SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY

A. Views of Lev Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was an important figure in a contextual perspective,
especially when that perspective was applied in the context of child development. Unlike
Bronfenbrenner, who views the contextual system as the center of one's attention, Vygotsky's
main focus is precisely on the social, cultural, and historical complexes in which a child is
part of the context. He argues, to understand the cognitive development of children, it must
consider the social processes that may be the source of children's thoughts (Papalia, 2008).
Vygotsky is a contextual figure. He argues that a person's behavior exists because of a
particular situation or the overall contexts that exist when the behavior occurs. Why does it
have to be in context? Because someone can't react or behave regardless of context, the
knowledge that exists in the human brain comes from outside or from other people. As
Piaget's theory of cognitive development, Vygotsky's sociocultural theory emphasizes the
active involvement of children with their environment. But, while Piaget described a single
thought that took and interpreted information about the world, Vygotsky saw cognitive
growth as a collaborative process. According to Vygotsky, children learn through social
interaction.
They get cognitive abilities as part of their induction into a group's way of life. Joint
activities help children to instill ways of thinking and behaving by what is done and expected
by the community where the child is located. Cognitive development occurs when individuals
are faced with new and challenging experiences and when they try to solve problems that
arise. To gain understanding, individuals try to link new knowledge with the initial
knowledge they have and then build a new understanding. Cognitive development in
Vygotsky's view is obtained through two pathways, namely biological basic processes and
psychological and sociocultural processes.
Vygotsky believes that child development includes qualitative and quantitative
changes. When qualitative change occurs, the whole system of mental functions undergoes a
major restructuring, which results in the emergence of new cognitive and social-emotional
forms of developmental achievements. Likewise, there is a period in which no new formation
takes place, but children are still developing their existing abilities. During this period,
growth occurs as a quantitative change in the number of things a child can remember and
process (Roopnarine in Papalia, 2008). The core of Vigotsky's theory is emphasizing the
interaction between internal and external aspects of learning and its emphasis on the social
environment of learning.
According to Vygotsky's theory, human cognitive function comes from the social interaction
of each individual in a cultural context. Vigotsky also believes that learning takes place when
the child is working on tasks that have not been learned but that the tasks are still within
reach of their abilities or that they are within the zone of proximal development.
a. The Sociocultural Concept
Vygotsky's learning theory is a view that can accommodate the sociocultural-
revolution in learning and learning theory. Lev Vygotsky said that a person's way of thinking
must be understood from his socio-cultural and historical background. That is, to understand
a person's mind not by tracing what is behind his brain and in the depths of his soul, but from
the origins of his conscious actions, from the social interactions that are based on his life
history. Improved mental functions of a person comes from social life or groups, not from
individuals (Budiningsih, 2003: 42-43).
Piaget views children as learning through individual discovery, while Vygotsky
emphasizes the role of adults and other children in facilitating the child's development.
According to Vygotsky, children are born with relatively basic mental functions such as the
ability to understand the outside world and focus attention.
However, children do not have much higher mental functions such as memory, thinking
and solving problems. These higher mental functions are considered as "cultural tools" in
which individuals live and those tools come from culture. The tools are passed on to children
by members of the older culture during the guided learning experience. Experiences with
other people gradually become deeper and shape the child's inner image of the world.
Vygotsky emphasized both the level of social context that is institutional and the level of
social context that is interpersonal.
At the institutional level, cultural history provides organizations and tools that are useful
for cognitive activities through institutions such as schools, inventions such as computers,
and literacy. Institutional interaction gives children a broad set of behavioral and social norms
to guide their lives. The interpersonal level has a more direct influence on the mental
functioning of the child.
According to Vygotsky (1962), skills in mental functioning develop through direct social
interaction. Information about tools, skills and cognitive interpersonal relationships is
transmitted through direct interaction with humans. Through organizing social interaction
experiences that are within this cultural background, children's mental development matures.
Vygotsky's study focuses on the relationship between humans and the socio-cultural context
in which they play and interact with each other in sharing experiences or knowledge.
Therefore, Vygotsky's theory, known as socio-cultural development theory, emphasizes
social and cultural interactions concerning cognitive development. The development of
children's thinking is influenced by social interactions in the cultural context in which they
are raised (Danoebroto, 2015: 194).
According to Vygotsky (Salkind in Danoebroto, 2015: 194), every function in the
development of a child's culture will appear twice at first at the social level in human
relations or inner psychology, then appear at the personal level in the child or intro
psychology. This means it is necessary to know the social and cultural processes that shape
children to understand their cognitive development. Child cognitive development progress is
obtained as a result of social interaction with others. Other people here are not always parents
but can be other adults or even peers who are more understanding about something.
According to Slavin (Danoebroto, 2015: 194). This social interaction spurred the
formation of new ideas and enriched the intellectual development of students. This concept
by Vygotsky is called cognitive apprenticeship. Cognitive apprenticeship refers to the process
by which a person who is learning step by step acquires expertise through his interaction with
an expert. The experts referred to here are people who master the problems studied.
Vygotsky, each individual develops in a social context. All intellectual developments
that include meaning, memory, thought, perception, and consciousness move from the
interpersonal to the intrapersonal realm. The mechanism underlying high-level mental work
is a copy of social interaction. In Vygotsky's view, all high-level cognitive work in humans
has origins in the social interaction of each individual in a particular cultural context.
Cognition is an internalization of social interaction.
Vygotsky's theory of social cognition encourages the need for a new social foundation
to understand the educational process (John, 2010: 129).
Vygotsky distinguishes mental processes into 2, namely:
1) Elementary. The preverbal period, that is, as long as the child has not mastered verbal,
at that time the child is related to the environment using body language.
2) Higher. The period after the child can talk. At this time, children will relate to the
environment verbally.
a. Zone of proximal development (zone of proximal development)
Vygotsky also put forward his concept of a zone of proximal development (zone of
proximal development) or can be interpreted as the closest development area (DPT).
According to him, the development of a person's ability can be divided into two levels,
namely the level of actual development and the level of potential development.
 The actual level of development appears from one's ability to complete tasks or solve
various problems independently. This is referred to as instrumental ability, while the level of
potential development appears from one's ability to complete tasks and solve problems when
under adult guidance or when collaborating with more competent peers. This is called
instrumental ability. The distance between the two, namely the level of actual development
and the level of potential development is called the zone of proximal development
(Budiningsih, 2003: 44).
The Proximal Development Zone is a gap between actual development and potential
development. Vygotsky (Taylor in Budiningsih, 2003: 44) defines the Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD) as follows.
The zone of proximal development is the distance between the actual developmental
level as determined through independent problem solving and the level of potential
development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration
with more capable peers.
Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is the distance between students 'ability to
perform tasks under the guidance of adults and or with peer collaboration and problem-
solving independently according to students' abilities. In the above definition, the lower limit
of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is the level of expertise possessed by children
who work independently (actual development). The upper limit is the level of additional
responsibility that a child can receive with the help of an instructor (potential level of
development).
The purpose of ZPD is to emphasize ZPD on social interaction will be able to
facilitate child development (Danoebroto, 2015: 195).
Vygotsky created the concept of Zone Proximal Development (ZPD) as a
psychologist's way for educators to think about children's development and how they learn
and develop problem-solving abilities needed to carry out the task area related to
development. ZPD develops a relationship of general psychological perspectives on child
development with an educational perspective on instruction. This term refers to the process
by which a person who is learning step-by-step acquires expertise in his interactions with an
expert, the expert can be an adult or an older person or peer who has mastered the problem.
(Mappalotteng, 2008 in Trianto, 2011: 39).
c. Scaffolding
This concept emphasizes step-by-step support for learning and problem solving as
important in modern constructivist thinking.
 According to Horowitz (2005) cited by Santrok (2009: 64), scaffolding is closely
related to ZDP. Scaffolding means setting the level of support. Throughout the teaching
session, a more skilled person (a more expert teacher or peer) adjusts the amount of guidance
according to the child's performance. When students are learning a new assignment, more
skilled people can do direct teaching. As student competency increases, guidance is given
less. Scaffolding is often used to help students reach the upper limit of their zone of proximal
development.
Furthermore, Winataputra, et al (2008: 6.21) add that Scaffolding is the process of
providing guidance or guidance to students to achieve what must be understood from what is
now known. Based on the teacher's understanding of students' abilities, students are
encouraged and assigned to work on tasks that are a little more difficult and are one step
higher than the abilities currently possessed with decreasing intensity of guidance. In this
way, students 'thinking abilities will develop, in addition to being by students' intellectual
development, also influenced by the challenges of thinking in assignments by the teacher.
Dialogue is an important scaffolding tool in the zone of proximal development. In
Vygotsky's view, children have concepts that are rich, but not systematic, unorganized, and
spontaneous. In a dialogue, the concept meets with a more systematic, logical, and rational
guidance concept. As a result, children's concepts become more systematic, logical, and
rational (Santrock, 2009: 64).
d. Language and Mind
The use of dialogue as a scaffolding tool is just one example of the important role of
language in child development. According to Vygotsky, children use conversation not only
for social communication, but also to help them solve tasks. Vygotsky believes more that
children use language to plan, guide, and assist their behavior. The use of language for self-
regulation (self-regulation) is called private speech. For Piaget, the private speech was
egocentric and immature, but for Vygotsky, this was an important tool of thought during the
early childhood years.
Vygotsky suggested that language plays an important role in the cognitive
development process of children. According to him also, there is a clear relationship between
language development and cognitive development. He stated that there are three stages of
language development. The three stages of development are described as follows:
1) Social speech (until the age of 3 years)
Talk is usually done to control behavior and to express simple thoughts such as
emotions.
 2) Egocentric speech (3-7 years) Children more often talk to themselves, they talk about
what they do and why they do it. Inner speech (above the age of 7 years to adulthood)
3) Inner speech or inner speech, is the process of the relationship between mind and
language, at this stage, each individual has arrived at a higher type of mental function
The implications of Vygotsky's theory in learning according to Oakley (2004: 48-50) are
as follows:
1. The learning process provided by the teacher must be by the level of potential
development of students. Students should be given assignments that can help them to
reach their level of potential development.
2. Vygotsky promotes the use of collaborative and cooperative learning, where students
can interact with each other and come up with effective problem-solving strategies in
each of their ZPD.
3. The important role of teachers in guiding students, providing input and advice and
offering a variety of strategies in solving Oakley problems (2004: 41).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Danoebroto, Sri Wulandari. 2015. Teori Belajar Konstruktivis Piaget dan Vygotsky. Jurnal:
Indonesian Digital Journal of Mathematics and Education Vol 2 No 3: 191-198.
Yohanes, Rudi Santoso. 2015. Teori Vygotsky dan implikasinya Terhadap Pembelajaran
Matematika. Jurnal: Widya Warta No 2: 127-135.