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Essay on vygotsky's sociocultural theory
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Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, a Constructive Learning theorist, was born and raised in a small Russian village called Orscha. He grew up in a well educated family, where his father was a banker. Throughout his early childhood, Vygotsky was tutored at home by a paid teacher. It wasn’t until he was a junior in high school when Vygotsky had his first experience with public schools. Vygotsky was always an exceptional student who enjoyed spending his free time writing. By the time Vygotsky turned 18, he wrote and published his first essay entitled “Hamlet”. Although he had a love for philosophy, history, and literature, in 1913 Vygotsky enrolled at the University of Moscow as a medical student. It didn’t take long for him to realize the medical field wasn’t his calling, so he transferred to the school of law. While attending law school, Vygotsky also enrolled in Shaniavsky University to pursue a degree in history and philosophy, which he remained so passionate about. Four years later in 1917, Vygotsky graduated from Moscow University and landed a job as a literature teacher at one of the local secondary schools in Gomel, Russia. He would continue his work as a teacher from 1917-1924, when he resigned to accept a job at the local teacher’s college. There, one of Vygotsky’s responsibilities was to teach courses in psychology, which is what sparked his interest in psychology, specifically cognitive development of children. During 1924, Vygotsky met a man by the name of Alexander Luria who worked at Moscow’s Institute of Psychology (MIP). Impressed by Vygotsky’s work, Luria offered him a job working at MIP, which allowed him the opportunity to work and study the cognitive development of children and adults suffering from numerou... ... middle of paper ... ...ited Broderick, P.C., & Blewitt, P., (2009). The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals 3rd Edition. Cook-Cotton, C. (2004). Using Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development to Understand the Construction of Healing Narratives. Journal of College Counseling, 7(2), p.177-186. Retrieved from PsycINFOdatabase. Fortosis, S. & Garland, K., (1990). Adolescent Cognitive Development, Piaget’s Idea of Disequilibration, and the Issue of Christian Nurture. Religious Education, 85(4), p. 631-644. Hinde, E.R., & Perry, N. (2007). Elementary Teachers’ Application of Jean Piaget’s Theories of Cognitive Development during Social Studies Curriculum Debates in Arizona. The Elementary School Journal, 108(1), 63-79. Sigelman, C.K., & Rider, E.A.,(2006). Life-Span Human Development 5th Edition. Vernon, A., (2004). Counseling Children and Adolescents 3rd Edition
Harris, Sara, and Laura E. Berk. Instructor's Resource Manual for Berk Exploring Lifespan Development, Second Edition. 2nd ed. Illinois: Allyn & Bacon, 2011. Print.
For this assignment I have chosen Jean Piaget’s cognitive development theory and Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development theory.
This paper will explore the ideas of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Exploring their philosophies and how they impact us today. The two scholarly articles show similarities and differences of their works and explore what they each mean.
This movie didn’t capture a student being taught by a professional educator, but it showed how Benjamin learned from his peers, and intelligent adults. Vygotsky theory is influenced by sociocultural. Sociocultural means that cognitive development is based upon ones’ culture. Benjamin grew up in a mixed-race setting. For example, in one of the movie scene Benjamin was trying to say molasses. His father (not biological) taught him how to say it correctly. Vygotsky strongly believe that speech plays a big role in development. However, in this case it did. Benjamin grew up with elders who taught him how to play the piano, and how to properly say words. Benjamin was wised beyond his years, he was able to live independently at the age of 17.
It stated that, "Sociocultural approaches to learning and development were first systematized and applied by Vygotsky and his collaborators in Russia in the 1920s and 1930s. They are based on the concept that human activities take in cultural contexts, are mediated by language and other symbol systems, and can be best understood when investigated in their historical development (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996). " At the core of this theory, "Vygotsky focused on the way that a child co-constructs meaning through social interaction, and the role word meaning plays in the development of thinking(Mahn, 1999). " It seems as though Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory is continuous. This theory is continuous due to the emphasis it places on the need for social interaction in the growth of humans mentally, linguistically, and socially.
Gredler, M. (2012). Understanding Vygotsky for the Classroom: Is It Too Late?. Educational Psychology Review, 24(1), 113-131. doi:10.
Huitt, W., & Hummel, J. (2003). Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved [date] from http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cogsys/piaget.html
Lev Vygotsky developed his theory of learning in the 1920’s but it was not until the late 1960’s that his ideas about learning became popular and were used to contribute to “Constructivism” as a method of teaching. (Krause [et al.] 2010 p. p81).
There are five ways in which Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and Vygotsky’s theory of the Zone of Proximal Development. The very first way that teachers can use these theories to teach constructively is by providing scaffolded instruction within the ZPD for their students (292). In other words, a teacher must be able to assist children in achieving a goal that may be slightly too difficult for them to reach alone. An example of this would be if a teacher had decided that her class should do an experiment on how well plants grow based on the amount of water they receive, she could challenge her students to make a hypothesis about what they think will happen. This teacher could allow her students to individually plant their seeds and then guiding her students to predict or hypothesize what they believe will happen if one plant gets more water than another. This example directly correlates with Vygotsky’s idea of ZPD because
By using Vygotsky’s theory, educators are able to realize what a child is able to do with assistance and they can help a child develop the skills on their own. They are engaged in the discovery process, but they are receiving guidance from a more knowledgeable source.
Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky are two very well-known theorists who emphasized the development of cognition in their theories. In Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental theory, he claimed that children go through a series of stages, which he used to describe human development. In Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory of Learning, he believed culture and social interaction played a role in cognitive development. Although Piaget and Vygotsky both focused their theories on cognitive development they take different stances a series of developmental issues. This paper will look at the similarities and differences between these theorist’s views on critical developmental issues, such as view of human nature, mechanisms of development, and their
McInerney (2014) explores Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development, explaining that language is used as a communication instrument and a way to organize our own thoughts. Vygotsky believed that children develop a tool called self-talk or private speech as a way for them to make sense of their own actions and thoughts. This then develops to then internalizing their thoughts and further to public speech, Vygotsky’s belief was that children develop cognitively with exposure to their surroundings and social situations. Learning how to process, project and receive language at a young age is important in the development of higher mental processes including; planning and evaluating, memory and reason, which are important in the functioning in society as adults. According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, language is the basis for learning the skill of internalizing problems instead of using objects and increasing their mental capacity (McInerney, 2014). At young ages not being able to develop and maintain language skills, for example having Specific Language Impairment, which restricts the ability to retain language skills to memory. This is problematic as it can impact children academically and psychosocially, and can extend to mathematical concepts, attention capacity and motor skills. If a child has issues absorbing these concepts it can lead to other problems in cognitive applications including problem solving, working memory and logical thinking (Reichenbach, Bastian, Rohrbach, Gross, & Sarrar, 2016). Piaget’s theory states that between the ages of 2-7 children are in the preoperational stage of development which means they have a sense of eccentricity, when talking to a child we can hear the use of instrumental and personal language functions. As
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development focuses on the concept of schemas and cognitive thought that helps an individual organize knowledge and understand the world in comparison to Erikson’s theory which focuses on conflicts that arise between and within the ego. Accommodation and assimilation occur throughout Piaget’s theory as a result of children
Kail, R. V., & Cavanaugh, J. C. (2007). Human development: A life-span view (5th ed.). [Adobe Digitial Editions version]. doi: 1009-0001-161F-00001620
One hundred years ago, Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a young man developing new insights about learning. He was one of a handful of constructivist-minded writers and educational theorists of the time. Learning theories open educators up to new ideas. They are necessary to expand our knowledge of how learning works. Piaget’s work is a well-tested and educators around the world should be aware of Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive development in particular because it will improve the quality of their teaching. Once a teacher knows this theory, they can plan lessons appropriate to their students’ cognitive ability and build upon students’ earlier knowledge in a constructivist way.