Lev Vygotsky





Two Important Ideas of Vygotsky's Theory of Learning and Some Thoughts on Their Practical Value for Kindergarten Curriculum

Introduction
The purpose of the essay is to introduce some important ideas proposed by a Russian theorist and the founder of cultural-historical psychology L.S. Vygotsky in his book "Mind in Society", chapters 6 and 7. Also in the essay there is an attempt to suggest some possible applications of Vygotsky's ideas for developing effective learning activities that can be used in kindergarten classroom.

L.S.Vygotsky was a prolific author whose innovations in developmental psychology, language and thought development, role of play in child development and relationship between development and learning became basic guidelines in many teaching philosophies. He is mostly famous for coining the term" zone of proximal development" and the key concept  "internalization" that results in an appropriation of knowledge that enables a child to construct  knowledge on his/her own.

Another Vygotsky's big idea is very important for taking into consideration especially for kindergarten curriculum. In the chapter 7 he states that   play is a leading factor in child's maturation where learning promotes development of higher mental functions. Children choose any activity where they can construct a new for them imaginative reality with their own rules of behavior, patterns of language and social roles. They are actively involved in making choices and decisions, directing the play and enjoying (or may not) results of the play.

In the book "Mind in Society", chapter 6 Vygotsky gives a brief review of three groups of  developmental theories stressing their weaknesses and pointing differences and similarities.The major argument was about what comes first, learning or development.

The first group of theorists (Piazet, Binet) proposed that learning can't play a role in development or maturation. Therefore, premature instruction will not be useful if the child is not developmentally ready to learn from it.

The second theoretical platform identified learning and development, but the theorists did not agree on the nature of development. Some theorists viewed development as the mastery of conditioned reflexes, some reduced development to elaboration and substitution of innate responses and habit formation. (James)

The third group of theories attempted to combine the two theoretical viewpoints. The theorists addressed interaction of maturity and learning where they expanded role of learning in child development. (Thorndike, Kofka).

Vygotsky states the idea that the learning and development is not the identity, but the unity where learning is converted into developmental process through never ending sequence of proximal zones. The term "zone of proximal development" is "the distance between a child's independent problem solving and the level of potential development of the child under adult guidance"(Vygotsky,1978,p.86). Proximal zone results in zone of actual development, a zone of internalized external knowledge.

The concept of converting ZPD into ZAD reflects the nature of effective curriculum where a teacher's role is to guide students through the process of acquiring new skills using imitation, collaborative learning and scaffolding. Learning mastery of previous knowledge and skills set a stage for the next proximal zone of more complex knowledge and skills. Scaffolding, collaborative learning and imitation  are used by teacher or more skillful peer as tools to move students from ZPD into ZAD.

Guidance by a knowledgeable person is a practice not new to the world. In all pre-industrial cultures learning happened in social setting. Mothers taught daughters how to cook by showing the process step by step (scaffolding and imitation), women and children weaved traditional rugs or collectively gathered harvest (collaborative learning). Initial learning started long before children went to school. By the time the children first came to school, they have already had previous knowledge of such concepts as shape, color, number, and size.

Roles of Playing
In many modern cultures due to socio-economic factors some children lack oral and mental development that result in underdevelopment of skills necessary for successful learning in school. In order to catch up, the students would need to be introduced to a lot of play activities where teacher actually assumes a role of significant other and teaches concepts that the students did not learn at home.

Unfortunately, currently kindergarteners lack the time to play; they are expected to be able to read by the end of a school year, therefore they spend most of the school time sitting at the desks and performing academic tasks. Kindergarteners are expected to be tested, though, according to Vygotsky, testing is not the best way to assess a child's learning. It adds enormous pressure on teachers making them teach the standard- based curriculum instead of facilitating and guiding relevancy- based play activities.

A lot of concepts can be learned during play—a teacher needs be a creative observer and facilitator while guiding children. Teaching numbers, colors and shapes can become an exciting activity if to take kindergarteners outside and turn it into a game. For example, for Easter egg hunting it would be exciting to hide not only eggs but also objects of different colors, shapes and colors and facilitate a play where students would have to create their own stories of who they think, for example, left "a star" on the ground and why.

While on the way back, students can count cars on school parking lot, name their colors, models and makes , license plate numbers (learn abbreviation), count windows and trees, birds and stray dogs. (Teacher: let's imagine us being stray dogs, what kind of life they have, no food, no home, cold winter—developing emotional intelligence and sense of responsibility for pets, what we should do not to have stray animals—decision making and so on.)

There are many cognitive, emotional, social, and physical activities promoting development can be done outside and inside of the classroom just based on one theme. Teacher creates multitask playing activities in which children would learn without realizing that they were actually taught. When all children moved to the Zone of Actual Development, the teacher can take them outside to observe the first grade activity that is similar to the egg hunting activity but addressed to a higher level of intellectual development... So for the kindergarteners it would be a "trip" into the Zone of Proximal Development, where they will observe and imitate the first grade play, and later after scaffolding by the teacher be actually able to do it on their own.

Annotated Bibliography
Vygotsky L.S. (1978) Mind in society. In M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, and E. Souberman (Eds.), Interaction between learning and development (pp.79-91). Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.


 * In the chapter a Russian-born theorist Vygotsky L.S. introduces the term "zone of proximal development" that is a zone where a child is learning to solve problems under adult guidance through imitation, scaffolding and cooperative learning. According to Vygotsky, learning is a never-ending sequence of proximal zones resulting in internalizing external knowledge.

Vygotsky L.S. (1978) Mind in society. In M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, and E. Souberman (Eds.), The role of play in development (pp.92-104). Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.


 * According to the theorist, play is a socially constructed activity with its own rules of behavior, purpose and result. Play plays a significant role on child's development. It is imaginary, but it based on recollection of something that has actually happened in child's life.

Author or Authors
The original version of this document was written by Natalia Kruse as an assignment in the CMTE 542 course being taught by Alexa Parker.