ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT

Vygotsky

Lev Vygotsky and Cultural-historical psychology

Vygotsky was a theorist whose ideas emerged in the last few decades from behind what was known as the Iron Curtain, in the former Soviet Union. He posited that children learn through hands-on experience, as Piaget suggested. However, unlike Piaget, he claimed that timely and sensitive intervention by adults when a child is on the edge of learning a new task (called the Zone of Proximal Development) could help children learn new tasks.

This technique is called "scaffolding," because it builds upon knowledge children already have with new knowledge that adults can help the child learn.An example of this might be when a parent "helps" an infant clap or roll his hands to the pat-a-cake rhyme, until he can clap and roll his hands himself

Vygotsky was strongly focused on the role of culture in determining the child's pattern of development. He argued that "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals."

Many theorists posit stage theories, but Vygotsky did not support stages at all, asserting instead that development was a process.