In our chapter on Human development, we focused mainly on the works of Jean Piaget, and failed to deeply analyze the works of many other psychologists. One person who was briefly mentioned in the book was Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky was a Russian researcher who developed a theory of cognitive development that and was able to greatly influence his field before he died at the young age of 37 due to TB. The book focused on Vygotsky's theories on scaffolding and zone of proximal development.
Another concept that Vygotsky purposed was that every function of a child's development appears twice: once on the social level and then later on the personal level. This doesn't sound like it is a big deal because it follows along with the common phrase, "monkey see, monkey do," however with this theory Vygotsky paved the way to emphasize the importance of teachers and parents and their role in the development of children. Vygotsky's main points were that children would first experience something within their social level, which refers to the people around them, and then they would then analyze, breakdown, and interpret this new information on a personal level. Since are parents and our teachers are often the ones who expose us to new information, they have the ability, according to Vygotsky, to greatly influence the development of children.
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