Lev Vygotsky ( ). Vygotsky was born in Russia in the same year as Piaget. Vygotsky was not trained in science but received a law degree from Moscow University. He went on to study literature and linguistics and began his Ph.D. for a book he wrote on the psychology of art. To understand Vygotsky´s theory, it is important to look at the political environment of that time. Vygotsky began to work in psychology shortly after the Russian revolution, where the Marxism replaced the rule of the czar. The new philosophy of the Marxist emphasized socialism and collectivism. Individuals were expected to sacrifice their personal goals and achievements for the improvement of the larger society. Sharing and co-operation was encouraged, and the success of any individual was seen as reflecting the success of the culture. Marxists also placed a heavy emphasis on history, believing that any culture could be understood only through examination of the ideas and events that had shaped it. Vygotsky incorporates these elements in his model of human development that has been termed as a sociocultural approach. For him, the individual’s development is a result of his or her culture. Development, in Vygotsky´s theory, applies mainly to mental development, such as thought, language and reasoning process. These abilities were understood to develop through social interactions with others (especially parents) and therefore represented the shared knowledge of the culture.

Vygotsky viewed cognitive developments as a result of a dialectical process, where the child learns through shared problem solving experiences with someone else, such as parents, teacher, siblings or a peer. Originally, the person interacting with the child undertakes most of the responsibility for guiding the problem solving, but gradually this responsibility transfers to the child. Although these interactions can take many forms, Vygotsky stresses language dialogue. It is primarily through their speech that adults are assumed to transmit to children the rich body of knowledge that exists in their culture. As learning processes, the child’s own language comes to help as his or her primary tool of intellectual transformation. Children can eventually use their own internal speech to direct their own behavior in much the same way that their parents’ speech once directed it. This transition reflects the Vygotsky´s theme of development as a process of internalization. Bodies of knowledge and tools of thought at first exist outside the child, in the culture of the environment. Development consists of gradual internalization, primarily through language, to form cultural adaptation.

The second aspect of Vygotsky´s theory is the idea that the potential for cognitive development is limited to a certain time span which he calls the “zone of proximal development”. ZPD refers to the gap between what a given child can achieve alone, their ´potential development as determined by independent problem solving´, and what they can achieve ‘through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers’. Vygotsky refers to what children can do on their own as the ‘level of actual development’. In his view, it is the level of actual development that a standard IQ test measures. Such a measure is undoubtedly important, but it is also incomplete. Two children might have the same level of actual development, in the sense of being able to solve the same number of problems on some standardized test. Given appropriate help from an adult, still, one child might be able to solve an additional dozen problems while the other child might be able to solve only two or three more. What the child can do with the help is referred to as the ‘level of potential development’. The full development during the ZPD depends upon full social interaction and the more the child takes advantage of an adult’s assistance, the broader the ‘Zone of Proximal Development’.

The language is also crucial and interrelated with the action, providing an additional tool used both to reflect on and direct behavior. Vygotsy´s work is therefore viewed as particularly relevant to those who are concerned with the use of language. Both Piaget and Vygotsky viewed pre-school children in problem solving situations talking to themselves. When Piaget labeled the self directed behavior as egocentric and believed it only to be of minimal relevance to children’s cognitive growth, Vygotsky referred to it as a private speech. He argued that private speech grows out of the children’s interaction with parents and other adults and through such interactions, they begin to use their parent’s instructional comments to direct their own behavior. The socio-cultural aspects in Vygotsy´s theories are interesting when analyzing the learner in the information age society. How do we educate the child raised in a world of instant information, where interactive technologies have led them to believe they can act on the world with the press of a button? In my opinion, Vygotsky introduced the earliest form of inclusion to us. Inclusion is an effort to make sure students with disabilities go to school along with their friends and neighbors while also receiving “specially designed instruction and support” they need to achieve high standards and succeed as learners.