Russian Psychologist Vygotsky\'s Sociocultural Theory, With Input

¶ … Russian psychologist Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory, with Input and Interaction Theory. Beginning with a definition of both theories the paper will then note how the two theories differ and where they are similar in their approach as well as how they are applied to everyday issues such as teaching language.

Sociocultural Theory

Sociocultural theory was first conceived and developed by Russian psychologist Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky's, (1896-1934). His most productive years were at the Institute of Psychology in Moscow (1924-34), where he expanded his ideas on cognitive development, particularly the relationship between language and thinking. His writings emphasized the roles of historical, cultural, and social factors in cognition and argued that language was the most important symbolic tool provided by society. His book, "Thought and Language" is a classic text in psycholinguistics' theoretical contributions to the development of curricula and teaching strategies. (Forman, Minick, Stone 1993)

Vygotsky was interested in applying Marxist social theory to individual psychology. The approach he took to cognitive development is sociocultural, working on the assumption that 'action is mediated and cannot be separated from the milieu in which it is carried out' (Wertsch, 1991) He devised the sociocultural theory that subsequently influenced the development of the constructivist movement. (Jaramillo, 1996) Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of learning contends that intelligence in humans has its origins from within our society of culture. Individual cognitive advancement thus occurs first as interaction with one's social environment followed by interaction within oneself, e.g. internalization. (Brown, 1996) These two phases observed in classroom settings shows that the first phase of the cognitive process for students is when students encourage, support and guide each other while learning. This is followed by students forming their own conclusions based on the evidence they have observed and then resolve conflict by articulating their arguments. (Wertsch).

An important concept in Vygotsky's theory is that the potential for cognitive development is limited to a certain time span which he calls the 'zone of proximal development (Kearsley 1994). The zone of proximal development is defined as having four learning stages. These stages range from the lower limit of what the student knows and the upper limits of what the student has the potential of accomplishing. This seems to be very roughly analogous to concepts of intelligent quotients and testing in modern education.