Question

Who is the theorist of Socio-cultural and what does the theory generally state?

Answer 1

Russian developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky was a socio-cultural theorist who came up with the Socio-cultural theory of development in children. According to him the culture in which we are raised significantly affects our cognitive developmen. He argues that we cannot take into account cognitive develpoment without taking the aspect of social learning.

He says that we learn more based on our social interations where children work with others to solve problems jointly. Although their skills increase working with someone they start to improve individually on the long run as well. He talks about something called the zone of proximal development which is the level at which a child can almost but not full fuly do or perform a task on his or her own. Over a course of time the child will gradually increase his one of proximal development.

Therefore to sumup his theory he says that all children need to learn in a social setting and interact in a social group in order to be able to grow and improve ones skills individually. Proving that we are social animals.