Vygotsky

• Key theories

  • Agreed with Piaget that children think qualitatively differently to adults
  • emphasised the importance of social interaction in children’s cognitive development
• What is the zone of proximal development

  • A zone of proximal development is what a learner can do unaided
  • represents what we can do with the help of a more knowledgeable other
  • children can understand more due to this interaction despite being limited by their development stage
• Explain scaffolding

  • This describes the help given by an expert/more knowledgeable other to guide the child through the zone of proximal development
  • help is progressive and leads to development
• Explain elementary and higher functions

  • Children are born with elementary functions
  • e.g memory, perception, sensation and attention
  • our social and cultural environment allows us to use the skills to develop higher mental functions
• Which study was used to research scaffolding

  Wood et al
• Explain Wood et als study

  • Identifies different elements of scaffolding taking place
  • demonstration - showing the child how to do the task
  • recruitment - engaging the learners interest
  • direction management - encouragement so the learner perseveres
  • marking critical features - highlighting the most important part of the task
• What are the strengths

  • Supporting evidence - Howe et al
  • evidence for scaffolding
• Evaluation - supporting evidence

  • Howe et al
  • children do form mental representations
• Evaluation - evidence for scaffolding

  • Conner and Cross
  • longitudinal study that recorded how much help mothers gave children over time
  • findings found that mothers decreased their intervention and help as their children got older with simpler tasks
• Evaluation - ignores individual differences

  • Assumes that learning processes were largely the same for all children
  • limits the usefulness of this theory in education if it’s not applicable to all children
  • different activities help children to learn better, it is not necessarily social interaction
• What is the limitation

  Ignores social differences