Vygotsky's Theory of Cognitive Development

Vygotsky and Piaget:

• Piaget’s Ideas:

  • Four discrete stages

  • Cognitive development is limited by stages

  • Young children are schematic

  • Motivation to maintain cognitive equilibrium

  • Development occurs when assimilation is not possible (adaption)

• Vygotsky’s Ideas:

  • Continuous development (no stages)

  • Zone of proximal development

  • Socially transmitted knowledge (cooperative learning and scaffolding)

  • Private speech helps internalise knowledge

• Both:

  • They were both constructionivists

  • They both believed that social forces set the limits of development

• Piaget’s work influenced Vygotsky and they agreed on many of the basics of cognitive development

• They agreed that children’s reasoning abilities develop in a particular sequence and that such abilities are qualitatively different at different ages

• The major difference is that Vygotsky saw cognitive development as a social process of learning from more experienced others (referred to as experts)

Differences between Piaget and Vygotsky:

• Vygotsky emphasised more than Piaget the role of other, more knowledgable people in children’s development

• Vygotsky argued that although children can acquire some concepts through their own unaided play, they acquire the mechanisms of thinking and learning as a result of the social interactions between themselves and the adults around them

An example:

• Vygotsky provides the example of finger pointing:

  • Initially, this behaviour begins as a meaningless gesture; however, as people react to the gesture, it becomes a movement that has meaning

  • In particular, the pointing gesture represents an interpersonal connection between individuals

Vygotsky Reckoned Culture Plays a Big Part in Cognitive Development

1. Vygotsky said there were two types of mental function - elementary and higher. Elementary functions can be thought of as innate reflexes, sensory abilities and certain types of memory. Higher functions include more complex tasks like language comprehension and decision-making.

2. Social and cultural factors play a necessary part in moving from one type of functioning to the other — it's the influence of others around you that drives cognitive development. Because of this, Vygotsky's theory is known as a social interactionist theory.

3. One of Vygotsky's ideas was the zone of proximal development. This is the difference between the problem-solving a child can do on their own and the problem-solving they can do with a more able peer or adult.

4. If your teacher has an idea of what your potential is, they can help you reach it by pushing and guiding. So it's interaction with the teacher that's important (unlike Piaget's idea that progression happens on its own).

5. Instruction is social and driven by the teacher using language and cultural influences. The intention is to help the child to be self-regulated and responsible for their own learning.

Language is Also Important in Cognitive Development:

Vygotsky suggests that language is a driving influence on cognitive development:

1. Children first learn language as a means to communicate with caregivers. It's also a tool that allows adults to communicate social and cultural information to children.

2. As the child grows older they uses language not only to communicate but also to guide their behaviour- they uses self-talk (talking out loud) to regulate and direct themselves.

3. This self-talk eventually becomes internalised and becomes silent inner speech. At this point, the child has developed two very different forms of language - inner speech and external oral speech.

4. Oral speech is used socially for communication, whilst inner speech is a cognitive tool that allows individuals to direct and monitor their thoughts and behaviour.

5. If someone finds a task difficult, they may re-employ self-talk to exert greater control over their thoughts.

Vygotsky Also Came Up With the Stages of Development

Vygotsky's stages aren't as rigidly defined as Piaget's - they're broader areas of development (without specified ages), giving an idea of the stages children go through as their thinking matures (concept formation).

He came up with these 4 stages after studying how children of various ages went about solving a problem:

1. Vague syncretic-trial and error methods are used, with no understanding of the underlying concepts.

2. Complex — use of strategies begins, but they're not used successfully.

3. Potential concept - successful strategies are used, but only one at a time.

4. Mature concept - lots of strategies used at the same time. Thinking becomes mature and developed.

Vygotsky (ZPD):

• Vygotsky was the first psychologist to bring in the variable of what we learn in social contexts, the role of speech and culture when looking at cognitive development

• He believed that children learn from others who are more knowledgable and who support their learning

• One of the terms used by Vygotsky is called the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD):

1. Current ability:

   • The starting point is the ability of the child to perform activities independently

2. What the child can do with the help of someone more knowledgable:

   • The zone of proximal development is where the child can perform activities with the help of others

3. The child’s potential:

   • The final part, which is beyond the zone of proximal development, is where the child would struggle to perform activities even with the assistance of others

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD):

• Critically, Vygotsky was not just saying that children can learn more facts during social interaction but also that they acquire more advanced reasoning abilities

• In fact, he believed that higher mental functions, such as formal reasoning, could only be acquired through interaction with more advanced others

• The next step in understanding the ZPD is the idea of scaffolding

• This refers to the help others give a child to cross the ZPD

Scaffolding:

• Scaffolding is a process through which a teacher or more competent peer gives aid to the student in his/her ZPD as necessary and tapers off this aid as it becomes unnecessary

• Much the same as scaffolding is removed from a building during construction

• According to education expert Nancy Balaban, Scaffolding refers to the way the adult guides the child’s learning via focused questions and positive interactions

Roazzi and Bryant (1998):

• Support for ZPD:

  • They gave 4-5-year-olds the task of estimating the number of sweets in a box

• Condition 1:

  • Children worked alone

• Condition 2:

  • Worked with an older child

• Most children working alone failed to give a good estimate, but in condition 2, with help, the older child was seen offering prompts, pointing the younger child in the right direction

• Most of those children successfully mastered the task

Five Aspects (Wood, Bruner and Ross, 1976):

• Identified five aspects to scaffolding which are general ways in which an adult can help a child better understand and perform a task

  1. Recruitment: Engaging the child’s interest in the task

  2. Reduction of degrees of freedom: Focusing the child on the task and where to start with solving it

  3. Direction maintenance: Encouraging the child in order to help them stay motivated and continue trying to complete the task

  4. Marking critical features: Highlighting the most important parts of the task

  5. Demonstration: Showing the child how to do aspects of the task

Vygotsky's Theory Emphasises Social Interaction:

Vygotsky's theory is a teacher-guided approach and suggests that interactions with others are important in learning.

In other words, other people are needed to stimulate cognitive development. For example, scaffolding is an important concept developed from Vygotsky's theory where other people assist a child's cognitive development:

• Scaffolding is when a teacher, another adult or a more cognitively advanced child acts as an expert to guide the child.

• They do this by making suggestions or doing demonstrations to provide a framework by which the child learns to do a task.

• At first the child might need lots of help, but as they learn less help is needed, and they can carry on learning independently.

• For scaffolding to work it needs to take place within the child's zone of proximal development (see previous page).

Strategies used when scaffolding:

• As a learner crosses the ZPD, the level of help given declines from level 5 (Most help) to level 1 (Least help)

• Example of helping a child draw:

  • 5: Demonstration- Mother draws an object

  • 4: Preparation for child- Mother helps child grasp a crayon

  • 3: Indication of materials- Mother points to crayon

  • 2: Specific verbal instructions- Mother says, ‘How about a green crayon?’

  • 1: General Prompts- Mother says, ‘Now draw something else’

Wood et al. (1976) - The effectiveness of scaffolding:

Method:

• Thirty children aged 3-5 were given the task of building a model and were observed. A tutor gave help to each child according to how well they were doing — the help was either in the form of showing or telling.

Results:

• Scaffolding allowed the children to complete a task they wouldn't have been able to do alone. The effectiveness of the scaffolding was influenced by various factors, e.g. how the tutor simplified the task, and how they helped them identify important steps. Showing was used most when helping younger children, whilst telling was used more with the older children. Also, the older the child was the less scaffolding was needed for them to complete the task.

Conclusion:

• Scaffolding can be helpful but consideration needs to be given to maximise its effectiveness.

Evaluation:

• This study had fairly good ecological validity, but there was less control over variables, reducing reliability.

Conner and Cross (2003):

• Evidence for the idea of scaffolding comes from research showing that the level of help declines during the process of learning

• A longitudinal study

  • Followed 45 children, observing them engaged in problem-solving tasks with the help of their mothers, at 16, 26, 44 and 54 months old

  • Distinctive changes in help were observed over time; mothers used less and less direct intervention and more hints and prompts as children gained experience

Application in education:

• Vygotsky’s ideas have been highly influential in education

• The idea that children can learn faster with appropriate scaffolding has raised expectations of what they should be able to achieve

• Social interaction in learning through group work, peer tutoring and individual adult assistance from teachers and teaching assistants has been used to scaffold children through the ZPD

Supporting Research:

• Keer and Verhaghe (2005):

  • Found that 7-year-olds tutored by 10-year-olds, in addition to their whole class teaching, progressed further in reading than controls who just had standard whole class teaching

• Alborz et al. (2009):

  • A review of the usefulness of teaching assistants concluded that they are very effective at improving the rate of learning in children provided they had received appropriate training

Vygotsky's Theory Has Some Support:

Vygotsky carried out very few studies while coming up with his theory. However, other people have carried out studies that have provided evidence that supports Vygotsky's theory:

1. Gardner and Gardner (1969) found that, with instruction, animals can reach higher levels of functioning. For example, they taught a chimp, Washoe, sign language, and she passed down her knowledge to her adoptive son. This is evidence for the role of culture and language in learning.

2. Chi et al. (1989) showed that pretending to talk to the author as you read (self-explanation) can help increase understanding. This is evidence for the use of speech in thought.

3. Berk (1994) found that children who used more self-talk when solving maths problems did better over the following year. This is evidence for the use of self-talk in problem-solving.

Evaluation:

• Negative:

  • The theory may overemphasize cultural factors at the expense of biological factors

  • The theory may neglect the role of the individual in their own development

  • Many of Vygotsky’s ideas are difficult to test scientifically

  • The theory may not adequately address the role of play in cognitive development- Individual differences

• Although Vygotsky's theory can be successfully applied to education, it has some limitations:

  • Some psychologists think that the theory over-emphasises social and ultural factors in intelligence and ignores biological factors.

  • Vygotsky didn't give any suggestions of the cognitive processes that

    might underlie development.