19 A bit of Vygotsky

Lev Vygotsky died in Moscow at the age of 37 but he left behind an extraordinary record of teaching and writing in literature, drama, art, Marxist philosophy and above all psychology. In the 1960s his work became known in the English speaking world through the work of Jerome Bruner and Reuven Feurstein. Unlike Piaget, Vygotsky’s interests lay with the interaction between people learning together, rather than a detailed analysis of individual cognitive performance. He described the importance of a ‘mediator’ in the process of learning, someone who encourages the learner to ‘talk his thoughts out loud’ so that both the speaker and listeners can interact to modify each other’s ideas. Obviously where the group consists of a teacher and her pupils, the teacher will play a leading role in helping the pupils to construct new knowledge. But more influential in a pupil’s development is their interaction with peers. Pupils working together also construct knowledge as they question each other about meanings and argue over possible explanations. Teachers using Thinking Science lessons are expected to become adept at classroom management skills which maximise the opportunities for pupils to work and talk together as ‘peer coaches’. Vygotsky hypothesised that half-formed or potential problem-solving strategies turn into complete or successful skills either by chance, which she can relate action on any one part of that world to the effects and repercussions on other parts of the world. It requires the ability to think about dynamic systems.

So, in summary, we used Piaget’s work to give us both the descriptions of the reasoning patterns required for formal operational thinking and the way in which children at different stages of development will apply that type of reasoning. These insights create the ‘content’ of each lesson. In other words, each lesson is designed to promote a particular type of reasoning. Vygotsky’s work gives us a model for how to teach an intervention lesson by spontaneous effort on the part of the learner or by the mediation of more able peers or older people (e.g. parents or teachers). The process of mediation involves either ‘framing’ the problem – helping the learner redefine it, or demonstrating how to do specific examples related to the problem so that the learner can ‘mirror’ the actions of the ‘expert’.

Vygotsky invented the term ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD) to describe the difference between the actual performance of a child as determined by their independent problem-solving performance and the level of potential development (increasing success with processing the problem) as determined by problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.

He said that

‘… instruction is good only when it proceeds ahead of development, when it awakens and rouses to life those functions that are in the process of maturing or in the zone of proximal development.’ (Vygotsky 1978 p.82)

Using Vygotsky’s ideas of social construction, we developed what is now known as ‘the five pillar’ teaching model: concrete preparation, cognitive conflict, construction, metacognition and bridging. We describe what we mean by each of these terms in ‘The teaching model’ section on page 11.