Activity 3.3 Vygotsky’s Social Constructivism

Vygotsky emphasizes the importance of language in learning and states that “learning and development are interrelated from the first day of life”.  Through obuchenie the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is activated and awakens “developmental processes that are able to operate only when the child is interacting with people in his environment”.  In the ZPD a child may understand what a variable is, but not be able to articulate the process for identifying variables in a word problem.  Through instruction and learning the child interacts with the teacher or more capable peers to learn.  Development results from this learning.  James acknowledges the centrality of language in human learning when he says “verbal material is the vehicle by which the mind thinks”.  He describes language as increasingly important in adolescence, when “”words, words, words” must constitute …an always larger part …of what the human being has to learn”.