3+Socio-Constructivism

Lev Vygotsky and Socio-constructivism

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Russian psychologist whose work emphasized the essential role of culture and the social dimension of learning. He emphasized that little is learned, particularly cognitive functions that allow us to make sense of and act in the world around us. He explains that we make sense of the world with the use of “cognitive tools”, the most significant of which is language. He explained that learning occurs when it is targeted within a learner’s “Zone of Proximal Development” which is the “gap between what a learner can learn on his own and that which he/she can learn with guidance and collaboration”.

Some key points drawn (and interpreted) from Vygotsky’s work (sourced in Improving Comprehension with Think Aloud Strategies by Jeffrey Wilhem):

•	Learning is the sharing of expertise that is given over to students in an exchange between the teacher and the learner. •	What is learned must be taught. •	The teacher teaches through the relationship cultivated with a student in a context of working together closely. •	We must learn ways of thinking and reading in order to participate fully in our culture and to make meaning within it; these ways have to be passed from experts to novices in the context of meaningful collaborative activity. •	Almost all students can learn given the right instructions.

Building on Constructivism, Social Constructivism is a learning theory that draws significantly from Vygotsky’s thinking. In this theory, learning is dependent on the social world. “Learning is not solely individual, rather it is always collective, embedded in, enabled by, and constrained by the social phenomenon of language, caught up in layers of history and tradition.” (Quay, 2003)  So, learning occurs when we engage with other’s ideas, thinking and processes. Through the social engagement, our thinking shifts. Language is one of the major tools with which we make sense of the world; it is also the primary means by which we engage the social in an academic space. In this theory, language and interaction are the means by which we “construct” or create our understanding of the world around us.