Social Learning: Lev Vygotsky

Lev Vygotsky

Vygotsky’s theory of learning in development is quite a beautiful one. It is very much centred around cognitive development, but cognitive development regulated through social interaction. Cognitive development is the development of more complex thinking, problem solving, planning, etc as the child grows physically. Piaget discusses cognitive development a bit more in depth.

Like Piaget, he addresses cognitive development, but says that cognitive development can only happen with social help and the child internalising that which society shows them. To him, children are not on this development journey alone, rather they require significant help and guidance. Unlike Bandura, Vygotsky is exclusively all about intentional modelling and guidance.

He doesn't discuss much though about how exactly children learn and develop, rather, he elaborates on the process required for learning to happen.

Sociocultural Theory

According to this theory, social interactions and culture are what shape learning and therefore, cognitive development. Children are, again, constantly learning from their society and being guided by those around them. Cognition develops in accordance with the culture. This means that the child will develop in line with the requirements of the society they grow up in and will adopt the necessary cultural tools to help them flourish in this context. Similar to what we discussed in Issue 1, Part 4.

Cultural tools are the fundamental beliefs, values, language, and practises of the group. This means that children will not develop exactly the same way across contexts, rather they will develop differently according to the needs of their own context. For example, a young child growing up in America has very different cultural tools to someone growing up in rural Indonesia. Therefore, they may develop only what is necessary.

Therefore, as cultural transmission happens, so does development and the perpetuation of that culture continues. This idea of cultural transmission going hand in hand with development is a wonderful one, though not the only one. Therefore, development doesn’t happen through just observation and modelling, but a continually active, interactive, engaged process between the child and a More Knowledgeable Other (to be explained below).

This idea of cultural transmission is basically that a child (in infancy; 0-3) will initially go through a social stage where they adopt and use what they need to communicate within their culture (particularly their caregiver). They take on and reflect these tools to get by in their interpersonal relationships. As they progress (age 3-7), they go through an egocentric stage. This egocentric stage is where they now learn to use their cultural tools more efficiently and come to naturally adopt these beliefs and tools for themselves and as their own.

The More Knowledgeable Other (MKO)

According to Vygotsky, learning (and therefore, development) is socially mediated and requires cooperation and interaction. This happens through a key model (person) known as the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO). This is a fancy term for the individual close to the child who they are looking to learn from. This person is one who knows more about the culture than the child and transmits this information to them, be it their caregivers or educators. Essentially, the MKO is the one the child looks to for guidance.

They demonstrate, educate, and support the child as they practise their application of what they’re learning and correct them where they make mistakes. They encourage learning and development. This individual or individuals shapes the child’s knowledge, thinking, and behaviour. Initially, this learning is more imitational, the child mostly copying these actions, however, as they mature and develop the ability to think more complexly, they adopt these as their own. They may initially need to think these through aloud, but once they have adopted them as their own, they behave automatically.

The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Learning and development happen in what is known as the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD is the space, whether physical or metaphorical, where the child interacts with the MKO and receives guidance and help from them. It is a safe space marked by a lower limit of what the child can do on their own, what they can with the MKO's help and guidance and the upper limit of their ability even with the MKO’s help. This upper limit could be a roof of their capacity or current developmental stage.

Scaffolding

As the child cannot grasp everything all at once, a scaffold provides support to them. It helps them understand and incorporate what they’re learning at their level. Scaffolding is where rather than dumping all the knowledge on the child at an advanced level, it gets slowly introduced to them in an easier way so that they can grasp and develop.

Remember when I mentioned how learning includes the integration and building of knowledge? Scaffolding is one way that that happens. It accounts for this idea of learning in stages. Once one element of learning has been achieved, the individual is now ready to learn something more complex through integrating that knowledge.

A scaffold can be something like explaining a task, demonstrating for the child (modelling), breaking things like ideas or tasks down into manageable pieces, and supportive motivation. Through scaffolding by the MKO in the ZPD, the child’s knowledge and cognition develop in a safe, and carefully guided way. Rather than being thrown into the deep end, they are slowly introduced. As they develop and grasp, they require less and less support.

The Takeaway

While this is a wonderful theory to describe contextual development, it is not perfect either. This is because there are certain elements about humans that are consistent independent of context (Issue 2 showed us this). There are certain constants children require to develop well regardless of their context. We see evidence of this across cultures and generations. One of these things, as I've been discussing, is the need for stimulation and interaction. We will definitely see more of this in Issue 5.

However, there is still much value in this theory. Vygotsky shows us that development is an interactive process that does not just happen spontaneously or in isolation, but which needs guidance and support unique to the child. Caregivers need to be proactive in their child's development and can be very influential in a good way too. Through this active process, external behaviour becomes internalised beliefs and ways of knowing and children develop.

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