VYGOTSKY'S SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY - ECONOMÍA - 2025

The sociocultural theory of Vygotsky is an emerging theory in psychology that looks at the important contributions that the company makes individual development. This theory highlights the interaction between people's development and the culture in which they live. It suggests that human learning is largely a social process.

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Soviet psychologist and the founder of the theory of cultural and social development in humans. He is considered one of the most influential psychologists in history.

His main work took place in the area of ​​evolutionary psychology and has served as the basis for much later research and theories regarding cognitive development in recent decades, particularly on what is known as Vygotsky's sociocultural theory.

The importance of social context

Portrait of Lev Vygotsky

Vygotsky's theories emphasize the fundamental role of social interaction in the development of cognition, as he firmly believed that the community plays a central role in the process of "giving meaning."

Contrary to Piaget, who asserted that children's development must necessarily precede their learning, Vygotsky argues that learning is a universal and necessary aspect of the process of culturally organized development, specifically in terms of human psychological function. In other words, social learning comes before development.

Vygotsky developed a sociocultural approach to cognitive growth. His theories were created more or less at the same time as Jean Piaget, the Swiss epistemologist.

Vygotsky's problem is that he began to elaborate his own from the age of 20 and died at the age of 38, so his theories are incomplete. Also, some of his writings are still being translated from Russian.

According to Vygotsky, individual development cannot be understood without the social and cultural context in which one is immersed. The higher mental processes of the individual (critical thinking, decision-making, reasoning) have their origin in social processes.

The effects of culture: tools of intellectual adaptation

Like Piaget, Vygotsky asserted that children are born with the basic materials and skills for intellectual development.

Vygotsky speaks of "elementary mental functions": attention, sensation, perception and memory. Through interaction with the sociocultural environment, these mental functions evolve into more sophisticated and effective mental strategies and processes, which Vygotsky calls "higher mental functions."

For example, memory in young children is limited by biological factors. However, culture determines the type of memory strategy we develop.

In our culture we usually learn to take notes to help our memory, but in pre-literary societies other strategies had to be used, such as tying knots in a rope to remember a specific number, or repeating aloud what one wanted to remember.

Vygotsky refers to tools of intellectual adaptation to describe the strategies that allow children to use basic mental functions more effectively and more adaptively, which are culturally determined.

This psychologist firmly believed that cognitive functions are affected by the beliefs, values ​​and intellectual adaptation tools of the culture in which each person develops. Therefore, these adaptation tools vary from one culture to another.

Social influences on cognitive development

Vygotsky, like Piaget, believed that young children are curious and are actively involved in their own learning and in the discovery and development of new patterns of understanding. However, Vygotsky placed more emphasis on social contributions to the developmental process, while Piaget emphasized the discovery initiated by the child himself.

According to Vygotsky, much of children's learning occurs through social interaction with a tutor. This tutor is the one who models the behaviors of the children and gives them verbal instructions. This is known as "cooperative dialogue" or "collaborative dialogue."

The child seeks to understand the actions or instructions provided by the tutor (usually the parents or the teacher) and then internalizes the information, using it to guide or regulate his own actions.

Take the example of a girl who is faced with her first puzzle. If left alone, the child will perform poorly on the task of completing the puzzle.

Her father sits down with her and describes or demonstrates some basic strategies, such as finding all the edge and corner pieces, and provides the girl with a couple of pieces to put together, encouraging her when she gets it right.

As the girl becomes more proficient at completing a puzzle, the father allows her to work more independently. According to Vygotsky, this type of social interaction that involves collaborative or cooperative dialogue promotes cognitive development.

The zone of proximal development according to Vygotsky

Source: The Vigotsky Project

An important concept in Vygotsky's sociocultural theory is the so-called zone of proximal development, which has been defined as:

Lev Vygotsky sees peer interaction as an effective way to develop skills and strategies. It suggests that teachers should use learning exercises in which the less competent children develop with the help of the more skilled students in the zone of Proximal Development.

When a student is in the zone of proximal development of a given task, if the appropriate assistance is provided, the child will feel the impulse to achieve the task.

Zone of proximal development and scaffolding

The zone of proximal development has become synonymous in literature with the term scaffolding. However, it is important to know that Vygotsky never used this term in his writings, as it was introduced by Wood in 1976.

Wood's scaffolding theory states that in a teaching-learning type interaction, the action of the teacher is inversely related to the level of competence of the learner; that is, the more difficult the task for the learner, the more actions he or she will need from the teacher.

Adjusting the interventions of the teacher and monitor to the difficulties of the learner seems to be a decisive element in the acquisition and construction of knowledge.

The concept of scaffolding is a metaphor that refers to the use of scaffolding by the teacher; As knowledge builds and tasks can be better performed, the scaffolding is removed and the learner will then be able to complete the task alone.

It is important to note that the terms "cooperative learning", "scaffolding" and "guided learning" are used in the literature as if they had the same meaning.

An example of a zone of proximal development

Laura has entered university this semester and has decided to enroll in an introductory tennis course. Her class consists of learning and practicing a different shot each week.

Weeks go by and she and the other students in the class learn to do a backhand properly. During the week in which they must learn to hit the forehand, the monitor realizes that Laura is very frustrated that all her forehand hits go to the net or away from the baseline.

The monitor examines your readiness and spin. He realizes that his posture is perfect, he prepares early, rotates his torso appropriately, and hits the ball precisely at the correct height.

However, he realizes that he grasps the racket in the same way that he would if he were doing a backhand, so he shows him how to reposition his hand for a proper forehand, emphasizing that he should keep the index finger parallel to the forehand. racket.

The monitor models a good movement to show Laura and then helps her and assists her in changing the way she holds the racket. With a little practice, Laura learns how to do it perfectly.

In this case, Laura was in the zone of proximal development to hit a successful forehand. She was doing everything else right, she just needed a little support, training, and scaffolding from someone who knew more than her to help her get it right.

When such assistance was provided, he was able to achieve his goal. If they are given the right support at the right times, the other students will also be able to accomplish tasks that would otherwise be too difficult for them.

Evidence proving Vygotsky's theories

Lisa Freund is an evolutionary psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist who put Vygotsky's theories to the test in 1990. To do this, I carried out a study in which a group of children had to decide what furniture to place in specific areas of a dollhouse.

Some children were allowed to play with their mothers in a similar situation before attempting the task on their own (proximal development zone), while others were allowed to work alone from the beginning.

The latter is known as “discovery learning”, a term introduced by Piaget to define the idea that children learn more and better by actively exploring and doing things on their own. After the first attempt, both groups of children made a second attempt alone.

Freund found that those children who had worked with their mothers before, that is, those who had worked in the zone of proximal development, showed great improvement when comparing their first attempt at the task with their second.

Children who had worked alone from the beginning fared worse on the task. The conclusion of this study is that guided learning within the zone of proximal development led to better task resolution than discovery learning.

Vygotsky and language

Vygotsky believed that language develops from social interactions, with the aim of communicating. He saw language as the best tool for human beings, a way of communicating with the outside world. According to Vygotsky, language has two critical roles in cognitive development:

1. It is the primary means by which adults convey information to children.
2. Language itself becomes a very powerful intellectual adaptation tool.

Vygotsky differentiates between three forms of language:

• Social speech, which is the external communication used to speak with others (typical at the age of two).
• Private speech (typical at the age of three), which is self-directed and has an intellectual function.
• Inner speech, which is less audible private speech and has a self-regulatory function (typical at the age of seven).

For Vygotsky, thought and language are two initially separate systems from the beginning of life, emerging to unite around three years of age.

At this point, speech and thought become interdependent: thought becomes verbal and speech becomes representational. When this occurs, the children's monologues are internalized to become internal speech. The internalization of language is important as it leads to cognitive development.

Vygotsky was the first psychologist to document the importance of private speech, viewing it as the transition point between social speech and inner speech, the moment in development when language and thought come together to constitute verbal thought.

In this way, private speech, from Vygotsky's point of view, is the earliest manifestation of inner speech. Without doubt, private speech is more similar (in its form and function) to internal speech than social speech.

Criticisms of Vygotsky's work

Vygotsky's work has not received the same level of intense scrutiny that Piaget's received, in part due to the enormous amount of time that has to be spent translating his work from Russian.

Likewise, the sociocultural perspective of this Russian psychologist does not provide as many specific hypotheses that can be tested as Piaget's theories, making their refutation difficult.

Perhaps the main criticisms of Vygotsky's work have to do with the assumption that his theories are relevant in all cultures. Scaffolding may not be used in the same way in all cultures, or it may not be equally useful in all cultures.