Question 5: Old Fashioned Play and Vygotsky

Q5: What connections do you see between this segment and the chapter you read by Lev Vygotsky?

Social constructivist theory according to Vygotsky suggests that learners actively construct knowledge by interacting with others, including more knowledgeable individuals.

The important linkage between the NPR story and Chapter six of Vygotsky is that Vygotsky posits that learning affects development:

"From this point of view, learning is not development; however, properly organized learning results in mental development and sets in motion a variety of developmental processes that would be impossible apart from learning. Thus, learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human, psychological functions" (p. 90).

Also note that this includes the informal, seemingly structureless learning which occurs long before elementary school:

"But even when, in the period of her first questions, a child assimilates the names of objects in her environment, she is learning. Indeed, can it be doubted that children learn speech from adults; or that, through asking questions and giving answers, children acquire a variety of information; or that, through imitating adults and through being instructed about how to act, children develop an entire repository of skills? Learning and development are interrelated from the child's very first day of life" (p. 84).

The internal speech of which Howard Chudacoff and others speak is explainable relative to Vygotsky's social constructivist framework.

Additionally, I would like to add something with regard to the zone of proximal development, the concept that learning is enhanced when teachers target the area between what students can learn on their own and what they can achieve with assistance. I like to think of Vygotsky's "experienced other" not only as teachers and other mentors, but also peers. Moreover, I believe that we may also include the affective domain as we think about social constructivism, as these attitudes and attributes which influence emotions and behaviors may also be observed and learned.