This theory of learning emphasizes the social and historical context of the individual.
And if our species is as it is, it is mainly due to our ability to draw lessons from what happens to us and disseminate this information throughout the rest of society. Arguably, learning and culture go hand in hand.
It is precisely this point of connection between the individual and the collective that has characterized theSociocultural Theory of Lev Vygotsky, an influential Russian psychologist who carried out most of his work in Soviet times. If you are interested in knowing one of the most important theories in the history of Psychology, keep reading.
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The historical-cultural perspective of Lev Vygotsky
To understand the basic ideas that shape Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory, it is first important to know how he understood the object of study of psychology, that is, what needs to be investigated from the point of view of psychologists. This question is what shapes the conception of it in the way in which human communities learn from what happens to them.
In the first place, it must be taken into account that in Vygotsky’s time, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the influence of positivism was very important in the scientific field.
This implied, among other things, that a large part of the scientists of the time understood that their activity should be as similar as possible to the activity of those who were dedicated to the “hard sciences”: breaking down what was studied into its simplest objective elements, and study them in isolation to ensure that their hypotheses and theories correspond to specific natural events, and not to mere suppositions or imaginary entities resulting from abstract thought detached from reality.
This cultural context made the first representatives of psychology put a lot of effort into studying the psychological from the observation of isolated events, expressed by individuals separated from their usual context and surrounded by a laboratory environment. Wilhelm Wundt’s investigations are an example of this.
Lev Vygotsky understood psychology in a totally different waytag. Influenced by the Marxist philosophy that spread through Russia (and that would end up becoming official with the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922), this researcher believed that the individual is inseparable from the culture and the historical moment in which he is immersed.
It is not only that people need the help of others to survive: it is that their way of thinking and acting depends largely on cultural phenomena and historical inertia that run through the entire society in which they live. Language itself, which he believed shapes thought, is a cultural phenomenon, something that cannot be created by the individual.
That is why the intellectual legacy of Lev Vygotsky is sometimes called “historical-cultural psychology” , to highlight the fact that according to his perspective each individual is explained by the historical and cultural context in which he was born and has developed, absorbing a large part of the mental frameworks that navigate through a given society.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
What we now call Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory is actually the result of the joint work of this psychologist with Alexander Luriaand a group of researchers strongly influenced by these two referents. This group was prolific in its areas of research, addressing topics ranging from the psychology of learning to neuropsychology.
However, Lev Vygotsky specialized mainly in developmental psychology, that is, the one that explains the way in which psychological predispositions and patterns of behavior evolve throughout people’s lives, from birth to death.
He understood that by understanding the way in which less complex psychological processes begin to unfold from childhood, adolescence and the early stages of adulthood, it would be possible to better understand how human beings think and act in general.
One of the aspects that motivated Vygotsky to investigate this topic was to gain access to the most rural and technologically backward areas of the Soviet Union, a political entity that in its first years of existence wanted to bring a “developed” way of life to all its territories. ” and consistent with their ideas of progress.
In this way, Vygotsky verified that the inhabitants of those lands still adhering to the traditional and to little complex forms of organization thought very differently from the proletarians of the large urban centers of westernmost Russia. In fact, they were unable to follow certain lines of reasoning, confusing categories and concepts.
These kinds of experiences were interpreted by Vygotsky, we are examples of the extent to which there is no human thought “by default”, a canon from which one can only approach or move away, but what really exists is different historical and cultural contexts promoting some ways of thinking and actingor other very different. Just as the living conditions and historical precedents of regions vary greatly, so does the human psyche.
Thus, unlike Jean Piaget , who understood that the learning engine is based on an internal force that arises in individuals and leads them to explore the environment, for Vygotsky learning is explained rather from the context.
That is to say: from the collectivity and from the historical. The same patterns of thought and behavior are not learned in a rich family as in a poor one, nor are the same cultural elements internalized in the Soviet Union of the 1920s as in the Athens of Pericles.
As a consequence, if psychology wants to help people to learn in the best possible way, a material and cultural transformation must take place in its environment, on the one hand, and it must be provided with external support points from which to develop. This is what led Vygotsky to develop the concept of the “zone of proximal development”
Next development area
The zone of proximal development is a construct developed by Vygotsky as a proposal to create effective learning spaces.
We can define it as a context in which there is harmony between what a boy or girl can do , and what they can learn from what they already know, thanks to the help of an educator or a more competent peer ( that is, that he already masters what the other is beginning to learn).
In this way, Vygotsky focuses on the objective conditions that we can create around each young person who is learning, to facilitate their learning without assuming that the will to learn will arise from them spontaneously. By maintaining a balance between the easy and the difficult, you can present small challenges that are simple enough not to throw you in the towel and complex enough to provide a challenge and a motivating goal.
The zone of proximal development is also an idea closely related to the concept of scaffolding , which is still used today in educational and developmental psychology to refer to the accompaniment of apprentices or students in terms of the level of difficulty they need: what is guaranteed is already known, making them not feel useless and use it in subsequent efforts to learn, and new teachings are proposed, areas devoid of “scaffolding”.
Bibliographic references
- Kellogg, D. & Yasnitsky, A. (2011). The differences between the Russian and English texts of Tool and Symbol in Child Development. Supplementary and analytic materials. PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological Journal, 4(4).
- Tudge, J. (1999). Discovering Vygotsky: A Historical and Developmental Approach to His Theory. In Undiscovered Vygotsky. Etudes on the Pre-history of Cultural-Historical Psychology, ed. N. Veresov, pp. 10 – 17. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
- Yasnitsky, A., van der Veer, R., Aguilar, E. & Garcia, LN (Eds.) (2016). Vygotsky Revisited: A Critical History of His Context and Legacy. Buenos Aires: Miño and Dávila Publishers
To the classic question “what do you do?” I always answer “basically I am a psychologist”. In fact, my academic training has revolved around the psychology of development, education and community, a field of study influenced my volunteer activities, as well as my first work experiences in personal services.
