Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, fathered the Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development. In other words, Vygotsky believes that social learning comes before cognitive development and that cognitive development is in turn advanced by social learning. The theory comes about with three levels of cognitive development. The first level being total understanding. In this level students can perform specific tasks without any help from adults because they feel comfortable enough with their knowledge to carry out the task. The next level is the zone of proximal development. This is level where students can carry out a task with minimal help from the adult. This is where students best learn because they feel as though they are close enough to mastery and with just a little help, they can get there. The last level is where students cannot carry out a task, even with help.
When we are looking and thinking about classroom management, we could potentially see problems within the first and third level of Vygotsky’s model. Why? Because students are not actively engaged with the task or content at hand. If a child has already mastered a specific task, they no longer have to learn, thus they will be disengaged, and some behavioral issues could start to take place. Now, this isn’t saying that behavioral problems will come out of the children who master concepts quicker, because a lot of times this is not the case. Children who master the concepts the quickest a lot of times will continue to be on task. The real problems come out of the children in that third level of Vygotsky’s theory. The children that cannot get to mastery, even with help. When a concept or task is over the head of a child, they are going to be disengaged and causing problems. Thus, where classroom management comes in.
I think it is also important to note that the children that are in the zone of proximal development are going to receive the most scaffolding naturally by the teacher. Simply because with a little help they will reach mastery and they are much closer to understanding than the students who do not understand at all. With classroom management it is important that we are creating lessons and activities that keep students within this zone of proximal development because if the material is too easy or too hard to where they are in limbo within the other two zones, then we will lose the students and they will start to present these unwanted behaviors.
Miss Trone 