Lev Vygotsky Social Learning Theory

Lev Vygotsky was born on the 17th November 1896 in Orsha. He studied at the University of Moscow. Vygotsky’s areas of studies were limited all due to the fact that he was Jewish, despite all of that he studied Law and graduated in 1917. He taught psychology at a college in Gomel and married Roza Noevna Smekhova in 1924. That marriage produced two girls. He went on to become a researcher and teacher at the Moscow Institute of Experimental Psychology for about nine years. It was while at this Institute that he started to really make a name for himself in researching children cognitive development, how they developed and to be able to understand how they learn, hence his theories were developed. Vygotsky died at a young age of 37 after a short illness, it was not until …show more content…
Jean Piaget like Vygotsky was a stage theory. Vygotsky’s early death put some limitations to his research. Piaget who was around to explain and give reasoning for his theory but the same could not be said for Vygotsky. Piaget was of the view that children development comes after their learning however; Lev Vygotsky had a different view in that although learning is necessary, social learning comes before development. He had some main themes; the social sources of individual thinking, cultural tools and cognitive development, the role of language and private speech, the zone of proximal development and the role of learning and development.
Vygotsky and Piaget saw the importance of social interaction in cognitive development, however Piaget was of the view that interaction between peers were very important as this cause them to challenge each other’s thinking ability. (Woolfolk 2007) Vygotsky views were that if the children interact with they peers as well as adults it will foster their cognitive development as the children will be learning from