He believed that social interaction played a critical role in children's learning. Through such social interactions, children go through a continuous process of learning. Vygotsky noted, however, that culture profoundly influenced this process. Imitation, guided learning, and collaborative learning all play a critical part in his theory. (About.com, 2015) Unlike Piaget's notion that children’s' development must necessarily precede their learning, Vygotsky argued, "learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human psychological function" (1978, p. 90). In other words, social learning tends to precede (i.e. come before) development. (McLeod, 2014) Lev Vygotsky is considered a formative thinker in psychology, and much of his work is still being discovered and explored today. While he was a contemporary of Skinner, Pavlov, Freud and Piaget, his work never attained their level of eminence during his lifetime. It wasn't until the 1970s that Vygotsky's theories became known in the West as new concepts and ideas were introduced in the fields of educational and developmental psychology. Since then, Vygotsky's works have been translated and have become very influential, particularly in the area of education. In a 2002 ranking of eminent psychologist's, Vygotsky was identified as the 83rd most frequently cited psychologist…
