Vygotsky: Theory of Cognitive Development Flashcards
When and where was Vygotsky from?
1920’s/30’s Russia.
What is a major difference between Vygotsky and Piaget’s work?
Vygotsky saw cognition development as a social process of learning from more experienced others (‘experts’) and saw language as a much more important part of development.
How does Vygotsky account for cultural development?
As learning is a social process , it follows that the child will have the reasoning abilities of the culture they are in eg picking up the tools from their environment.
What is the Zone of Proximal Development?
The gap between a child’s current level of development (defined by by unaided cognitive tasks) and their potential with the help from an expert.
What is scaffolding?
The process of helping a learner across the zone of proximal development that typically declines as the learner crosses the zone.
What are the five general ways that Wood, Bruner and Ross said scaffolding can happen?
Recruitment Reduction of degrees of freedom Direction Maintenance Marking critical features Demonstration
What support is there for ZPD?
Roazzi and Bryant gave 4-5 year olds the task of counting how many sweets there were in a box Children who worked alone struggled however children who had an older ‘expert’ to guide them got closer to the estimate.
Discuss Vygotsky’s application to education.
Social interaction through group work, peer mentoring and TA’s has been use to scaffold children and help them cross the ZPD.
