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Vygotsky’s philosophy of education

School resources

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was part of a group of revolutionary scholars who were working at the
beginning of the twentieth century to create a new school of Soviet psychology. Vygotsky himself
produced an impressive corpus of works in the span of his short lifetime. He is credited with establishing
the foundation of cultural psychology and cultural-historical theory, which emphasised that human
change and development, particularly the development of our thinking, is influenced by society and
culture. This theory has been widely explored in relation to education, and has also provided support
for fields such as positive psychology. His work was repressed under the Stalin regime and a lot of
his theories were not widely disseminated until the 1980s. Because Vygotsky developed his work in a
radically different social, cultural and political context, it is important to appropriate and recontextualise
his work for our own time and situation.

The main features of Vygotsky’s theory of education

Like Piaget, Vygotsky emphasised learning as a meaning-making process, although Vygotsky’s cultural-
historical approach is characterised by an insistence that human thinking be understood as both
an individual and a socio-cultural phenomenon. While he emphasised social, cultural and historical
influences on thinking, Vygotsky also maintained a focus on the individual, with his concept of the zone
of proximal development, for example (more on this below).

According to Vygotsky’s theory:

Human action is situated in sociocultural, historical settings, and is mediated by tools and signs. All
human actions, including thinking, are mediated by material and symbolic objects (tools and signs) that
are culturally constructed and socially used. For example, a verbal explanation of a word meaning, or a
procedure for a science experiment, works to mediate (intervene in, influence or change) the student’s
thinking. The ways in which students think, solve problems, and use concepts are related to their social
and cultural context.

Students’ development has a social origin. Vygotsky saw new cognitive capabilities for students,
particularly higher mental processes such as problem-solving, logic and concept formation, as emerging
first in interaction with others before being taken up by the student independently. For example, a teacher
may help a student to solve a mathematical word problem by working through a set of questions to
identify what they know and what they need to learn. The next time the student encounters a similar
problem, he or she runs through the same questions in their mind, and the questions become a tool for
the student’s thinking.

Mediation of various kinds is crucial for human pyschological and social development. All kinds of social
processes and cultural resources are used by individuals in their thinking, and schools are a primary
source for introducing students to many different mediational means, such as tools and artefacts,
symbol systems, and specialised discourse. For example, discipline-specific concepts and language can
help students to talk about the phenomena they notice in science, while number grids and squares in
mathematics are tools that can help children to see the relationships between numbers more easily.

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Learning precedes development. Vygotsky saw learning as leading development (rather than being
dependent on it). Learning creates the conditions needed for development, so teaching should be aimed
at the next stage of a child’s development.

Cognitive development at any point in time is limited to a particular range known as the zone of proximal
development (ZPD). The ZPD describes the learning an individual student is capable of, which is just
beyond what he or she can achieve independently (it is ‘proximal’). Students can only learn knowledge
and skills that are in their particular ZPD, and will require the support and help of a more capable peer, the
teacher or other mediational resources such as dictionaries, number lines and diagrams.

Scientific concepts are built on, and transform, everyday concepts. Everyday or spontaneous concepts
(‘dog’, ‘lizard’) are based on our everyday experience of the world as it appears through our senses, while
scientific concepts (‘mammals’, ‘reptiles’) are more systematic, so they can be more easily reflected
upon and manipulated. For example, an understanding of the geometric concept of ‘circle’ is based on
students’ experiences of coins, wheels, and pizza, but enables a more generalised understanding of
the shape.

What empirical evidence is there for this philosophy in practice?

Research does show that, generally, mediation improves language and thinking skills1. In relation
specifically to Vygotsky’s theory of mediation, studies have found that mediating learning can result in
improved thinking skills, performance and ability to learn independently2, as well as independent problem
solving and dealing with new challenges3. There is also some evidence to support the use of the ZPD
in teaching4.

Vygotsky’s influence on teaching practice

Vygotsky’s theory and the idea of the ZPD in particuar have had an impact on a variety of educational
practices, including peer tutoring and scaffolding. Vygotsky’s theory can also be considered to have
had an impact on key practices such as assessment for learning, while most teachers are aware of
capitalising on student’s culture, community and environment as an influence on their learning and
development, described here as a ‘funds of knowledge’ approach.

Scaffolding
The aim of scaffolding (which was not Vygotsky’s term) is to offer assistance to ensure that a student
is successful in their learning, so it has strong parallels to Vygotsky’s concept of mediation in the
ZPD. Rather than adapting the task, scaffolding supports students to complete it in one or more of the
following ways:

• modelling the thinking or behaviours needed

• simplifying the student’s role through intervention

• structuring problem-solving by reducing the degrees of freedom

• highlighting the critical features of the task

• providing a sounding board for students to discuss their ideas

At the earliest stages of the ZPD a student needs a sequence of simple and precise instructions. They
come to understand tasks and directives as a result of performing them under guidance (‘performance
before competence’). As they gain understanding, they may only need encouragement or prompts. In
the school setting, scaffolding is often understood as the provision of frameworks (such as opening

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sentences or a series of headings), worked examples, clear performance criteria, or guidelines to help
students to structure their learning. It is important to ensure that these more fixed and predetermined
scaffolds are specifically responsive to each student’s ZPD as Vygotsky intended.

Peer tutoring
Peer tutoring enables more students to be supported to reach a higher level of competence than would
be possible if the teacher was the only mediator. Students need to be paired carefully, and may need
coaching so that they are able to effectively assist each other. Peer tutoring might also involve students
having different roles in the same task. For example, in learning a second language, it might be possible
to pair a student who has strengths in vocabulary with a student who has strengths in grammar.

Funds of knowledge
A ‘funds of knowledge’ approach to teaching establishes social relationships with families to facilitate
an understanding of how students’ home lives can help mediate their learning in the classroom. Funds
of knowledge are the strategies, adaptations and knowledge that families develop to assist them in their
daily lives, and which can be drawn upon as a basis for learning academic concepts and procedures in
the classroom. For example, if teachers learn that a family is involved in the cultivation and gathering
of medicinal plants, they might relate these botanical funds of knowledge to the classroom science
curriculum.

Assessment for learning (AfL)

AfL is a pedagogy in which teachers and students evaluate the student’s current performance together,
and agree strategies to address gaps in what they need to know or be doing to perform better. As such
it represents an example of the student moving ahead of their current level of performance with the
support of a more knowledgeable adult. However, where AfL conversations are constrained within pre-set
goals and targets regulated by summative assessment routines and the need to help students to achieve
particular grades and outcomes, there may be less overlap with Vygotsky’s concept of ZPD, which is
more individual, co-constructed and open to the intentions and motivations of the learner.

Reciprocal teaching
Reciprocal teaching is related to the concept of the ZPD. It is used in reading instruction, where a portion
of text is read aloud or silently, before a ‘learning leader’ helps the group to comprehend what was read by
engaging in specific reading strategies (questioning, clarifying, summarising and predicting). The teacher
is the first learning leader and models strategy use, before each student has the responsibility of being
learning leader. The aim is for students to monitor their own comprehension and to internalise some
strategies for improving comprehension.

Dialogic teaching
Vygotsky’s theory has been used to inspire a focus on interactive and collaborative organisations of
teaching and learning that encourage students to learn from social interactions with peers and with the
teacher. Dialogic teaching focuses on the co-construction of knowledge in social settings where students
learn to use specific reasoning and argumentation strategies particular to specific domains of knowledge
and to verbally elaborate, compare and discuss their developing concepts.

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References & further reading

DeVries, R. (2000). Vygostky, Piaget and education: A reciprocal assimilation of
theories and educational practices. New Ideas in Psychology, 18, 187-213.

Flavian, H. (2019). Mediation and thinking development in schools: Theories and

practices for educators. Emerald Publishing Ltd.

Moll, L. (2014). L. S. Vygotsky and education. Routledge.

Moore, A. (2012). Teaching and learning: Pedagogy, curriculum and culture. Rout-
ledge.

Endnotes
1 Flavian, 2019

2 Flavian, 2019

3 Flavian, 2019

4 Moll, 2014

PREPARED FOR THE EDUCATION HUB BY

Dr Vicki Hargraves
Vicki is a teacher, mother, writer, and researcher. She recently completed her PhD
using philosophy to explore creative approaches to understanding early childhood
education. She is inspired by the wealth of educational research that is available
and is passionate about making this available and useful for teachers.

https://theeducationhub.org.nz/category/school-resources/
© The Education Hub 2019. All rights reserved.