Vygotsky and Learning

Reading Response 1:
Vygotsky, Lev S. “Interaction Between Learning and Development.” Excerpted from Readings on the Development of Children. 1978.

What do we know the teaching of writing is all about? Psychology. Enter Vygotsky and his zone of proximal development. I appreciate scholars who work to make the teaching of writing more accessible and ultimately easier, and this piece is especially useful for those looking for theories of learning.

Attempting to extend the location of learning to include realms beyond the classroom, Vygotsky challenges traditional theories of education. He argues that “any learning a child encounters in school always has a previous history,” meaning that school is not the primary source of development (32). With this knowledge, I don’t believe it is difficult to see how such an idea alone can change the way teachers approach lesson plans or interactions with students. Yet his argument continues to grow.

Specifically, Vygotsky explains the common knowledge that when properly matched, the type of learning and a child’s developmental level can be powerful, coordinated tools for enhancing a learning environment. To provide evidence the author identifies two developmental levels to showcase the relational differences. The first, “actual development,” is “the level of development of a child’s mental functions that has been established as a result of certain already completed developmental cycles” (32). The zone of proximal development, on the other hand, traces a student’s “internal course of development,” or their state of learning as they are in the process of building. This is useful to pay attention to because it can be used as a method of teaching students self sufficiency with a given subject (a result of its prospective characterization) (33).

Learning itself is not development based on Vygotsky’s research. And this conclusion should have serious implications for how we imagine the teaching of writing in particular. If students learn faster than their processes of development can keep up with, then teachers must adjust the location and effects of their developmental lessons/moments.