ABSTRACT
Two important and related themes in Vygotsky’s writings are the social foundations of cognition and the importance of instruction in development:
An important point to note about Vygotsky’s ideas on the social origins of cognition is that it is at this point that he uses the notion of internalization. He is not simply claiming that social interaction leads to the development of the child’s abilities in problem-solving, memory, etc.; rather, he is saying that the very means (especially speech) used in social interaction are taken over by the individual child and internalized. Thus, Vygotsky is making a very strong statement here about internalization and the social foundations of cognition.
(Wertsch, 1981, p. 146)If all the development of a child’s mental life takes place in the process of social intercourse, this implies that this intercourse and its most systematized form, the teaching process, forms the development of the child, creates new mental formations, and develops higher processes of mental life. Teaching, which sometimes seems to wait upon development, is in actual fact its decisive motive force…. The assimilation of general human experience in the teaching process is the most important specifically human form of mental development in ontogenesis. This deeply significant proposition defines an essentially new approach to the most important theoretical problem of psychology, the challenge of actively developing the mind. It is in this that the main significance of this aspect of Vygotsky’s enquiries lies.
(Leont'ev and Luria, 1968, p. 365) In all or Vygotsky’s writings with which we are familiar, the social relationship referred to as “teaching” is the one-to-one relationship between one adult and one child. When we try to explore Vygotskian perspectives for education, we immediately confront questions about the role of the student peer group. Even if formal education takes place in a group context only for economic reasons, because no society can afford a teacher for each individual child, the presence of peers should not be ignored or relegated only to discussions of issues in classroom management and control.