Lev Vygotsky's Theories of Education

By Robin Duncan
Student, University of North Carolina at Pembroke

        Considerable attention has been placed on Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist.  Vygotsky,
was born 5 November, 1896 and he died in 1934, but his theories received no recognition until
recently.  Vygotsky's was an educator and philologist before becoming a psychologist.  He
studied literature, worked with physically and mentally challenged children and taught psychology
and teacher education at the university and even pursed medicine.  His teachings have been used to
support the idea of inclusion for students with severe learning disabilities and behavior problems.
He insisted that there should be a learning environment that would provide all students with
successful alternatives for communicating and development.  He felt strongly that including
disabled students into the social/cultural life of their classroom was the social influences on
cognitive development.  Rather than examining learning from the perspective of an individual
learner as most psychologists did, Vygotsky examined the social content in which learning happens:
hence his interest in the social influence on learning.
        Vygotsky  was tutored by Solomon Asphize.  His experience with Asphize is perhaps what
brought on his idea best known as the zone of proximal development of ZPD.  Vygotsky held
that each individual has an actual level of development and a potential level of development.
Vygotsky called it the area between the actual and potential development the zone of proximal
development.  He stated that cognitive growth would be most enhanced when individuals were
working in this zone of proximal development.  According to Lefrancios, (1944) "three underlying
themes unify Vygotsky's rather complex and far reaching theory."  The first one is the importance of
culture, the second theme is the central role of language, and the third and one of the most important
is the zone of proximal development."
        According to Vygotsky children learn better while working in their ZPDs with a more
advanced and capable person, the teacher.  This defines the fertile ground for the teaching-learning
process as the difference between what a child can do alone and what he or she can do with the
assistance of a another.  He also felt that children learn little from performing tasks they can do
independently.  A skilled teacher can help students progress through their zones of proximal
development by using group discussion, modeling, and tutoring. Working in this manner, teachers
can promote cognitive development rather than just waiting for it to occur naturally on its own.
"Experience has shown that the child with the larger zone of proximal development will so much
better in school." (Hanfmann, 1962)  For example, two five year old children, who can both under
normal circumstances, answer question that other average five year olds can also answer.  Their mental
ages might be said to correspond to their chronological ages, and their intelligence would be described
as average. But if, when prompted, one of these children could successfully answer questions corresponding
to a mental age of but the other could not, it would be accurate to say that the first child's zone of proximal
development growth is greater than the other's (that is, it spans a wider range of higher functions).
(Lefrancois 1994)
        Vygotsky also felt that  the child is able to take the basic cultural ideas and determine his/her
own ideas through language as a tool.  The child is a determiner not determined.  Vygotsky
emphasized the cultural line of development because of social determination of mental activity
(Blanck, 1990).
        There are many successful teaching strategies that have been developed from the theories if
Vygotsky.  Tools of the Mind is one of those theories.  It is mot just a method for teacher reading
and writing, but a body of teaching and earning practices that enables children to become self
regulating, self directed learners.  As a result, teachers spend less time on outstanding initial successes
even in high risk and bilingual schools.

The Setting of Learning Goals

        Tools of the Mind is designed to help children become self regulated, self directed learners.
Several verbal and written techniques are used to help children think about the way they learn
about ways to improve their learning.  One strategy the teacher can use is setting learning goals in
collaboration the students.  The teacher and the student will decide together what skill or behavior
the student need to work on.  The goal set by the student and teacher is recorded and it is the
student's responsibility to keep track of the goal during the week.  The teacher and student also
decide on ways that the teacher and fellow students can help the student to reach the goal.
The goal set should be challenging but not frustrating.  Proper trained teachers can provide
different ways of support to allow the students to use the tools and strategies to attain the
behaviors themselves.  The purpose of the support is to prepare the child to manage independently.

Scaffolded Learning

        Scaffolding, the learning process that has been proven effective in problem solving,  is one
of those tools.  Vygotsky viewed learning as a mediated process, that is filtered and tempered
by tools, signs and symbols of the context or culture used in interaction with more skilled other
person or persons.(Blanck1990)   Scaffolding is one Vygotskyean technique that is being applied
by using mediators to "scaffold" the learning of writing and reading.  A mediator is a tool the child
uses to facilitate a difficult activity such as writing. For example, drawing lines of different length
with a color marker can help a child learn to write words of different length.  Eventually the child
is able to perform the task without using a mediator and the scaffolding is removed.  Scaffolding of
subject matter within the zone of proximal development supports the student's evolving understanding.
It can also come from instructional practices such as graphic organizers, mnemonic devices, guided
practice, tactile manipulatives, peer modeling, adult modeling, pictures, self talk, etc.  Some of the
signs of successful scaffolding are modeling out loud; the pairing of advanced learners with developing
learners; providing prompts, links guides and structures; fading when appropriate.  Vygotsky saw
instruction as a facilitator of cognitive development.  "What a child can do with assistance today she
will be able to do by herself tomorrow"(Vygotsky 1978:p87).  He also argued that play leads to
development and teachers should provide children with the opportunity to play.  He felt that trough
play and imagination a child's conceptual abilities are stretched.  In their games they can recollect and
reenact real situations and by using their imaginations and recognizing rules governing the activities
they have reproduced in their games, children will achieve and elementary mastery of abstract thought.
        Constructivism supports the use of scaffolding as an instructional strategy.  It was developed
to help children with cognitive task management.  To a constructivist, scaffolding is part of and overall
learning environment that helps children to make their own choices about their environment.  Some
commentators believe that Vygotsky was not a constructivist because of his emphasis in the social
context learning, but others see his stress in children creating their own concepts as constructivist to the
core.

Classroom Learning Plans and Menus

        According to Vygotsky's Tools of the Mind approach, observing the regulations of others
and regulating ones own behavior  brings about self regulation.  The Classroom Learning Plans
or  Learning Menus provide students with tools for planning, monitoring and evaluating their own
activities, which will help the student move from guided learning to independent learning.  The
Learning Menu helps the child take responsibility for classroom tasks by supporting the child's
memory and providing reminders of what is supposed to be accomplish such as rules and
expectation of work in the classroom.  A student will use the menu with a fellow student who
will check to make sure that the work assigned has been completed. The Learning Plan allows
children to work together when something is unclear instead of viewing the teacher and the
only source of assistance.  Under the Learning Plans and Menus, teachers are taught to break
assignments into feasible segments, make the assignments meaningful to the students, and how
to identify what the students partner of buddy should do.  Within this Vygotskyean framework
researchers have focused their attention upon the processes of collaboration rather upon conflict,
arguing that "for interaction to be effective children have to work toward accomplishing joint
goals"(Tudge, 1990).

Social Development Theory

        Social interaction and the fact that it plays major role in the development of cognition is the
theme of Vygotsky's theoretical framework.  Vygotsky (1978) states: "Every function in the child's
cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first
between people (inter psychological) and then inside the child (intra- psychological).  This applies
equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts.  All the higher
functions originate as actual relationships between individuals."(p57).  Vygotsky's sociocultural
theory is recognized as a practical theory of learning and teaching.  He felt that children are
socialized into learning and the tools handed down from generation to generation are what makes
learning possible.  Through socialization, children learn to think and do in ways that are relevant
to their culture.  Internalismis an important concept in Vygotsky's research and is the process
through which the internal stage of consciousness is formed.

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