Vygotsky's Developmental Theory: An Introduction Flashcards
According to the theories of Vygotsky, what is necessary to evaluate classified behaviour?
The level of their independent performance and from seeing how they use help
What are the four major ideas of Vygotsky’s theory of learning and development?
1) Children construct knowledge
2) Learning can lead to development
3) Development cannot be separated from its social context
4) Language plays a central role in mental development
What are the key ideas for “children construct knowledge?”
- They do not passively reproduce what is presented to them
- Learning is much more than mirroring
- It always involves the learners creating their own representations of new information
- Knowledge is not so much constructed as co-constructed
- Learning always involves more than one human
What did the block test that Vygotsky develop test for?
How children develop the ability to discover categories
What is the opposing position to constructivism?
Behaviourism
What do behaviourists believe?
That there is no structural distinction between learning and development
What is not accounted for by the accumulation of facts or skills?
Qualitative changes in thought
How did Vygotsky differ from Piaget in believing that learning can lead to development?
Vygotsky envisioned a more complex relationship between development and learning than either the young Piaget or the elderly Pavlov had conceived
What belief were Vygotsky and Piaget in agreement with?
That there were maturational prerequisites for certain learning
What did Vygotsky argue in opposition to Piaget’s early writing?
Learning impacts development
What did Vygotsky give great value to?
Assisting children to use strategies to further their intellecular capacities
What is assisted performance?
The higher level, which the child is currently capable of attaining only with help
What is the zone of proximal development?
The area between the level of independent performance and the level of assisted performance
- Not all the assistance used by the child needs to be intentionally provided by an adult
What social interactions did Vygotsky believe contributed to performing at a higher level?
Interaction with peers as equals, with imaginary partners, or with children at other developmental levels
Why is the zone of development not static?
It shifts as a child progressively attains the higher level
- With each shift, the child is capable of learning more complex concepts and skills (obviously there are concepts and skills beyond a child’s current zone of proximal development)
What are the important implications for early childhood education with regard to the zone of proximal development?
Directions - What you want to do
1) Causes educators to rethink how we intervene
2) How we assess children
3) Causes us to rethink what is developmentally appropriate
What is a developmentally appropriate practice defined by?
The child’s repertoire of fully developed skills and concepts
What is the most effective teaching aimed at? How should it be provided by teachers?
The higher level of the child’s zone of proximal development, not at the lower
- Provide activities that are just beyond what a child can do on their own, but within what she can do with assistance
Intervening more actively with the learning of children does what?
Gives children better tools with which to express themselves - doesn’t seem to block creativity
What is the most pervasive Vygotsky tenet?
That development cannot be separated from its social context
What does the social context influence?
- More than just attitudes and beliefs
- Has profound influence on how we think as well as what we think
Why is Western logic not universal?
Other cultures have ways of classifying and describing experiences that differ from ours, but that are appropriate to their environments
What two levels of mental functioning did Vygotsky believe there to be?
Lower and higher mental functions which consist of abilities like reactive attention, reacting to a loud noise or bright coloured objects
What kinds of functions are associative memory and sensory-motor thought?
Innate
Describe higher mental processes.
- Unique to humans
- Passed down through generations by teaching and learning
- Form varies from culture to culture
- Through the passing of cultural tools, such functions as focused attention, the ability to concentrate in spite of distractions, deliberate memory, the ability to remember on purpose
According to Vygotsky, what is the whole history of human culture based on?
The development of mental tools, primitive external ones to complex ones
Why does language play a central role in mental development?
- Language is both the transmitter of these cultural tools and the most important to them
- Language is a mechanism for thinking, the most important mental tool
What is information?
The means by which information is passed from one generation to another
What does learning always involve?
External experience being transformed into internal processes through the mediation of language
What was the aim of Vygotsky’s educational practices?
- To develop an independent, self-regulating individual who could work with others to use the lessons of the past to push the envelope to the present
- Expand the ways teachers can guide and influence a child’s active learning
What can Vygotsky’s analysis of learning enable?
Children to master their own behaviour, and to foster what Vygotsky called “rousing minds to life”
