Assessment Post 3 - Lev Vygotsky

Lev Vygotsky

Vygotsky's research concerned a child's development through social interaction and its importance in defining their actions and behaviours. Vygotsky observed how higher mental functions developed through social interactions with significant people in a child's life, particularly parents, but also other adults. Through these interactions, a child came to learn the habits of mind of their culture, including speech patterns, written language, and other knowledge through which the child learns to develop their own skills.

Vygotsky (1978) states:

"Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first,
on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people
(interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This
applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation
of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between
individuals."

Reflective Ideas

The idea central to Vygotsky's theory is that development occurs through social
interaction with adults and other children. This means that childrens
social interaction at school is vital and must be nurtured. Activites such as group work may be helpful in this situation as the interaction involved in it means that the children are engaging in thinking together and often help each other develop necessary skills. An interesting side effect of this would be that the students learn social skills and social roles ( such as a leader, thinker, doer etc in a group situation) in the process of learning academic information.