Postingan terakhir soal ‘sekolah dimana’ menyebut-nyebut Vgotsky. Berikut ini sedikit penjelasan mengenai Vgotsky yang saya ambil dari tugas yang saya buat.

#1 Important features of Vygotsky theory

The most important features of Vgotsky theory are Zone of Proximal Development and Mediation Learning, which is developed by Vgotsky from Feuerstein theory (Gage and Berliner, 1992, pg 122). From these two main ideas, it can be seen Vgotsky believed that an individual is actively learning through his or her interaction with social environment.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) means a gap between actual level of child’s development and child’s higher potential development. In this ZPD, a child is participating in an activity to develop his or her mastery of practise or understanding a topic (Kozulin et al, 2003, pg 57). To enhance each child’s domain skill into his or her higher potential development, Vgotsky introduced the concept of Mediation Learning which means adults or more capable peers should be the agent by assisting child to learn from easy task that he or she can do it independently and then giving more challenging task without causing frustration.

#2 Comparison between Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s understanding of cognitive development

Piaget as a structuralist mentioned in each mental stage, a child shows an organised pattern of behaviour that can be vary or improved as the mental age increases (Miller, 1993, pg 37). While Vgotsky as a contextualist proposed every single child can have different cognitive development depends on stimulus from his or her circumstances and how this child interacts with environment.

Piaget claimed that a cognitive development proceeds through a series of stages. He believes a child on a certain age shows typical behaviour that can be generalised to all humans everywhere. While Vgotsky explained, a cognitive development of a child is depending on a culture. Children in various cultures learn skills valued by the culture by observing others and responding to their informal instruction (Miller, 1993, pg 380). According Vgotsky, the progress of cognitive development depends on social interaction between a child and the adult who is assisting this child through scaffolding method (learn from easy to more challenging task).

#3 Vgotsky’s perspective for education especially special education

For special education, Vgotsky focus on searching special needs’ strength and capabilities not weaknesses. That is the reason he believed in educating special needs students, teacher should develop personalised program.  First, student must be assessed using qualitative approach to know his or her mental processing and meta-cognitive processing and not using standardised intelligence test which is cultural biased. Second, using compensatory strategies, which means, in teaching knowledge, teacher needs to use students’ strengths. Moreover, in special education, his theory about ZPD is developed into Dynamic Assessment, a tool to assess student’s performance before and after mediation so that it can be seen, is the instruction and guidance effective or not. Dynamic assessment also can be used as an indicator is the child successfully gains new skills or knowledge.

Gage, NL & David Berliner. (1992). Educational Psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin

Chaiklin, Seth. (2003). The Zone of Proximal Development in Vygotsky’s Analysis of Learning and Instruction. In Kozulin et al. Vygotsky’s Educational Theory in Cultural Context (pg 39-64). Cambridge: Cambridge Press

Miller, Patricia. (1993). Theories of Developmental Psychology 3^rd Ed. NY: W.H Freeman & Company.