In the twentieth century, Lev Vygotsky proposed a different theory about how people learn. It was during this time that Jean Piaget, a leading theorist on psychological development, argued that learning occurred after a person had biologically developed the capability to learn. Vygotsky reversed this notion, arguing that humans learn before and during biological development. He attributed children’s learning to a social interaction between more experienced members of the community, whether they be parents, teachers, and any other adults. Thus was born a socialist-constructivist view of learning, where learning happened through the construction of knowledge from social interactions with experts who are transferring knowledge. The teacher must assess what the child currently knows, known as their funds of knowledge, from which they can build. From this starting point, teachers must find students’ Zones of Proximal Development (ZPD), which is the next level beyond students’ current understandings to which students are able to achieve with the guidance and scaffolding from the teacher. This shift in thinking about how children learn will change the way that educators view and address their students, specifically in the student-teacher relationship1. Applications of Vygotsky’s theories can be made in each subject area to better educate the youth.
Social Constructivism
Vygotsky’s theories of learning and development were applied to the theory of Social Constructivism, which comes with certain tenets. First, students are not viewed as empty vessels waiting for adults to deposit knowledge, but rather are social beings that engage and affect their own learning and development. It is through the interactions in a social setting with peers and teachers that students learn and make sense of the world that they live in. Teachers find ways to build off schemas that students are familiar with, especially to develop understandings of more abstract concepts. They do this by pushing students into their ZPD in cooperative problem solving, which is set to be just above their level of understanding, where they look to their teachers to aid them to draw from their current knowledge to advance in their thinking.
“Intrinsic to Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory is the notion that social experiences shape the ways that students think and interpret their world. This individual student cognition occurs in a social situation, and is inseparable which corresponds with the integrated nature of holism and the focus of sociocultural theory... To do this, Vygotsky noted that individuals interact with one another in social situations to socially negotiate meaning. To learn, he emphasized the importance of problem solving in this process, which was reflected in his notion of learning by doing.”7
Zone of Proximal Development
Identifying a child’s ZPD is an important initial step of instruction within the classroom, where the teacher needs to determine the level of the students’ abilities from which they can be challenged. Some believe that this level is of the students’ mental ages, when Vygotsky intended to have students problem solve within a social context with more capable adults. The level was identified by having students perform tasks and given in four different non-independent contexts: 1) have the student imitate the steps performed by a more capable adult, 2) have the more capable adult begin the solution to a problem and have the student finish solving, 3) have a student collaborate with a peer with a higher intelligence quotient (IQ), and 4) have a student explain the process of solving a problem to a more capable peer. These levels vary with the amount of support given to a student, from which the teacher can determine at what level the students function. ZPD must be consistently monitored as instruction continues and the students are gradually given a smaller amount of support as they become more independent thinkers.5
Teacher-Student Relationship
Teachers should work as facilitators to connect the curriculum of the classroom to the prior knowledge of the students. If students are not connected to the class or to the teacher, the structure of the class does not work and students will disengage from the class. Students must see their “instructor as the rule makers and curricula planners. To develop curricula, teachers must find middle ground between their decisions toward curricula development and individual student interests. Vygotsky implicitly corroborates this concept since he espouses that enculturation requires active social participation in and out of school.”7 The teachers must learn to develop strong relationships with their students, determining what should be taught and finding a balance with the students’ interests. Students learn from the social interaction and their experience of learning with the teachers, so teachers should act as models as how to problem solve and perform tasks. The child learns to master their own behavior by observing and mimicking the behavior of adults.7
Application of Vygotsky
Language Arts:
One challenge that teachers face is the rising diversity of cultures within the classrooms of today. Children have a certain way of learning that they have developed since their birth, but schools have a certain culture themselves that may be different from the cultures with which students come. Teachers must create a culture within the classroom where students feel accepted in their own cultures and where they may take risks to learn. Speaking would be one example of this where, many times, students feel shy or ashamed to speak in class. This may occur especially when they may be providing an idea or thought that may be incorrectly or they may speak with some accent that is different from the majority of the class. As a result, many of these students shut down and disengage from the class, especially because they feel like they are inferior to the rest of the students in some way. “ ‘Education that concerns people of difference, wrote Vygotsky (1993), “must cope not so much with these biological factors as with their social consequences’ (p. 66; emphasis in original). This emphasis suggests that people should know how to treat others respectfully in order to promote feelings of inclusion that enable them to become productive members of society.”2 In applying Vygotsky’s principles, Peter Smagorinsky suggests to combat feelings of inferiority is to have students learn and discuss empathy. He suggests identifying a conflict within members of the community and to have students role-play people within those conflicts, paying attention to the different points of view. The goal of the role-play is for students to see the wide range of perspectives within the conflict. Smagorinsky extends the activity to have students write a narrative about a conflict that they were involved in and to discuss the varying points of view between the conflicting groups. In addition, being in a language arts class, students can discuss conflicts within different stories and the differences in the perspectives between each character.
Mathematics:
Vygotsky’s principles in childhood learning also has applications in mathematics education. Vasily Davydov developed a math curriculum that focused more on students being able to construct an understanding of mathematics, instead of the rote practice of specific skills. Schmittau presents,
“The mathematics curriculum created by V.V. Davydov and his colleagues, and grounded in Vygotskian theory, consists of a series of carefully sequenced problems that require progressively more powerful insights and methods for their solution. Such a curriculum is initially mystifying to US teachers, who are accustomed to a didactic textbook presentation in the form of a written lecture interspersed with sets of exercises. Moreover, Davydov's approach is virtually the antithesis of the scattered US curriculum, both in its coherence and in its intense focus on the theoretical understanding of the real number system, which he identifies as the central subject matter of school mathematics.”3
One application of Vygotsky’s theories within Davydov’s curriculum is in dealing with the teaching of calculations without the use of a calculator. Many times, students will struggle with basic calculations and will heavily rely on the calculator, even to do simple, single-step operations. Traditionally, students will just practice these operations repetitively until they are committed to memory, but Davydov has students investigate the algorithmic nature of these operations in order to better understand their meaning. He builds on the students’ abilities to construct parts together to create a whole. Taking the calculator away requires teachers and students to work together to build a stronger understanding of what addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are. An example of this would be multiplying two or more digit numbers. Davydov applies the idea of the distributive property where one digit is being multiplied by the sum of the individual place values. Twenty-five times eight is going to be the sum of twenty times eight and five times eight, where the eight is be distributed to each place value of twenty-five. A more visual example of student work and applying this level of understanding can be seen below3:
Science:
Additionally, there are applications of Vygotsky’s theories within the field of science education. Important to the roles of being a science teacher includes being an observer, judge for students’ work, and helper for students to investigate their interests; however, this is not enough. Within a Vygotskian type science classroom, teachers must also be mindful of the type of instructional tasks that students are exposed to so as to grow the students to be more capable and independent thinkers. There is some reliance on the student to use their interests to guide the curriculum, but more so the teacher is there to pose problems and guide students to understand concepts and tasks in order to solve those problems. The student interest comes when the problem is posed and students are thinking about what they do not quite understand and what they need to understand in order to analyze and solve problems. The teacher repeats this process of posing problems, developing questions, understanding what is known and unknown, and determining what can be done to learn what is needed to solve the problem. With each iteration of this process, the teacher releases more responsibility onto the student, allowing students to better know how to investigate and learn so as to become more independent thinkers in a science class.4
Special Education:
One of Vygotsky’s tenets is that students are capable learners given enough scaffolding and support for them to achieve success on a given task. This tenet applies especially within the field of special education, where students may have a disability that delays their learning. With an ever more reliance on IQ tests to determine a student’s ability level, Vygotsky speaks to having diverse learners face dynamic assessments (DA) instead.
“DA is an interactive procedure that follows a test-intervene-retest format focusing on the cognitive processes and metacognitive characteristics of a child. Through an analysis of a child’s pretest and posttest performance following test-embedded intervention, an evaluator can derive important information about the child’s cognitive modifiability, his or her responsiveness to an adult’s mediation, and his or her amenability to instruction and guidance. Therefore, the DA provides information that is not readily available through standardized testing but is crucial for effective remediation, which is the ultimate goal of this assessment.”6
By having students with disabilities face DA instead of IQ tests or other standardized tests, teachers are able to effectively find the students’ abilities with a pretest and therefore apply appropriate interventions and scaffolding to get students to learn the material or perform the task. After the intervention, teachers assess students’ understanding with a posttest, where the student will show independence in functioning or not. If the student does not meet the goal or standard, teachers can then remediate and be able to provide additional guidance so bring that student to success.
A second way that Vygotsky’s theories are applied to Special Education is with inclusion that is applied to provides placements of students with disabilities into classrooms that are their least restrictive environment (LRE). Vygotsky was one that argued against the policies of separate settings that he saw in his home country and criticized the education system to be a “negative model of special education as a combination of lowered expectations, a watered-down curriculum, and social isolation.”6 He strongly believed that special education should not be a substandard version of general education, but that there should be teachers that are trained to be experts to teach students with disabilities in the general education setting. Within this setting, he believed that these students should be provided modified and alternative methods of communication, differentiated curriculum, technological aids, and increased time to learn.
References:
1) Gauvain, Mary. Cole, Michael. Readings on the Development of Children, 4th Edition. Worth Publishers. Pg 34-36 New York. 2005.
2) Smagorinsky, Peter. “What Does Vygotsky provide for 21st-Century Language Arts Teacher?” Language Arts, Volume 90 Number 3, Pgs 192-204. January 2013.
3) Schmittau, Jean. “Vygotskian theory and mathematics education: Resolving the conceptual-procedural dichotomy”. European Journal of Psychology of Education. Volume 19. State University of New York at Birmingham, 2004.
4) Kirsch, Susan. “Integrating Vygotsky’s theory of relational ontology into early childhood science education”. Cultural Studies of Science Education. Volume 9. Pg 243-254. Springer Science+Business Media. October 2013.
5) Gredler, Margaret. “Understanding Vygotsky for the Classroom: Is It Too Late?” Education Psychology Review. Volume 24. Pg 113-131. Springer Science+Business Media. October 2011
6) Gindis, Boris. “Vygotsky’s Vision Reshaping the Practice of Special Education for the 21st Century”. Remedial and Special Education. Volume 20, No 6. Pg 333-340.November/December 1999.
7) Jaramillo, James. “Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory and Contributions to the Development of Constructivist curricula”. Arizona State University. Education. Volume 117 No 1. 1996