socio-cultural theory

1. EARLY ATTEMPTS IN
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY:
“VYGOTSKY”
M2 TESOL

2. Outline
I. Educational Psychology (1920-1960) : Preamble
II. Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky : "Mozart" of his age
a) Biographic entries : Life and scientific legacy
b) Vygotsky's Career and Theories
c) Evaluation
III. Strategies for Applying Vygotsky’s Theory to Children’s Education
a) The impact of Vygotsky’s views on education
b) Applying Vygotsky’s theory in class

3. I. EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
(1920-1960)
PREAMBLE

4. The field : Novice Directions
 The field of educational psychology was founded by several pioneers in psychology
in the late nineteenth century. Three pioneers—William James, John Dewey, and E.
L. Thorndike—stand out in the early history of educational psychology.
 At the dawn of the 1920s, educational psychologists were beginning to make
substantial contributions to the scientific development of curriculum and
instructional methods in American schools.
 By 1920 educational psychology had nearly 30 years of development as a subarea
of psychology.
 NB: Educational psychology draws much of its knowledge from broader theory and
research in psychology (Bonney & Sternberg, 2011; Danielson, 2010).
 Educational psychologists also recognize that teaching sometimes must depart from
scientific recipes, requiring improvisation and spontaneity (Borich, 2011; Parkay &
Stanford, 2010).

5. LEV SEMYONOVICH VYGOTSKY:
"MOZART" OF HIS AGE

6. OVERVIEW OF VYGOTSKY'S LIFE
 Lev Vygotsky was born in Orsha, a city in the western region of the Russian Empire.
 He attended Moscow State University, where he graduated with a degree in law in 1917.
 By the early 1920s he changed his Jewish-sounding birth name, Lev Símkhovich Výgodskiy
(Russian: Лев Си́мхович Вы́годский), with the surname becoming “Vygótskiy” and the patronymic
”Símkhovich” becoming the more Slavic “Semyónovich”.
 Vygotsky returned to Gomel' in 1917, just prior to the Russian Revolution, and for the next few years had
to deal with the problems of German occupation, Civil War, and famine. During this period, two of his
brothers died from tuberculosis and typhoid. (There is virtually no information about his life during the
years of the German occupation and the Civil War until the Bolsheviks captured the town in 1919)
Vygotsky himself, in 1920, also fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, the disease that would eventually
kill him.
He taught literature and psychology, and also edited a literary journal, wrote literary criticism, and
published theatre reviews.
 In January 1924, Vygotsky took part in the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress
in Leningrad . Vygotsky presented three papers at the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Psychoneurology,
including "The Methods of Reflexological and Psychological Investigation. Soon thereafter, Vygotsky
received an invitation to become a research fellow at Kornilov's Institute of Experimental Psychology in
Moscow.
(1896-1934)

7. Vygotsky participated in establishing
the “Institute of Defektology”
By the end of the decade (1920-1930),
however, Vygotsky was developing his
cultural-historical theory, and his
position on children who experienced
mental and physical difficulties
changed accordingly.
By the end of his life Vygotsky was
again focusing more on educational
psychology, it is clear that Vygotsky
was dissatisfied with reflexological
views that separated mind and body
and consistently attempted to create a
new psychology that would overcome
this dualism

8. "Vygotskian" scientific legacy
 Vygotsky was a pioneering psychologist and his major works span six separate volumes, written over
roughly 10 years, from Educational Psychology (1926) to Thought and Language [or Thinking and
Speech] (1934).
 His scientific thinking underwent several major transformations throughout his career, but generally
Vygotsky's legacy can be divided into two fairly distinct periods These are the mechanistic "instrumental"
period of the 1920s, integrative "holistic" period of the 1930s:
 In 1930s Vygotsky was engaged in massive reconstruction of his theory of his "instrumental" period of
the 1920s (Self-criticism). Specifically, Vygotsky criticized his earlier idea of radical separation between
the "lower" and "higher" psychological functions, impracticality and inapplicability of his theory in social
practices (such as industry or education) during the time of rapid social change, and vulgar Marxist
interpretation of human psychological processes and, around 1932, appears to abandon it. Critics also
pointed to his overemphasis on the role of language and, on the other hand, the ignorance of the
emotional factors in human development.
 During this period Vygotsky was under particularly strong influence of holistic theories of German-
American group of proponents of Gestalt psychology. .Vygotsky introduced the notion of zone of
proximal development, a metaphor capable of describing the potential of human cognitive development.
Perhaps Vygotsky's most important contribution concerns the inter-relationship of language development
and thought. This problem was explored in Vygotsky's book Thinking and speech.
Vygotsky never saw the book published: it was published posthumously, edited by his closest
associates.

9. Vygotsky's Career and Theories: the Need of its Own “Das
“Kapital
• Lev Vygotsky was a prolific writer, publishing six books on psychology topics over a
ten-year period. His interests were quite diverse but often cantered on issues of
child development and education specifically during the post-Revolutionary zeal to
create new ways of doing things, transform ideas on education, and develop a "new"
psychology that would be based on Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialism.
• The Russian Revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union were both a blessing
and a curse for Vygotsky*
As Vygotsky wrote in Educational Psychology (1926): "Psychology is in need of its own
Das Kapital—its own concepts of class, basis, value, etc.“ (Educational Psychology was
written while Vygotsky was still very much influenced by stimulus-response approaches
to psychology, and drew heavily on the concept of conditional reflexes, as developed by
Pavlov and Bekhterev)

10. Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory and Child’s Cognitive
Development
• Sociocultural theory grew from the work of seminal psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who
believed that parents, caregivers, peers, and the culture at large were responsible for
developing higher order functions.
• Lev Vygotsky also suggested that human development results from a dynamic
interaction between individuals and society.
• NB: Vygotsky was a contemporary of other great thinkers such as Freud, Skinner, and Piaget :
some traces and influences are more-and-less noticeable.

11. “ EVERY FUNCTION IN THE CHILD’S CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
APPEARS TWICE: FIRST, ON THE SOCIAL LEVEL, AND LATTER, ON
THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL; FIRST BETWEEN PEOPLE (INTER-
PSYCHOLOGICAL) AND THEN INSIDE THE CHILD (INTRA-
PSYCHOLOGICAL) ”
• In short, Sociocultural theory focuses not only how adults and
peers influence individual learning, but also on how cultural
beliefs and attitudes impact, how instruction and learning take
place.
Cultural-Historical
Factors
Individual Factors
Interpersonal
Factors

12. The Academic Reception and the Imperfection of Translation
 the complexity of Vygotsky's theory has been for the most part ignored in favor of a reliance on a
single concept, the zone of proximal development. Moreover, the concept itself has too often been
viewed in a rather limited way that emphasizes the interpersonal at the expense of the individual
and cultural-historical levels and treats the concept in an unidirectional fashion.
 Non-relatedness with “Scaffolding” : As if the concept were synonymous with "scaffolding," too
many authors have focused on the role of the more competent other, particularly the teacher,
whose role is to provide assistance just in advance of the child's current thinking. The concept thus
has become equated with what sensitive teachers might do with their children and has lost much of
the complexity with which it was imbued by Vygotsky, missing both what the child brings to the
interaction and the broader setting (cultural and historical) in which the interaction takes place.
 The Russian term obuchenie has been translated by different translators as instruction, teaching,
or learning, whereas in fact the word connotes both teaching and learning.
 For example, the Plenum version of Thinking and Speech (1987) translated obuchenie as
"instruction" throughout (see for example p. 212), whereas the Mind in Society (1978) translation of
the same word in the same context is consistently "learning" (a totally different perspective on what
Vygotsky meant). A more appropriate translation of the term obuchenie infers a more bi-
directional
flow

13. Interpersonal Aspects
 Vygotsky (1934/1987) argued that "the zone of proximal development” has more
significance for the dynamics of intellectual development and for the success of
instruction than does the actual level of development" (p. 209). Therefore:
"[Teaching/learning] is only useful when it moves ahead of development.
William James : One of his recommendations was to start lessons at a point just
beyond the child’s level of knowledge and understanding to stretch the child’s mind

14. ZPD*
Zone of current
knowledge
ZPD
Zone of
unreachable
knowledge
*For more information follow the

15. Empirical Facts: Evidence for ZPD

16. The general genetic law of child’s cultural development (GGL)
Social Psychological Cultural
Development

17. How does the child construct higher psychological
structures?
 Internalization and externalization :
Children internalize or interiorize the processes occurring in the course of the
interaction with the more competent member of the culture —they "grow into the
intellectual life of those around them"
Those (transformed knowledge structure) who have already aided the child may
assist in this process by encouraging externalization: "The teacher, working with the
school child on a given question, explains, informs, inquires, corrects, and forces the
child himself to explain"
 NB: Internalization is not a matter of mere copying and is "far from being a purely
mechanical operation" (Vygotsky & Luria, 1930/1994, p. 153), because this would
preclude the emergence of novelty. Rather, children transform the internalized
interaction on the basis of their own characteristics, experiences, and existing
knowledge. Development is thus a process of reorganization of mental structures in
relation to one another

18. Reflection: Nexus to James
 James’sTalks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals
(1912) :

19. Cultural-Historical Aspects
 Vygotsky's theory is appropriately termed a cultural-historical theory and that this is
where the focus should be placed, even while acknowledging the important role
played by individual activity in conjunction with others.
Culture
History
individual

20.  Vygotsky viewed the cultural world as the source of the development of higher mental functions.
History can be viewed as relating to the development of the species and the cultural group but also
as ontogenetic and microgenetic development.
 School and schooling play a critical role in determining the ways in which we think. However,
school's importance is not so much as a context in which children are scaffolded but rather as the
setting in which children are encouraged to become consciously aware or “consciousness” of
themselves, their language, and their place in the world.
 Vygotsky drew connections between interactions within the zone of proximal development and an
expanded context of social development:
 social" as "everything cultural
 Culture is the product of man's social life and his public activity"

21. “ THE HIGHER FUNCTIONS OF
INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY ARISES OUT OF
COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR, OUT OF
COOPERATION WITH THE SURROUNDING
PEOPLE, AND FROM SOCIAL EXPERIENCE ”

22. Individual
Because Vygotsky argued that the social world "is a source of
development" (1935/1994, p. 351) many who have invoked Vygotsky have implied that
his theory involves a view of culture and context that acts in a unidirectional ( fashion
on the individual .
This interpretation is far from accurate, and ignores the essentially Marxist-
based dialectical nature of the theory (Elhammoumi, 2002;van der Veer & van
Uzendoorn, 1985).
 Included within the natural line of development are all "inherited" factors.
 Vygotsky discussed the interrelations of individual and environment in one of the
last lectures he gave before his death, in which he argued that social influences can
only be understood in relation to the child.

23. Evaluation
Major problems:
- Lack of understanding of Vygotsky’s work (partly because of the
absence of a proper translation)
- Misconception of the concept « ZPD »
Example : Hogan and Tudge (1999)

24. Scaffolding
 « this scaffolding consists essentially of the adult ‘controlling’ those elements of
the task that are initially beyond the learners’ capacity, thus permitting him to
concentrate upon and complete only those elements that are within his range of
competence »
( Wood, Bruner and Ross 1976)
  unidirectional interactions, stressing the child’s development through the
teacher’s assistance. ≠ Vygotsky’s dynamic process.

25. Vygotsky Piaget
• co-constructive relationship between the
teacher and the learner.
• A complicated theory that focuses on the
development of both teacher and child.
• Interactions are bi-directional.
• The relationship between the teacher and
the learner is that of ‘control’.
• A simplistic theory that focuses primarily on
the child development.
• Minimalizes the role of the teacher to that
of an assistant.

26. The impact of Vygotsky’s views on education
 Pollard (1993) and Bodrova (1996) : the use of external mediators that link the
child’s activity to the social and cultural context.
 Newman, Griffin, and Cole (1989) : the learning process is accomplished via a
combinatin of individual and social activity, ‘ making sense of materials that are
provided’ in relation to both the classroom and the society.
 The « dialogic inquiry » ( Wells, 1999, 2000) : teachers are both co-inquirers and
leaders/organizers.

27.  « Schools are incorporated into the larger society and
have that as their context, so that some of their activity
settings are determined by larger contextuality » (Gallimore
1988)

28. STRATEGIES FOR APPLYING
VYGOTSKY’S THEORY TO
CHILDREN’S EDUCATION

29. Applying Vygotsky’s theory in class
1. Assess the child’s ZPD :
 the child is presented with tasks of varying difficulty to determine the best level at
which to begin instruction.
2. Use the child’s ZPD in teaching:
 Teaching should begin toward the zone’s upper limit
 provide just enough assistance
 Provide encouragement

30. 3. Use more-skilled peers as teachers.
4. Monitor and encourage children’s use of private speech.
5. Place instruction in a meaningful context.

31. Conclusion
“ Through others {MKO}, we become ourselves”
Vygotsky (1931)

32. References
 Kupermintz, H. (2003). Lee J. Cronbach's contributions to educational psychology.
In B. J. Zimmerman and D. H. Schunk (Eds.). Educational Psychology: A Century of
Contributions (289-302). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.,
Publishers.