Republic of the Philippines

President Ramon Magsaysay State University

Iba, Zambales, Philippines
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

GRADUATE SCHOOL
MAEd-Social Studies
____Trimester, A.Y. 2019-2020

Course Title: Selected Topics in the Social Sciences for Social Studies Teachers
Professor: Marie Fe D. De Guzman, Ed. D. Associate Professor V
Topic: Lev Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory and Theory of Zone of Proximal
Development
 Objectives: Discuss the implication of Lev Vygotsky’s Social Development
Theory to Education and
 Discuss how the features of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) helps
child/children to improve learning and develop skills.
Presenter: Ms. Jeremae Torres Eugenio and Ms. Jhem Lynn S. Icban
_______________________________________________________________________

Lev Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory

source: www.phillwebb. net

“What a child can do today with assistance, she will be able to do by herself
tomorrow.”
 Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky lived from November 17, 1896 to June 11, 1934.
He was a Soviet psychologist and the founder of cultural-historical psychology. 
 
Vygotsky’s name may not be as recognizable as, say, Piaget, Pavlov and Freud,
who were his peers when he developed his theory, but ask anyone studying psychology
and they are bound to know who he is.
He may have died at the relatively young age of 37 in 1934, and it may have
taken around 4 decades before his ideas were formally introduced and incorporated in
psychology curricula across universities in the Western world, but they have since
 become integral to the study of psychology, particularly in the field of educational and
early childhood psychology.

Social Development Theory

In the Social Development Theory, Lev Vygotsky (1934)
 primarily explains that socialization affects the learning process in an individual.
 It tries to explain consciousness or awareness as the result of socialization. This means
that when we talk to our peers or adults, we talk to them for the sake of communication.
After we interact with other people, we tend to internalize what we said.

 The work of Vygotsky was the beginning of research and theory in cognitive

development. Specifically, what is known as Social Development
Theory. Vygotsky's theories stress the fundamental role of social interaction in the
development of cognition. He believed that community plays a central role in the process
of "making meaning." (Vygotsky,1978)

 He is commonly compared and contrasted to Jean Piaget. One of the biggest differences
between the two is where Piaget believed 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). Which plainly means that social learning tends to come before
development.

 Vygotsky’s social development theory of human learning describes learning as a social

process and the origination of human intelligence in society or culture. The major theme
of Vygotsky’s theoretical framework is that social interaction plays a fundamental role in
the development of cognition.

Example:
Early Childhood Education/ Kindergarten
 RA 10157 and RA 10533, or the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, provide that
kindergarten education shall mean “one year of preparatory education for children at least
five (5) years old as a prerequisite for Grade 1.”
 This part of early education for children, acts as a transition from home to school
environment. At Kindergarten, children are molded by giving a number of games and
activities such as drawing, singing, which help them develop their fine motor skills, a
love for learning and build social skills.
 The ongoing ECCD Longitudinal Study in the Philippines, which tracks a cohort of
Kindergarten pupils up to Grade 2, revealed that Kindergarten pupils who had preschool
experience have higher socioemotional skills than those who did not have such
experience.

 Socioemotional skills are a child’s ability to understand the feelings of others, control his
or her own feelings and behaviors, get along well with other children, and build
relationships with adults Moreover, those who have higher socioemotional skills have
higher early literacy and numeracy skills.

Why should a child attend kindergarten?

 Kindergarten goes a long way in overall development of your child. It develops your
child s social, emotional, literacy and fine motor skills, on which they need to build
during their lifetime.
 During this period, a child learns by engaging its sense of hearing, sight, smell, and
touch. For example, through the sense of touch a child learns about different shapes and
sizes of objects, by hearing a child develops the art of listening and understanding about
the world around them better and the sense of sight enables a child to recognize objects,
patterns, and words.
 At kindergarten, children also learn from various activities such as dance, music, art and
games, how to think, recognise objects & language, and express themselves.

Two Major Principles Introduced by Vygotsky’s Social

Development Theory or SDT

1. Cognitive development is limited up to a certain extent or within a certain range,

at any given age of the individual; and

2. An individual’s full cognitive development requires social interaction.

These principles are encapsulated in three theories or themes:

I. Social Interaction,

II. The More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) and

III. the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).

I. SOCIAL INTERACTION

Key Concept #1 Social interaction plays a central role in cognitive

development

 It is instilled in every individual, even as a child, to seek meaning in everything.

Curiosity sets in early on during childhood, and you probably noticed how, even from a
very yong age, a person starts asking questions.
 He will be looking around, wide-eyed, wonder and interest in his observant eyes.
It is safe to say that the individual has started the process of looking for or “making
 meaning”. And, in order to find or make that meaning, he has to look around him, be
involved, and play an active role on the “road to discovery”.
 Cognitive – and human – development, according to Vygotsky, is a result of a
“dynamic” interaction between the individual and the society. This dynamic relationship
denotes a relationship of mutuality between the two. Just as society has an impact on the
individual, the individual also has an impact on society.

Implication to Education Children are unable to learn and develop if they are removed
from society, or are forbidden to interact with it. 

Key Concept #2 Social learning precedes development

1. Social level, or interpsychological. The functions first appear between

individuals first. This is where the person will have to interact, connect, and reach out to
other people. This is the level where social learning takes place.

2. Individual level, or intrapsychological. This is the area within the child or the

individual. Once he has passed the social level, where he acquired social learnings, the
functions will appear a second time and, this time, more developed and thus, leading to
cognitive development.

Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social
level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and
then inside the child (intrapsychological). (Vygotsky, 1978, p.57).

Implication to Education Social learning comes before cognitive development.

 Children’s minds would not advance very far if their knowledge would be based only on
their own discoveries.

 Children learn from exploring and guidance is a great tool to help them on this path to
cognitive development.

 Example:
Social level, or Interpsychological Individual level, or Intrapsychological.
 This does not mean that people are born with absolutely zero abilities. Vygotsky is quick
to point out that everyone is born with basic or elementary functions or abilities that will
get them started on the road to their intellectual development.

 The elementary mental functions include those that come by naturally with birth and
growth, without influence by an external stimulus. In other words, these capacities are not
learned, involuntary, and often do not really require any thought on the part of the
individual. Vygotsky even went so far as saying that most of these elementary mental
functions are acquired by a child through genetics.

Examples of Elementary or Lower Mental Functions (LMFs) are:

 Sensation. A child does not need to be taught that something is hot, cold, sweet,
or bitter. His senses are will automatically deliver those messages to his brain, so he can
react accordingly.

 Hunger. There are bodily processes that are beyond a person’s control, and one
of them is hunger. When an infant is hungry, he is hungry, and so he will show it by
crying or acting restless. He does not need to be told that he is hungry since his body will
manifest the fact.

 Memory. To be more specific, natural or unmediated memory. Young children

are able to immediately commit things to memory in a natural manner. A baby will
instantly recognize the sound of his mother’s voice, or the taste of baby food. But that’s
it. He won’t necessarily be able to associate – or subsequently recognize any association
– the sound of his mother’s voice to those times that she sung him a lullaby to sleep, and
he isn’t likely to identify that baby food to be the one that he really likes to eat.

As the child grows older, and as his social learning increased through more social
interactions, his elementary mental functions evolved into his “higher mental functions”
or HMF. Unlike elementary mental functions, they are stimulated. 

Examples of higher mental functions (HMF)

 Language. As a child develops, so does his capacity for languages.

 Memory. This refers to what comes after the child has gone past the natural
memory stage. This time, his memory can be cultivated and controlled, and he now has
access to memory aids and tools.

 Voluntary attention. You may have heard toddlers and small children being
described as having short attention span. That is because, at that age, their thought
processes aren’t stable enough to sustain concentration on one particular object or
thought. Sure, they can focus on one thing at one time, but they won’t really know what
to do with that ability, and so they turn on to something else. Social learnings will arm
the child with the ability of focus and concentration, and the ability to figure out what to
do with it

 Perception. Through sensing, a child is able to recognize a sensory stimuli… but

it ends there. His lack of perception skills will render him unable to interpret the meaning
or significance behind it. Social interactions help the child’s level of
perception, increasing his awareness and capacity to understand why things are as they
are.

The learning that Vygotsky referred to does not point to a specific type or
standard, because he also acknowledged how cultural differences can cause variability
when it comes to learning and how culture, in general, is influential and powerful in
shaping or molding one’s cognition.

Key Concept #3 Language accelerates Cognitive Development

It is a given that language is very important in any social interaction, since it is the
primary medium of communication in any social setting.

According to Vygotsky (1962) language plays two critical roles in cognitive

development:
1: It is the main means by which adults transmit information to children.
2: Language itself becomes a very powerful tool of intellectual adaptation.
Vygotsky (1987) differentiates between three forms of language:
Social speech which is external communication used to talk to others (typical
from the age of two);
Private speech (typical from the age of three) which is directed to the self and
serves an intellectual function; and finally private speech goes underground, diminishing
in audibility as it takes on a self-regulating function and is transformed into silent inner
speech (typical from the age of seven).
For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems from the
beginning of life, merging at around three years of age. At this point speech and thought
become interdependent: thought becomes verbal, speech becomes representational. When
this happens, children's monologues internalized to become inner speech. The
internalization of language is important as it drives cognitive development

Three stages of speech development, according to Vygotsky.

Stage 1 – Social or External Speech

This covers the preverbal stage, usually under the age of three, when the child is still
unable to transcribe his thoughts in complete thought messages. His thoughts are pretty
simple, and his emotions basic, and there is no intellectual or thinking exercise involved.

However, despite that, he still wants to be able to control others’ behaviors. Therefore, he
makes use of his limited speech to express simple thoughts of hunger, pleasure,
displeasure, satisfaction and dissatisfaction through crying, laughing, shouting, and
gurgling.

Stage 2 – Egocentric Speech/ Private speech

If, in the first stage, the purpose of the child’s speech is to control the behavior of other
people, the egocentric speech in the second stage is spoken as a way for the child to direct
his own behavior.

This is usually demonstrated between the ages of 3 and 6, when the child starts to
enunciate words more clearly and form more complete sentences, with more sense or
thought

Stage 3 – Inner Speech/ Private speech

The final speech development stage takes place once the child becomes older and starts
growing toward adulthood, and he is able to use it to direct both his thinking and the
resulting behavior or action. It is during this stage that the individual is now able to
engage in all the other higher mental functions.

Stage 1 Stage 2
Stage 3

Language involves
speech – both its expression
and comprehension. The
two- way nature of
communication
 requires that the language must be expressed or delivered, and it must also be understood.
When expressed differently, or even erroneously, the recipient will receive a different
meaning.

Implication to Education:  Language acts as a vehicle for educational development and

is important for the apprehension and acquisition of knowledge.

Example:
Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE)

 In 2009, the Department of Education (DepEd) recognized the benefits of teaching

children using their mother tongue or first language.
 Local and international research has found that children learn to speak, read, and write
more quickly in their first language, and can pick up a second and third language more
easily if taught in their first language. In the same way, they acquire other academic
competencies more quickly, particularly in science and math.

 Through Department Order 94, DepEd instituted Mother Tongue-Based

Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE), with the following major languages as languages
of instruction in 2012-2013: Tagalog, Kapampangan, Pangasinense, Iloko, Bikol,
Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray, Tausug, Maguindanaoan, Maranao, Chabacano,
Ivatan, Sambal, Akianon, Kinaray-a, Yakan, and Sinurigaonon.

 Aside from their mother tongues or first languages, the children are taught English and
Filipino as subjects focusing on oral fluency, starting in the first grade. From the fourth
grade onward, Filipino and English are introduced as languages of instruction.

 According to Rosalina Villaneza, chief of teaching and learning division of the DepEd.
Researchers have proven even during our education with the Thomasites that the child’s
first language really facilitates learning, as emphasized by Dr. Monroe, that we should
be educated in our mother tongue.

II . THE MORE KNOWLEDGEABLE OTHER (MKO)

 The MKO a person with a better understanding and considerably higher or superior level
of ability, skill or knowledge about a particular subject, task or process, than the person
who is attempting to learn (also called the learner).
 The MKO often comes in the person of a teacher, a superior at work, or a peer with more
experience. There are instances when he could be someone younger, but with more
cultivated knowledge and skill.  In this digital age, the MKO may even be a computer or
any intelligent machine. In the eyes of a child, adults are the MKOs.
 Implication to Education: Learning becomes more productive and contributory
when acquired from an MKO.
Cooperative and Collaborative Learning
From a Vygotskian perspective, the teacher's role is mediating the child's learning
activity as they share knowledge through social interaction' (Dixon-Krauss, 1996, p. 18).
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 skillful peers - within the zone of
proximal development.
Vygotsky's theories also feed into current interest in collaborative learning,
suggesting that group members should have different levels of ability so more advanced
peers can help less advanced members operate within their zone of proximal
development.

III. The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

 The Zone Of Proximal Development refers to the difference between what a
learner can do without help and what he or she can achieve with guidance and
encouragement from a skilled partner.

Thus, the term “proximal” refers to those skills that the learner is “close” to
mastering mastering them but needs more guidance and practice in order to perform these
actions independently.

 The concept, zone of proximal development was developed by Soviet psychologist and
social constructivist Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934).

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, p. 86).
 Vygotsky believed that when a student is in the zone of proximal development for a
particular task, providing the appropriate assistance will give the student enough of a
"boost" to achieve the task.
To assist a person to move through the zone of proximal development,
educators are encouraged to focus on three important components which aid the
learning process:

 The presence of someone with knowledge and skills beyond that of the learner (a
more knowledgeable other).
  Social interactions with a skillful tutor that allow the learner to observe and
practice their skills.

 Scaffolding, or supportive activities provided by the educator, or more competent

peer, to support the student as he or she is led through the ZPD.
 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, Bruner and Ross (1976).

Theory of Scaffolding
 Scaffolding consists of the activities provided by the educator, or more competent peer,
to support the student as he or she is led through the zone of proximal development.

 Support is tapered off (i.e. withdrawn) as it becomes unnecessary, much as a scaffold is

removed from a building during construction. The student will then be able to complete
the task again on his own.

 Wood et al. (1976, p. 90) define scaffolding as a process "that enables a child or novice to
solve a task or achieve a goal that would be beyond his unassisted efforts."

 It is important to note that the terms cooperative learning, scaffolding and guided learning
all have the same meaning within the literature.

Implication to Education: This concept is important because teachers can use it

as a guide to a child's development. Through play, and imagination a child's conceptual
abilities are stretched. Teacher’s job is to move the child’s mind forward step by step.

References:

McLeod, S.A. (2007) Simply Psychology  [On-line] UK: Available:

http://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html

Accessed: April 23, 2011

Vygotsky LS. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press; 1978.

McLeod, S. A. (2018, Aug 05). Lev Vygotsky. Simply psychology:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.htm
McLeod, S.A (2019) The Zone of Proximal Development and Scaffolding

https://www.simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-Proximal-Development.html