ewnglish essay

Lev Vygotsky.
Lev Vygotsky was born on the 5th of November 1896 in a small Russian town called Orsche.
Vygotsky was born in Russia in the same year as Piaget. Vygotsky was not trained in science but received a law degree from the Moscow University. He went on to study literature and linguistics and became his Ph.D. for a book he wrote on the psychology of art. During that time, there were strict laws on what jobs Jews could hold, what region of the country they could live in, and limits on how many could be formally educated. He, therefore, received his education in an unconventional way. Lev studied with a private tutor for many years, and enrolled in a Jewish gymnasium only at the junior high school level. Despite under the quota for Jews entering college, finally he was fortunately admitted to Moscow University by a Jewish lottery.

The work of Lev Vygotsky has become the foundation of much research and theory in cognitive development over the past several decades, particularly of what has become known as Social Development Theory.
Vygotsky's theories stress the fundamental role of social interaction in the development of cognition Vygotsky, , as he believed strongly that community plays a central role in the process of "making meaning."
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" .In other words, social learning tends to proceed development.
The zone of proximal development (ZPD) has been defined as "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygotsky, 1978, p86).
Lev Vygotsky views interaction with peers as an effective way of developing skills and strategies. He suggests that teachers use cooperative learning exercises where less competent children develop with help from more skilful peers - within the zone of proximal development.
Vygotsky believed that when a student is at the ZPD for a particular task, providing the appropriate assistance will give the student enough of a "boost" to achieve the task.
The ZPD has become synonymous in the literature with the term scaffolding. However, it is important to note that Vygotsky never used this term in his writing, and it was introduced by Wood et al. (1976). Once the student, with the benefit of scaffolding, masters the task, the scaffolding can then be removed and the student will then be able to complete the task again on his own.

Vygotsky's theory differs from that of Piaget in a number of important ways:

1: Vygotsky places more emphasis on culture affecting/shaping cognitive development - this contradicts Piaget's view of universal stages and content of development. (Vygotsky does not refer to stages in the way that Piaget does).
2: Vygotsky places considerably more emphasis on social factors contributing to cognitive development (Piaget is criticized for underestimating this).
3: Vygotsky places more (and different) emphasis on the role of language in cognitive development (again Piaget is criticized for lack of emphasis on this).