Social Development Theory (Vygotsky)

Social development theory, also known as sociocultural theory, is a model explaining how children develop their ways of thinking and behaving. It originated in the work of Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, a Russian teacher and psychologist with a deep interest in how education occurs. The theory proposes that children learn by exposure to a more experienced and knowledgeable person. In other words, much of learning and cognitive development follows and is dependent upon socialization. Vygotsky centered these ideas on the concept of a zone of proximal development, or ZPD, which includes the tasks a child can accomplish with or through the assistance or example of someone else. According to the social development theory, the amount a child is capable of learning is dependent on how much an individual child relies on the ZPD for learning. Vygotsky's theory has found applications in how people of all ages learn and attain knowledge.

Background

Lev Vygotsky was born in the western Russian Empire (modern-day Belarus) in 1896 and earned a law degree from the University of Moscow. He graduated in 1917 and began his career as a teacher, which sparked an interest in how education occurs. Although Vygotsky had no formal training in psychology, he developed several theories about how children learn new tasks and acquire information.

The year Vygotsky graduated was also the year of the Russian Revolution, which put Vladimir Lenin in power. The Communists who were in control rejected Vygotsky's theories, and he died of tuberculosis in 1934 without receiving any significant recognition for his ideas. However, students and others who accepted his theories continued to perpetuate them throughout the period after World War II (1939–1945), when political tensions were high between Russia and many of the world's other large countries, a time known as the Cold War.

When these tensions eased, Vygotsky's theories were finally shared with the rest of the world. Many articles and several books written during his lifetime, including Thought and Language, which is often considered his most significant work, were translated and published. Vygotsky's theories became influential among those interested in the psychology of education, even in his native Russia, where his concepts were originally rejected.

Overview

Vygotsky believed that a child's learning occurs in incremental steps, influenced by the culture in which the child is raised and the extent to which the child interacts with others. He proposed that a person's social environment has a great deal to do with how and how well a person learns. According to Vygotsky, children—and people of all ages—learn in three ways. First, learning can happen by imitating someone who already knows how to complete a task or skill. Second, a skill or task can be learned by hearing instructions on how to do it and then completing the task from the instructions. Third, new skills, tasks, or behaviors can be learned through collaborative work with others.

In each of these cases, the learner has three levels of skills. One group consists of the skills the child or learner already knows, and the other consists of skills the child will never know. The third group of skills is those that the person will learn with some level of assistance from others. This assistance can be in the form of observation, instruction, or collaboration, as noted in the three ways Vygotsky believed learning occurs. This was the zone of proximal development, or ZPD, and it was dependent on the social environment in which the learning took place.

According to Vygotsky, there are two key factors in determining the success of ZPD. The first is subjectivity, which means that two people start the same task at different levels of knowledge about the task and eventually end up at the same or a similar level. The second factor is scaffolding, which refers to the way the knowledge and example of the more experienced person provides a framework for the cognitive growth of the less experienced person.

For example, a child who is placed in front of a pan of water will experiment with that water, perhaps dipping their fingers or a hand, noticing that the water can be moved, and then splashing one or both hands into the water. If a bar of soap is nearby, the soap may be dropped in, picked up, and dropped in again. However, the behavior of rubbing the hands on the soap to remove dirt and then rinsing the soap off will likely only occur if the child sees another child or an adult do this, or if someone does it with and to the child. The child and adult demonstrate subjectivity by starting with different levels of understanding; over time, the child will develop a similar level of understanding because the example of the adult helps the child learn the individual steps and combine them to complete learning the behavior.

Vygotsky further believed that the play and private talk that children engage in are important steps in their learning. It helps children rehearse learning in context; for instance, a child who is trying to master the steps of handwashing might "talk to themselves" using words and gestures they have observed in the past, saying something like, "Rub rub rub, now rinse off the soap. Let's dry our hands and then we're all clean and can have lunch!" Play and mimicry such as this help the child work through the steps and start to understand not just what to do but also how to put it into the context of when and why the task is performed.

Vygotsky believed that because talking to oneself is not considered socially acceptable behavior, learners past young childhood stop vocalizing their private talk but continue to mentally work through various steps to mastering a new task. He also believed that people continue to use the concept of ZPD to learn new tasks, although those beyond childhood may find other ways to be exposed to learning, such as reading a book, rather than direct social exposure to a new task. He also believed that when assessing learning, it is important to take ZPD into account. For instance, if three people are learning a new task and one learns by watching, one reads a manual, and one works side by side with an experienced worker, these differing zones of development should be taken into account when assessing each person's proficiency at accomplishing the task.

Bibliography

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