Week 7-9

Unit 3 – Cognitive Development

A. Cognitive Development Theories

1. Jean Piaget Cognitive Development Theory

Cognition refers to thinking and memory processes, and cognitive development

refers to long-term changes in these processes. One of the most widely known
perspectives about cognitive development is the cognitive stage theory of a Swiss
psychologist named Jean Piaget. Piaget created and studied an account of how
children and youth gradually become able to think logically and scientifically.

Piaget believed that learning proceeded by the interplay of assimilation

(adjusting new experiences to fit prior concepts) and accommodation (adjusting
concepts to fit new experiences). The to-and-fro of these two processes leads not
only to short-term learning, but also to long-term developmental change. The long-
term developments are really the main focus of Piaget’s cognitive theory.

After observing children closely, Piaget proposed that cognition developed

through distinct stages from birth through the end of adolescence. By “stages” he
meant a sequence of thinking patterns with four key features:

1. The stages always happen in the same order.

2. No stage is ever skipped.
3. Each stage is a significant transformation of the stage before it.
4. Each later stage incorporated the earlier stages into itself.

Basically, this is a “staircase” model of development. Piaget proposed four major

stages of cognitive development, and called them (1) sensorimotor intelligence, (2)
preoperational thinking, (3) concrete operational thinking, and (4) formal
operational thinking. Each stage is correlated with an age period of childhood, but
only approximately.

The Sensorimotor Stage: Birth to Age 2

In Piaget’s theory, the sensorimotor stage occurs first, and is defined as the
period when infants “think” by means of their senses and motor actions. As every
new parent will attest, infants continually touch, manipulate, look, listen to, and
even bite and chew objects. According to Piaget, these actions allow children to
learn about the world and are crucial to their early cognitive development.

The infant’s actions allow the child to represent (i.e., construct simple
concepts of) objects and events. A toy animal may be just a confusing array of
sensations at first, but by looking, feeling, and manipulating it repeatedly, the child
gradually organizes her sensations and actions into a stable concept: toy animal.
The representation acquires a permanence lacking in the individual experiences of
the object, which are constantly changing. Because the representation is stable, the
child “knows,” or at least believes, that toy animal exists even if the actual toy
animal is temporarily out of sight. Piaget called this sense of stability object
permanence, a belief that objects exist whether or not they are actually present.
Object permanence is a major achievement of sensorimotor development, and
marks a qualitative transformation in how older infants (~24 months) think about
experience compared to younger infants (~6 months).

During much of infancy, of course, a child can only barely talk, so

sensorimotor development initially happens without the support of language. It
might therefore seem hard to know what infants are thinking. Piaget devised
several simple, but clever, experiments to get around their lack of language, and
these experiments suggest that infants do indeed represent objects even without
being able to talk (Piaget, 1952). In one, for example, he simply hid an object (like a
toy animal) under a blanket. He found that doing so consistently prompts older
infants (18-24 months) to search for the object, but fails to prompt younger infants
(less than six months) to do so. (You can try this experiment yourself if you happen
to have access to young infant.) Something motivates the search by the older infant
even without the benefit of much language, and that “something” is presumed to
be a permanent concept or representation of the object.

The Preoperational Stage: Age 2 to 7

In the preoperational stage, children use their new ability to represent objects
in a wide variety of activities, but they do not yet do it in ways that are organized or
fully logical. One of the most obvious examples of this kind of cognition is dramatic
play, or the improvised make-believe of preschool children. If you have ever had
responsibility for children of this age, you have likely witnessed such play.

Children engaged in imaginative activities are thinking on two levels at once

—one imaginative and the other realistic. This dual processing of experience makes
dramatic play an early example of metacognition, or reflecting on and the
monitoring of thinking itself. Because metacognition is a highly desirable skill for
success in school, teachers of young children (preschool, kindergarten, and even
first or second grade) often make time and space in their classrooms for dramatic
play, and sometimes even participate in it themselves to help develop the play
further.

The Concrete Operational Stage: Age 7 to 11

As children continue into elementary school, they become able to represent

ideas and events more flexibly and logically. Their rules of thinking still seem very
basic by adult standards and usually operate unconsciously, but they allow children
to solve problems more systematically than before, and therefore to be successful
with many academic tasks. In the concrete operational stage, for example, a child
may unconsciously follow the rule: “If nothing is added or taken away, then the
amount of something stays the same.”
 This simple principle helps children understand certain arithmetic tasks (such
as adding or subtracting zero from a number) as well as perform certain classroom
science experiments (such as ones that involve calculating the combined volume of
two separate liquids). Piaget called this period the concrete operational stage
because children mentally “operate” on concrete objects and events. They are not
yet able, however, to operate (or think) systematically about representations of
objects or events. Manipulating representations is a more abstract skill that
develops later, during adolescence.

Concrete operational thinking differs from preoperational thinking in two

ways, each of which renders children more skilled as students. One difference is
reversibility, or the ability to think about the steps of a process in any order.
Imagine a simple science experiment, for example, such as one that explores why
objects sink or float by having a child place an assortment of objects in a basin of
water. Both the preoperational and concrete operational child can recall and
describe the steps in this experiment, but only the concrete operational child can
recall them in any order (e.g., chronological, reverse chronological, etc). This skill is
very helpful for any task involving multiple steps—a common feature of tasks in the
classroom. In teaching new vocabulary from a story, for another example, a teacher
might tell students: “1) Every time you come across a word you don’t know, write it
down. 2) Then find and write down the definition of that word before returning to
the story. 3) After you have a list of all the words you don’t know, have a friend test
you on your list.” These directions involve repeatedly remembering to move back
and forth between a second step and a first—a task that concrete operational
students—and most adults—find easy, but that preoperational children often forget
to do or find confusing. If the younger children are to do this task reliably, they may
need external prompts, such as having the teacher remind them periodically to go
back to the story to look for more unknown words.

The other new feature of thinking that develops during the concrete
operational stage is the child’s ability to decenter, or focus on more than one
feature of a problem at a time. There are hints of decentration in preschool
children’s dramatic play, which requires being aware on two levels at once—
knowing that a banana can be both a banana and a “telephone.” But the
decentration of the concrete operational stage is more deliberate and conscious
than preschoolers’ make-believe. Now the child can attend to two things at once
quite purposefully. Suppose you give students a sheet with an assortment of
subtraction problems on it, and ask them to do this: “Find all of the problems that
involve two-digit subtraction and that involve borrowing from the next column.
Circle and solve only those problems.” Following these instructions is quite possible
for a concrete operational student (as long as they have been listening!) because
the student can attend to the two subtasks simultaneously—finding the two-digit
problems and identifying which actually involve borrowing. (Whether the student
actually knows how to “borrow” however, is a separate question.)

In real classroom tasks, reversibility and decentration often happen together.

A well-known example of joint presence is Piaget’s experiments with conservation,
the belief that an amount or quantity stays the same even if it changes apparent
size or shape (Piaget, 2001; Matthews, 1998). Imagine two identical balls made of
clay. Any child, whether preoperational or concrete operational, will agree that the
two indeed have the same amount of clay in them simply because they look the
same. But if you now squish one ball into a long, thin “hot dog,” the preoperational
child is likely to say that the amount of clay has changed—either because its shape
is longer or because it is thinner, but at any rate because it now looks different. The
concrete operational child will not make this mistake, thanks to new cognitive skills
of reversibility and decentration: for him or her, the amount is the same because
“you could squish it back into a ball again” (reversibility) and because “it may be
longer, but it is also thinner” (decentration). Piaget would say the concrete
operational child “has conservation of quantity.”

The Formal Operational Stage: Age 11 and Beyond

In the last of the Piagetian stages, the child becomes able to reason not only
about tangible objects and events, but also about hypothetical or abstract ones.
Hence, it has the name formal operational stage—the period when the individual
can “operate” on “forms” or representations. With students at this level, the
teacher can pose hypothetical (or contrary-to-fact) problems: “What if the world had
never discovered oil?” or “What if the first European explorers had settled first in
California instead of on the East Coast of the United States?” To answer such
questions, students must use hypothetical reasoning, meaning that they must
manipulate ideas that vary in several ways at once, and do so entirely in their
minds.

The hypothetical reasoning that concerned Piaget primarily involved scientific

problems. His studies of formal operational thinking therefore often look like
problems that middle or high school teachers pose in science classes. In one
problem, for example, a young person is presented with a simple pendulum, to
which different amounts of weight can be hung (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). The
experimenter asks: “What determines how fast the pendulum swings: the length of
the string holding it, the weight attached to it, or the distance that it is pulled to the
side?”

The young person is not allowed to solve this problem by trial-and-error with
the materials themselves, but must mentally reason a way to the solution. To do so
systematically, he or she must imagine varying each factor separately, while also
imagining the other factors that are held constant. This kind of thinking requires
facility at manipulating mental representations of the relevant objects and actions—
precisely the skill that defines formal operations.

As you might suspect, students with an ability to think hypothetically have an

advantage in many kinds of school work: by definition, they require relatively few
“props” to solve problems. In this sense they can in principle be more self-directed
than students who rely only on concrete operations—certainly a desirable quality in
the opinion of most teachers. Note, though, that formal operational thinking is
desirable—but not sufficient for—solving all academic problems, and is far from
being the only way that students achieve educational success. Formal thinking skills
do not ensure that a student is motivated or well-behaved, for example, nor does
they guarantee other desirable skills, such as ability at sports, music, or art. The
fourth stage in Piaget’s theory is really about a particular kind of formal thinking:
the kind needed to solve scientific problems and devise scientific experiments.
Since many people do not normally deal with such problems in the normal course of
their lives, it should be no surprise that research finds that many people never
achieve or use formal thinking fully or consistently, or that they use it only in
selected areas with which they are very familiar (Case & Okomato, 1996). For
teachers, the limitations of Piaget’s ideas suggest a need for additional theories
about development—ones that focus more directly on the social and interpersonal
issues of childhood and adolescence. The next sections describe some of these.

2. Lev Vygotsky

The work of Lev Vygotsky (1934, 1978) has become the foundation of much
research and theory in cognitive development over the past several decades,
particularly what has become known as sociocultural theory. Vygotsky’s theory
comprises concepts such as culture-specific tools, private speech, and the zone of
proximal development. Vygotsky believed cognitive development is influenced by
cultural and social factors. He emphasized the role of social interaction in the
development of mental abilities e.g., speech and reasoning in children. Vygotsky
strongly believed that community plays a central role in the process of “making
meaning.” Cognitive development is a socially mediated process in which children
acquire cultural values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through
collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society. The more
knowledgeable other (MKO) is someone who has a higher level of ability or greater
understanding than the learner regarding a particular task, process, or concept.

The MKO can be a teacher, parent, coach, or even a peer who provides
guidance and modeling to enable the child to learn skills within their zone of
proximal development (the gap between what a child can do independently and
what they can achieve with guidance).

The interactions with more knowledgeable others significantly increase not

only the quantity of information and the number of skills a child develops, but also
affects the development of higher-order mental functions such as formal reasoning.
Vygotsky argued that higher mental abilities could only develop through interaction
with more advanced others.

According to Vygotsky, adults in society foster children’s cognitive

development by engaging them in challenging and meaningful activities. Adults
convey to children how their culture interprets and responds to the world. They
show the meaning they attach to objects, events, and experiences. They provide
the child with what to think (the knowledge) and how to think (the processes, the
tools to think with).

Vygotsky’s theory encourages collaborative and cooperative learning

between children and teachers or peers. Scaffolding and reciprocal teaching are
effective educational strategies based on Vygotsky’s ideas.
 Scaffolding involves the teacher providing support structures to help students
master skills just beyond their current level. In reciprocal teaching, teachers and
students take turns leading discussions using strategies like summarizing and
clarifying. Both scaffolding and reciprocal teaching emphasize the shared
construction of knowledge, in line with Vygotsky’s views.

Vygotsky highlighted the importance of language in cognitive development.

Inner speech is used for mental reasoning, and external speech is used to converse
with others.

These operations occur separately. Indeed, before age two, a child employs
words socially; they possess no internal language.

Once thought and language merge, however, the social language is

internalized and assists the child with their reasoning. Thus, the social environment
is ingrained within the child’s learning.

Effects Of Culture

Vygotsky emphasized the role of the social environment in the child’s

cognitive development.

Vygotsky claimed that infants are born with the basic abilities for intellectual
development called “elementary mental functions” (Piaget focuses on motor
reflexes and sensory abilities). These develop throughout the first two years of life
due to direct environmental contact.

Elementary mental functions include –

o Attention

o Sensation

o Perception

o Memory

Eventually, through interaction within the sociocultural environment, these

are developed into more sophisticated and effective mental processes, which
Vygotsky refers to as “higher mental functions.”

Tools of intellectual adaptation

 Each culture provides its children with tools of intellectual adaptation that
allow them to use basic mental functions more effectively/adaptively.

Tools of intellectual adaptation is Vygotsky’s term for methods of thinking

and problem-solving strategies that children internalize through social interactions
with the more knowledgeable members of society.

For example, memory in young children is limited by biological factors.

However, culture determines the type of memory strategy we develop.

For example, in Western culture, children learn note-taking to aid memory,

but in pre-literate societies, other strategies must be developed, such as tying knots
in a string to remember, carrying pebbles, or repeating the names of ancestors until
large numbers can be repeated.

Vygotsky, therefore, sees cognitive functions, even those carried out alone,
as affected by the beliefs, values, and tools of intellectual adaptation of the culture
in which a person develops and, therefore, socio-culturally determined.

Therefore, intellectual adaptation tools vary from culture to culture – as in the

memory example.

Social Influences on Cognitive Development

Like Piaget, Vygotsky believes that young children are curious and actively
involved in their own learning and discovering and developing
new understandings/schema.

However, Vygotsky emphasized social contributions to the development

process, whereas Piaget emphasized self-initiated discovery.

According to Vygotsky (1978), much important learning by the child occurs

through social interaction with a skillful tutor. The tutor may model behaviors and/or
provide verbal instructions for the child.

Vygotsky refers to this as cooperative or collaborative dialogue. The child

seeks to understand the actions or instructions provided by the tutor (often the
parent or teacher) and then internalizes the information, using it to guide or
regulate their performance.

Shaffer (1996) gives the example of a young girl given her first jigsaw. Alone,
she performs poorly in attempting to solve the puzzle. The father then sits with her
and describes or demonstrates some basic strategies, such as finding all the
corner/edge pieces, and provides a couple of pieces for the child to put together
herself, and offers encouragement when she does so.
 As the child becomes more competent, the father allows the child to work
more independently. According to Vygotsky, this social interaction involving
cooperative or collaborative dialogue promotes cognitive development.

To understand Vygotsky’s theories on cognitive development, one must

understand two of the main principles of Vygotsky’s work: the More Knowledgeable
Other (MKO) and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).

More Knowledgeable Other

The more knowledgeable other (MKO) is somewhat self-explanatory; it refers

to someone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the
learner, concerning a particular task, process, or concept.

Although the implication is that the MKO is a teacher or an older adult, this is
not necessarily the case. Often, a child’s peers or an adult’s children may be the
individuals with more knowledge or experience.

For example, who is more likely to know more about the newest teenage
music groups, how to win at the most recent PlayStation game, or how to correctly
perform the newest dance craze – a child or their parents?

In fact, the MKO need not be a person at all. To support employees in their
learning process, some companies are now using electronic performance support
systems.

Electronic tutors have also been used in educational settings to facilitate and
guide students through learning. The key to MKOs is that they must have (or be
programmed with) more knowledge about the topic being learned than the learner
does.

Zone Of Proximal Development

The concept of the more knowledgeable other relates to the second

important principle of Vygotsky’s work, the zone of proximal development.

This important concept relates to the difference between what a child can
achieve independently and what a child can achieve with guidance and
encouragement from a skilled partner.

Vygotsky consequently focuses much more closely on social interaction as an

aid to learning, arguing that, left alone, children will develop – but not to their full
potential.
 He refers to the gap between actual and potential learning as the zone of
proximal development (ZPD) – and argues that it is only through collaboration with
adults and other learners that this gap can be bridged.

The zone of proximal development is the gap between the level of actual
development, what the child can do on his own, and the level of potential
development, what a child can do with the assistance of more advanced and
competent individuals.

Social interaction, therefore, supports the child’s cognitive development in

the ZPD, leading to a higher level of reasoning. It is generally believed that social
dialogues have two important features.

The first is intersubjectivity, where two individuals who might have different
understandings of a task, arrive at a shared understanding by adjusting to the
perspective of the other.

The second feature is referred to as scaffolding. Adults may begin with direct
instruction, but as children’s mastery of a task increases, so the adult tends to
withdraw their own contributions in recognition of the child’s increasing success.
 For example, the child could not solve the jigsaw puzzle (in the example
above) by itself and would have taken a long time to do so (if at all), but was able to
solve it following interaction with the father, and has developed competence at this
skill that will be applied to future jigsaws.

ZPD is the zone where instruction is the most beneficial, as it is when the task
is just beyond the individual’s capabilities. To learn, we must be presented with
tasks just out of our ability range. Challenging tasks promote maximum cognitive
growth.

As a result of shared dialogues with more knowledgeable others, who provide

hints, instructions, and encouragement, the child can internalize the ‘how to do it’
part of the task as part of their inner or private speech. The child can then use this
on later occasions when they tackle a similar task on their own.

Vygotsky (1978) sees the Zone of Proximal Development as the area where
the most sensitive instruction or guidance should be given – allowing the child to
develop skills they will then use on their own – developing higher mental functions.

Vygotsky also views peer interaction as an effective way of developing skills

and strategies. He suggests that teachers use cooperative learning exercises where
less competent children develop with help from more skillful peers – within the zone
of proximal development.

Evidence for Vygotsky and the ZPD

Freund (1990) conducted a study in which children had to decide which items
of furniture should be placed in particular areas of a doll’s house.

Some children were allowed to play with their mother in a similar situation
before they attempted it alone (zone of proximal development) while others were
allowed to work on this by themselves (Piaget’s discovery learning).

Freund found that those who had previously worked with their mother (ZPD)
showed the greatest improvement compared with their first attempt at the task.

The conclusion is that guided learning within the ZPD led to greater
understanding/performance than working alone (discovery learning).

Vygotsky And Language

Vygotsky believed that language develops from social interactions for

communication purposes. Vygotsky viewed language as man’s greatest tool for
communicating with the outside world.
 According to Vygotsky (1962), language plays two critical roles in cognitive
development:

1. It is the main means by which adults transmit information to

children.

2. Language itself becomes a very powerful tool for intellectual

adaptation.

Vygotsky (1987) differentiates between three forms of language:

1. Social speech, which is external communication used to talk to

others (typical from the age of two);

2. Private speech (typical from the age of three) which is directed

to the self and serves an intellectual function;

3. Private speech goes underground, diminishing in audibility as

it takes on a self-regulating function and is transformed into silent
inner speech (typical from the age of seven).

For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems from the
beginning of life, merging at around three years of age.

At this point, speech and thought become interdependent: thought becomes

verbal, and speech becomes representational.

As children develop mental representation, particularly the skill of language,

they start to communicate with themselves in much the same way as they would
communicate with others.

When this happens, children’s monologues are internalized to become inner speech.
The internalization of language is important as it drives cognitive development.

“Inner speech is not the interiour aspect of external speech – it is a function

in itself. It still remains speech, i.e., thought connected with words.

But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech

words dies as they bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in
pure meanings.”

Private Speech
 Vygotsky (1987) was the first psychologist to document the importance of
private speech.

He considered private speech as the transition point between social and inner
speech, the moment in development where language and thought unite to
constitute verbal thinking.

Thus, in Vygotsky’s view, private speech was the earliest manifestation of

inner speech. Indeed, private speech is more similar (in form and function) to inner
speech than social speech.

Private speech is “typically defined, in contrast to social speech, as speech

addressed to the self (not to others) for the purpose of self-regulation (rather than
communication).”

Private speech is overt, audible, and observable, often seen in children who
talk to themselves while problem-solving.

Conversely, inner speech is covert or hidden because it happens internally. It

is the silent, internal dialogue that adults often engage in while thinking or problem-
solving.

In contrast to Piaget’s (1959) notion of private speech representing a

developmental dead-end, Vygotsky (1934, 1987) viewed private speech as:

“A revolution in development which is triggered when preverbal thought and

preintellectual language come together to create fundamentally new forms of
mental functioning.” (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005: p. 1)

In addition to disagreeing on the functional significance of private speech,

Vygotsky and Piaget also offered opposing views on the developmental course of
private speech and the environmental circumstances in which it occurs most often
(Berk & Garvin, 1984).
 Through private speech, children collaborate with themselves, in the same
way a more knowledgeable other (e.g., adults) collaborate with them to achieve a
given function.

Vygotsky sees “private speech” as a means for children to plan activities and
strategies, aiding their development. Private speech is the use of language for self-
regulation of behavior.

Therefore, language accelerates thinking/understanding (Jerome Bruner also

views language in this way). Vygotsky believed that children who engage in large
amounts of private speech are more socially competent than children who do not
use it extensively.

Vygotsky (1987) notes that private speech does not merely accompany a
child’s activity but acts as a tool the developing child uses to facilitate cognitive
processes, such as overcoming task obstacles, and enhancing imagination, thinking,
and conscious awareness.

Children use private speech most often during intermediate difficulty tasks
because they attempt to self-regulate by verbally planning and organizing their
thoughts (Winsler et al., 2007).

The frequency and content of private speech correlate with behavior or

performance. For example, private speech appears functionally related to cognitive
performance: It appears at times of difficulty with a task.
 For example, tasks related to executive function (Fernyhough & Fradley,
2005), problem-solving tasks (Behrend et al., 1992), and schoolwork in both
language (Berk & Landau, 1993), and mathematics (Ostad & Sorensen, 2007).

Berk (1986) provided empirical support for the notion of private speech. She
found that most private speech exhibited by children serves to describe or guide
the child’s actions.

Berk also discovered that children engaged in private speech more often
when working alone on challenging tasks and when their teacher was not
immediately available to help them.

Furthermore, Berk also found that private speech develops similarly in all
children regardless of cultural background.

There is also evidence (Behrend et al., 1992) that those children who
displayed the characteristic whispering and lip movements associated with private
speech when faced with a difficult task were generally more attentive and
successful than their ‘quieter’ classmates.

Vygotsky (1987) proposed that private speech is a product of an individual’s

social environment. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that there exist high
positive correlations between rates of social interaction and private speech in
children.

Children raised in cognitively and linguistically stimulating environments

(situations more frequently observed in higher socioeconomic status families) start
using and internalizing private speech faster than children from less privileged
backgrounds.

Indeed, children raised in environments characterized by low verbal and

social exchanges exhibit delays in private speech development.

Children’s use of private speech diminishes as they grow older and follows a
curvilinear trend. This is due to changes in ontogenetic development whereby
children can internalize language (through inner speech) to self-regulate their
behavior (Vygotsky, 1987).

For example, research has shown that children’s private speech usually
peaks at 3–4 years of age, decreases at 6–7, and gradually fades out to be mostly
internalized by age 10 (Diaz, 1992).

Vygotsky proposed that private speech diminishes and disappears with age not
because it becomes socialized, as Piaget suggested, but because it goes
underground to constitute inner speech or verbal thought” (Frauenglass & Diaz,
1985).
Educational Implications

Vygotsky’s approach to child development is a form of social constructivism,

based on the idea that cognitive functions are the products of social interactions.

Social constructivism posits that knowledge is constructed and learning

occurs through social interactions within a cultural and historical context.

Vygotsky emphasized the collaborative nature of learning by constructing

knowledge through social negotiation. He rejected the assumption made by Piaget
that it was possible to separate learning from its social context.

Vygotsky believed everything is learned on two levels. First, through

interaction with others, then integrated into the individual’s mental structure.

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.

Teaching styles grounded in constructivism represent a deliberate shift from

traditional, didactic, memory-oriented transmission models (Cannella & Reiff, 1994)
to a more student-centered approach.

Traditionally, schools have failed to foster environments where students

actively participate in their own and their peers’ education. Vygotsky’s theory,
however, calls for both the teacher and students to assume non-traditional roles as
they engage in collaborative learning.

Rather than having a teacher impose their understanding onto students for
future recitation, the teacher should co-create meaning with students in a manner
that allows learners to take ownership (Hausfather, 1996).

For instance, a student and teacher might start a task with varying levels of
expertise and understanding. As they adapt to each other’s perspective, the teacher
must articulate their insights in a way that the student can comprehend, leading the
student to a fuller understanding of the task or concept.
 The student can then internalize the task’s operational aspect (“how to do it”)
into their inner speech or private dialogue. Vygotsky referred to this reciprocal
understanding and adjustment process as intersubjectivity.”

ZPD

Because Vygotsky asserts that cognitive change occurs within the zone of
proximal development, instruction would be designed to reach a developmental
level just above the student’s current developmental level.

Vygotsky proclaims, “learning which is oriented toward developmental levels

that have already been reached is ineffective from the viewpoint of the child’s
overall development. It does not aim for a new stage of the developmental process
but rather lags behind this process” (Vygotsky, 1978).

Appropriation is necessary for cognitive development within the zone of

proximal development. Individuals participating in peer collaboration or guided
teacher instruction must share the same focus to access the zone of proximal
development.

“Joint attention and shared problem solving is needed to create a process of

cognitive, social, and emotional interchange” (Hausfather,1996).

Furthermore, it is essential that the partners be on different developmental

levels and the higher-level partner be aware of the lower’s level. If this does not
occur or one partner dominates, the interaction is less successful (Driscoll, 1994;
Hausfather, 1996).

Vygotsky’s theories also feed into the current interest in collaborative

learning, suggesting that group members should have different levels of ability so
more advanced peers can help less advanced members operate within their ZPD.

Scaffolding and reciprocal teaching are effective strategies to access the

zone of proximal development.

Reciprocal Teaching

A contemporary educational application of Vygotsky’s theory is “reciprocal

teaching,” used to improve students” ability to learn from text.

In this method, teachers and students collaborate in learning and practicing

four key skills: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher’s
role in the process is reduced over time.
 Reciprocal teaching allows for the creation of a dialogue between students
and teachers. This two-way communication becomes an instructional strategy by
encouraging students to go beyond answering questions and engage in the
discourse (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather, 1996).

A study conducted by Brown and Palincsar (1989) demonstrated the

Vygotskian approach with reciprocal teaching methods in their successful program
to teach reading strategies.

The teacher and students alternated turns leading small group discussions on
a reading. After modeling four reading strategies, students began to assume the
teaching role.

The results showed significant gains over other instructional strategies

(Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather,1996).

Cognitively Guided Instruction is another strategy to implement Vygotsky’s

theory. This strategy involves the teacher and students exploring math problems
and then sharing their problem-solving strategies in an open dialogue
(Hausfather,1996).

Based on Vygotsky’s theory, the physical classroom would provide clustered

desks or tables and workspace for peer instruction, collaboration, and small-group
instruction. Learning becomes a reciprocal experience for the students and teacher.

Like the environment, the instructional design of the material to be learned

would be structured to promote and encourage student interaction and
collaboration. Thus the classroom becomes a community of learning.

Scaffolding

Also, Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development on learners is relevant to

instructional concepts such as “scaffolding” and “apprenticeship,” in which a
teacher or more advanced peer helps to structure or arrange a task so that a novice
can work on it successfully.

A teacher’s role is to identify each individual’s current level of development

and provide them with opportunities to cross their ZPD.

A crucial element in this process is the use of what later became known as
scaffolding; the way in which the teacher provides students with frameworks and
experiences which encourage them to extend their existing schemata and
incorporate new skills, competencies, and understandings.

Scaffolding describes the conditions that support the child’s learning, to move
from what they already know to new knowledge and abilities.
 Scaffolding requires the teacher to allow students to extend their current
skills and knowledge.

During scaffolding, the support offered by an adult (or more knowledgeable

other) gradually decreases as the child becomes more skilled in the task.

As the adult withdraws their help, the child assumes more of the strategic
planning and eventually gains competence to master similar problems without a
teacher’s aid or a more knowledgeable peer.

It is important to note that this is more than simply instruction; learning

experiences must be presented in such a way as to actively challenge existing
mental structures and provide frameworks for learning.

Five ways in which an adult can “scaffold” a child’s learning:

1. Engaging the child’s interest

2. Maintaining the child’s interest in the task e.g., avoiding distraction and
providing clear instructions on how to start the task.

3. Keeping the child’s frustration under control e.g., by supportive

interactions, adapting instructions according to where the child is
struggling.

4. Emphasizing the important features of the task

5. Demonstrating the task: showing the child how to do the task in simple,
clear steps.

As the child progresses through the ZPD, the necessary scaffolding level
declines from 5 to 1.

The teacher must engage students’ interests, simplify tasks to be

manageable, and motivate students to pursue the instructional goal.

In addition, the teacher must look for discrepancies between students” efforts
and the solution, control for frustration and risk, and model an idealized version of
the act (Hausfather, 1996).

Challenges to Traditional Teaching Methods

Vygotsky’s social development theory challenges traditional teaching

methods. Historically, schools have been organized around recitation teaching.
 The teacher disseminates knowledge to be memorized by the students, who
in turn recite the information to the teacher (Hausfather,1996).

However, the studies described above offer empirical evidence that learning
based on the social development theory facilitates cognitive development over
other instructional strategies.

The structure of our schools does not reflect the rapid changes our society is
experiencing. The introduction and integration of computer technology in society
has tremendously increased the opportunities for social interaction.

Therefore, the social context for learning is transforming as well. Whereas

collaboration and peer instruction were once only possible in shared physical space,
learning relationships can now be formed from distances through cyberspace.

Computer technology is a cultural tool that students can use to meditate and
internalize their learning. Recent research suggests changing the learning contexts
with technology is a powerful learning activity (Crawford, 1996).

If schools continue to resist structural change, students will be ill-prepared for

the world they will live.

Critical Evaluation

Vygotsky’s work has not received the same level of intense scrutiny that
Piaget’s has, partly due to the time-consuming process of translating Vygotsky’s
work from Russian.

Also, Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective does not provide as many specific

hypotheses to test as Piaget’s theory, making refutation difficult, if not impossible.

Perhaps the main criticism of Vygotsky’s work concerns the assumption that
it is relevant to all cultures. Rogoff (1990) dismisses the idea that Vygotsky’s ideas
are culturally universal and instead states that scaffolding- heavily dependent on
verbal instruction – may not be equally useful in all cultures for all types of learning.

Indeed, in some instances, observation and practice may be more effective

ways of learning certain skills.

There is much emphasis on social interaction and culture, but many other
aspects of development are neglected, such as the importance of emotional factors,
e.g., the joys of success and the disappointments and frustration of failure act as
motivation for learning.

Vygotsky overemphasized socio-cultural factors at the expense of biological

influences on cognitive development. This theory cannot explain why cross-cultural
studies show that the stages of development (except the formal operational stage)
occur in the same order in all cultures suggesting that cognitive development is a
product of a biological process of maturation.

Vygotky’s theory has been applied successfully to education. Scaffolding has

been shown to be an effective way of teaching (Freund, 1990), and based on this
theory, teachers are trained to guide children from what they can do to the next
step in their learning through careful scaffolding.

Collaborative work is also used in the classroom, mixing children of different

levels of ability to make use of reciprocal / peer teaching.

Vygotsky vs. Piaget

Unlike Piaget’s notion that children’s cognitive development must necessarily

precede their learning, Vygotsky argued, “learning is a necessary and universal
aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human
psychological function” (1978, p. 90). In other words, social learning precedes (i.e.,
come before) development.

Vygotsky’s theory differs from that of Piaget in several important ways:

Vygotsky places more emphasis on culture affecting cognitive

development.
Unlike Piaget, who emphasized universal cognitive change (i.e., all children would
go through the same sequence of cognitive development regardless of their cultural
experiences), Vygotsky leads us to expect variable development depending on
cultural diversity.

This contradicts Piaget’s view of universal stages of development (Vygotsky does

not refer to stages like Piaget does).

Hence, Vygotsky assumes cognitive development varies across cultures, whereas

Piaget states cognitive development is mostly universal across cultures.

Vygotsky places considerably more emphasis on social factors

contributing to cognitive development.

1. Vygotsky states the importance of cultural and social context for learning.
Cognitive development stems from social interactions from guided learning
within the zone of proximal development as children and their partners co-
construct knowledge.

In contrast, Piaget maintains that cognitive development stems largely

from independent explorations in which children construct knowledge.

2. For Vygotsky, the environment in which children grow up will influence how
they think and what they think about.

The importance of scaffolding and language may differ for all cultures.
Rogoff (1990) emphasizes the importance of observation and practice in
pre-industrial societies (e.g., learning to use a canoe among Micronesian
Islanders).

Vygotsky places more (and different) emphasis on the role of language in

cognitive development.

According to Piaget, language depends on thought for its development (i.e., thought
comes before language). For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate
systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three years of age, producing
verbal thought (inner speech). In Piaget’s theory, egocentric (or private) speech
gradually disappears as children develop truly social speech, in which they monitor
and adapt what they say to others.

Vygotsky disagreed with this view, arguing that as language helps children to think
about and control their behavior, it is an important foundation for complex cognitive
skills. As children age, this self-directed speech becomes silent (or private) speech,
referring to the inner dialogues we have with ourselves as we plan and carry out
activities.

For Vygotsky, cognitive development results from an internalization of language.

According to Vygotsky, adults are an important source of cognitive

development.

Adults transmit their culture’s tools of intellectual adaptation that children

internalize.

In contrast, Piaget emphasizes the importance of peers, as peer interaction

promotes social perspective-taking.