vygotsky posting

I agree completely with Lev Vygotsky’s claim that a student’s learning is related to their environment and culture. I am sure that this is the case and I believe that for many students the classroom environment may not be the ideal place in which to learn, as they are often so distracted by social interaction with other students. Of course they will be learning about socialisation but content learnt may be minimal.
Vygotsky talked of egocentric speech (talking out loud) as “a transition to internalized thought” (Driscoll cited in Riddle. 1999) and I wonder whether in the present time egocentric speech is more socially acceptable than it was in the past, resulting in people talking considerably more than in the past (during classes, movies or concerts for example).

Vygotsky claimed that the three elements that needed to be present in order for learning to occur were 1) active student 2) active teacher and 3) an active social environment. (The Mozart of Psychology. N.d.)

Here I think he is referring to the fact that unless a student is actively involved whatever they are doing will not be internalized. I think that this is helpful as it means that as a teacher I would be wise to relax in the knowledge that there is only a certain amount that I can do.
As a teacher of mine used to say “teaching has nothing to do with learning” (Ilana Nevill. 1980) and Vygotsky also said that “From a scientific point of view, strictly speaking, you cannot educate anyone else”. (ibid.)


Vygotsky created the term Zone of Proximal Development describing it as “the distance between the actual development 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) I interpret this to mean that students can learn more when they are helped by someone else, if they are met on ground of something that they already know. This makes sense as from what I have seen if I can engage students with something about which they feel confident, learning is much more likely than if they feel lost from the start.

References:
Nicholl, T. Vygotsky.
Retrieved from HYPERLINK "http://www.massey.ac.nz/-alock/virtual/trishvyg.htm" http://www.massey.ac.nz/-alock/virtual/trishvyg.htm on April 3 2007

Riddle, E. Lev Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory (1999)
Retrieved from HYPERLINK "http://tonymcarthur.edublogs.org/files/2007/03/vygotsky1.htm" http://tonymcarthur.edublogs.org/files/2007/03/vygotsky1.htm on March 4 2007

Lev Vygotsky Wikipedia entry
Retrieved from HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky
On April 3 2007

The Mozart of Psychology
Retrieved from HYPERLINK "http://vygotsky.afraid.org/" http://vygotsky.afraid.org/ on April 3 2007