LEARNING FROM VYGOTSKY’S SOCIAL-CULTURAL THEORY

Now it is time to learn another learning concept but this time from Vygotsky’s point of view. He is a Russian psychologist who argued that culture has a major impact on a child’s cognitive development. On one hand, many authors and researchers as Piaget defended that the development stemmed directly from the child, on the other hand, Vygotsky stated that skills as language, writings, and concepts arising from the.

This author supports the idea that social interactions with adults and more facilitate a child’s potential for learning. In other words, Vygotsky defended that we are social beings who need to interact a lot, and as a result of this interaction many things shall be discovered. On the contrary, if children only base their knowledge on what they see, it will be a sort of hurdle in the knowledge path.

The teacher’s role in the educational context is to act and perform as a facilitator for learning. In other words, teachers should act as tutors who guide exchanges, handle comprehensive discussions, and create an engaging community as strategies for cognitive development. Many educators use some of Vygotsky’s ideas in their curricula in order to facilitate social connection and small group learning in the classroom in an effort to see more growth.

For example, the teacher can implement items or topics as culture, which can be defined as the morals, values, and beliefs of its community members, which are held in place with systems and establishments. Positive conduct will be communicated by the use of language, creating a nice channel of communication. For that reason, culture is shaped over time as the result of specific events or specific moments in the life of the community members. That is why Vygotsky emphasized the crucial role of communication, creating another concept called the zone of proximal development,

Zone of Proximal Development

One of the theories that were also Vygotsky best known is the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (also known as ZP) In this theory, the author highlights that children should be taught in the ZPD, in other words, it is the interaction between two people: one that dominates the knowledge and another one who does not. The main focus in this topic is to guide the learner to accomplish in the future to fully dominate the knowledge. The role of the guide is to help, build, and support throughout the whole process.

To wrap up, the author defends that the concept of being a social being not just follows the concept that the social world is not only the interactions between peers and their teacher but also consisted of outside influences within the community. For instance, Vygotsky defended that Prior knowledge, such as learned behaviors at home, impact learning in the classroom environment related to cognitive development, such as culture, language, and community role.