In what sense and proportion can culture and society influence the cognitive development of the kids? Is there some type of relationship between cognitive development and the complex collaborative process that adults carry out in the education and learning (specific and general) that children receive?
Likewise, what are the main implications of the Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory for the education and cognitive assessment of children?
Sociocultural Theory Vygotsky’s emphasis is on the proactive participation of minors with the environment that surrounds them, being the cognitive development fruit of a collaborative process. Lev Vygotsky (Russia, 1896-1934) maintained that children develop their learning through social interaction: they acquire new and better cognitive skills as a logical process of their immersion in a way of life.
Those activities that are carried out in a shared way allow children to internalize the thought and behavioral structures of the society that surrounds them appropriating them.
Learning and “Zone of proximal development”
According to Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory, the role of adults or more advanced peers is to support, direct and organize the child’s learning, in the step prior to him being able to master these facets, having internalized the structures behavioral and cognitive that the activity requires. This orientation is more effective in offering help to children to cross the development zone. proximal (ZPD) which we could understand as the gap between what they are already capable of doing and what they cannot yet achieve on their own.
Children who are in the ZPD for a specific task are close to being able to perform it autonomously, but they still need to integrate some key to thinking. However, with the right support and guidance, they are capable of completing the task successfully. To the extent that collaboration, supervision and responsibility for learning are covered, the child makes adequate progress in the formation and consolidation of his or her new knowledge and learning.
The scaffolding metaphor
There are several followers of Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (for example: Wood, 1980; Bruner and Ross, 1976) who have brought up the metaphor of the ‘scaffolding ‘ to refer to this mode of learning. He scaffolding It consists of the temporary support of adults (teachers, parents, guardians…) that they provide to the child with the aim of carrying out a task until the child is able to carry it out without external help.
One of the researchers who starts from the theories developed by Lev Vygotsky, Gail Ross, practically studied the scaffolding process in children’s learning. Instructing children between three and five years old, Ross used multiple resources. He used to control and be the center of attention in the sessions, and used slow and dramatized presentations to the students with the aim of showing that the achievement of the task was possible Dr. Ross thus became the one in charge of foreseeing everything that was going to happen. She controlled all parts of the task that the children worked on in a degree of complexity and magnitude proportionate to each one’s previous abilities.
The way in which the tools or objects that were the object of learning were presented allowed children to discover how to solve and carry out the task themselves, in a more effective way than if they had only been explained how to solve it. It is in this sense that Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory points out the “zone” between what people can understand when something is shown in front of them, and what they can generate autonomously. This zone is the zone of proximal development or ZPD that we had previously mentioned (Bruner, 1888).
Sociocultural Theory: in context
The Sociocultural Theory of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky has transcendent implications for education and the evaluation of cognitive development. Tests based on the ZPD, which highlight the child’s potential, represent an invaluable alternative to standardized intelligence tests, which usually emphasize the knowledge and learning already achieved by the child. Thus, many children benefit from guidance sociocultural and open that Vygotsky developed.
Another of the fundamental contributions of the contextual perspective has been the emphasis on the social aspect of development This theory defends that the normal development of children in a culture or in a group belonging to a culture may not be an appropriate norm (and therefore cannot be extrapolated) to children from other cultures or societies.
