Lesson 9 Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development

 

      Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist was the one who formulated the sociocultural theory. According to him, social interaction, mediated with language, is a key factor in children’s development. Concepts and social behavior are formed through the child’s interaction with others. The sociocultural theory of cognitive development believes that children’s thinking is affected by their knowledge of the social community which are learned from either technical or psychological cultural tools.

Technical tools refer to the real tools like calculators and measuring instruments while psychological cultural tools include symbol systems, i.e., numbers and language that allow people to communicate, think, solve problems and create knowledge.

 

The Role of Social Interaction

            To reiterate, Vygotsky stressed the significance of social interaction in children’s thinking. They learn from their more knowledgeable others (MKOs). MKOs include their parents, teachers, adults and those more advance classmates and peers. An MKO is someone who the learner considered as an individual with higher skill level in terms of specific task to perform.

       An example is a child who is guided by verbal clues by the mother learns how to tear off the plastic wrapper of the cookies. In another case, children playing Chinese garter abide by the rules that they agree with. This is called a co-constructed process as the children negotiated to create an acceptable rule on how to play the game.


The Role of Language

            According to Vygotsky, language plays a crucial role in the theory of human cognitive development. Language plays multiple roles, including culturally shaping the overt behavior of individuals as well as influencing their covert behavior. Through language, human cognitive development and higher mental functions are initiated from social communications. As people engage in social activities, they are involved in mental and communicative functions (Vygotsky, 1986).


            John (2014) explained the three stages of speech development identified by Vygotsky. The following paragraphs explained the stages mentioned.

  1.       Social or external speech. (0-3 years old). At this stage, thinking is not related to speech at all. Instead, thinking is primarily in the form of images, emotions, and impressions. Speech only occurs on the external or social level to express a desire or to convey simple emotions such as shouting or crying. For instance, a child would tell “Dede” if hungry. At this stage, speech is merely a tool to make things happen in the external world.
  1.      Egocentric speech. (3-7 years old). In this period, children think out loud or talk to themselves as they are doing something. For instance, as Paul plays with his toy car and it doesn’t run, he tells himself “Sira na.”. Egocentric speech is used to guide behavior and help to solve problems. It is important part of transition to inner speech and more sophisticated thinking.
  1.      Inner speech (7 years old onwards). It is a soundless speech or thought. Here, speech becomes internalized and is used to guide thinking and behavior. It eventually leads to higher levels and more complex types of thinking.


Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)


            ZPD or zone of proximal development is one of the major features of Vygotsky socio-cultural theory. Wheeler (2013) argued that at any time, children find difficulties in performing tasks or problems posed to them as they are not yet matured enough to handle them.

            With the guidance of MKOs, like the parents or elder siblings, they could perform the tasks. Scaffolding, the provision of cues, clues, modeling, and demonstrations of the MKOs can assist the children in successfully performing the task. The goal of the ZPD is to help the child move form the level of current independent performance to the level of potential performance.

            For instance, a difficult word is used in a sentence. Asked about its meaning the children could not provide the meaning on their own. When the teacher reminds them that the contexts or the neighboring words or phrases could reveal the meaning, they begin giving synonyms or related words to unlock the difficult word/s. The teacher’s reminder scaffolded the children to arrive at the correct answer.

            Scaffolding holds the idea of helping the students to learn. With the aid of more competent person or MKO, the learners can increase the level of their understanding of the material. It means peer support which becomes one way to resolve gaps in understanding. It means that teachers or tutors should provide carefully crafted questions, well-phrased explanation, and thoughtfully designed learning tasks. Scaffolding can be done through expansion and prompting.


            Expansion requires one to elaborate or describe something more fully. Prompting is the process where statements are clarified by asking questions to provide cuing or leading statements.

 

Examples:

Expansion

MKO: What is the difference between speed and velocity?

Learner: Direction

MKO: That’s right, one has direction the other has none.

 

Prompting

            MKO: What is the difference between speed and velocity?

Learner: Direction

MKO: Which of the two has direction?

 

Teaching Implications of Sociocultural Theory

            Citing research findings, Slavin (2018) in Bulusan, et al. (2019), proposed the following teaching practices for consideration in the use of ZPD:

  1.      Instructions can be planned to provide practice within the ZPD for individual children or group of children. For example, hints and prompts that help that help children during a pre-assessment could form the basis of instructional activities.
  2.      Scaffolding provides hints and prompts at different levels. In scaffolding the adult does not simplify the task but the role of the learners is simplified.
  3.      Cooperative learning activities can be planned with groups of children at different levels to help each other to learn.

References

  • Aquino, A. M. (2009). Facilitating human learning (First Edition). Rex Book Store, Inc.
  • Bulusan, F., Raquepo, M. R., Balmeo, M. L., & Gutierrez, J. C. (2019). Facilitating learner-centered teaching (First Edition). Rex Book Store, Inc.
  • CMO No. 75 s. 2017, Policies, Standards and Guidelines for Bachelor of Secondary Education (BSEd), p. 39
  • CMO No. 80 s. 2017, Policies, Standards and Guidelines for Bachelor of Physical Education (BPEd), p. 24
  • Lucas, M. R. D., & Corpuz, B. B. (2013). Facilitating learning: a metacognitive process (3rd Edition). LORIMAR Publishing, Inc.
  • Ornos, P. S., Gonzaga, E. P., Esgra, C. B., Gomez, N. G., Tarinay, A. R., & Verde, S. P. (2008). Facilitators of the learning process. Grandwater Publications.
  • Vega, V. A., & Prieto, N. G. (2012). Facilitating learning (Revised Edition). Books Atbp. Publishing Corp.

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