Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory

Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) has had an enormous impact on the field of Education. Like Piaget, he believed that children learn through first-hand, active experiences with their surroundings. Vygotsky's sociocultural learning theory included the role of parents, caregivers, and peers in cognitive development. He suggested that social and cultural environments foster learning, and that young people learn through social interactions with others. Learning situations and environments that encourage youth to interact with each other include:

• Group projects

• Group discussions

• Opportunities for peer feedback

Youth librarians we talked to describe the importance of fostering group and peer interaction. A youth librarian from a _ library

“I really like group tasks, I like breaking people up into teams, I love the idea of peer-mentoring... I think often times that's a great way to start building community.” -- INTS-059

Other key ideas that Vygotsky developed include:

Social scaffolding.

Vygotsky emphasized growth and development through collaboration. Through formal and informal interactions, adults, caregivers, and peers pass on ways to interpret information and share their knowledge. Other people, often adults, provide support and assistance, or social scaffolding. Additionally, cultures pass on cognitive tools— concepts, symbols, or strategies—that help learners form meaning and understanding. Cognitive tools might include language, writing, and maps. Such tools help us communicate and make sense of things.

Zone of proximal development (ZPD).

Out of scaffolding comes the idea of the Zone of proximal development (ZPD), or the “sweet spot” between the range of tasks that a young person can perform without scaffolding and what he can do with more support. For example, a teen might be struggling with learning how to code. By working with mentors or other adults and peers, she problem solves with the help of others. Through this support, she gains more confidence in her coding abilities. In this example, scaffolding might also come from other cognitive tools like online forums or web searches. When a young person is in the ZPD, providing them with some scaffolding, or assistance, may give them more motivation to continue with a task.

In essence, Vygotsky found that learning is connected to the social context in which it occurs. As such, librarians we spoke to have incorporated Vygotsky's approach by enabling social interaction in libraries. INTS-046 says she designs programming that teaches youth: “...good sportsmanship and respect for each other, socialization, soft skills, and kind of keep them engaged with loving the library and seeing the library as a place that they want to be…”