Vygotsky: Theories And Concepts Of Learning

Fig.2. Theories and Concepts of Learning

Vygotsky’s Cultural-Historical Activity Theory. Vygotsky discusses his view from the angle of children’s psychological development. Any higher mental function is a social function originally, which is the core issue of all internal and external activities. In the cultural development of children, every higher mental function appears twice at two sides. The first is social, interpersonal relationship between minds, and the second is the psychological category within children; all higher mental functions are the internalization of social relationships (Vygotsky, 2004b:388). The psychological development should be understood from historical points instead of abstract points, from its indivisible relations

Vygotsky theorized that interaction and language are two central factors in cognitive development (Corpus & Lucas, 2010). (Beriones, 2010) emphasized that effective learning happens through participation in social activities, making the social context of learning crucial. Parents, teachers and other adults in the learner’s environment all contribute to the process. When children with special needs are given an environment that is conducive to learning, they too will become fruitful members of the community. In addition, Lev Vygotsky Socio-Cultural Theory states that students’ learning could be more effective if it is provided with support or scaffold. Information processing theory supplies the scaffold theory which is also a cognitive theoretical framework that focuses on how knowledge enters and is stored and retrieved from our memory. Cognitive psychologist believed that processes influence the nature of what is learned. They considered learning as largely an internal process, not an external behavior change. They looked into how learners receive, perceive, store and retrieve

This theory is concerned with how individuals learn large amounts of meaningful material from verbal/textual presentations in a school setting in contrast to theories developed in the context of laboratory experiments. According to Ausubel, learning is based upon the kinds of super ordinate, representational, and combinatorial processes that occur during the reception of information. He also explains that new learning or acquisition of knowledge is related to relevant ideas in the existing cognitive structure. Cognitive structures represent the residue of all learning experiences; forgetting occurs because certain details get integrated and lose their individual identity.

Constructivist Learning Theory. According to this theory, teachers should provide learners enough time to construct their own meaning when learning something new and make wait long enough after posing a question so that the student will have enough time to think about their answers and be able to respond thoughtfully.

The above theories help provide more clarification about the concern and rationale of the study. For better knowledge and clarity, the researcher focused on the effects of personal tutoring on the learning performance of