made attribution errors had greater memory for the location of the furniture in the rooms
Ruvalcaba & Rogoff (2022) - cultural differences in collaboration
-10 minute task in pairs:
Mexican American children collaborated through fluid synchrony and proposal building
European American children collaborated mostly via proposal building and were rarely in fluid synchrony, more often resisted one another
fluid synchrony
-skilfully sharing decisions
proposal building
-discussing proposals before taking an action
importance of motor skills
-developing motor skills has a cascading impact on other areas of development and learning
-leads to a new view of the world, altered perception and new opportunities to explore, interact and communicate
WHO motor skills milestones
-series of norms for when motor skills should be developing in infancy
-guidelines for health workers
-development is often linear and babies develop when their bodies are ready (biological maturation) → but is still linked to socioculture
based on WEIRD data
motor skills milestones
-these norms are based on a narrow population and are built into a model
-this model is applied to a sample different from the population → leading to faulty conclusions
-promotes the idea that the Western way is normal
Super (1976) - cross-cultural research
-studied infants in a Kenyan farming community
-observed that:
sat and walked a month earlier than Western infants
slower at rolling over and crawling than Western infants
-Kokwet mothers kept infants on their backs while working which gave them a boost in physical development for sitting and walking
-but mothers kept their babies from crawling due to environmental hazard → so babies had limited opportunities to develop crawling which led to a delay in physical development
-shows impact of socioculture on motor development
Gottlieb (2002) - cross-cultural research
-studied mothers and infants in the Beng community, Ivory Coast
-observed that:
sat up earlier than Western infants
learned to walk later than Western infants
-kept infants on their backs while working, strengthening the infant’s back, boosting their physical development
-infants actively discouraged to walk before 1 year due to cultural beliefs → limiting opportunities to develop walking and delaying physical development
conclusions from cross-cultural motor research
-different skills may be actively discouraged or encouraged in different cultures
-cultures vary in norms and environments
-beliefs about development and the opportunities for infants to engage in certain in motor behaviour varies
-motor milestones are not universal
-studies demonstrate how important it is to consider socioculture when studying development
the marshmallow task
-Shoda, Mischel & Peake (1990)
-children given a marshmallow by the researcher, who then leaves and asks the child not to eat the marshmallow
-told that if they wait until the researcher returns, they will receive two marshmallows
-observed child’s strategies for delayed gratification
marshmallow task as a predictor
-children’s ability to delay gratification predicted greater success in adolescence and adulthood
-performance on the task before they started school predicted academic and cognitive outcomes years later (Mischel et al., 2010)
recent research on marshmallow task
-recent research has proposed that both socioeconomic status and culture may play an important role in how well children delay gratification
Watts, Duncan & Quan (2018) - role of socioeconomic status
-tested 900 children
-socioeconomically diverse group of children on the marshmallow task
-found that:
less convincing evidence that delaying gratification leads to better outcomes
evidence that socioeconimic status predicts how successfully children delay gratification
reasons why socioeconomic status plays a role in development
-children from lower socioeconomic households may have less certainty, so it makes more sense to take risks
→ daily life comes with fewer guarantees, so while rewards are there they should be taken
-having less money and resources may lead people to go for shorter-term rewards over longer-term rewards
Lamm et al (2018) - role of culture
-tested middle-class German and rural farming Cameroonian pre-schoolers
-found that:
children from Cameroonian community did better on the marshmallow task than the German children
Cameroonian children waited twice as long on average
cultural differences in the marshmallow task
-Lamm observed that German children displayed many more negative emotions during the task → Cameroonian children tended to wait patiently
-Cameroonian children learnt to control their needs and negative emotions early on from their parents
-parenting practices may help children to develop self-control more quickly
-parenting practices are largely determined by culture
conclusions from research on the marshmallow task
-recent research suggests that when studying children’s skills, attention does not need to be paid to their sociocultural background
-findings support Vygotsky’s ideas about the importance of socioculture in development
-emphasises the importance of having social and culturally diverse participants in our studies → otherwise may draw incorrect conclusions about broad phenomena
differences between Piaget and Vygotsky (cognitive development)
-Piaget
progresses in distinct, continuous stages
qualitative shifts
developmental pathway does not differ between children
-Vygotsky
progress more flexibly and continuously
gradual quantitative improvements
developmental pathway is influenced by various factors
differences between Piaget and Vygotsky (culture)
-Piaget:
does not influence development
-Vygotsky:
plays an important role in development
differences between Piaget and Vygotsky (social environment)
-Piaget:
no interaction is necessary for development
child determines their own cognitive development
-Vygotsky:
interaction is necessary for development
the child and those interacting with the child determine cognitive development
differences between Piaget and Vygotsky (self-speech)
-Piaget:
self-speech suggests that young children are egocentric
they are unable to consider other’s POV and engage in meaningful exchanges
-Vygotsky:
self-speech is a transition between the child’s learning language in a social communicative context and attempting to internalise it as ‘private’ or ‘inner speech’ to plan and regulate behaviour
differences between Piaget and Vygotsky (nature vs nurture)
-Piaget:
maturation is important
emphasised nature
-Vygotsky:
social environment and culture is important
emphasised nurture
