Lev Vygotsky's theory of learning

Biography

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, or Vygotsky, (1896 – 1934) was a Belarusian psychologist, author of cultural-historical psychology. The thinker emphasized the role of language and the social historical process in the individual's intellectual development.

He was only discovered by Western scholars many years after his death, but his influence was profound in the sense of changing the hegemonic perception that the student would only be the subject of learning.

lev vygotsky's theory

According to the model he proposed, the child's interaction with the environment through the use of signs (spoken or written language) would result in cognitive development. This placed learning as a social experience and placed the teaching emphasis on the student's living conditions and his social interactions with the teacher.

The teacher's role, according to Vygotsky, was to interfere rather than simply pass on knowledge, thus provoking what he conceptualized as zones of proximal development.

This idea refers to the abstract state of learning located between what the child already knows how to do alone and what he would be able to do with the intervention of an adult. Between actual knowledge and potential.

The internalization, memorization and imitation of social interactions, for Vygotsky, would happen through the observation of culture by the individual. There is a crucial difference between the prevailing ways of understanding teaching at the time, because this model suggests that the subject of knowledge does not directly understand objects directly, but rather a representation from them. Language, culture, would be a representation of the world, a mediation accessible to those who learn.

Context

Researching cognitive development, learning and language in the Soviet Union, Vygotsky was subject to socio-political influences and demands. There is an attempt to reorganize psychology under the paradigm of Marxist materialism.

The ideas of collectivity, of man's plasticity in the face of culture and the use of instruments transformers of nature to shape man himself are congruent with the mentality in which he was inserted.

Phrases

• “Knowledge that does not come from experience is not really knowledge”
• “Through others, we become ourselves”
• “By playing, the child assumes roles and accepts the rules of play, imaginarily performing tasks for which he is not yet able or does not feel pleasant in reality”
• “To understand what the other says, it is not enough to understand their words, but also their thoughts and motivations”
• “The structure of the language a person speaks influences the way that person perceives the universe”