Lecture 3: Vygotsky Flashcards
Learning Objectives:
Part 1: Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory of cognitive development.
Part 2: The role of inner speech.
Part 3: The zone of proximal development, scaffolding and applications in education.
Part 4: Comparisons with Piaget’s theory.
- Explain how socio-culture influences development.
- Explain why inner speech plays an important role in development.
- Describe what the zone of proximal development and scaffolding are and how they apply to education.
- Be able to compare and contrast Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories of development.
What functions are infants born with?
Infants are born with several functions:
- attention
- sensation
- perception
- memory
It is through their interaction with other people and their environment (socio-culture) and language that they become higher mental functions.
Brief overview of the theory
Several points underpin vygotsky’s theory…
- The importance of socio-culture: Vygotsky thought that how we think is a function of the social + cultural world we grow up in. Cognitive skills develop to handle the tasks and problems for their surroundings.
- Inner Speech plays a crucial role in promoting cognitive development.
- Instruction at the heart of learning: Cognitive development occurs in situations where a child’s problem solving is guided by an adult (scaffolding)
What is socio-culture?
Culture - broad term used to describe customs, beliefs and habits of particular people at a particular time and their collective intellectual, material, scientific and artistic achievements over historical time.
Socioculture - brings together both how society and the social world of a child (parents, family, wider community and government) and the culture in the child’s world at that time may impact a child’s development
How does socio-culture influence a child’s cognitive development?
Play
Play - Socio-culture determines the type of practical activity we engage in and the things we learn. Because children often imitate in play, this will affect the type of play-based activities children engage in.
Study: Morelli et al (2003) observed toddlers in three different communities:
- American communities
- The Efe people – foragers in the Democratic Republic of The Congo
- An indigenous Mayan group from San Pedro, Guatemala
One big difference between the groups was that the Efe and San Pedro children imitated adult work in their play more so than the American children.
How does socio-culture influence a child’s cognitive development?
Problem solving 1
Socio-culture determines the type of practical activity we engage in and the things we learn. Therefore, it influences how familiar we are with thinking and reasoning about certain problems or topics.
Example 1: The Kpelle people of Liberia are not as good as US participants at estimating length, but are better at estimating quantities of rice, which is a daily activity for them
Example 2: . Luria (1979) studied two groups of farmers in Uzbekistan. One group were traditional farmers living in small villages; the other group were farmers living in larger communities who had some formal schooling due to Marxist reforms. Luria showed them four pictures and asked the farmers to pick the 3 that went together:
- Saw
- Log
- Shovel
- Axe
- Those with formal schooling put the tools together - thinking in terms of an abstract tool category
- Those without schooling put the wood/ saw and axe together thininking in terms of practical situations
The Cave Problem
A treasure hunter is going to explore a cave near a beach. He suspected there might be many paths inside the cave so he was afraid that he might get lost. Obviously, he did not have a map of the cave; all that he had with him were some common items such as a flashlight and a bag. What could he do to make sure he did not get lost trying to get back out of the cave later?
Please write down any ways in which the treasure hunter might be able to get out safely. Write down any ideas that you think might be appropriate. Any idea is valid.
–> A hansel and gretel solution would be culturally specific!
Example 3: Chinese and US students were tested on two problems. One required a solution analogous to the strategy of leaving a trail to follow home as in the popular Western tale ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ The US students were better at solving this problem.
In the second problem, the solution was analogous to one in a popular Chinese tale ‘the elephant tale’. The Chinese students were better at thinking of ways to solve that problem.
How does socio-culture influence a child’s cognitive development?
Language
Socio-culture determines the language we speak, and subtle differences in language can lead to noticeable differences in cognition.
Example 1:
In two Amazonian languages there are no number words for quantities larger than 5. As a result, individuals from this culture can only solve maths problems easily when working with numbers less than 5 (Gordon, 2004).
Interestingly, if children from this culture learn a language with words for numbers above 5 (e.g., Portuguese) they become better at solving maths problems with numbers above 5. This supports the idea that language can influence numerical skills.
Example 2: In English, when expressing numbers between 21 and 99 the decade is said first and then the units (e.g., 47 is “forty-seven”).
Some languages do this the opposite way around e.g., in German, 47 would be siebenundvierzig which is “seven-forty.”
Because of this, often German speaking children have problems learning to convert spoken numbers for example writing 74 instead of 47 (Zuber et al., 2009).
Self Speech
Vygotsky regarded self-speech as a transition from language as a tool for communicating to language as a tool for thought. Thus, self-speech is essential for children’s cognitive development.
- Children’s behaviour is first controlled by adults instructions
- Then in private speech said out loud
- Then these monologues become internalised at around 7 years to become inner speech (which becomes thought).
Transition between 2nd and 3rd stages often includes whispering
Evidence for self-speech:
+ Berk (1992): Children engage in more self-speech if a task is challenging, if they are making mistakes or if they are confused about what to do.
+ Behrend et al. (1992): Children who use speech when facing challenging tasks are more attentive and perform better on cognitive tasks than “quiet“ children.
Scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development
Children‘s cognition improves through interacting with other people, especially those who are more experienced or knowledgeable than them.
ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT:
Refers to the potential increase in development that a child can reach through assistance by a more competent person compared to the development without this help.
Vygotsky thought that children learn best when they are in this zone.
Example: Learning to walk
- Can learn to walk better when assisted vs when trying alone
SCAFFOLDING:
Jerome Bruner developed the idea based on the theory of the ZoPD. Bruner introduced the idea of scaffolding (1983) - describes how children’s learning is enhanced when a competent person provides a framework that supports children’s thinking at a higher level than they could manage by themselves. This is then adjusted as the child becomes more capable.
ZoPD /= Scaffolding - Scaffolding is specific guidance or practice occurring in the zone of proximal development
How does scaffolding work? Use an example
Who scaffolds? Parents, teachers or more capable peer.
They assist the child by:
- modelling an action
- suggesting strategies to solve problem
- by restructuring problem into parts that are more manageable
Wood et al., (1976) proposed 5 important aspects of scaffolding:
- Recruitment: you need to engage a child‘s interest.
- Reduction of degrees of freedom: you should reduce the number of acts that are needed to arrive at a solution.
- Direction maintenance: you need to maintain a child‘s motivation.
- Marking critical features: you should highlight important features.
- Demonstration: you should model the solution or parts of the task to stimulate the learner to imitate this.
Counting example:
- An adult can recruit a child by letting her count how many biscuits she is allowed to eat.
- Degrees of freedom can be reduced by letting the child count only the biscuits from one tray.
- Direction can be maintained by reminding the child they get to eat more biscuits the more they can count.
- For Critical features, the parent could point out that the child just mentioned 4, so the next number shouldn’t be 6.
- Demonstration can take place by counting the first 2 numbers while the child feels confident in counting to 3.
Evidence that scaffolding is helpful for children…
Parental scaffolding can have a positive impact on a child’s development.
- Parents who provide a supportive learning environment have children who generate more private speech and are therefore more successful than children with a less supportive environment (Behrend et al., 1992).
- Parental scaffolding while children did a jigsaw puzzle predicted preschoolers academic attainment one year later because it supported the development of high level cognitive skills such as working memory (Devine, Bignardi & Hughes, 2016).
Implications of scaffolding in education…
- Computers can also help scaffold learning
- Computers can be useful “partners“ that provide feedback, structured guidance, and access to factual knowledge.
- A computer can enable productive peer tutoring through sharing knowledge, exchanging competencies and offering emotional support (van Rosmalen et al., 2007)
- A typical “vygoskian’ classroom
- structured learning activities
- hints tailored to the child’s current abilities.
- monitoring the learners progress and gradually turning over the mental activity to the learner
- collaborative learning exercises where students assist each other.
DO these educational methods of scaffolding help?
Freund (1995) had 3- to 5-year-olds help a puppet decide which furnishings (e.g., sofas, beds, sinks) they should put in rooms of a dollhouse the puppet was moving to.
They then worked on a similar task either:
- Alone with corrective feedback from an experimenter OR
- With their mother through guided learning.
They 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 that worked alone.
WHY do these educational methods of scaffolding help?
Motivation is enhanced when working with another person (Johnson & Johnson, 1989).
Cooperative learning means the child has to explain their ideas, persuade and resolve conflicts – all of which require them to examine their ideas and articulate them clearly.
Collaborative learning also increases self-speech which supports learning (Teasley, 1995).
…. However, peers need to be competent and modify their behaviour for any less skilled peers (i.e., scaffold). If not, collaborative learning is no more effective than working alone (Tudge, 1992).
Improvements from group learning can be linked to poor memory…
Ratner, Foley & Gimpert (2002) got 5-year-olds to do the collaborative doll house exercise.
They found that many 5-year-olds in the collaborative condition incorrectly later thought that they had made certain actions or decisions when in fact it was the adult!
- they made attribution errors.
Interestingly, this led to greater learning: the children that did make attribution errors had greater memory for the location of the furniture in the rooms.
So collaboration = greater learning because young children’s poor memory leads them to make attribution errors (I.e. I did that, so I can do it again… when in the first instance it was their mother)
