Socialcultural Theories of Development and Education Pt. 1

• Human Growth and Development
• Year 4

Chapter 6: 

Socialcultural Theories of Development and Education

Elijah Coates 

FED 321 Human Growth and Developmenment

Vygotsky's Perspective

In Vygotsky’s view, learning begins in the social world. Speech is originally external to children: they speak to address others, not to talk to themselves. Only after establishing speech for others can children initialize it. Thus, children can have monologues with themselves only after they have developed the ability to dialogue with others.

Thoughts and Speech in Adults:

Vygotsky believed that inner speech plays and important role in adult thought.

Inner speech is an internal dialogue that is often abbreviated and fragmentary, with the meaning of complex thoughts captured in very few words.

The relationship between thought and inner speech. Inner speech is thought connected by words.

Ex. Looking for a book in a database and you are not familiar. Your cognitive mind asks "How do I get here" and then "Pick it" as you find the book  until the database becomes familiar and inner speech no longer needed. 

Thoughts and speech in Children:

In vygotsky’s theory much of the development of thinking is the development of inner speech.

This process goes through 4 stages

Fist stage - 2yrs thought is nonverbal and speech is nonconceptual and has no relations with thought and speech.

Second stage- thought and speech begin to merge with the development of language at age 2yrs.

Third stage- the role of speech in directing thoughts and behavior begins to emerge as children exhibit egocentric speech or private speech that voices what children are thinking or doing a s as a sign of maturation.

Fourth stage- the development of inner speech, the egocentric speech, that was overt becomes covert and abbreviated becoming inner speech.

How does is inner speech in adults differ from children?

Development of Sophisticated Thought

Adults often assist children in thinking about problems they face. For example, they may help children solve a puzzle or help them figure out how many days there are until there next birthday. What goes on in these interactions is thinking, but thinking involving two heads. After years of participating in these interactions, children internalize they types of actions they once carried out with adults.

Sophisticated Thought cont.

Most critically, however, the responsive social world provides assistance on tasks that are within hat Vygotsky called the zone of proximal development. Tasks in the zone of proximal development are those that children cannot accomplish independently but can accomplish with assistance.

The concept of scaffolding is based on the principles of Vygotsky’s theory. Builders use a scaffold to erect a building gradually removing it as the building becomes self supporting. Likewise, adults or older children are helping younger children with a task should gradually remove their prompts and hints

Apprenticeship

Educators who agree with Vygotsky believe that excellent instructions involves social interactions between an apprentice student and a more expert adult.  During apprenticeship the teacher bridges what the apprentice needs to know and what the apprentice already knows. A prime example in schools is tutoring would be tutoring. 

Reciprocal teaching

reciprocal teaching is a form of instruction that is often showcased as illustrating Vygotskian principles. This includes summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. Putting children in small groups allows all students to go through each stage independently. 

Reciprocal Teaching cont.

The group work involves guided learners (the students) to take turns as group leaders and take the reigns of each project and the teacher slowly retracts themselves as the students begin to become competent of the content knowledge. 

How can Sophisticated Thought and Reciprocal Teaching work together?