Vygotsky

Question 1

Who was Vygotsky heavily influenced by?

Answer 1

Karl Marx

Question 2

What are the four infant elementary functions that they are born with?

Answer 2

1. Attention
2. Sensation
3. Perception
4. Memory

Question 3

How do they come higher mental functions?

Answer 3

Through interaction with other people, the environment and language

Question 4

What are the key elements of Vygotsky’s theory?

Answer 4

• The importance of socio-culture
• Inner speech
• Instruction at the heart of learning

Question 5

How does socio-culture influence play?

Answer 5

Socio-culture determines the type of practical activity we engage in, as children often imitate in play.
One big difference between cultural groups is that Guatemalan children imitated adult work in their play more than American children

Question 6

How does socio-culture influence problem solving?

Answer 6

Socio-culture influences how familiar we are with thinking and reasoning about certain problems or topics
Liberian people are better at estimating quantities of rice, than length in general compared to US people.

Question 7

How does socio-culture influence language?

Answer 7

It determines the language we speak and subtle differences in language can lead to noticeable differences in cognition
Some languages don’t have words for quantities larger than 5, which can influence numerical skills.

Question 8

What did Vygotsky describe self-speech as?

Answer 8

A transition from language as a tool for communicating to language as a tool for thought
It is essential for children’s cognitive development
These monologues become internalised at around 7 years to become inner speech

Question 9

What evidence is there for self-speech?

Answer 9

Children engage in more self-speech if a task is challenging

Children who use self-speech when facing challenging tasks are more attentive and perform better than quiet children

Question 10

What is the zone of proximal development?

Answer 10

the 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

Question 11

What is scaffolding?

Answer 11

An idea to describe how 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

Question 12

How can people assist children using scaffolding?

Answer 12

By:

• Modelling an action
• Suggesting a strategy to solve a problem
• Restructuring it into parts that are more manageable

Question 13

What is the evidence that supports scaffolding?

Answer 13

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

Question 14

What are the 5 important aspects of scaffolding?

Answer 14

1. Recruitment - need to engage a child’s interest
2. Reduction in degrees of freedom - reduce number of acts that are needed to arrive at a solution
3. Direction maintenance - maintain a child’s motivation
4. Marking critical features
5. Demonstration - model the solution or parts of the task to stimulate the learner to imitate this

Question 15

What is a typical “Vygotskian” classroom?

Answer 15

• Structured learning activities
• Helpful hints carefully tailored to the child’s current abilities
• Monitoring the learners progress
• Collaborative learning exercises where the students assist each other

Question 16

Why does collaborative learning help?

Answer 16

Motivation is enhanced
Cooperative learning means the child has to explain their ideas which requires them to examine and articulate them clearly
It also increases self-speech
But peers need to be competent and modify their behaviour for any less skilled peers otherwise it is no more effective than working alone

Question 17

How are improvements from group learning linked to poor memory?

Answer 17

Many 5 year olds in collaborative conditions later incorrectly think that they made certain actions/decisions and make attribution errors
This led to greater learning, children that made attribution errors had greater memory

Question 18

Outline similarities between Piaget and Vygotsky

Answer 18

They agreed that children are active learners and believed that interaction with the world is important for development
They were both constructivists

Question 19

Outline differences between Piaget and Vygotsky

Answer 19

For Piaget - all about the child and their own efforts to understand their world
For Vygotsky - takes place in their social world and between the child and other people
Vygotsky’s stages are more flexible and continuous compared to PIaget’s
Interaction is necessary for Vygotsky but not for Piaget
Self-speech for Piaget means the child is self-centred but Vygotsky sees it as a transition