Essay on Lev Vygotsky: Enhancing Cognitive-Developmental Abilities of Children

One of the notable early theorists who advanced a significant contribution to child development theories was Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist born in 1896. His theories have been widely applied in early childhood education to understand how children's brains develop cognitively and effective strategies for improving the cognitive-developmental abilities of children to enhance their learning abilities. Vygotsky made a significant contribution to child development theories by developing and advancing the cognitive development and sociocultural theories that have become the basis of today's research and studies on the role of these theories on child development and learning processes.

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In his theory of cognitive development, Vygotsky posits that the process of social development in children is contributed largely by their imaginative play and social interactions. His theory was the development of the social learning theory by Bandura. According to him, it is these social interactions among children and between children and adults that children created and have meaning to thins that exist and occur in their immediate social environments. Further, according to Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development, children's cognitive abilities improve with time as they grow, interact with other children and adults, and observed the behaviors of other people with whom they interact. Vygotsky also believed that development in children occurs psychologically inside the child and between the child and other people and that when children engage in social behavior and interactions, they finally achieve what he referred to as the zone of proximal development whereby a child can independently perform most functions and learn on their own.

As Verenikina (2010) correctly observes, Vygotsky's theoretical work and research on child development are still relevant to contemporary research on cognitive learning and development processes in children. According to this author, Vygotsky's theoretical framework on child development profoundly enables twenty-first-century researchers to comprehensively understand the teaching and learning pedagogies that bring out the complex cultural and social contexts in which many school-join children find themselves. This is because Vygotsky's theoretical framework emphasizes on the sociocultural factors in a child's environment that influence their learning and development. It is also Verenikina's (2010) argument in favor of Vygotsky's contribution to child development theories that his theories of cognitive and sociocultural development have stimulated many modern scholars in the field of education and psychology to conduct more research on his theories. That is, many contemporary researchers have relied on Vygotsky's theory and have the south to develop his theoretical perspectives further in a bid to understand the process of child cognitive development.

Verenikina (2010) further argues that educational technology which is a less- known aspect of Vygotsky's theory has a lot of relevance and significance in today's research on child development. That is, the widespread use of technology in teaching and learning today has to an extent been informed by Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development which lay the basis. As children interact with computer technologies, for instance, their learning is cognitive abilities and learning is enhanced since they can observe as the computers perform and execute various functions. Analytically, this argument is true because the children's curiosity to learn more is enhanced when they observe their instructors, parents, and each other use technology in different contexts.

Moreover, Vygotsky's contribution to child development theory is significant because his theoretical perspectives have been widely applied in early childhood education specifically in the education setting. For, as Winsler (2010) succinctly puts it, the Vygotskian theoretical perspectives can be and have been directly applied and translated into actual classroom practice. The transformation from theory to practice is seen in the way contemporary education scholars continuously use his theory in explaining particular pre-school activities such as play among children. The contemporary relevance of Vygotsky's theory on child cognitive development is also seen in the explosion of scholarship and research that seek to expound on and apply his theory in a classroom setting (Winsler, 2010). The cultural diversity that currently characterizes the social environment in which children learn and develop also calls for increased applicability of Vygotsky's theories on child development, such as the Vygotskian sociocultural theory.

Furthermore, Vygotsky's theoretical concepts of scaffolding and the zone of proximal development are important in that educators, parents, tutors, and teachers today can directly apply them to enable children to develop the relevant and necessary skills such as imagination, language, thinking, creativity, innovation, and problem-solving. For, as they play and interact with each other, children's cognitive abilities continue to develop because they learn and acquire skills that enable them to understand the sociocultural environment around them. According to Bodrova and Leong (2015), Vygotsky's theory and work on child cognitive development are now being used across nations in the education setting to reinforce the value and role of play for kindergarteners and pre-schoolers in enabling them to develop important skills and concepts. This application, they observe, is mainly based on Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory which posits that the process of human cognitive development is incremental and is influenced mainly by cultural or social interactions and assimilations. Vygotsky considered play to be a transitional stage that influences the way a child thinks, learns, and develops.

Conclusion

In conclusion, therefore, it is apparent from the above discussion and analysis that Vygotsky played an important role in the field of child development by advancing theories that have continued to shape research on child cognitive development and impact on learning. Apart from providing a foundation for current and future research on child development, Vygotsky sociocultural and cognitive development theories have found widespread application in the field of education due to their relevance in understanding how children's cognitive processes develop and how that can be enhanced through activities such as play. Through his theories, we can now understand how social and cultural interactions in the increasingly diverse society and learning environment do influence the cognitive growth and development of children. The increased use of technology to facilitate learning is also somewhat a remote application of Vygotsky's theoretical perspectives on child cognitive development.

References

Bodrova, E., & Leong, D.J. (2015). Vygotskian and post-Vygotskian views on children's play. American Journal of Play, 7(3), 371-388

Verenikina, I.M. (2010). Vygotsky in the twenty-first-century research. In J. Herrington & B. Hunter (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications (pp. 16-25). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

Winsler, A. (2010). Introduction to the special issue: Vygotskian perspectives in early childhoodeducation: Translating ideas into classroom practice. Early Education and Development, 14(3), 253-270. DOI: 10.1207/s15566935eed1403_1